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Today's 'liberals' are anything but liberal
vanity ^ | June 17, 2004 | vanity

Posted on 06/17/2004 8:27:13 AM PDT by tdadams

It's time to stop using the word liberal to describe leftists.

Liberals today are anything but liberal. To be liberal is to be laissez faire, to be open and accepting of the differences of opinion and lifestyle that others may choose. To be liberal is to embrace liberty and promote maximum freedom and choice.

To today's 'liberal' choice is just a euphemism for abortion. They don't embrace choice. They are controlling, hypersensitive, and litigious. They embrace something close to totalitarianism. Today's liberals are certain they know what is best for everyone and only need to apply the right coercive blend of punishment and incentives to make people behave accordingly.

A true liberal shuns intolerance, yet today's liberals have become screeching, seething agitators of intolerance toward conservatism in general and Christianity in particular. Today's 'liberals' want to bar you from expressing your Christian values in public. Today's liberals demand nothing less than an atheistic society where religious expression is verboten.

Today's liberals want to command you to wear your seatbelt, rather than leave the decision up to you. Of course, it's a smart idea to wear your seatbelt. It'll probably save your life. But does a free nation threaten its citizens with a police ticket for choosing to not wear a seatbelt?

Today's liberals say "let every vote count" but during the fiasco in Florida after the 2000 presidential election, sent a team of lawyers to use every trick in the book to exclude Republican-leaning military votes.

Today's liberals vehemently oppose allowing you to choose which school your child attends. Even if you choose to spend your own money to send your kids to private schools, you're still on the hook to pay for the government's schools your child won't be attending.

Want to save and invest for your own retirement? Sure, you can do that too but you're still going to have your paycheck deducted to pay for the government's failing and antiquated Ponzi scheme called Social Security, which provides nothing close to security. Feel free to object, but know that your objection will fall on deaf ears. You may know that you can get a better return elsewhere, but that's just too bad. You don't have the choice to opt out.

Rather than electing which charities to help and having the power to discern who is a credible recipient of your dollars, you are ordered pay for a generous list of welfare benefits doled out to everyone from deserving single moms who are down on their luck to drug and alcohol dependent social misfits who can't and won't keep a job for more than two days.

To today's liberal it is inconceiveable that you be allowed to do anything with your own property without getting the proper clearances and approval from the planning commission, the zoning commission, the neighborhood association, the homeowner's association, the tax assessor's office, and local environmental authorities. If you happen to live in East Hamption, NY apparently you can't even mow the grass or rake the leaves anymore. It has too much of a harmful environmental impact, or so the 'liberals' say.

If you want to go into business for yourself, you're walking a virtual minefield of potential litigation set by today's liberals. The labor unions will sue if you make them work overtime, or if you don't provide them enough overtime. If you fire an assistant who has a debilitating wrist injury, you're in violation of disability laws. If that secretary also falls into one of the 'protected' classes - a racial minority, female, older than 40 - you're virtually certain to be hearing from their lawyer. Are you sure you're not in violation of any of the myriad laws and regulations concerning wages, child labor, environmental compliance, workers compensation, and health insurance? There's a trial lawyer somewhere who is eager to find out.

Today's liberal thinks you should only be allowed to earn what they think is a reasonable income. Anything more and you're greedy and probably stepping on the little guy to get where you are. You should be taxed more than other to even out the difference. Nevermind that you have many extra years of schooling or experience.

Today's liberal believes in freedom of speech if you advocate needle exchange programs, expanding welfare, abortion, abolishing the death penalty, socialized medicine, gay rights, organic farming, protectionist trade policies, labor unions, affirmative action, and herbal colonics.

However, if you believe in self-direction, open markets, deregulation, traditional marriage, the sanctity of life, hiring based on merit, punishment for criminal activity, educational freedom, and reducing the size of government, well then your ideas are just too dangerous, too radical, too uncivilized and need to be silenced by any means necessary.

Is there anything about today's liberals that truly reflects liberalism? If not, let's quit calling them liberal. It conveys to them a noble attribute which they do not possess.

I have made a personal pledge to call them what they are. They are leftists. I will no longer call them liberals. Please consider making the same pledge.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Chit/Chat; Education; Government; Health/Medicine; Military/Veterans; Religion
KEYWORDS: affirmativeaction; business; doctors; gays; healthcare; hippa; hospitals; leftist; liberal; nea; race; socialism; socializedmedicine; unions

1 posted on 06/17/2004 8:27:14 AM PDT by tdadams
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To: kattracks; tpaine; Wolfie; mhking; The King Is Dead; tacticalogic; Phantom Lord; Protagoras; ...

Ping to some of my favorite FReepers.


2 posted on 06/17/2004 8:36:49 AM PDT by tdadams (If there were no problems, politicians would have to invent them... wait, they already do.)
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To: tdadams

Goes along with today's big government conservatism, I guess.


3 posted on 06/17/2004 8:39:25 AM PDT by Wolfie
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To: tdadams

Today's liberals aren't like old libs... these people rather witness the destruction of entire civilizations just to engage in their pet agendas. The animal rights wackos, the ethnic wackos from the blacks to the storm front mouth breathers to viva la raza.


4 posted on 06/17/2004 9:36:05 AM PDT by cyborg
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To: tdadams

"Long before liberty was imperiled by dictatorships, faith in liberty was being gradually weakened in people's consciences. Long before dictators destroyed the sanctuaries and profaned the altars of liberty, God was gradually losing His faithful followers. Certainly, the idea of democracy was no longer questioned by anyone, the future democracy appeared secure in the world, and the man of 1900, for example, regarded it as inseparable from the idea of inevitable and indefinite progress. He was grossly mistaken, however, about the meaning of the "democracy." Democracy means liberty much less than it means equality; democracy is infinitely more egalitarian than libertarian. Every victory for equality seemed to the man of 1900 a victory for liberty. He was not aware of the fact that it was first and foremost a victory for the state. From every victory for equality, each citizen could derive some advantages and personal satisfaction, but the real profit went only to the state. To reduce everything to one common denominator makes
dictatorships' problems enormously easier to solve. Totalitarian regimes are the most egalitarian of all: total equality in total slavery!"


5 posted on 06/17/2004 11:52:13 AM PDT by RunningJoke
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To: tdadams

"Conservative" is a relative term, and I'd vouch that "liberal" is, too.

Conservative means you're trying to conserve whatever is the norm, the status quo. Liberal basically means you're against that.

Funny thing is, socialism and all its concordant ideas has become more the norm in our gov as well as society at large for at least 50 years.

It is *we* who should be the liberals, as we do not wish to conserve the multitude of regulations and rules and strictures on natural rights that these socialists have "progressively" been snowballing on us for decades. These *socialists* should be the "conservatives" now.


6 posted on 06/17/2004 12:43:21 PM PDT by the OlLine Rebel (I was there! I passed Reagan's casket 6/10 3:40 PM!)
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To: tdadams

Ping for later read and comments.


7 posted on 06/17/2004 7:09:51 PM PDT by ThomasMore (Pax et bonum!)
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