Best "Why Liberals are Wrong" article I've read:

[dmp]

The problem with Democrats

Liberals may be well-meaning, but that is about all they are

by PAUL D. MILLER

Opinions Editor

I am rabid environmentalist and care passionately about the poor. Yet
I would sooner pull out a constitutionally protected handgun and
shoot myself while chain smoking, eating red meat, and conducting a
painful experiment on a cute bunny rabbit than become a Democrat.
Here is why I am not a liberal:



Liberalism is simplistic. Whenever there is a problem, liberals
define it as a tragedy of the commons or an example of the private
sector under providing public goods, or make it an issue of rights.
The solution, of course, is to make it government's job to provide
the good or protect the newly minted right.

No doubt a President Gore would soon grace us with a right to the
internet or make self-confidence a public good which needs to be
provided by federal education standards.



The Left is short-sighted. It wants to fund a behemoth welfare state
at home while crusading and gallivanting about the globe in defense
of American ideology abroad. The ever-increasing financial demands of
their utopian vision will suck up all the surplus from our miracle
market, increase the yearly interest payments on the debt, and
necessitate more taxes.

In the long term, the liberal vision is only sustainable if they
succeed in raising the already immorally large tax burden. Yes,
immoral. Coercively appropriating the fruits of up to a third or even
a half of someone's labor is alienating and dehumanizes the process
of work and the worker. Especially when done to fund programs that
deliberately benefit someone else. Especially when justified as our
obligation to helping our community; as if the national, rather than
the local community was the locus of our communal obligation.



Liberal rhetoric is too shrill. If liberalism has an answer to
poverty and you have a different one, you are labeled `anti-poor
people'. If liberalism wants to tax pollution but you think the rate
is too high, you are personally responsible for the deaths of 6,484
small children somehow directly attributable to that specific
pollutant. "It's like you pulled the trigger yourself, man."
Liberalism defines every issue around saving lives and enhancing
liberty: it isn't dramatic or activist enough to say that we are
simply reducing risks and preserving stability.



Liberalism is hypersensitive, waging an unwinnable eternal revolution
against the smallest evil. Liberal causes these days are puny: let us
make sure we use `she' for a hypothetical person instead of always
using `he'; let us narrow the income gap between the richest
country's rich people and the richest country's poor people (the
richest poor in the world); let us give everyone a right not to be
subject to a certain level of pollution (lowering my risk of cancer
from one in a million to one in two million).

Liberals will never believe that America is doing okay; they are the
modern day muckrakers who insist on spoiling the party for everyone
because one person doesn't like the music.



The left is naïve. Liberals act indignantly shocked to find
injustice, poverty, hypocrisy, or oppression. There is really nothing
new about those evils at all. "It is the 20th Century, for crying out
loud!" The most barbaric century yet, they seem to forget. "This
isn't the Middle Ages!" As if that was the only or the worst age of
ignorance, vice, and malice.

Instead of heeding the historical truth that humans and their
institutions in every age will always find ways to perpetuate evil,
liberals blindly listen to the music of political scientists,
economists, psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists who lie
and say they have discovered the laws of human behavior, and that
with the right institutional manipulation we can cancel out our vices
and live in harmony forever.



Which brings us to the worst crime of liberal ideology. The left
behaves as if the human spirit did not exist. Liberals and their
social scientists treat humans like object of the scientific method:
predictable, responding to stimuli like animals, obeying laws.
Liberals believe that hard circumstances like poverty,
discrimination, or oppression cause people to believe and behave in
certain ways, with little or no choice of their own. They do not
expect people to rise above their circumstances or live above their
material reality.

The tragic consequence is that liberal programs treat people like
products of their material reality: and when you treat a person a
certain way, over time they begin to believe that is all they are.
Liberals turn a blind eye to the system of power and domination that
their programs often unintentionally create.

The conservative belief that people should participate in helping
themselves is founded on the belief that they can help themselves. If
you treat people like they have the capacity to change, they will
begin to believe they can do so. Conservatism is fundamentally more
respectful of the dignity of human beings. Liberals do not believe
people have the ability to chose their response to their environment.
Conservatism, not liberalism, is the ideology of choice.



I believe liberals are sincere and earnest (which is more than most
conservatives will concede). Indeed, that earnestness is what gives
them their strength over conservatives: they really are more ready
and willing to attack injustice and oppression. Their problem is that
they act so fast that they cause so many unintended consequences
which could bring down the whole social project and which offend most
everyone else in the meantime.

Their victories are pyrrhic and their zeal is fundamentalist, two
very undesirable traits in an ideology.

 

[nakedemperor]

d your avatar is sweet

 

[007]

Best point of all....

Liberals will never believe that America is doing okay; they are the modern day muckrakers who insist on spoiling the party for everyone because one person doesn't like the music.

 

[IControlThePast]

=http://liberalscum.com/problemdemocrats__liberals.html]:D

Overall it is a good article Darin, although a little dated.

The Left is short-sighted. It wants to fund a behemoth welfare state
at home while crusading and gallivanting about the globe in defense
of American ideology abroad. The ever-increasing financial demands of
their utopian vision will suck up all the surplus from our miracle
market, increase the yearly interest payments on the debt, and
necessitate more taxes.

In the long term, the liberal vision is only sustainable if they
succeed in raising the already immorally large tax burden. Yes,
immoral. Coercively appropriating the fruits of up to a third or even
a half of someone's labor is alienating and dehumanizes the process
of work and the worker. Especially when done to fund programs that
deliberately benefit someone else. Especially when justified as our
obligation to helping our community; as if the national, rather than
the local community was the locus of our communal obligation.

What's popping up is the NeoLib, a new fiscal idea. The defense of ideology abroad with behemoth costs now seems to have come from Conservatives, while the Liberals are against that. Are the new Liberals for welfare programs? Sort of. The last liberal President cut welfare and had a balanced budget. Liberals are now believing that programs that hand money to people are not good and need to go, but there are programs to help people get started on jobs, help provide transportation to their worksite if they are unable to afford that transportation, and other programs like that. However, liberals have taken a turn at fiscal conservatism and make balancing the budget a top priority.

The tax burden needs to be about what it was when this article was written, before the Bush tax cuts. The Laffer Curve shows those rates were better. Defining one's identity through a job is more alientating and dehumanizing in the first place than tax rates could ever be. Sure communal help is great, I'm a volunteer myself, but if we can't leave everything to charity. I mean imagine if we had option to decide how much in taxes ("charity taxes") we pay to the government. Our government would hardly earn any money.

Which brings us to the worst crime of liberal ideology. The left
behaves as if the human spirit did not exist. Liberals and their
social scientists treat humans like object of the scientific method:
predictable, responding to stimuli like animals, obeying laws.
Liberals believe that hard circumstances like poverty,
discrimination, or oppression cause people to believe and behave in
certain ways, with little or no choice of their own. They do not
expect people to rise above their circumstances or live above their
material reality.

You know I'm all for the philosophy of helping ones self, but the problem is in the "cycle of poverty" people aren't taught they can succeed, and that is why they fail. If you're poor, you definately have to help yourself a lot more, and you'll usually fail at least once on something very important, but persistence is key.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

Overall it is a good article Darin, although a little dated.



What's popping up is the NeoLib, a new fiscal idea. The defense of ideology abroad with behemoth costs now seems to have come from Conservatives, while the Liberals are against that. Are the new Liberals for welfare programs? Sort of. The last liberal President cut welfare and had a balanced budget. Liberals are now believing that programs that hand money to people are not good and need to go, but there are programs to help people get started on jobs, help provide transportation to their worksite if they are unable to afford that transportation, and other programs like that. However, liberals have taken a turn at fiscal conservatism and make balancing the budget a top priority.

defense of ideology? seems to me we're protecting ACTUAL PEOPLE from fundamental islamist aggression.
Balanced budget only becomes a top priority for libs when there's a war on. Most libs are internationalists and feel the sovereignty of nations should be eroded so we "can all get along". Additionally, many libs feel America is fundamentally evil and is not worth defending. I'm not sure libs are really turning toward fiscal conservatism as you assert.

The tax burden needs to be about what it was when this article was written, before the Bush tax cuts. The Laffer Curve shows those rates were better. Defining one's identity through a job is more alientating and dehumanizing in the first place than tax rates could ever be. Sure communal help is great, I'm a volunteer myself, but if we can't leave everything to charity. I mean imagine if we had option to decide how much in taxes ("charity taxes") we pay to the government. Our government would hardly earn any money.



You know I'm all for the philosophy of helping ones self, but the problem is in the "cycle of poverty" people aren't taught they can succeed, and that is why they fail. If you're poor, you definately have to help yourself a lot more, and you'll usually fail at least once on something very important, but persistence is key.

Liberals perpetuate the psychological spiral of poverty by attempting to convince people that their ONLY way out is through reliance on government social programs instead of themselves.

 

[IControlThePast]

defense of ideology? seems to me we're protecting ACTUAL PEOPLE from fundamental islamist aggression.
Balanced budget only becomes a top priority for libs when there's a war on. Most libs are internationalists and feel the sovereignty of nations should be eroded so we "can all get along". Additionally, many libs feel America is fundamentally evil and is not worth defending. I'm not sure libs are really turning toward fiscal conservatism as you assert.



Liberals perpetuate the psychological spiral of poverty by attempting to convince people that their ONLY way out is through reliance on government social programs instead of themselves.

We're out defending our ideology that those people should have Freedom and Democracy. I think they've seen the light after Clinton had a balanced budget and supported the Third Way programs, which cut many aspects of welfare. I think they've realized their mistakes about government social programs. Meanwhile, under the current administration even just domestic spending is much higher than it was under Clinton. We had a balanced budget back then, when there wasn't a war on.

Most liberals are internationalists, but not to a degree that if we need to defend ourselves we will go ahead unilaterally. They consider something like Afghanistan as okay to do unilaterally, but don't consider a situation like Iraq as being suitable for unilateral action (but we had a coalition anyways).

I can tell you many libs don't feel America is evil. They feel the need for America to stick to its principles, and will concentrate to harshly on America's mistakes, to either decide how we can be a better nation or some will just do it for political gain.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

We're out defending our ideology that those people should have Freedom and Democracy.

We're also defending flesh and blood people from jihadi bombers.

I think they've seen the light after Clinton had a balanced budget and supported the Third Way programs, which cut many aspects of welfare.

I wish. I think this is not the case, though.

I think they've realized their mistakes about government social programs.

I wish. I think this is not the case though. they've just realized they need to sell themselves as moderates.

Meanwhile, under the current administration even just domestic spending is much higher than it was under Clinton.

Somehow I'm still not convinced that the DEMS are the party of small government.

Most liberals are internationalists, but not to a degree that if we need to defend ourselves we will go ahead unilaterally. They consider something like Afghanistan as okay to do unilaterally, but don't consider a situation like Iraq as being suitable for unilateral action (but we had a coalition anyways).

Yeah. Their litmus test is "is kojo annan doing ok with the whole deal?".

I can tell you many libs don't feel America is evil. They feel the need for America to stick to its principles, and will concentrate to harshly on America's mistakes, to either decide how we can be a better nation or some will just do it for political gain.

American principles are freedom and freemarkets, not tyranny by a self elected cultural elite, and planned economies.

 

[fuzzykitten99]

d your avatar is sweet

is that all you can say? c'mon, you can do better than that

 

[nakedemperor]

is that all you can say? c'mon, you can do better than that

See: all of my other political forum posts for an indirect rebuttal.