What is a liberal to you, and why do so many people bash them on this board?

I consider myself a liberal, only because I believe in transparent, non-corrupt polotics, peaceful resolution of conflicts, free press, education/medicine/food for all people of the world, and preservation of the enviorment. I am willing to make financial sacrafices to help the less fortunate. It seems to me these are values every one should believe in and support. I don't quite understand the contempt for liberals -- enlighten me.

And also, what is conservative to you?

let the flamings begin!!!!

You've hit it on the head. Contempt for liberals (or leftists, to be more precise) is due (for me) to

a) their assumption that they know better than anyone else what priorities should be set by all and how those priorities should be achieved;

b) their belief that their "remedies" should be implemented by government;

c) that the state should pay for these remedies with somebody else's money (i.e. mine) and

d) that if I disagree, I should be forced to comply by the coercive powers of the state (don't believe the state's coercive? Skip paying your taxes for a year).

If you want to further your goals with your time and your money, that's great - it's called charity, and involves making your own life choices that impact you and the people you want to help. When you decide that you know better than me how my time and money should be used in furtherance of your goals, that's coercive and intrusive, and it's SOP for the left.

Reparations is a perfect example. I've never oppressed or enslaved anybody; nor have my parents, grandparents, etc. (poor immigrants, faced their own discrimination, not that I'm whining about it or demanding redress), and I'm not paying for someone else's guilt. If true believers on the left feel guilty for the actions of some dead people against some other dead people 300 years ago, let them pay into a voluntary reparations fund to feel better about themselves. Leave me out of it.

Example #2: Gray Davis, in one of his last official acts (hopefully), signs into law the requirement that all California employers with over 50 employees (I believe that's the limit) provide health insurance for their employees. The governor and legislature don't care who pays for it - that's somebody else's problem. They just saw that there were a lot of people - VOTERS - without health care. Let's fix it by forcing a requirement on somebody else. They look like heroes to their constituents, and nobody thinks about the long term effects - if I were a commercial/industrial real estate agent in Nevada or Arizona I'd be laughing right now. California is on a suicide course, and nobody seems to care.

Today's right in America isn't particularly laudable, either, being in hock to their own special interests (different from those on the left, of course) and attacking the constitution. Neither side is representative of what used to be "liberal" in the 19th century British sense, but the right is marginally closer to those values.

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This is why Liberals reap contempt. Liberalism is the new catholicism.

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The one thing that bothers me is the contempt for the great books in the universities. I am not totally against multiculturalism. If other cultures offer something worthwhile to read I am all for it - but not at the expense of our Western Heritage. As a teacher I see kids everyday that do not know who Homer, Dante, or Chaucer was. The works of these men stand on their own - regardless of there skin color. In the universities Tenured Radicals belittle the Western Tradition. It is hard to belittle something you have not even read.

Robert Davis

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Robert Davis

I see now. Thank you.

It seems liberals might exhibit a "knowing" that irritates others.

Hmm, in my lifely conversations, I always listen to and respect other peoples opinions, but I do know many a liberal who are very aggressive with their views.

BTW In a William F Buckley Jr. article, he stated that he wanted the term Liberal back from the Democrats because of a Merriam Webster defination. If I remember correctly the most compelling reason was freedom. A Democrat is anything but free after the taxes kick in.

Republican or Democrat? That is the question.
A young teenage girl was about to finish her first year of college. She considered herself to be a very liberal Democrat and her father was a rather staunch Republican.
One day she was challenging her father on his beliefs and his opposition to programs like welfare. He stopped her and asked her how she was doing in school. She answered that she had a 4.0 GPA, but it was really tough.
She had to study all the time, never had time to go out and party and often went sleepless because of all the studying. She didn’t have time for a boyfriend and didn’t really have many college friends because of all her studying.
He then asked how her friend Mary, who was attending the same college, was doing. She replied that she was barely getting by. She had a 2.0 GPA, never studied, was very popular on campus, and was at parties all the time. She often wouldn’t show up for classes because she was hung over.
He then asked his daughter why she didn’t go to the Dean’s office and ask why she couldn’t take 1.0 off her 4.0 and give it to her friend who only had a 2.0. That way they would both have a 3.0 GPA. The daughter fired back and said “That wouldn’t be fair, I worked really hard for my 4.0 and my friend has done nothing.”
The father smiled and said: “Welcome to the Republican Party”.

In a government that takes from Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on the support of Paul.

I guess I see a void in the republican party -- a void of compassion and generosity.

Sure, they all have families they love and would die for, but a small increase in taxes or prices to help less fortunate people and the enviorment sends them into a state of shock.

I guess I feel them as seeing money and power as more important than global life and happiness.

Just my $.02

Since this is a thread full of generalizations, I'll point out that your assertion is a big one. Some of us do more than our share, and take pains to ensure that it's effectively used. Happy to review that with you offline if you want.

We all agree that there are problems, we disagree in how to address them. What's a "small increase"? Who's going to pay for it? Sorry to personalize this, but you've said in another thread that you're working minimum wage, so it's unlikely to be you. In other words, you're very happy to spend other people's money to solve the problems that YOU perceive in the way that YOU perceive they ought to be solved, and if the donors you've nominated disagree with a) the need for that specific problem to be solved, b) the way you choose to go about it, or c) the fact that someone else decided a) and b) but they get to pay for it, then they're heartless bastards. Does that pretty much sum it up?

Be careful about your assumptions about conservatives, or Republicans for that matter. Remember that the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act were sponsored and passed by the Nixon administration.

Leftists are of the belief that throwing money at a problem, preferably someone else's money, is the only solution. In most cases, that's not true. Let's take foreign aid - you're probably for that, right? It meets your criteria of improving "global life and happiness"? I had intimate experience for a couple of years with the U.S. government's foreign aid program, and it didn't leave me with any confidence that the minimal good it was doing was worth anywhere near the taxpayer money it cost - but value for money was nowhere in the priority list of the government employees doing the spending. On the other hand (MB content), US and EU foreign aid has done more than anything else to ensure that MB dealerships and service departments are established in many places in the world you wouldn't expect to find them.

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"I guess I see a void in the republican party -- a void of compassion and generosity."

If you are talking about politicians it is easy to be compassionate with other peoples money. Most religous (conservatives) that I know are very generous.

I think a clear difference between Liberal and Conservative is their different approach to problems. Liberials (in politics) believe the Government should solve most if not all problems. Conservatives believe solutions should first be tried by the private sector.

Thats assuming a level playing field with equal opportunity, a fallacy in the real world... also it assumes that the gov't is really taking half of your million dollars and giving it straight to some loser who has no income, making him fabulously wealthy, which is also not how it works.

I understand the point, but that example skews reality very badly.

To me a liberal is someone who believes the "common good" is more important than the interests of a select few, that it is reasonable to curtail ultimate wealth to work towards solving social problems. To me a conservative is one who would rather have it centered around the individual, allowing him/her to do as well or as poorly as they can, whether it is at the expense of another or not.

I just got tired of the hippcracy and the backseat driver mentality of leftwing politics. When Democrats were in power, there always seemed to be a self-righteous assertion that the left wing perogitive was the only answer. Conservatives are always painted as "stupid" by the mainstream media, which is largely liberal. Just watch television, All you hear from liberal actors and politicians is how poor of a job the Bush Administration is doing.
As to the economy, Clinton inherited the dot com boom, Bush inherited the post 9-11 clean up. I don't think that a president has an immediate effect on our economy, it takes years after an action to effect change. There is always constant heckling and critcism, however there rarely seems to be an offer of solutions. I always feel that leftist ideology revolves more around clever slogans rather that effective actions (put your money where your mouth is)

And then I review the facts: Jimmy Carter could barely land a helicopter in the desert, yet he some how is revered by the left as a foreign policy advisor. The Cold war was ended by Conservative ideology. Clinton had a couple of chances to nip Bin Laden in the bud, but didn't for fear of tarnishing his image. Where were all of the anti-war activists when we were bombing Kosovo? There were plenty of civilian casualties there and yet no-one hooted or hollered. I have an Aunt in Israel, somehow I dont feel that the "oppressed" Palistinians are justified if they blow her up in a supermarket. I work 70 - 80 hours a week and still cannot afford to buy a house in my area, I really don't feel that raising my taxes and trippling my car registration fees are going to improve my quality of life. After 9-11 and the 2000 election controversies, I think it is pretty irresponsible and unintelligent to hand out driver's licenses to ILLEGAL immigrants (that's undocumented workers in liberal speak).

I certainly lean more to the Left when it comes to issues pertaining to the environment however.


I'm finished with my ramblings.

Liberal believes that, despite the facts, his ideology must be right because it will save the world (usually by taking money from others and giving it to somebody else of his choice- HIS money, of course, excluded from the deal). Facts are definitely undesirable because they cloud the issue. Liberal refuses to acknowledge a reality because if he does, he would have to, by default, admit that the core of his beliefs is simply unobtainable.

Discussion with a true liberal is pointless, because the liberal's basic assumption is that he is ALWAYS right simply by the virtue of being a liberal. The "truth" (say, in reporting the news) is in essence altering the facts to fit the liberal ideology. Anybody having an audacity to point out that the facts negate the great liberal dogma is, naturally, a "right-wing nut", a "liar", "greedy conservative", a "lazy Hannity" (ooops, where did tis one come from?? ) , a "mean spirited rich bastard." That's how liberals came to understand that "rich" means anybody making over $40,000 a year.

Of course, the rich (say over $250,000) liberals are excluded from this stigmata, because they are already saving the world, so they themselves do not have to contribute to their big scheme. For instance, it's OK for Bill Clinton to sexually harras women because he is such a big liberal. Same goes for Mr. Gephardt who, while bemoaning the environment and calling for low emissions and villifying SUVs himself drives a V-8 Suburban getting 9 mpg.

Oh, I could go on and on...

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