Rep. Pete Start shows the tyrannical mind of the modern leftist Democrat:

The Federal government can do most anything.

That quote is what people are focused on, but the first thing Stark said was just as disturbing:

I think that there are very few Constitutional limits that would prevent the federal government from rules that could affect your private life.

Contrast that with Thomas Jefferson, the man who would probably gut punch Pete Stark:

A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government…”

The modern day Democrats are the party of big government tyranny, limited only by their imagination and supported by a convoluted understanding of the role of government. As C.S. Lewis said, they are the most oppressive sort of tyrant, worse than robber barons:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Tyrannical minds like Pete Stark feel that whatever rule or law they institute is for the good of the people, even when it robs the people of their liberty. They have no problem with dictating to people what they will do, for who and for how much. This is no longer the party of Jefferson.

This is the party of Marx.