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A History of Liberal Disasters
American Spectator ^ | 11-06-07 | Jeffrey Lord

Posted on 11/05/2007 9:49:34 PM PST by smoothsailing

A History of Liberal Disasters

By Jeffrey Lord

Published 11/6/2007 12:07:43 AM

It's a long list.

Add Hillary Clinton's endorsement of driver's licenses for illegal immigrants ("it makes sense") to a very long list.

The list? A seemingly unending series of bad policy proposals and loopy values that liberals have championed during the course of decades. What all of these subjects have in common is that they upended common sense in favor of a fit of moral superiority and emotional feel-goodism. They are a history of liberal disasters. All backfired or were proved dead wrong. Sometimes they were outright lethal. Collectively they are part and parcel of the real reason the once honorable term "liberal" has won such disdain from so many Americans when it isn't being hooted out of a serious policy discussion with laughter. And lying just under the surface of all the current crop of polls that predict a Democrat victory in the race for the White House is the lurking reality that any candidate who makes a point of flying the liberal flag stands a serious chance of being defeated outright. Why, after all, do you think Senator Clinton hemmed and hawed her way through the driver's license issue in last week's debate?

Here's just a handful of my personal favorites:

* Forced School Busing The idea: to raise the education level of blacks by forcibly integrating urban schools with white kids who lived in "segregated" neighborhoods. The result? Disaster.......

(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...


TOPICS: Extended News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: busing
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1 posted on 11/05/2007 9:49:35 PM PST by smoothsailing
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To: smoothsailing

Dont forget they closed the insane asylums. This created a new problem. The insane had nowhere to go, and began roaming the streets as homeless and insane. Even given welfare they can’t manage money or tend to their own needs.


2 posted on 11/05/2007 10:15:28 PM PST by passionfruit (When illegals become legal, even they won't do work American's won't do)
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To: smoothsailing

I want one of those stickers.


3 posted on 11/05/2007 10:25:54 PM PST by Defiant ("Expectorate" has Specter in it.)
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To: smoothsailing

Start printing them now, demand will be strong


4 posted on 11/05/2007 10:26:46 PM PST by SShultz460
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To: smoothsailing

Left out gun control. Let’s abolish handguns and solve the murder and crime problem!


5 posted on 11/05/2007 10:28:27 PM PST by Luke Skyfreeper
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To: smoothsailing

And socialized medicine.


6 posted on 11/05/2007 10:28:50 PM PST by Luke Skyfreeper
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To: passionfruit

Could you give more details on that? Who, how, and when?


7 posted on 11/05/2007 11:45:20 PM PST by Just Lori (There is nothing democrat-"ic" about democrats.)
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To: Just Lori

I’m sure he’s refering to when State Asylums were closed down in the 60s. I know it’s retarded to site Wiki, but any way. You can go from there to do more research

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychiatric_hospital#Deinstitutionalization

Now a great deal of mental health for crazy people is done in prisons and ERs, where it would have in the past been done at a State Asylum. The old State sytems were far far from perfect, however the current state is probably worse.


8 posted on 11/06/2007 1:16:00 AM PST by SShultz460
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To: Defiant

Received that in email today too. They can be obtained at http://www.rebuttalstickers.com/


9 posted on 11/06/2007 1:16:02 AM PST by DakotaRed (Liberals don't rattle sabers, they wave white flags)
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To: Just Lori
There are numerous articles on the subject, and you can find them by googleing “deinstitutionalization”. One good article from PBS is at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/special/excerpt.html, which in part says “Deinstitutionalization was based on the principle that severe mental illness should be treated in the least restrictive setting. As further defined by President Jimmy Carter’s Commission on Mental Health, this ideology rested on “the objective of maintaining the greatest degree of freedom, self-determination, autonomy, dignity, and integrity of body, mind, and spirit for the individual while he or she participates in treatment or receives services.”

Now bear in mind, PBS would never smack Jimmy carter in the face directly, but earlier the article states “Most of those who were deinstitutionalized from the nation’s public psychiatric hospitals were severely mentally ill. Between 50 and 60 percent of them were diagnosed with schizophrenia. Another 10 to 15 percent were diagnosed with manic-depressive illness and severe depression. An additional 10 to 15 percent were diagnosed with organic brain diseases — epilepsy, strokes, Alzheimer’s disease, and brain damage secondary to trauma. The remaining individuals residing in public psychiatric hospitals had conditions such as mental retardation with psychosis, autism and other psychiatric disorders of childhood, and alcoholism and drug addiction with concurrent brain damage. The fact that most deinstitutionalized people suffer from various forms of brain dysfunction was not as well understood when the policy of deinstitutionalization got under way.”

In reality, the people who suffered from the mental conditions listed in the previous paragraph went from being fed three meals a day, kept warm clean and dry, to being out on the street with no care givers, no food, no warmth in cold weather. and more important, no coping skills to get themselves out of this dilemma that the “compassionate liberals” put them in.

10 posted on 11/06/2007 1:17:32 AM PST by passionfruit (When illegals become legal, even they won't do work American's won't do)
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To: passionfruit

This is a good article. I would like to see the Democrats called to task for the War on Poverty. We’re now 40+ years into that quagmire. Arguably we fought the war on poverty, but poverty won.


11 posted on 11/06/2007 1:22:40 AM PST by Dilbert San Diego
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To: Dilbert San Diego

Johnson fought poverty and poverty was victorious


12 posted on 11/06/2007 1:26:48 AM PST by SShultz460
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To: Dilbert San Diego

You know how much the liberals love defeat!


13 posted on 11/06/2007 1:35:04 AM PST by passionfruit (When illegals become legal, even they won't do work American's won't do)
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To: smoothsailing

Modern liberalism is the philosophy of taking the easy way out all the time. Avoiding hard decisions is the natural tendency of libs. Immediately handing candy to the wailing kid is the libs idea of solving the problem. Immediate gratification is their motto.


14 posted on 11/06/2007 2:15:51 AM PST by driftless2
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To: All

I’ll take “New Orleans Levee Maintenence” for $1000, Alex.


15 posted on 11/06/2007 3:44:25 AM PST by jeffers
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To: jeffers

Then there’s the “quagmire’ in Afghanistan, 19 days after the war began, not to mention the “quagmire” in Iraq, 7 days in.


16 posted on 11/06/2007 3:46:30 AM PST by jeffers
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To: smoothsailing

It goes to prove what one intelligent FReeper opined recently....Liberals never look at the consequences of their actions. We used to call them “do gooders” when I was a kid. Too bad they aren’t doing any good but a great deal of harm.


17 posted on 11/06/2007 3:53:32 AM PST by SWEETSUNNYSOUTH (Help stamp out liberalism!)
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To: smoothsailing

bookmark


18 posted on 11/06/2007 3:57:36 AM PST by VirginiaMom
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To: Dilbert San Diego

IMO, it is more accurate to state that poverty was defeated, but dependence took its place.

Perhaps we need a War on Dependency.


19 posted on 11/06/2007 4:49:21 AM PST by reformedliberal
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To: smoothsailing

In the beginning there was “right” and “wrong”.
We’ve been compromising in the “wrong” direction ever since.


20 posted on 11/06/2007 4:51:24 AM PST by G Larry (HILLARY CARE = DYING IN LINE!)
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