25 Reasons You Might be a Liberal

Friday, August 15, 2008

John Hawkins

25 Reasons You Might Be a Liberal

With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, you just might be a liberal if...

* You're sure the Constitution explicitly guarantees the right to abortion and gay marriage, but not the right to own a handgun.

* You think Dan Quayle is the dumbest Vice-President we ever had because he believed a flash card that misspelled "potato," but think Obama is a genius despite the fact he believes we have more than 57 states.

* You'd be more upset about your favorite candidate being endorsed by the NRA than the Communist Party.

* You think the same criminals who use guns in the commission of a crime will just hand them over to comply with the law if guns are made illegal.

* You know that 86% of all income taxes are paid by the top 25% of income earners and you still feel that the rich "aren't paying their fair share of the taxes."

* You put a higher priority on oil pipelines possibly inconveniencing a few caribou than you do on lowering the price of gas for everyone in the country by drilling ANWR.

* You're worried that Osama Bin Laden might not get a fair trial if we capture him, but want George Bush thrown in prison for being too zealous in protecting us from Al-Qaeda.

* You get infuriated when you hear about the CEO of a Fortune 500 company making tens of millions of dollars, but don't see a problem with an actor, basketball player, or trial lawyer making the same amount.

* You're constantly seeing subtle, coded racism in campaign ads, but see nothing racist about blacks being promoted over more qualified white applicants because of Affirmative Action.

* You think it's obscene that oil companies are allowed to make 8.3 cents per gallon in profit with gas prices this high, but would never suggest cutting the 13 cents per gallon they pay on taxes to reduce the price of gas.

* You think George Bush is a chickenhawk because he wanted to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan despite the fact that he only served in the National Guard, but you don't think the same about Barack Obama, who has never served in the military and probably couldn't find either country on a map without help.

* You think protesting outside of abortion clinics is extremism and should be illegal, but carrying around giant puppet heads while wearing a t-shirt that compares Bush to Hitler is just exercising your First Amendment rights.

* You think the case for global warming is proven without a shadow of a doubt, but that we need another century or two worth of evidence to figure out if capitalism and free markets work better than socialism.

* You believe the best way to fix the government screwing something up in the market is with...drumroll, please...more government intervention.

* You think the first thing we should have done when Russia invaded Georgia was to take the matter to the United Nations, where Russia sits on the UN Security Council.

* You spend your days criticizing the use of private jets, SUVS, and luxurious houses that consume enormous amounts of resources and then ride in an SUV to the airport, get on your private plane, and fly home to your luxurious house.

* You have more nice things to say about countries like Cuba and France than you do about your own country.

* You think the war in Iraq is unwinnable, but victory in the war on poverty is going to happen any day now if we can just get the Democrats back in charge.

* You won't even support English as our national language, but can't seem to understand why people worry about tens of millions of illegal aliens changing our culture.

* You think censorship is absolutely wrong; except when it's applied to conservatives on college campuses or on talk radio via the fairness doctrine.

* You get more upset about an American soldier accidentally killing a civilian than you do about a terrorist deliberately blowing up a school bus full of kids.

* You think Fox News is hopelessly biased to the right, but MSNBC, CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS call it right down the middle.

* You think the real hero of the Cold War was Mikhail Gorbachev.

* You couldn't care less about what Americans in states like Kansas or Virginia think of you, but you would be greatly upset if a Frenchman gave you a dirty look because you're an American.

* You think kids in public schools should have to watch Earth in the Balance and read Heather Has Two Mommies, but no piece of literature with the word "Jesus" on it should be allowed within a hundred yards of a school.

 

"* You think Fox News is hopelessly biased to the right, but MSNBC, CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS call it right down the middle."

Many were good but I laughed out loud at that one.

Thanks for posting.

 

If Republicans didn't have strawmen to comfort them, they'd have nothing at all.

 

I thought Mickhael Gorbachev was the real hero of the cold war.
Wasn't he the glasnost guy?

 

Thomas Jefferson was a Classical Liberal. Most dickheads have never known the term.

 

I'd change the term liberal to radical leftist as there is a difference. Other than that, your post was right on the money.

 

The patients have taken over the ET asylum, Doc. Up is the new down.

 

mmmmm.....maybe.

But I think it's more of a case where it's easy to label another verses actually think. CO had a good post above. Change the title of hapa's post from "liberal" to "radical leftist," and the author has automatically alienated himself from 9/10's of his audience.

The people that make and post these types of articles aren't dumb....they're just looking for a fight.

 

Context is everything. The classic definition has NEVER applied to the left.

liberal
adj. Marked by generosity.
n. ORIGINAL: One who is open-minded or not strict in the observance of orthodox, traditional, or established forms or ways.
n. CURRENT: One who seeks to maintain the changes of recent years or limit the erosion thereof.
The dictionary definition of “liberal” has meaning independent of the political spectrum, but is now almost exclusively used — incorrectly in my opinion — as to mean someone from the left. In the U.S. this means one of the two dominant parties of the two-party system. The modern meaning of “liberal” has therefore become simply a synonym for a Democrat, i.e. an artificial packaging of political views created to help perpetrate the two party system. As such, “liberal” has undergone an about-face from someone who is open-minded and non-traditional to someone who seeks to maintain the status quo in the face of efforts to undo the program of past liberals. In addition, the word “liberal” has acquired a negative connotation due the sustained and withering attacks of neo-conservatives. Neo-conservatives use “liberal” as a pejorative to tar their enemies as spend-thrifts of government money, thus capitalizing on the meaning of the English adjective form of the word. The effort to pejoratize the word is also aided by the lack of defenders of the term “liberal”; non-conservative political movements have historically preferred to call themselves “progressive”. In the 18th and 19th century, “liberal” was associated with disciples of John Locke (thus the authors of the U.S. Constitution would have been liberals), who believed in minimalist government (government as a protector of rights, not an instrument of social policy). The association of “liberal” with a more expansive role for government may have begun with the New Deal, since by then laissez-faire had become orthodoxy that was failing under conditions much evolved from those of Locke and the U.S. founders (the corporate age).

 

Yes, that's a good observation. Nothing quite hits the spot in the morning like a bit of divisiveness.