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I peeped an (old) article by a reporter for the Washington Post.  He was describing being awaken one night as an intruder entered his home. He stated: “At that moment, what I wanted more than anything in the world was a gun. What I wanted at that moment, and only that moment, I hasten to add was denied last month to airline pilots who just might have to deal with a terrorist somehow getting into the cockpit…. I am, like all reasonable people, in favor of the tightest restrictions on guns.”
 
How typical of liberals. The liberal paradigm of denying reality always rules, except when reality intrudes so sharply that the liberal paradigm breaks down for a moment. But the liberal never draws any larger conclusions from that experience, that is, he never thinks that since he needed a gun when there was a burglar in his house, other people need a gun for the times when there is burglar in their house, which would imply that gun ownership in general is a justified and necessary thing. Instead, the liberal only relates to the issue in personal terms. He is completely self-righteous in his liberalism, but when he wants to abandon his liberalism under the pressure of circumstances, then that instantly becomes the correct position. Liberal rightness is defined purely by the whims and feelings of the liberals themselves.

Being a liberal typically means living in a comfortable New England, Midwestern or left coast home discussing why gays should be allowed to get married, or why so many Negros are unemployed, or the horror of that homeless not having access to a quality shopping cart, over a cup of coffee at the local Starbucks, condemning all of those “ignorant Southerners” Bush lovers, religious zealots and racists republicans and then hopping back in the BMW, Volvo or some hybrid car. ( drive a BMW and did have a Volvo, but I don’t count LOL!)

I catch grief from my liberal critics at my attacks on liberals as they send me definitions of liberalism as if I had not seen them thousands of times before. But these definitions don’t mean anything. The definitions don’t focus on real issues. These definitions don’t say anything about their view of taxes, it says nothing about their views of homosexuality, it says nothing on their views of Affirmative Action,  it says nothing about their view of the right to keep and bear arms, or abortion, or feminism, or school prayer, school choice, international affairs or whether you vote Democratic or Republican or 3rd party or not at all.

If you take the typical liberal definition seriously that means, you could be a card-carrying member of the NRA, you could think homosexuality is sinful, or that taxes are much too high, you could think Bill Clinton was a horrible President, you could think that welfare checks cause crime and poverty and destroy the human soul, you could oppose socialized medicine, or think abortion is murder, you could believe that our Social Security system is a ripoff that steals from our children, or think our public schools can best be fixed by freedom of choice for parents,  or think legalizing medical marijuana is a horrible idea, or that the mainstream media is badly biased, hell, you could think all of that and more, and still be a liberal!

The problem is that when millions of Americans say “liberal,” they are referring to a fairly specific set of beliefs completely at odds with everything described above. Just as interesting, many people who hold typical liberal beliefs are, in fact, not at all “free of bigotry,” “favoring of reform,” “unorthodox,” “broad-minded,” or “anti-authoritarian.”

Google research revealed that in the late 20th Century, “liberal” came to mean, basically, a socialist. Usually, it’s a socialist who believes that the state is dangerous when it arrests criminals or wants to limit pornography or abortion, but should be free to regulate our lives in just about any other way. It is also axiomatic for them that, since taxes are an unavoidable aspect of life, any amount of taxation is moral. As long as we democratically elect those who impose the taxes, it doesn’t matter how much they take away from our fellow citizens. Indeed, the only caveat is that a “moral” tax will be leavied not just in higher amounts, but at much higher rates on vaguely-defined groups they call “the rich” and, of course, those “greedy corporations.”

Most folks who think like this also think tend to of themselves as free of bigotry and intolerance, although if you changed the words “rich” and “corporations” in many of their statements to oh, let’s say “Jews,” the nature of their views would be far more open to question. Ditto on many of their rants about “The Religious Right.”

Such people also usually think themselves to be intelligent, good and decent because of their obviously righteous ideals. (liberalism ended slavery, therefore its good! for example) They take it as a given that anyone who disagrees with them on any fundamental issue is, stupid, ignorant, selfish, mean-spirited, or just plain evil. This is especially ironic, because most of those opposed to their views are highly anti-authoritarian and unorthodox and are, at least some of the time, quite broad-minded and tolerant.

But the truth is that they are the closed-minded reactionaries of today. The laughable part is they actually think they’re the liberals.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 4:45 pm and is filed under Liberal Fun, Liberal Editorial, Liberal Education, Liberal hypocrisy.
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