What You Have to Believe to be a Modern-Day Leftist

While most public schools teach kids about sex by stressing condom use, birth control and the mechanics of sex, the fact that teen pregnancy and the spread of STD's is on the rise can be linked directly to the fact that some politicians favor abstinence-only education.

It is insensitive to the rights of Muslims to object to their building of a Mosque anywhere they want. It is not insensitive for Muslims to want to build a giant Mosque less than two blocks from the site where their people massacred thousands of Americans.

Black men and women should not be defined by skin color, but it is important that they talk, dress, think and vote alike. Otherwise they are not "true" black people, but instead are "self-loathing Uncle Toms."

A white police officer asking a black man seen attempting to force a door open to produce ID is racist. A black man saying it's time to "kill some cracker babies" is not.

Showing an admiration for the female form is sexist. Calling a right-wing female politican a "slutty flight attendant" for no particular reason is not.

Protesting a right-wing president's policies is patriotism. Protesting a left-wing policitian's policies is domestic terrorism.

There is no such thing as evil. Right-wingers are evil.

Sharia Law permits, and in fact encourages, the murder of infidels, apostates and women who talk back to their husband. Islamic jihadists have committed cold-blooded murder in the name of Allah on American soil three times within the past decade, along with several unsuccessful attempts. With that in mind, Islam is a religion of peace.

The solution to welfare having created a generation of dead-beat parents who refuse to work and don't provide for their kids is more welfare.

A white prisoner is a criminal. A black prisoner is a victim.

In light of the fact that there is statistically less crime in areas where private citizens can carry guns in public, the solution to lowering crime in crime-ridden areas such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles is stricter gun control.

The fact that there are more black single-parent families than white is due to racism.

Despite the fact that cities where homelessness is at its worst (such as Baltimore, Detroit and Chicago) have been run by Democrats for the past several decades, homelessness is the fault of evil, greedy Republicans.

You would have to be a crazy, stupid idiot to believe that Obama was not born in the USA, despite the existence of a Kenyan birth certificate, a sign on the town he grew up in proclaiming itself his "birthplace" and the lack of a hard copy of a real Hawaiian birth certificate. However, 9/11 was unquestionably an inside job.

Bush is an idiot because he used words like "nucular." Obama is not an idiot for thinking America has more than 57 states.

Bush was to blame for a hurricane that wiped out an entire city that occurred during his presidency. He is apparently also to blame for an oil spill that happened nearly two years after his presidency.

In a world where Radical Islamists have flown planes into buildings, shot up American Army bases while shouting "Allahu ackbar", have attempted to suicide-bomb other airplanes and have left car-bombs in Times Square, the real danger is from Tea Partiers.

Martin Luther King's dream of black children and white children holding hands means that he saw white people as the enemy.

The fact that the American Right are pro-MLK makes them racist.

Celebrating diversity creates unity.

Global warming is unquestionably real despite a lack of confirmed evidence but Christians are silly for believing in God.

Statistics matter only when they make Democrats look good. The fact that only 35% of Americans consider themselves "liberal" is unimportant. The fact that only 12% were in favor of gay marriage is unimportant. The fact that Obama's approval rating is at 45% and dropping is unimportant.

Obama is a genius despite the fact that he can barely deliver a coherent answer to a question without a teleprompter telling him what to say. Sarah Palin is supposedly an idiot because she wrote four words on her hand to deliver an hour-long speech with no other notes.

The Tea Partiers would have no problem with America's slide into socialism if the Democrats had elected Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid instead.

Will a GOP-Controlled Congress be a Good Thing?

I won't lie. I'm no fan of modern-day Republicans really any more than I am Democrats. The best thing I can say about the current GOP is that they aren't actively trying to turn America into a socialistic nightmare. But that's also part of the problem. They aren't actively trying to do anything. They stand for nothing, they do nothing and their primary strategy seems to be currying favor with the current Democratic leadership. Michael Steele went from a bold-speaking leader to an appeasing power-seeker. John McCain always was that. Are the current crop of GOPers seeking election to Congress any better?

Whether or not they are, there's a larger question; one that I've seen few on the Right asking. That is, what will really happen if the Right overtakes the Senate this November?

Up until now, Obama's chief tool to deflect criticism has been what again? Say it with me: "Blame Bush". Obama's White House predecessor has been blamed for literally every stumble (or outright faceplant) Obama's administration has faced. We were promised the Stimulus bill would show imediate improvement in our economy. It didn't. Who got blamed? Bush. We were promised unemployment would not rise above 8%. It's now over 10%. Who's at fault? Bush. A BP tanker spills crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico a full year and a half after Bush left office. And yet...who's more to blame, Bush or Obama? Do you even have to ask?

BTW, as an aside, I know that the reason people blame Bush for the oil spill is that he deregulated the Oil Industry, so this is the effect of his cause. However, whatever regulations they think Bush should have put in place would not have affected this situation one whit. It's just another instance of Democrats thinking the Government should have their hand in every pie. As if Government regs would have stopped the spill! For that matter, Bush was blamed for EVERYTHING that happened while he was in office, even the recession. Any idiot knows the economy is affected by actions taken by Congress, not the President. Who controlled Congress in the months leading up to the recession? I'll give you a hint; not Republicans. If we can blame literally everything that happened during Bush's term in office on Bush, then why are we not blaming everything that happens during Obama's term on Obama?

But whether or not we should be, the fact is that the mainstream media is not. Obama is taking no responsibility. He, and the media, are riding out the idea of blaming the ghost of the now-departed previous administration and clearly plan on doing so until it's ridden into the dust. Then they'll ride it further. But only if they have to. If another horse, equally rideable, comes along, they'll jump on that one.

What better horse could there be than a Congress diametrically opposed to your agenda? I can see it now: "I'm trying to do some good work here, but I'm being blocked at every turn by a Congress opposed to change." I mean, he already blamed what few Republicans there are in the Senate for the issues he had passing the healthcare bill. That was a laugh; the Republicans didn't have enough votes to stop anything.

Now, some might say "Good! That's the whole reason I'm voting Republican this November: to break the Left's stranglehold on all legislation!" And for the short term, this is good. Maybe with eight years of GOP-controlled Congress keeping Obama from driving us closer and closer off the cliff of socialism, the Left's re-structuring of America might at least be slowed down, if not totally stopped. But then, what of Obama's re-election chances?

You see, the general mood I get from America is that they don't trust Obama, they don't know if they can believe in him, but they want to. Those who voted for him don't want to think they misplaced their trust. Those who didn't are waiting for him to prove himself. And then there are those on the far Left who will love him no matter what. Obama has managed to keep the Left on his side for this long, thanks to his "Blame Bush" mantra, but now he's starting to lose support even from them. I think he knows his go-to position for passing blame is starting to sound tired, even to his supporters.

But if we give him a new demon to point his finger at, what will happen? His supporters, even the fringe supporters, will leap back on board the Obama wagon with no hesitation whatsoever. You will no longer hear about Bad ol' Bush from the media. Now you will hear, day and night, how awful that obstructionist new Congress is.

And Obama could ride that pony to a second term.

Now, no matter who controls Congress, a second term for Obama will be bad news. First off, this administration has already proved that they'll use whatever means they can to pass their legislation, even if Congress is stopping him. If they need to use reconciliation, they will. They've already threatened to use it. We suspect very strongly that they're already using bribes, and we know for a fact that many of the weaker GOP candidates may very well go along with the Obama agenda to prove they're trying to get along. So as long as Obama's in power, he will continue to push his socialist agenda, and he will continue to gain ground there.

The best thing that could happen from a second Obama term will be that America's love affair with him will go from just cooling to boiling over with irritation, and we won't end up with a President Biden (or worse, Pelosi). The worst that could happen is that Obama will pass so many new laws, sue those who make laws he doesn't like (such as Arizona) and turn America irrevocably into another Russia, China or North Korea. At absolute worst, he could attempt to overturn term limits for the office of President, and manage a third term. Don't laugh; there actually is a movement on to let him have a third term, even before he's managed a second!

And you just know that any opposition to ending term limits will automatically be labeled racist.

So, here's my problem; I want the GOP to win the House and Senate back as much as anyone, but at what cost? I think the most ideal situation is for the GOP to win a few more seats that they can block Obama's worse ideas but few enough that Obama can't blame a GOP-dominated Congress for all his mistakes.

In this case, I truly am not rooting for a GOP sweep. Primarily because it will give Obama a new target for passing blame, but also because I don't really trust the GOP anymore, and I won't until they start representing the voice of their constituents and stop worrying about making us look better to Democrats. Liberals aren't going to vote for a Republican, period, no matte what they do or say. They don't want Conservatives to be more like them; they want Conservatives eradicated. I don't mean literally, but if Spencer Ackerman proved one thing in his proposal to "remind those on the Right the cost of going after the Left", it's that Liberals are not trying to change our minds, but are instead trying to humiliate us and bring us down. Conservative politicians have yet to understand this, but the Tea Partiers do, and hopefully the GOP will understand that our vote for them comes with the expectation that they will stand up against this bullying government, not just adopt "Liberal lite" policies.

It's the only way we'll ensure Obama won't get his second term.

Why I Truly Feel the Right is in the Right

Every now and then I'll hear a friend, or an online commenter, say something along the lines of "There's no difference between liberals and conservatives; they're both corrupt." This may be true if you're speaking of the general idea that there are corrupt politicians on both the Left and the Right, but the generalization misses the point.

To say they're both the same just because there are bad apples in both bunches is unfair to both sides. What you need to do is look at both sides' corruption and decide for which one the corruption is the exception, rather than the rule.

I won't deny that every now and then a right-wing politician is caught in a scandal, be it sexual, criminal or otherwise. I will, however, state that the frequency of this occurance on the Right is far, far less than what you see on the Left. The higher a left-wing politician rises, the more corrupt you can be sure he or she is. Just look at the initially proposed Presidential Cabinet. Nearly all of them turned out to be tax cheats. Look at Rod Blagojevich. Look at Al Gore or John Edwards. Look at Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters. Look at Van Jones.

And that's just recent!

But to really cut to the heart of the matter, you've got to look at what morality they're willing, in daily business practice, to view as acceptable.

On the Right, any politician caught in any sort of wrong-doing is out of a job. Anyone caught conspiring with them is similarly out of a job. Uusually it's a resignation in disgrace, but sometimes they are fired. Either way, right-wingers don't take kindly to their fellow conservatives not living up to expectations.

We certainly do not encourage each other to tell blatant lies about the other side in an effort to bolster our cause. We don't accuse those on the Left of behavior or views they are not guilty of. Our politicians can't even say "you're lying" when they tell bald-faced falsehoods about us. Well, some can, but not all politicians are as gutsy as Joe Wilson.

See, that's the thing about the Left; they don't really believe what they're saying. Oh, they have the courage of their convictions (to a point, anyway; see James Cameron). But they certainly don't actually believe the things they say in their own defense. They stick to their guns, but their positions are built on lies and half-truths that they need in order to arrive at the conclusions they want.

A Rightist takes all the facts he can gather into consideration, listens to arguments made by all sides, and then makes up his mind what he believes. You can tell this because among right-wingers there is no clear consensus on issues like God, abortion or gay marriage.

On the other hand, a Leftist takes a position, and then clamors for any support he can to retain that position. You can tell this because if there's one thing that's strong about the Left, it's their uniformity of opinion.

If the Leftist cannot find any facts to support his case, he either pretends that doesn't matter or makes those facts up. For proof of this, you need look no further than the JournoList, a listserv of left-wing journalists created by Ezra Klein for the purpose of keeping the left-wing narrative in the old media alive. Among some of the choicest comments made on the JournoList was one made by Spencer Ackerman in response to the question of what to do about Jeremiah Wright. This comment was made during the 2008 Presidential campaign, when it began to look like the racist, anti-America, pro-Farrakhan minister that Obama called his "spiritual mentor" might hurt Obama's campaign. The matter was hushed up right away, and hardly spoken of in the old media, and those on the Right who kept the issue alive were, surprise! Labeled racists.

Here's what Ackerman had to say about how to deal with the Jeremiah Wright problem:

It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.

If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.

Wow. Just...wow. In essence, Ackerman has said "Our position is indefensable, so let's do our best to put the other side on the defensive instead."

There's a reason you have never heard of a right-wing "JournoList" secretly saying this kind of thing to each other. Because it doesn't happen. I'm not saying nobody on our side lies, or tries to deflect criticism. I'm saying that when this does happen, this is the exception, not the rule.

If Ackerman had been a right-winger, and had been on a pro-McCain board posting this kind of horseshit, he would have been kicked off. He would have been told "Listen, we're not going to lie. We're going to do this clean or we don't do it at all."

I hear all the time people accusing the Right of lying. "Bush lied, people died." "Fox News is nothing but a bunch of liars." "Rush Limbaugh is a big fat liar."

But it seems like, when pressed, left-wingers can't really point to a time when we've been caught actually lying. Oh, we've gotten our facts wrong. One or two journalists or politicians may have overlooked stuff in the past, but as I've been saying, these are the exceptions, not the rule. But I keep hearing that the Right is nothing but a pack of liars. It's as if they're liars by virtue of being right-wingers. Of course Fox News lies! I mean...they're Fox News! Of course Limbaugh is lying! He's Rush Limbaugh! That's their only defense.

A while back, an author whose work I admire was discussing the healthcare bill on his blog. He was gung-ho for it and felt that anyone against it was against humanity, more or less. He then responded to a few commenters who were against it with another post, in which he concluded:

I also found it striking that so many of the objections to the health bill (NOT all, please note, some of the arguments against the bill were polite, cogent, and well reasoned, so please note that I am saying SO MANY and not ALL) seemed rootly firmly in misunderstanding as to the actual provisions of the bill. They were based on Republican talking points and the biased accounts of Fox news and hysterical right wing talk radio. Guys, really. These people have lied to you. Change the channel. I won't ask you to watch MSNBC, which has its own slant, but go at least to one of the centrist channels like CNN or the old line networks, or better still, read a good newspaper.

As [Partner]'s Uncle Pat -- known to most of the rest of you as the late, great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- once said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

Needless to say I was somewhat irritated by his blanket statement that Republican talking points or anything spoken by Fox News or "hysterical" right-wing talk radio was automatically a lie. He didn't say what proof he had that these people have "lied to you"; as far as he was concerned, if a right-winger said it, it's a lie. (As an aside, I gotta wonder what right-wing talk radio personalities he doesn't consider "hysterical".)

I decided to challenge him, so I sent him a letter asking what proof he had that the lying came from the Right, and only facts came from the Left. I reminded him that CNN, which he says is "centrist" and therefore supposedly more truthful, had run a story about some racist quotes attributed to Rush Limbaugh that turned out to be totally fake. I stated that they had quoted a website that offered no sources, and that it seriously called their journalistic integrity into question. I was not asking him to list his credentials or by what grounds he declares himself an expert, but he felt compelled to do so anyway in his response to me:

I have a master's degree in journalism, from one of the leading journalism schools in the country (Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, to be exact). I've worked as a journalist from time to time during my life, I have dealt with many journalists during my career, and I know quite a few working journalists. So please accept that I have considerable expertise on this subject.

Sure, you have knowledge. Doesn't mean you're not biased. He also goes on at length about how he states that it is the goal of the journalist to be objective. No one's arguing that, but he still offers no proof that CNN is objective, merely that he doesn't think Fox News is:

A couple points about that. Being objective is NOT the same thing as being "balanced," which Fox likes to tout. (Actually, Fox is wildly unbalanced, but that's another matter). The objective reporter strives for truth, not for balance. A "balanced" reporter when writing about the solar system will give equal time to the Copernican and Ptolemiac theories, and claim he was being fair by presenting "both sides." An objective reporter will report that Copernicus was right (more or less) and that Ptolemy's ideas have all been disproven. Sure, the cliche says that "there are two sides to every story," and a good reporter is aware of that... but that does not mean each side has an equal portion of the truth.

He then goes on to criticize Fox News by blaming them for the Tea Parties:

But Fox News has changed that equation. From the first Fox has been slanted heavily to the right -- not only in their commentary, which is perfectly respectable (newspapers have always had editorial pages, where opinions were expressed, but those same opinions were always kept OUT of the news columns)... but also in its NEWS reporting, which was and is a shock to anyone who takes the tenet of the professional seriously. Consider, if you will, the way Fox reports on these "Tea Parties," events which the network itself was instrumental in starting and promoting. That violates every canon of journalistic ethics that I was ever taught. You report news, you don't create it.

The F--K???!!! The Tea Parties were not started by Fox News, and to say they are is to create your own facts. Notice he offers no proof of this statement, either.

After that, he talks about MSNBC and admits that it's not objective, either, but then concludes this way:

In between you have CNN and the three traditional networks, CBS, NBC, and ABC, which are still striving to hold to the old standards of objectivity. If you want to get your news from television, those are the places to get it. (Admittedly, even those stalwarts are not what they were. The days of Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Eric Sevareid, and Edward R. Murrow are sadly gone).

Where in any of that do you see an answer to the question I put to him? I was not asking which stations are more objective; he could not have been more clear about which stations he felt were the most objective. What I was asking was why. When did he objectively decide that CNN (and the alphabet networks) was more objective than Fox News? How did he decide that there was no left-wing slant to CNN? He's able to recognize that about MSNBC due to how overt it is, but thinks that CNN is "centrist" and therefore not lying to us. How does he know this?

Oh, and he had nothing, literally nothing, to say about CNN's lying about Rush Limbaugh (or, to be fair, repeating lies as if they were true).

I asked him to defend his side and point to the proof of lies from the other side. He did neither.

Then there's the Congressional Black Caucus. Back near the end of the debate, the CBC walked through a crowd of Tea Partiers, flip-phones held high, clearly waiting for a racially-charged incident of violence to take place. None happened. Undeterred, Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver claimed one man spit on him. Video of the incident shows him walking close to a man who is chanting "Kill the Bill" and it's possible that some spittle flying from the man's mouth might have struck Cleaver, but this hardly constitutes being spat upon. Rep. Lewis claims he heard the n-word fifteen times. To this day, no one can produce video of this occurring, despite the fact that, as I said, flip-phones were in abundance. There's been a $100,000 reward offered by conservative online media mogul Andrew Breitbart, that remains unclaimed. The Left would rather accuse Breitbart of lying (about what? He didn't make any claims.) than offer any proof that they aren't.

I don't see this on the Right. Right-wingers don't evade the questions they're asked. We don't claim things and then refuse to give proof of our claims. We don't skip out on debates we started when the going gets tough. We don't rely on data from institutions caught falsifying their research. We don't make up conspiracy theories and then act like the mere fact that we made them up is proof of their veracity. We're not perfect, but we're trying to be honest and lawful, while the Left is trying to win. At any cost. It's probably why in the court of public debate, we appear to be losing.

I Am a Liberal

I am a modern American liberal.

I am liberal because I believe in tolerance. I'm so tolerant that I hate hearing intolerance coming from anyone, and I refuse to tolerate anyone who does not conform to my standard of tolerance. My standard of tolerance is me. If you disagree with anything that I, a picture of tolerance, have to say, then by definition you are intolerant, and I cannot tolerate you.

I am a liberal because I believe in freedom of speech. I believe that anyone who agrees with me on every issue should be free to speak as much as they want, wherever they want, and use as much inflamatory language as they want. After all, it's a free country. If you don't agree with me about everything, however, you are intolerant, and should not be free to speak a word.

I am a liberal because I believe in freedom of expression. I believe that any attempt to censor freedom of expression is inherently evil, and those who side with it should not be free to express themselves. That includes anyone who believes in traditional ideas like Christianity, capitalism, marriage, or family.

I am a liberal because I believe the word "marriage" has no true meaning. Marriage is about love, and nothing else, and any people who love each other should be able to express that love by getting married. Be it a man and a woman, two men, two women, a brother and sister, etc., I say, let's give them all equal marriage rights! I'm so committed to dulling the meaning of the word "marriage" that I don't even care that across the country gay men and women have all the same rights and benefits extended to all common-law couples, or that most people in this country don't want to legalize gay marriage. I just want to make it illegal for anyone who disagrees with gay marriage to be able to say so in public.

I am a liberal because I believe in freedom of choice. That means that I want all women across America to be free to choose to kill their babies, and I want those who choose otherwise to just shut up about it. I believe that choice to kill is so important, that I think it's perfectly acceptable for a doctor to pierce the neck of a partially-born baby and stick a tube in the hole to suck out its brain. After all, a baby isn't a baby until it can vote.

I am a liberal because I want more government presense in my daily life. After all, when I get in trouble, the people I turn to to get me out of it is the government, so why shouldn't they run my life? Besides, they're much better at deciding how to spend my money, raise my kids and decide what kind of products I am or am not allowed to buy or eat than I am. I'm very much in favor of making the government an omnipresent entity that watches my every move, and I don't even think I should be allowed to own a gun to defend myself if they get too power-hungry! All hail Big Brother! (Note: This is only true if the Government in question is Liberal. Despite the fact that I spent eight years complaining that Bush was turning the country into the very thing I just described, I'm all for handing Obama as much power as he wants.)

I am a liberal because I care about the environment. I care so much, in fact, that I am willing to sacrifice humans in order to bring about a better environment. I believe it is paramount that we stop questioning the fact of global warming and start actively fighting against it. And if that means higher taxes and sacrificing some of our freedoms, well, heck, it's worth it to fight global warming, which unquestionably exists. Don't even talk to me about those stupid emails that were uncovered that showed leading climatologists freely discussing the falsification of their research; these guys know what they're doing and I will swallow anything they say. It's a much bigger issue that their lies were exposed by that evil, criminal hacker. We shouldn't focus on what was in the emails; we should instead find that hacker and put him to death. Those scientists are brilliant men, and a few lies from them doesn't change the fact of global warming!

I am a liberal because I truly believe that Hollywood actors and comedians are the smartest people in the world. If Sean Penn, Matt Damon, Bill Maher and Jon Stewart say something, then gosh-darn it, they must be right. I mean...they're on television.

I am a liberal because I hate George W. Bush. I'm not sure why, exactly. He...uh...took away our freedom! Like...he wiretapped people and stuff. No, I never heard of anybody being wiretapped, arrested or detained who wasn't a terrorist, but that doesn't mean he didn't have the power to do that if he wanted! And...uh...he was pro-life! Okay, so he didn't overturn Roe vs. Wade, but he wanted to! And...and...ah...he was against gay marriage! Okay, so's Obama. And Bush stumbled over his words! Only an idiot does that! All I know is that Bush was bad, Obama is good, and we've got a good president now. I mean, my sociology professor told me that Bush was evil, and he wanted to, like, take over the middle-east to get its oil. And he wouldn't lie.

I am a liberal...because I prefer to let other people do my thinking for me.