Liberal
A liberal is someone who rejects logical and biblical standards, often for self-centered reasons. There are no coherent liberal standards; often a liberal is merely someone who craves attention, and who uses many words to say nothing.
A liberal supports many of the following political positions and practices.
- Taxpayer-funded and/or legalized abortion
- Censorship of teacher-lead prayer in classrooms and school sponsored events
- Support for gun control
- Support of obscenity and pornography as a First Amendment right[1]
- Income redistribution, usually through progressive taxation
- Government-rationed medical care, such as Universal Health Care
- Taxpayer-funded and government-controlled public education
- The denial of inherent gender differences
- Insisting that men and women have the same access to jobs in the military
- Legalized same-sex marriage
- Implementation of affirmative action
- Political correctness
- Support of labor unions
- Teaching acceptance of promiscuity through sexual "education" rather than teaching abstinence from sex.[2]
- A "living Constitution" that is reinterpreted as liberals prefer, rather than how it was intended
- Government programs to rehabilitate criminals
- Abolition of the death penalty
- Environmentalism[3]
- Disarmament treaties
- Globalism
- Opposition to an interventionalist American foreign policy [4]
- Opposition to full private property rights[5]
- Reinstating the Fairness Doctrine
- In 2005, it was reported by CBS News that liberals were the most likely supporters of the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution is a key component of atheistic ideologies in the Western World.
- Opposition to domestic wire-tapping as authorized in the Patriot Act
- Calling anyone they agree with a "professor" regardless of whether he earned that distinction based on a real peer review of his work (see, e.g., Richard Dawkins and Barack Obama).
Contents
Liberals and Uncharitableness
For more information please see: Liberals and uncharitableness
In March of 2008, George Will wrote at RealClearPolitics:
“ | Sixteen months ago, Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University, published "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism." The surprise is that liberals are markedly less charitable than conservatives....
If many conservatives are liberals who have been mugged by reality, Brooks, a registered independent, is, as a reviewer of his book said, a social scientist who has been mugged by data. They include these findings: -- Although liberal families' incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227). -- Conservatives also donate more time and give more blood.[6] |
” |
Liberals and Superstition
In September of 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported:
“ | The reality is that the New Atheist campaign, by discouraging religion, won't create a new group of intelligent, skeptical, enlightened beings. Far from it: It might actually encourage new levels of mass superstition. And that's not a conclusion to take on faith -- it's what the empirical data tell us.
"What Americans Really Believe," a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.... This is not a new finding. In his 1983 book "The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener," skeptic and science writer Martin Gardner cited the decline of traditional religious belief among the better educated as one of the causes for an increase in pseudoscience, cults and superstition. He referenced a 1980 study published in the magazine Skeptical Inquirer that showed irreligious college students to be by far the most likely to embrace paranormal beliefs, while born-again Christian college students were the least likely.[7] |
” |
Liberalism in North America today
Democrats and many media outlets in the U.S. are often liberal.[8]
- Liberals claimed a monopoly on compassion, decency, and social justice (as defined by themselves), posing as the sole defenders of civic virtue against a horde of backwoodsmen, racists, and religious fanatics. [4]
There's another goal, from my point of view, which is to try to lay the groundwork for a radical political force which would conceive of itself as distinctly to the left of moderate, reformist American liberals. And that has two aspects. One is to try to change that liberalism, to transform it by analysis, critique, and activism; the second is to build a radical movement which would be an autonomous force in its own right, which would be distinct from the traditional American liberal consensus. This radical part of the program involves not simply supporting the liberal students against conservative students and conservative professors, but trying to act on them, to push them to the left. It also involves trying to find and support, even trying to help create, networks of radical students in law school and of radical professors around the country — students and teachers who see themselves as wanting to go a lot further than most people want to go. [10]
Liberal Rankings of Congress Members
The National Journal compiles the votes of each congress member each year and uses the information to create rankings[11] of how liberal each member of the United States Congress is. In addition to showing the voting records of each member and given an overall all ranking of liberalness, the National Journal also ranks congress members by liberalness in the areas of social, economic, and foreign policy.
Liberalism in Europe today
In Europe, on the other hand, parties that call themselves liberal are moderate in outlook, ranging from centre-left to centre-right, promote typically economic and business freedom. The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe[12] is a party of the European Parliament that represents most liberal parties from European countries. Similar policies are promoted by many liberal parties throughout the world,[13] such as the Liberal Party of Australia.[14]
Trade unions and socialist parties often criticize politicians for promoting lower taxes on business, or more flexible hiring and firing laws, by calling them "liberals" or neoliberals. Thus, just as in the US, "liberal" may occasionally be used as a term of abuse. But when someone is called "liberal" in Europe, it has an entirely different meaning than in the US. In fact, the US meaning of liberal is more similar to the politics of European socialist or social democratic parties.[15]
Historical Liberalism
In history, the word "liberal" has meant different things at different times, and was associated with individual liberty in prior centuries. In the postwar period, liberals supported government intervention in the economy and welfare state policies, as well as peaceful coexistence with the communist block, which are not liberal policies in the sense of classical liberalism. After the end of the cold war, with the demise of socialism and communism, many liberals embraced some ideas from economic neo-liberalism, and coined it the "Third Way". In the area of national security and foreign policy liberals in the U.S. failed to define a consistent stance, even after the events of 9/11 and the beginning of the war in Iraq. Liberals generally support affirmative action, gay marriage, and abortion.[16]
Original meaning: Classical Liberalism
Liberalism is a political philosophy with freedom as its core value. The term was originally applied to supporters of individual liberties and equal rights, but, in America, the term has come to represent a movement of social change that often conflicts with conservative values such as moral values and tradition.
See Classical Liberalism. Compare Libertarianism.
Alternative meanings of 'liberal'
One definition of liberal is anything that is not conservative. For example, the American Heritage Dictionary includes this definition of "liberal":[17]
- Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas ...
Liberal Organizations
- AARP - American Association of Retired People
- ACLU - American Civil Liberties Union
- AFL-CIO - American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations
- AI - Amnesty International
- Democratic National Committee
- Greenpeace
- NARAL - National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League
- NAACP - National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
- National Committee for an Effective Congress
- National Education Association
- National Organization of Women
- Planned Parenthood Federation of America
- Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
- MoveOn.org
- A.N.S.W.E.R.
Source: The Politix Group
References
- ↑ The Warren Court, led by liberal Justices William O. Douglas, Hugo Black, Abe Fortas, William Brennan and Chief Justice Earl Warren issued 36 decisions granting First Amendment rights to obscenity and pornography. These decisions remain fully supported by liberals today.
- ↑ Democrats Aim To Kill Abstinence-Only Program Funding, Fox News, Monday, June 25, 2007
- ↑ Greenpeace, for example.
- ↑ Stefaan Walgrave and Joris Verhulst, The February 15 Worldwide Protests against a War in Iraq: An Empirical Test of Transnational Opportunities. Outline of a Research Programme(PDF).
- ↑ For example, the liberal wing of the U.S. Supreme Court issued the 5-4 Kelo v. City of New London decision authorizing the taking of private property by government in order to give the property to another private entity rather than convert it to a public use.
- ↑ http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/conservatives_more_liberal_giv.html
- ↑ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178219865054585.html
- ↑ Media Bias basics. Media Research Center.
- ↑ Video discussion about how modern liberalism is actually fascist by author Jonah Goldberg..
- ↑ Liberal Values in Legal Education Duncan Kennedy (professor at Harvard Law School)
- ↑ http://nationaljournal.com/voteratings/index.htm
- ↑ http://www.alde.eu
- ↑ http://www.liberal-international.org/
- ↑ [1]
- ↑ [2]
- ↑ "Political liberals tend, for whatever reason, to be ardent supporters of both gay rights and pro-choice programs." Greenberg and Bailey [3]
- ↑ Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/liberal
See Also
- Articles about liberals
- Classical liberal
- Drinking Liberally
- Godless liberal
- Hollywood values
- Last wordism
- Liberal Bias
- Liberal celebrity obsession
- Liberal Behavior on Conservapedia
- Liberal Christianity
- Liberal deceit
- Liberal Democrats
- Liberal denial
- Liberal Elite
- Liberal Falsehoods
- Liberal Fascism
- Liberal friendship
- Liberal Gloss
- Liberal grading
- Liberal hate speech
- Liberal hypocrisy
- Liberal hysteria
- Liberal ideology
- Liberal Intellectualism
- Liberalism and art
- Liberal labels
- Liberal Lies About the American Right
- Liberal logic
- Liberal Mind
- Liberal Myths
- Liberal obfuscation
- Liberal Party
- Liberal quotient
- Liberal supremacist
- Liberal Style
- Liberal tools
- Liberal tricks
- Liberal values
- Massachusetts liberal
- Professor values