Jewish World Review July 10, 2000 / 7 Tamuz, 5760
David Limbaugh
The perplexities
of liberalism
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
ON CERTAIN ISSUES, I think I can at least partially understand the
liberal mindset. On others I am at a complete loss.
Though I don't agree, I believe I understand, for example, why many
liberals believe they have an inside track on compassion, if not a
monopoly. These are a few of the things, though, that I don't understand
about liberals (generally speaking, of course, and allowing for numerous
exceptions):
- Why they have such a learning disability regarding the abject
evils of Communism; how they thought the Cold War was largely a product
of conservatives' irrational fear of Communism;
- Even if they thought the United States had no business assisting
South Vietnam in the Vietnam War how they could carry it to such an
irrational extreme as to glorify the North Vietnamese and Cambodian
butchers;
- How they could similarly turn a blind eye to the genocide of the
Soviet Union;
- How they can possibly romanticize Fidel Castro;
- How they oppose capital punishment -- even in cases when they are
sure that the convict is guilty beyond any doubt -- yet register not an
ounce of hesitation at the killing of millions of babies in the womb,
when they know that those babies have to be the most innocent creatures
of all of God's creation;
- How they think that conservatives who oppose abortion (killing of
the innocent) but favor capital punishment (killing of the guilty) are
the ones who are inconsistent;
- Why their sympathies lie with manifestly guilty characters like
Gary Graham;
- How they profess to eschew moral absolutes then turn around and
enforce the rigid and twisted standards of political correctness with an
inflexible vengeance; similarly, how they decry conservative
intolerance, yet demonstrate unparalleled intolerance toward the
conservative viewpoint;
- How they can characterize conservative opposition to special
rights for homosexuals as hatred for homosexuals, or even more
preposterously as fomenting violence against homosexuals.
- How those of them in the mainstream media can be embarrassingly
oblivious to their liberal bias. How Bryant Gumbel, for example, can ask
with a straight face whether a certain person is a liberal or a racist,
implying the two are mutually exclusive and that conservatives are
racists;
- How that same Bryant Gumbel can say that he reports with no
political bias so that his viewers cannot discern his political views;
- How they can fool themselves into believing that their morality
is defined more by the political policies they advocate than the way
they conduct their lives;
- How they can be so conserva-phobic that they will defend Bill
Clinton, no matter what the transgression;
- Why they are not at least demanding more answers from the
administration about the apparent link between Chinese campaign
contributions and a relaxation in our nuclear security leading to
China's acquisition of most of our nuclear secrets -- it will affect
their children, too;
- Why they are not concerned about the Department of Justice's
usurpation of congressional prerogatives, especially in cases where
Congress has deliberately chosen not to act, such as the government's
lawsuits against gun manufacturers to coerce them into "voluntarily"
adopting gun control measures.
- Why they are not alarmed at the government's confiscation of
millions of acres of private property;
- How they can possibly assume that conservatives are opposed to
clean air and clean water, or are in the pockets of big-business, just
because they oppose radical environmental policies based on unproven, if
not junk, science;
- Why they don't understand that by constantly playing the race
card and invoking affirmative action solutions, they are exacerbating
rather than alleviating unnecessary distinctions and problems between
races;
- Why they don't have a healthier respect for the Second Amendment
and choose to demonize weapons themselves rather than those who harm
people with them;
- How they can continue to believe that throwing yet more money at
education will improve its quality while opposing educational choice, a
solution that would certainly enhance education and benefit minorities;
- How they can possibly oppose strategic missile defense
considering the volatile and dangerous world in which we live.
While this list is certainly not exhaustive, if I could get
satisfactory answers to even some of these questions, I might have a key
to the baffling perplexities of
liberalism.
JWR contributor
David Limbaugh
is an
attorney
practicing in
Cape Girardeau,
Missouri,
and a
political
analyst
and
commentator. Send your comments to him by clicking here.
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