***...........The intoxicating vision of a social redemption achieved by Them - this is what creates the left, and makes the believers so self-righteous.
And it did so long before Karl Marx. It is the vision of this redemption that continues to inspire and animate them despite the still-fresh ruins of their Communist dreams.
It is this same idea that is found in the Social Gospel which impressed the youthful Hillary Clinton at the United Methodist Church in Park Ridge, Illinois. She later encountered the same idea in the New Left at Yale and in the Venceremos Brigade in Communist Cuba, and in the writings of the New Leftist who introduced her to the "politics of meaning" even after she had become America's First Lady. It is the idea that drives her comrades in the Children's Defense Fund, the National Organization for Women, the Al Sharpton House of Justice and the other progressive causes which for that reason still look to her as a political leader.
For these self-appointed social redeemers, the goal-"social justice"-is not about rectifying particular injustices, which would be practical and modest, and therefore conservative. Their crusade is about rectifying injustice in the very order of things. "Social Justice" for them is about a world reborn, a world in which prejudice and violence are absent, in which everyone is equal and equally advantaged and without fundamentally conflicting desires. It is a world that could only come into being through a re-structuring of human nature and of society itself.
Even though they are too prudent and self-protective to name this future anymore, the post-Communist left still passionately believes it possible. But it is a world that has never existed and never will. Moreover, as the gulags and graveyards of the last century attest, to attempt the impossible is to invite the catastrophic in the world we know.
But the fall of Communism taught the progressives who were its supporters very little. Above all, it failed to teach them the connection between their utopian ideals and the destructive consequences that flowed from them. The fall of Communism has had a cautionary impact only on the overt agendas of the political left. The arrogance that drives them has hardly diminished. The left is like a millenarian sect that erroneously predicted the end of the world, and now must regroup to revitalize its faith.
No matter how opportunistically the left's agendas have been modified, however, no matter how circumspectly its goals have been set, no matter how generous its concessions to political reality, the faithful have not given up their self-justifying belief that they can bring about a social redemption. In other words, a world in which human consciousness is changed, human relations refashioned, social institutions transformed, and in which "social justice" prevails.
Because the transformation progressives seek is ultimately total, the power they seek must be total as well. In the end, the redemption they envision cannot be achieved as a political compromise, even though compromises may be struck along the way. Their brave new world can ultimately be secured only by the complete surrender of the resisting force. In short, the transformation of the world requires the permanent entrenchment of the saints in power. Therefore, everything is justified that serves to achieve the continuance of Them. ........***
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39611fde5615.htm
Yep, can't get anymore sissy than that!
An honest Liberal? Definitely the last of a dying breed.
Pity, that.
I wonder if the writer wants his kids being educated by openly homosexual Marxists who will teach them to grow up and throw Molotov cocktails at SUVs? Does the writer want his taxes to be increased for tax incentives for same sex partners to join in state-sponsored unions and expensive divorce procedings involving the redefinition of marriage? Does the writer want immigration based on deviant unions between Americans and their foreign tryst partners? Does the writer really believe that our support for Holocaust survivors to have their own 37,000 square kilometer state in Israel is responsible for the bitter, genocidal hatred of their oil-wealthy neighbors? I'm sorry to be so blunt, but liberals need to reevaluate what they mean by liberal.
So, by his own words has the author labeled himself as the enemy.
You want socialism? Move to France!
How can the original author label redistribution of wealth as a bedrock principal this country was founded on?
"If you're not a liberal when you're 20, you have no heart. If you don't become a conservative by the time you're 40, YOU HAVE NO BRAIN." - Winston Churchill
Brainless wonder alert!
In response I will say the one thing that is most hurtful to a liberal who's crowing his liberalism from the rooftops: WHO CARES?
When I was a young man, I felt attracted to the Young Marx's idea of alienation. His idea of a communist society sounds a lot like libertarian one: where freed from the drudgery of material compulsion, people would find their own happiness in pursuing their own talents. Some would fish and others would paint. The point is man would not be acted by an outside force against himself; man would be the master of his own nature and the agent of his own well-being. Sounds idyllic doesn't it? The flaw in the theory as attractive as it sounds, is that if getting rid of alienation would make men happy, it would already happen and no force would be required to liberate human beings from the bonds that keep them from connecting to their real selves. And there is no evidence any communist society has managed to make people happy by freeing them of wants and renewing their once-lost freedom and authentic state of being.
I consider myself a moderate on social issues and a hawk on national security but my family says that I am a "conservative" because I just voted Republican - I have never had any problem with the liberal agenda as you have expressed it - I can identify with most of your ideals - but I do have a problem with how the Democratic party has become hostage to the extremism of the very groups that they espouse to champion - so today the Democrats are the party of extremism, intolerance and crackpots - intolerance expressed as a disdain for people of faith along similar lines of how social conversatives at one time dissed monorities - I hope the Dems come to their collective senses - I notice how negative most of the responses are to your posting - what a shame that an idealistic vision such as yours is shot down due to the idiotic position the Dems are now in - so every conservative now lumps together the liberal ideal with the nuttiness of the latter day Democratic party - what happened to the middle road?
Sheila "Don't you know who I am!" Jackson-Lee's buddy.
You obviously just sullied yourself. You should go wipe.
Hoochie mamas. I like that. Is that a regional expression?
And there is his agenda. Turning the U.S. into one big teet for all the freeloaders of the world to suckle at, while the few Americans left working their 80 hour weeks pay for it. doesn't it just warm your heart to know that the illegal aliens are honored more than they hard working Americans that pay the taxes.
"Liberal" is not a word in my vocabulary anymore. I have replaced it with the word "LEFTIST". The leftists don't much care for being called "leftists", they always bring up another of their favorite words, "dialog". LOL!
I'm sorry sir. Liberalism is a mental disorder.
"Liberalism is the principle that glorifies and revels in the beautiful diversity of this land in all its multicultural, multiracial and multi-lingual aspects..."
LOL, it reads just like something out of North Korea!
Some "reasons" I can think of:
laziness,
lack of discipline,
lack of education (drop out or just quit trying),
lack of initiative,
inability to read
unwillingness to improve themselves
drugs,
alcohol,
other addictions,
money wasted on new cars and big screen TVs,
too much TV,
willingness of others to assume responsibility for them,
Socialist crap filling their brains,
hatred of employers,
imagined racist behavior
self pity,
hatred of achievment,
MTV,
rap music,
Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton
Howard Dean/Algore
PEOPLE WITH VALID REASONS: people with physical and mental handicaps that require special accomodation, children still under 18 who are born to people that use the "reasons" above and are forced into their circumstances. (less than 0.1% of the complainers)
I just can't help but think of the glories of diverse Bosnia/Serbia, Iraq, religiously diverse Ireland, etc, etc. Diversity, unto itself, is destructive. Unless their is unity of culture diversity is, well, divisive.
After all, we are a country of immigrants, whether voluntary or forced.
Let's not forget the noble Native American, many of which did a pretty good job of making war on each other even before we got here...
As I see it, liberalism is a philosophy that supports a strong role for government in ensuring that all are able to live a decent life and share in the bounties of this incredibly blessed country, regardless of the stations of life into which they were born.
"...promote the general welfare..." Funny how liberals have a hard time differentiating between "promote" and "provide." Our government was designed to stay out of the people's way. To give them the oportunity to acheive their dreams, not to take from others to give them their needs.
And, if government is not about making life just a little bit better by doing those things that require a collective endeavor, such as security, both physical and financial, by creating a military for the former and programs such as Medicare and Social Security to deal with the latter, and helping those who find themselves in a position of needing temporary support, through safety nets like Medicaid, public housing and food stamps, then, pray tell, what in the world is it for?
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." That's what it is for, no more, no less.
And, perhaps, most important of all, liberalism is about a belief in an entitlement
Bingo. They believe that people have rights not enumerated in the constitution and are constantly trying to create programs that take from one group to give to another, to pit one side against another, for political gain.
publicly provided education for all citizens, not just those who can afford to send their children to private institutions
And when those public institutions fail, who stands in the way of improving them? Who refuses to give those with no other choice but to go to failing schools a chance to go elsewhere?
so that we all may take part in this participatory democracy as informed citizens.
As long as we are informed in the way THEY want us informed. Contrary opinion (FoxNews, Newsmax, FreeRepublic) is to be belittled and marginalized.
Certainly, government does not exist simply to ensure that the rich get richer and the powerful gain more power, while the poor remain poor.
See preamble above. Our Government exists to promote a general welfare, among other things. If the founders has wanted to provide a general welfare, they would have used that word...
It is not unpatriotic to be a liberal, either, and the suggestion that it is makes this old 82nd Airborne paratrooper's blood boil.
I have yet to hear a conservative call a liberal unpatriotic because he his a liberal. You may be unpatriotic if you wish harm upon this nation, as many liberals during the Bush Administration have done. They hope the war will go badly so it will hurt Bush. They hope the economy goes bad so it will hurt Bush. That is putting politics before your country and that is unpatriotic.
I was drafted, served without complaint (OK, without too much complaint), and was willing to put my life on the line if that had become necessary. And, as I near the seventh decade of life, I am happy to stand as a yellow-dog, East Texas, Franklin Roosevelt liberal in all my unsullied glory.
Stupid is as stupid does. His service is commendable, his idiocy afterwards is not.