Posted on 03/29/2004 11:19:32 AM PST by Graybeard58
"Why is it that liberals are so afraid to take their own side in an argument?" asks Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation and one of the world's hardest leftists. Her question was directed at Sen. John Kerry because he has been parsing his positions to mask the truth that he is the most liberal U.S. senator.
"But why allow the L-word to be defined — and turned into a negative — by thugs at the Republican National Committee?" she continued in her piece posted on the magazine's Web site. "Isn't it time, after more than 20 years of conservative ascendancy, for liberals to take the offensive, stop biting their tongues and declare forcefully — ‘I'm a liberal and proud of it!'"
Good for you, Ms. vanden Heuvel, but what's there to be proud of? Plenty, she says, ticking off the "triumphs of 20th century liberalism": "Women's suffrage; Social Security; unemployment compensation; the minimum wage; child labor laws; Head Start, food stamps; Medicare; federal housing laws barring discrimination; the Voting Rights Act; the Civil Rights Act; anti-pollution statutes, guaranteed student loan programs and the forty-hour work week."
Let's examine those "triumphs":
Woman's suffrage and child-labor laws ceased to be issues 75 years ago. Social Security and Medicare are fiscal train wrecks in waiting, with $50 trillion in unfunded liabilities. Only mammoth tax increases, significant benefit reductions, privatization or some combination will keep them from imploding.
Unemployment compensation replaced private insurance programs and made joblessness a career until reforms by a Republican Congress began to rein in abuses. With every uptick in the minimum wage, the least skilled and educated are denied entry to the work force. Head Start provides, at enormous cost, a minimal educational benefit that disappears by the fourth grade.
Food stamps are a component of the failed Welfare State, which discouraged initiative, self-reliance and achievement. Government giveaways give low-income people the wherewithal to pay for their cell phones, cable TV, cigarettes, etc. It is noteworthy that Ms. vanden Heuvel did not tout the Welfare State — liberalism's crowning achievement of the 20th century — among its triumphs.
Fair-housing laws ultimately evolved into mandates forcing housing projects built exclusively for the elderly to accept as tenants drug addicts, career criminals and the mentally ill, among other less-desirable elements. The Voting Rights Act ensured people's access to the polls, but unintended consequences included the systematic cheapening of the franchise and a dramatic decline in voter participation.
Contrary to her assertions, the Civil Rights Act wouldn't have passed if not for the near unanimous support of congressional Republicans in 1964. Apparently, she forgets that the "Dixiecrats" had bottled up that legislation for years. The Environmental Protection Agency was created during the Nixon administration, and many of its toughest anti-pollution regulations were promulgated during the Ford and Reagan years.
Guaranteed student-loan programs are the driving force behind the skyrocketing college costs. They flood the system with money and remove the motivation for schools to economize. And thanks to the many "triumphs" of big-government liberalism, fewer and fewer people — in the private sector, at least — are able to make ends meet working just 40 hours a week.
Ms. vanden Heuvel is mystified by the "more than 20 years of conservative ascendancy," but most reasonable people would be more bewildered by her assertion that liberalism has "a winning legacy."
"Why not stand on liberalism's proud heritage?" she advises Sen. Kerry. By all means, he should run on that legacy. And with the wholehearted support of the likes of Hanoi Jane, Howard Stern, al-Qaida, France, Spanish socialists and Ms. vanden Heuvel, maybe he'll qualify for the liberal pantheon dedicated to Al Gore, Michael Dukakis and Fritz Mondale.
Because it liberalism doesn't work, people know it, and it doesn't sell.
At least 30 years appeasing Islamofascists - 1.3 billion enslaved.
I've always though Ann Coulter summed it up best - "If the American people ever found out who liberals are, they would boil them in oil."
Because deep inside they know they're positions are totally indefensible from a common sense point of view
*an ethical emphasis on the individual as a rights-bearer prior to the existence of any state, community, or society,
*the support of the right of property carried to its economic conclusion, a free-market system,
*the desire for a limited Constitutional government to protect individuals' rights from others and from its own expansion, and
*the universal (global and ahistorical) applicability of these above convictions.
From: The Rise, Decline, and Reemergence of Classical Liberalism
These people are NOT liberals. They need to be called on it at every turn. They are the worst of all authoritarians - leftist, collectivist, fascists using the government to force their lifestyle beliefs on everyone.
But it did.
I never thought a putz like Al Gore could possibly even be taken seriously, no less nearly elected to the Presidency of the US.
But he was.
I didn't think the American people were so fickle that they could support Bush at 80%+ after 9/11, but fold in the longer, harder war ahead.
Which brings me back to my first point.
Because they can't debate on facts.
About the only of modern liberalism's "triumphs" missed was taxes. The income tax went from a starting value of 1% on the highest income earners to 90%. It hit a recent low of 28% under Reagan before rising again. Thanks liberals for thinking you own that much of my labor and by logical extension own that much of me.
You're not taking into account the number of times a dead person can vote.
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