Famous Liberals in our history

[Ringel05]

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."- JFK

Lets start here

Nice platitudes. But not the definition we are looking for. According to JFK's definition everyone would consider themselves liberal to one degree or another. Yes, even George Bush and Ronald Reagan.

So its a meaningless definition.

Give us the definition that YOU are using. In YOUR words. a definition of conservative. Not liberal. And not some historical figure's definition.

Don't you love definitions! I did some searching and found this one on some site called Conservapedia . Thought it might be an amusing counter point.

A liberal (also leftist) is someone who rejects logical and biblical standards, often for self-centered reasons. There are no coherent liberal standards; often a liberal is merely someone who craves attention, and who uses many words to say nothing. Liberalism began as a movement for individual liberties, but today is increasingly statist, and in Europe even socialistic.
· The long romance of Western leftists with some of the bloodiest regimes and political movements in history is a story not told often enough ...[1]
A liberal generally supports many of the following political positions and practices:
· Taxpayer-funded and/or legalized abortion
· Censorship of teacher-lead prayer in classrooms and school sponsored events
· Support for gun control
· Support of obscenity and pornography as a First Amendment right[2]
· Income redistribution, usually through progressive taxation
· Government-rationed medical care, such as Universal Health Care
· Taxpayer-funded and government-controlled public education
· The denial of inherent gender differences
· Insisting that men and women have the same access to jobs in the military
· Legalized same-sex marriage
· Implementation of affirmative action
· Political correctness
· Support of labor unions
· Teaching acceptance of promiscuity through sexual "education" rather than teaching abstinence from sex.[3]
· A "living Constitution" that is reinterpreted as liberals prefer, rather than how it was intended
· Government programs to rehabilitate criminals
· Abolition of the death penalty
· Environmentalism[4]
· Disarmament treaties
· Globalism
· Opposition to an interventionalist American foreign policy [5]
· Opposition to full private property rights[6]
· Reinstating the Fairness Doctrine
· In 2005, it was reported by CBS News that liberals were the most likely supporters of the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution is a key component of atheistic ideologies in the Western World.
· Opposition to domestic wire-tapping as authorized in the Patriot Act
· Calling anyone they agree with a "professor" regardless of whether he earned that distinction based on a real peer review of his work (see, e.g., Richard Dawkins and Barack Obama).

 

[paperview]

Conservapedia?????????????????

What a hoot.

You're not familiar with them, are you?

Too funny.

We couldn’t make this up…

 

[xotoxi]

Cons would condemn Jesus as a Liberal if he returned today.

What is wrong with that picture?

I think that Jesus's hair is too shiny. As he likely did not have any conditioners at that time, I fail to see how he would be able to get such smooth hair.

 

[Ringel05]

Conservapedia?????????????????

What a hoot.

You're not familiar with them, are you?

Too funny.

We couldn’t make this up…

Like I said, it would be an amusing counterpoint. But the real amusing (histerical) aspect are those on both sides who bemoan descriptive relatavism then proceed to use it to justify their position.

 

[veritas]

I'll bite.

Powell Deserves an F in Economics, November 29, 2007
By watzizname "watzizname" (Murfreesboro, Tennessee) - See all my reviews

This review is from: FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression (Paperback)
If Mr. Powell had submitted this as a paper in one of the college economics classes I taught, he would have received an F, for incompetent economic analysis and intellectual dishonesty. Mr. Powell picks his facts carefully, citing only those for which he can argue (almost always fallaciously) that FDR was wrong. Listing all his economic whoppers would become tiresome, but here are a few:

On page 41: "The fundamental fallacy in the high-wages doctrine was that it didn't increase the total purchasing power." BAD ECONOMIC ANALYSIS (BEA) Powell cleverly confuses instantaneous total purchasing power with total purchasing power over time. The same dollar (or $10, or $100) can make many times that many purchases over the period of a month or a year, with no change in the total instantaneous purchasing power. If Alice pays Brian $10 for something, Brian can spend that $10, as can those he pays it to, and so on. Economists call this the MULTIPLIER EFFECT, a term Powell never mentions. The money is taxed every time it changes hands. The purchasing Power declines as value inflates.

On page 83, after admitting that only about 5% of Americans paid income tax during the Depression (carefully omitting that it was because wages weren't taxed) Powell says "these taxes surely discouraged employers from making investments." (BEA) Excess plant capacity and lack of demand, not taxes, were the major reasons for lack of investment. Even with zero taxes, who will invest in more plant capacity when their existing plant is operating at 20 or 25% of capacity and producing all the product they can sell? Are you stating that sales are slack, the market is flooded and inventories are growing? Is there need? Is the product over priced? Is it a seasonal product? Could it possibly be that circumstance dictates what is affordable? I think that your claim of lack of demand is more related to priority spending and that is you that are being dishonest. The poor we're taxed when they spent, not when they earned. Powell clearly showed that. They starved for lack of Jobs, and means. FDR confiscated too much. He did not know when to stop.

On page 89: "Each dollar taxed meant a working person had a dollar less to spend on his or her own." INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY (ID) Powell knew (he mentioned it on page 83) that wages weren't taxed. Spending was taxed heavily. That is clearly shown. Why the disconnect?

On page 96: "(again, not counting jobs destroyed by taxes that reduced private sector spending)" (BEA) Powell makes much of the theoretical possibility, but never cites even one job destroyed by taxes. It is, of course, difficult to obtain an accurate count of those job losses that didn't happen, and Powell prefers to ignore the jobs created by the government spending of that tax money. Only someone who could not turn a profit in a Kool-Aid stand could justify that argument. ... Well ... maybe I'm exaggerating a tiny tiny bit. How can you doubt the relationship, Theoretical Possibility,

On page 41: "In any case, public works projects tended to require people with construction skills, so they weren't an effective way to help poor people" (BEA) Skilled workers were needed IN ADDITION TO, NOT INSTEAD OF common laborers, which generally outnumbered any of the skilled trades. They Apprenticed, at least FDR built things, Obama is just pissing it away.

On page 161: "business investment remained at historic lows throughout the Great Depression." (ID) Production was increasing almost thruout FDR's presidency, but very little new investment was needed until the production facilities approached capacity. For the life of me, I can't imagine why nobody wanted to invest. I'm gonna throw everything I have into Fannie and Freddie tomorrow.

On page 179: [Social Security] "supposedly would involve contributions by employers. In truth, the entire payroll tax would come out of the pockets of working people, because the tax would be part of the cost of providing a job; and if the money weren't going to the government, it would be available for employee compensation." That's a gem right there. So the money that the Employer is paying into Social Security is not his either because we have imagined a use for it and usurped it, taking all credit for a resource born of extortion. Try being Self employed paying both ends of that tax, and take a good look in the mirror. (BEA & ID) Powell understandably does not specify which employers would actually have paid that money to employees, were it not for FICA {Social Security) tax. One suspects the list would be embarrassingly short. You probably have never worked on merit or ability, so I can't fault you for not knowing any better. The embarrassment is taking what is not deserved, what has not been rightly earned.

On page 183: "The advocates of Social Security must have realized that private retirement plans would offer a better deal," (ID) No doubt they would have OFFERED a better deal, but experience (in Chile and England, for example) indicates that it is unlikely that they would have DELIVERED a better deal. And every laundry detergent cleans better than any of the others. Some people will believe anything.

on page 254: [Social Security] is a pay-as-you-go system without an investment fund yielding returns to help cover future obligations." (ID) An out-and-out lie. SS is not fully advance funded, like the New York State Employees' Retirement System, but unlike pay-as-you-go, it does include an investment fund sufficient to meet ALL obligations for nearly four years and growing.Paid for by the poorest, among us, so you can feel secure. (Source: OASDI Trustees Report, 2007)

On page 187: "Labor unions were generally based on force and violence . . . ." (ID) A blatantly unfair, untrue, and prejudicial statement. While it is true that a minority of unions descended to unjustified force or violence, most of the violence was started by company goons or strikebreakers. And calling elected union officers 'bosses' is similarly prejudicial and generally, false.I feel like I need waist deep boots to comment on this. You are so full of shit. You actually teach shit like this to gullible kids? Shame on You.

On page 200: "General Motors car production plunged from 50,000 in December, 1935 fo 125 during the first week of February, 1936." (ID) Comparing dissimilar items, a month's production to a week's. This technique could have come straight from Darrell Huff's How to Lie With Statistics It would have been quite proper to say 'from an average of 12,500 a week in December,' but impressive as that 99% reduction is, Powell chose to make it seem four times as big. Not only dishonest, but downright silly. Like unfunded mandates are silly, and expectations and demands with deadlines beyond Technilogical Capability? Comply or die? What the fuck is the UAW gonna do now? They are Parasites, not producers.

On page 203: "UAW picketers fought with nonunion workers, and some people were stabbed." (ID) The 'some people' that were stabbed must have been union members, because had they been the strikebreakers, you can be sure Powell would have said so very clearly. That is a real amazing deduction. Maybe I can use that reason to get disqualified from Jury Duty. Good foot work there.

On page 245: "Personal income tax rates hit 91 percent . . . ." (ID) Deceptively, Powell fails to mention that this was the highest tax bracket, not the average tax rate, which was nowhere near 91%. Hammurabi and Moses had it at about 10% of wealth, not income, taxed every other year if I remember it right. When is enough, enough. You don't see the Jealousy here, the want, the greed from Government.

On page 273: "Maintaining wages above market levels is guaranteed to maintain unemployment at high levels." (BEA & ID) A 'guarantee' not worth the paper it is written on. Since the enactment of minimum wage laws, there have been many periods of full employment. The 'market levels' Powell envisions are the result of a monopsony market in which the sellers (workers) would be price-takers, forced to take whatever wages are offered or be unemployed and face starvation. The Market sets the price. Not You not me Not Powell. Try selling something for more than it's worth, it's on you. By artificially corrupting the value of something, you screw up everything that is related to it. Everything it touches. Government needs to take off the God Hat and put the Referee hat back on.

On a lighter note, on page 226: "October 19, 1937--which came to be called 'Black Tuesday'" I googled "Black Tuesday" to be sure there weren't two, but all the entries referred to October 29, 1929.

The above is but a small sampling of the lies, distortions, and bad economic analysis in Mr. Powell's book. FDR did indeed do some bad things, such as the blatantly racist internment of American citizens of Japanese ancestry during WWII, and permitting the refusal to allow Jewish refugees from Germany to enter the United States, but he also did a great many more good things; the credit for bringing the nation out of the Great Depression is deservedly his, and Mr. Powell's mean-spirited hatchet job doesn't deserve even one star.

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/FDRs-Folly-Roosevelt-Prolonged-Depression/product-reviews/0761501657/ref=cm_cr_pr_link_next_3?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&pageNumber=3&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending]Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression[/ame]

The above is a pathetic (meaning me) rebuttal to your claims. I only wish Powell could answer your slander directly. I'm sure there are better souls here than me here, that owe you a spanking.

What does that mean, Vern? It's a review on Powell's book from Amazon. I wouldn't be caught dead with a Tennessee address.

 

[paperview]

Cons would condemn Jesus as a Liberal if he returned today.

What is wrong with that picture?

I think that Jesus's hair is too shiny. As he likely did not have any conditioners at that time, I fail to see how he would be able to get such smooth hair.

I think it was from all the fish oils.

 

[skookerasbil]

again I'll say.............this thread is highly gay................

Its like having a discussion of how great the 1919 Black Sox would be in todays game of baseball..............nobody cares. Classic liberalism, or progressivism, so enamoured by the k00ks on thsi board, is dying a slow death these last few months...........its called out and out rejection. And the k00ks know it too...........and proves beyond even a shadow of a doubt that Obama was elected by independents who saw him as anti-establishment/anti-Washington. To them, he was going to fix America..............

yuk............yuk..............and after a few short months, its like a modern day version of the Wizard of Oz and the little dog is pulling back the curtain on the wizard and showing him to be a total fraud. Fix America? This guy is in the process of epic levels of fubar and the American people are sayng, "Fcukk you Charlie!!!"


The perception illustrated........................

 

[rightwinger]

...

How FDR's New Deal Harmed Millions of Poor People | Jim Powell | Cato Institute: Daily Commentary

Peoplewho propagate the revisionist history of the Great Depression, the facts are not on your side:

Hey, one random chart. THAT certainly puts us in our place . . . oh, wait. It doesn't.[/QUOTE]

Oh.....it doesn't??

GDP rises significantly
Unemployment falls significantly

Kind of shoots holes in your theories about FDR doesn't it?

 

[Fatality]

again I'll say.............this thread is highly gay................

Its like having a discussion of how great the 1919 Black Sox would be in todays game of baseball..............nobody cares. Classic liberalism, or progressivism, so enamoured by the k00ks on thsi board, is dying a slow death these last few months...........its called out and out rejection. And the k00ks know it too...........and proves beyond even a shadow of a doubt that Obama was elected by independents who saw him as anti-establishment/anti-Washington. To them, he was going to fix America..............

yuk............yuk..............and after a few short months, its like a modern day version of the Wizard of Oz and the little dog is pulling back the curtain on the wizard and showing him to be a total fraud. Fix America? This guy is in the process of epic levels of fubar and the American people are sayng, "Fcukk you Charlie!!!"


The perception illustrated........................

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWyCCJ6B2WE]YouTube - Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.[/ame]

 

[rightwinger]

A liberal (also leftist) is someone who rejects logical and biblical standards,

Isn't logical and biblical a contradiction in terms?

 

[rightwinger]

1. Jesus Christ
2. George Washington
3. Abe Lincoln
4. Gandhi
5. Martin Luther King
6. Ben Franklin
7. FDR
8. Thomas Jefferson
9. JFK
10. James Madison

And what exactly have the conservatives done for us?

Back to our original list, can someone name some notable conservatives?

I'll start
1. Joe McCarthy
2. Richard Nixon
3. Dick Cheney
4. Rush Limbaugh
5. George Bush

 

[Intense]

1. Jesus Christ
2. George Washington
3. Abe Lincoln
4. Gandhi
5. Martin Luther King
6. Ben Franklin
7. FDR
8. Thomas Jefferson
9. JFK
10. James Madison

And what exactly have the conservatives done for us?

Back to our original list, can someone name some notable conservatives?

I'll start
1. Joe McCarthy
2. Richard Nixon
3. Dick Cheney
4. Rush Limbaugh
5. George Bush

Why bother? Why not correct Your List First. At Least 8 on Your List Side with the Individual Over The State, which disqualifies them from Being Liberal Kool-Aid Drinkers like You. Your Foundation is based on Fraud. You Centralized Government, one size fits all girlie man. Shame on you Statist. Big Brother sure owns your ass.

 

[rightwinger]

Why bother? Why not correct Your List First. At Least 8 on Your List Side with the Individual Over The State, which disqualifies them from Being Liberal Kool-Aid Drinkers like You. Your Foundation is based on Fraud. You Centralized Government, one size fits all girlie man. Shame on you Statist. Big Brother sure owns your ass.

You have no concept of what a liberal is

Thank- you come again

 

[Fatality]

Why bother? Why not correct Your List First. At Least 8 on Your List Side with the Individual Over The State, which disqualifies them from Being Liberal Kool-Aid Drinkers like You. Your Foundation is based on Fraud. You Centralized Government, one size fits all girlie man. Shame on you Statist. Big Brother sure owns your ass.

You have no concept of what a liberal is

Thank- you come again

what a liberal is? just google "piece of shit" and youll see.

 

[rightwinger]

Back to our original list, can someone name some notable conservatives?

I'll start
1. Joe McCarthy
2. Richard Nixon
3. Dick Cheney
4. Rush Limbaugh
5. George Bush

Anyone?? Anyone??

There must be one conservative we can be proud of

 

[Intense]

Why bother? Why not correct Your List First. At Least 8 on Your List Side with the Individual Over The State, which disqualifies them from Being Liberal Kool-Aid Drinkers like You. Your Foundation is based on Fraud. You Centralized Government, one size fits all girlie man. Shame on you Statist. Big Brother sure owns your ass.

You have no concept of what a liberal is

Thank- you come again

Not since the identity was hi-jacked. There is no salvation in State Control. You demand control over every aspect of our lives. Even Political Control over Thought. You have transformed the Concept into a Totalitarian Police State. Even Thought, can be construed a crime. Your first sacrifice is Individual Conscience. I know that you are too busy fucking up our lives to notice, but there are those of us that will not consent to being property of the State. Your Course is Not Right. You are dragging everything down with you.

 

[Intense]

Why bother? Why not correct Your List First. At Least 8 on Your List Side with the Individual Over The State, which disqualifies them from Being Liberal Kool-Aid Drinkers like You. Your Foundation is based on Fraud. You Centralized Government, one size fits all girlie man. Shame on you Statist. Big Brother sure owns your ass.

You have no concept of what a liberal is

Thank- you come again

what a liberal is? just google "piece of shit" and youll see.

The Liberal Church of Government Controlling every aspect of our lives. Thought, word, deed, even what we fail to do. Why is it so important to beat Conscience with a stick until it learns to be silent? Why must it be denied? Why is the Empire so threatened by Individual Perspective, Individual Witness? Why Suppress? Why take offense to Legitimate Concern? Why must the messengers be perpetually beat down? So much is invested in the beat down. Why? Personally I like contrast. It helps to develop and expand perspective.

Separation of Church and State was first envisioned to better preserve both, not to hold one hostage while the other plays God, with the Courts and Jails to back up it's Imagined claim. Government is not the source of Justice. It is the Custodian of Justice, at best.

 

[rightwinger]

Hint: Liberalism has nothing to do with state control

That is only right wing fear mongering

 

[Fatality]

Hint: Liberalism has nothing to do with state control

That is only right wing fear mongering

the take over of banks, gm, health care etc prove you to be one dumb fucking liar.

 

[rightwinger]

Hint: Liberalism has nothing to do with state control

That is only right wing fear mongering

the take over of banks, gm, health care etc prove you to be one dumb fucking liar.

I did not see a single private entity stepping in to rescue these industries. The banks are already paying back the TARP money and removing themselves from government oversight.

If we meant to keep them we would