Posted on 09/23/2002 11:04:30 PM PDT by MadIvan
Regards, Ivan
Anti-American = putzhead.
It's the abrasion of the wool kilt on their wee brains that drives them crackers.
Why I can't stand all those smug Liberals
by Daniel Finkelstein
Proportional representation. Now I haven’t got your attention, let me talk to you about the Liberals. You might think that no one would want to thunder about the Liberals, that nothing could be as herbivorous and inoffensive as them. Surely no one could have all that much against all those earnest people out delivering Liberal Focus leaflets and eagerly awaiting a visit from the leader on his Battlebike. You would be wrong.How would Tom Lehrer have put it? Old Labour hates new Labour and new Labour hates old Tories and old Tories hate new Tories, but everyone hates the Liberals.
For political junkies (the only people watching) the Liberal conference is the most irritating week of the year. Of course, all party conferences have their moments. I worked for the Conservatives when Jeffrey Archer received a standing ovation for what, even at the time, was a toe-curlingly embarrassing call to be tough on crime (criminals only allowed out to the theatre four days a week and no more than five Chinese takeaways a month). And have you ever listened to a whole speech by John Edmonds? Yet the Liberal week at the seaside somehow contrives to be worse.
It is the sanctimonious tone of all those patronising lectures that does it. Watching Liberal conference is like going back to primary school, only without the literacy and numeracy hours. My own theory about why Charles Kennedy looks more uncomfortable as party leader than his predecessor is that being sanctimonious came naturally to Paddy Ashdown while Kennedy has to make a real effort.
Now, being sanctimonious is never a very attractive characteristic, but there is something in the Liberal case that makes it truly insufferable. It is what might be termed the Law of Liberal Politics — the more sanctimonious the Liberals are about something, the more likely it is that their own behaviour towards it will be characterised by hypocrisy or self-delusion.
Let’s start with their favourite topic for smug sermonising, their insistent complaint about the negative campaigning and “Punch and Judy politics” of the other parties. I’m not a celebrity, but get me out of here anyway. There is nobody who can compete with the Liberals when it comes to running nasty and disingenuous local campaigns. In private they revel in it. “Be wicked, act shamelessly, stir endlessly,” the Association of Liberal Councillors told its members before the 2002 elections. “Positive campaigning will not be enough to win control of the council.”
This must be the reason why, at the last election, the Labour MP Denis MacShane found himself adorning Liberal literature in another constituency apparently endorsing the Liberal candidate when he had done no such thing. Or why the Folkestone Liberals told pensioners that the Tories planned to charge them £6,500 for a hip operation.
The Law of Liberal Politics covers policies as well as campaigning. The Liberals love to go on about how honest they are, and how responsible, when they talk about taxation. Only they have been prepared to admit they will put up taxes. Yet their famous 1p extra on income tax to fund spending on education is entirely fraudulent. The money is pledged over and over again by the party to fund the most expensive series of unrealisable promises.
Whether it be their boast that they are the party that truly believes in decentralisation, while promoting a highly centralised European Union, or their attacks on Labour’s ties to “vested interest” while exploiting Tony Blair’s difficulties by emphasising their “lifelong belief in trade unionism”, as Kennedy shamelessly did in Blackpool, Liberal policies are lent coherence only by their incoherence.
The party always claims that if only people thought they could win power they’d vote Liberal. The Law of Liberal Politics applies again. If people ever thought they would actually win, they’d run a mile.
There is, however, one nice thing you can say about the Liberals. At the end of this polemic they’ll only have one complaint. I should have called them Liberal Democrats.
Regards, Ivan Regards, Ivan
Excellent post. Seems as if Mr. Kenneday and Algore are singing from the same sheet of music...
"undermining the moral, legal and practical authority of the United Nations,"Kennedy
Unfortunately the United Nations is immoral, illegal and highly impractical.
This the verbatim message from the Saudis, Egyptians and other Arab nations. At least, by his rhetoric, we know whose pocket he's in.
I aim to please. ;)
Regards, Ivan
Do you imagine a change of attitude after an attack in England? Or will the liberals start blaming themselves, moaning how they never did enough to "understand" those poor, suffering Muslims?
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." – John F. Kennedy
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That speach was written by Ted Sorenson as a ploy to con the people. Kennedy bare knew or understood what as in it. I was similar to the time Kennedy went to South Dakota for a photo-op meeting with farmers. As he got back into his limosine he said, "Well, that's done. Fxxk the farmers after November." Anybody who believes anything Kennedy said or his intention to act upon it has a screw loose.
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