WHY I’M A LIBERAL [AM: Yes, I know. I know]

Sunday was a gorgeous day here in Los Angeles, clear, windy, just a hint of smoke from the fire up above Santa Clarita.

The SO – who is the “perfect pillion” as well as a pretty good rider herself – and I took the motorcycle out and spent the day with some friends riding through the canyons up there, and on the way I was strongly reminded of why I am a liberal.

The population of Southern California has gone up by about 60% since 1970, according to the Southern California Association of Governments. Auto ownership and use has grown faster, probably about 25% more, I’ll estimate, so we’re looking at a 75% increase in vehicle-miles. We’ve probably lost a bunch of manufacturing and refining, but employment is still a whole bunch higher than it was back then.

And I remember summer days in high school when you couldn’t see the end of my West LA block for the smog. Two-a-days in the pool at school when you spent the day with “aqualung”—a chest so sore you couldn’t raise your voice.

My sons haven’t had those problems (I am aware of the higher incidence of asthma, but there’s a bunch of interesting epidemiology on that). I don’t think their children will, either. Why?

The damn bureaucrats, and their command-and-control bureaucracy. Personally, I think there are more refined tools available to us in the Information Age … Precision Guided Munitions of regulation, rather than the crude daisy-cutters. But if we don’t regulate, we’ll choke.

Our normal ride, up Bouquet Canyon, was closed due to the fire, so we rode up San Francisquito Canyon instead (past “A Place to Shoot”, a pretty decent firing range).

In the canyon you can see the remnants of William Mulholland’s last great project, the St. Francis Dam, which failed catastrophically in 1928, killing at least 500.

But Southern Californians live on the desert because of the infrastructure that gives us water, protects us from floods, lets us move around, etc. etc. etc.

I know that each of these is the heavy boot of man’s dominion over nature…but unless we are all willing to live like Gabrielinos, we need it.

And the infrastructure isn’t just physical, but social as well. I have a bachelor’s and a master’s from the University of California, and it is a truism the public university has changed people’s lives.

We spent Saturday night at the annual fundraiser for the St. Joseph’s Center in Venice. This hasn’t been a brilliant year for us financially, but we managed to give some away anyway, and enjoyed the company of a bunch of people who were doing pretty much the same thing.

I’ve always felt that I was an economic liberal because I enjoyed my nice things less when I had to either worry about someone trying to hit me on the head and take them away, or eat my meal in the window of a restaurant while a starving family stood outside.

Look, I know that the biggest beneficiaries of the welfare programs in the last fifty years have been the people who work for the welfare departments.

I know that we’ve grown dysfunctional cultures like mold on bad French cheese.

But does it tell you we’ve accomplished something when the biggest nutritional problem among the very poor is obesity?

First, the clean air.

Then why is Kyoto needed?

Churning out liberals daily.

I knew the warm fuzzy couldn't be far off....."we on the left are such wonderfully charitable people, we care so much more than those on the right....hey let's FORCE them to help us by increasing their taxes... yeah, that's the ticket!!

Look, I know that the biggest beneficiaries of the welfare programs in the last fifty years have been the people who work for the welfare departments.

I could have sworn it was you guys who fought us tooth and nail to change welfare.

But does it tell you we’ve accomplished something when the biggest nutritional problem among the very poor is obesity?

It tells me only that the system you people oppose has delivered, if the poor are less poor it is not because of your government programs.

Let's see... you listed clean air, infrastructure, hope and charity.

The first one I'll grant you... conservatives typically don't scream loud enough early enough on the environment, outside of hunters protecting their future. From time to time, I do appreciate having the Left help temper the Right. However, environmentalists have caused far more problems than they have helped solve because of their extremism. If nuclear technology were allow to grow normally, our dependence on foreign oil would be far diminished. (PA gets more than 1/4 of it energy from nuclear plants, despite the HUGE hurdles you people put up, and yet there have been zero deaths, injuries, or emergencies in decades.) It's safer than it has ever been, yet liberals have this irrational fear of some nuclear boogeyman. It's ridiculous, and hurts the nation.

Infrastructure: I can't help but think of the compliment bestowed upon the National Socialists of Germany: they kept the trains running on time. For the most part, if something is worth doing, a private enterprise will get the job done. Government does contract for important things like dams, but there's nothing liberal or conservative about that... the only difference that is apparent to me is that liberals want a BIG government to do LOTS of infrastruture projects. Unfortunately, they have to steal LOTS of our money to do it. "That government which governs least, governs best." The more you ask government to do for you, the less freedom you have. It's a bad road to be on, but you can turn around at any time.

Hope: to be perfectly frank, the liberal movement only brings hopelessness. Look at the race issue. It is far better than it has ever been in this country, and yet liberals today specifically state that it is as bad as ever. Where is the hope in that? Liberals love to punish those who become financially successful through their own hard work. How does that inspire hope to the poor? Liberals think that abortion is the one "right" that should have no limits. What hope does abortion bring to anyone? Liberals want to take away my guns. How can I ever hope to protect my family if I can be out-muscled by any two teenagers? How does wanting to imitate the utter failure of Socialism bring a hopeful future for the nation?

Charity. Here is your biggest misnomer. It is NOT charity on your part to help vote my dollars away from me into the pockets of others. Charity is when you use your own dollars and labor to help others. Forcing me at gunpoint (and those IRS agents ARE armed) to contribute to your favorite progerams is oppression, not charity. Free individuals who keep the fruits of their labors and use them to help others become independent out of the goodness of their hearts (or with their church, which liberals also seek to incapacitate and replace) are the definition of charity... NOT the force of government giving bare handouts to merely keep the poor dependent.

Finally, the implication that clean air, infrastructure, hope, and charity are not conservative concerns or traits is childishly naive. It is those very same conservative principles of self-help, keeping what you earn, freedom from government intrusion, that define the American Dream and compels millions of people to come here every year. Liberal paradises like Sweden, France, and Canada never see this kind of immigration, for one specific reason... American is the land of Hope and Opportunity, expressly because of those conservative, capitalistic principles. History and millions of immigrants show that Conservatism is the ideology of hope, not liberalism.

The population of Southern California has gone up by about 60% since 1970, ....And I remember summer days in high school when you couldn’t see the end of my West LA block for the smog. Two-a-days in the pool at school when you spent the day with “aqualung”—a chest so sore you couldn’t raise your voice.

Yeah, and what exactly does this have to do with liberalism? I grew up in L.A. too, and I remember the smog-filled lung-hurting days as well. The worst of the air pollution problem was during ultra-liberal Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown's tenure as Governor.

What makes you think conservatives are against reasonable environmental regulations on pollution? We like to drink clean water and breath clean air too, you know. Most conservatives are conservationists. Liberals aren't any more concerned about pollution than we are; their main concern is with getting as many people on the government dole as possible, creating a class of serfs.

conservatives typically don't scream loud enough early enough on the environment, outside of hunters protecting their future

I don't agree and doubt you could cite many examples

Infrastructure: I can't help but think of the compliment bestowed upon the National Socialists of Germany: they kept the trains running on time.

Yes, but where does this "liberal" get the idea that "liberals" do even that? All I know is that where I live, freeways are jammed. One reason is that "liberals" about 15-20 years ago decided to block off one lane of each freeway from general use and call it a "carpool lane", in effect shrinking the freeway. That's a typical "liberal" approach to infrastructure.

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