Don't get me started on liberals and liberal politics.
Political liberalism was quite different 100 years ago, at the turn of the 20th century, when sweatshops, the 12-hour work day, child labor and no regard for worker safety were all common. Unions, along with government regulation, were the new hope of the poorly-paid working man. Social liberals fought for minimum wages and safety conditions and other big issues of the day, including the end of racial segregation and the establishment of federal civil rights laws (which most Southern Democrats vehemently opposed). Back then, liberalism meant actually helping people in need to some extent. Now, it simply means bigger government, which means more intrusion into your life combined with ever-higher taxes.
Unfortunately, liberals have generally been dangerously soft on national defense if not flat-out anti-military, looked favorably at communism and other repressive ideologies over the years and have opposed capitalism as evil and repressive when in fact, it is the lifeblood of America and a major reason for our ability to rise to superpower status since the end of World War Two. Look at who supports the liberal-dominated Democrat party today: trial lawyers, pushing up the cost of everything by attacking the manufacturers of perfectly safe products that are used irresponsibly. Militant, anti-male feminists who think having an abortion should define all women. Unions, shrinking in members every year and still supporting the Democrats even when half their membership votes Republican and minority groups with never-ending grievances (think Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan), just to name the major players in the DNC.
Liberals have been stridently against the war in Iraq and, now forgotten, were mostly against the war in Afghanistan, too. That is their right, but the barely-hidden anti-military attitudes on the political left are troubling to many folks. Liberals push enviromentalism like a religion and try to use environmental laws to stop progress and normal human activity. The insane Kyoto accord, that the U.S. passed on because it would have crippled us economically while exempting China, India and other big nations with serious pollution problems, is a good example of how the left has tried to use environmentalism as a club to stifle U.S. progress and cripple our economy, all in the name of 'clean air'. The trouble with that rationale is that our air is far cleaner than it has been for decades, as is our water. We have more trees now than we did 200 years ago. The environmental ploy the leftwing uses to advance it's anti-capitalist agenda is a hoax. Yes, we have problem areas and we can't stop working to get our air and water in even better condition but the left's cry that we are 'killing the planet' is absurd.
These days, the political left uses not only 'enviromentalism' to push it's agenda but plays one race against the other, pretending that anyone who doesn't think the America of 2005 is just like the America of 1940 for black people is a 'racist'. It goes without saying that the political leftwing loaths - and never stop whining about - the Bush administration. Too bad. When you win elections- as Republicans do - you get to set the national agenda. The liberals who run the DNC today can only disrespectfully call President Bush 'a moron' while he continues to do big things that will change the course of the nation and be effective long after he is retired. The liberals running the Democrat party today fight like banshees every time a tax cut for the overburdened American taxpayer is raised by Republicans, using the old
'tax cuts for the rich' line when that is patently untrue of most tax cuts. Meanwhile, our economy is absolutely booming and the Democrats keep losing more seats in congress, along with the presidency, every election. The Democrats elect a raving leftist zealot like Howard Dean to the DNC chairmanship and wonder why more and more people are backing away from a political party that get loonier every month, making wild accusations against Republicans and acting as if we are all going to die because a Democrat elitist snob wasn't elected president last November. On and on it goes.
Political liberalism, as it is practiced today, runs counter to what most Americans cherish and believe. The highly secular leftwing sneers at religion and and the concept of God, portrays believers as idiots and weak sisters. Meanwhile, over 80% of Americans believe in God and have a religious faith that sustains them to some extent. Most Americans favor a smaller tax burden...but not liberals. Most Americans want a Supreme Court that will actually follow the constitution instead of finding hitherto unknown 'rights' that don't really exist in that venerable document. Liberals want a Supreme Court that
makes laws instead of interpreting them, as the constitution calls for. Most Americans, even if they are not pleased with the war in Iraq, want the U.S. to win the war and see Iraq become a full-fledged democracy. Liberals just want us to cut and run and call it 'victory', as they persuaded the government to do in VietNam, to our everlasting shame.
In many ways, political liberals seem to be opposed to individual freedom, a smaller tax burden, less government intrusion into business and personal lives. They seem to favor race-baiting, environmental whacko stuff that costs taxpayers money and harrasses business and individuals trying to comply with more and more regulations, and they obviously obsess over finding more and more new rights and writing new laws just for homosexuals. They are always finding America to be the villain in the war on terror, and generally treat the twice-elected president of the United States disrespectfully, just because they, with their insufferable elitist attitudes, think they are somehow better than he is and, truth be told, better than 'the rest of us'. They are far from it and their leftist views will probably help shrink their numbers in congress in the next election and render them even less important than they are, now. One hopes, anyway.
Like I said, don't get me started.
