The Democrat party seems to be a mere shadow of what they used to be. During the Great Depression and onwards the Democrats ruled the country. Whatever opposition the GOP was able to mount was clearly dwarfed by a coalition of all the poor and marginalized people that the Great Depression impacted. This was also America's greatest generation that we're talking about so liberalism back then was a force to be reckoned with and fight for.
But over the decades, liberals have adopted policies and pushed platforms that have alienated a lot of the American public. Now, liberals are genuinely running scared. They seem terrified of the emerging Tea Party. Former Democrat majority leader and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi predicts an end to civilization as we know it. Comments in the blogosphere are full of impotent rage. Why would anybody in their right mind vote for a Republican? was one of the more coherent responses. If one were to try and look for a more articulated response, it would have to be Thomas Frank who wrote What's the Matter With Kansas. Frank in Kansas looks favorably in the past at what a trend-setter in liberalism Kansas was only to become disenfranchised at how far the state has been pulled to the right to the point of even giving moderate Republicans the boot in state politics. Frank identifies this shift as a backlash but seems to be at a loss or in complete denial of what role liberals have played in the shift.
Well, that's why I'm writing this article; to explain why somebody would vote for a Republican in this day and age. You won't listen to it, but now it's out in the open so it's your loss and the GOP's gain if you don't head the advice.
I should note that political discussions in America tend to be idealized and this article follows this format. We often talk about Democrats following a liberal policy and associated with the political left. On graphics and tables we use the color blue to designate them. Likewise, the Republican party usually follows a conservative platform and is associated on the right. We use the color red to represent them. In reality, if red is conservative and blue is liberal, then most people are purple. People's political beliefs can often be represented "cafeteria style"--they rarely hold strict boundaries between liberal and conservative and often pick from both. So for example, you'll see people hold liberal beliefs in certain areas like gay marriage while preaching fiscal conservatism that would be closer to conservatives.
This article identifies issues that are associated with the liberal agenda and how it costs support from the American public.
Attacks on Religion
Frank in Kansas tries to describe the political backlash that Democrats have sustained in recent years from the religious right but essentially regards it as a pathology and offers no real solutions.
It's simple. STOP! Most of the electorate can agree that the government forcing people to convert to a particular denomination would be a violation of our personal freedoms. This is what the concept of separation of church and state is suppose to address. Separation of church and state was never a license to suppress all religious sentiment. Legislation and law suits over "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and a nativity scene in a public park are just petty. These are straight-forward first amendment issues and don't violate the rights of nonbelievers or people of other denominations in the slightest.
Liberals seem genuinely confused as to why such a secularized population can be so riled up over the issue. I'll explain: Religion is a strong cultural force in America and many people who barely get to church twice a year will, nevertheless, become incensed over the left's attack on any sort of public expression of religious sentiment. Most people can be described as nominally religious. Even though they may not actively practice their religion or observe all its tenants, they more or less, culturally identify with it. It is a part of their heritage. This makes sense--you can't begin to describe or characterize a culture without describing and including the beliefs and customs that make up that culture. So, to many people, assailing and suppressing forms of religious sentiment is equivalent to assailing or suppressing somebody because he's black, white or Chinese.
Laying off the attacks on religion would benefit liberals as well. Attacking religious sentiments or remaining silent while it happens is guaranteed to keep the religious right mobilized. Frank in Kansas describes a case in Alabama where a granite monument of The Ten Commandments was erected in front of a courthouse prompting a lawsuit from the ACLU. The ACLU won the case and the monument was ordered taken down. The ACLU won another recent case against a monument of The Ten Commandments in Oklahoma.
Frank in Kansas seemed puzzled because the people of Alabama should have known what would have resulted from such a futile effort. If so, this is the best example of civil disobedience I've ever seen. First, nobody got hurt. Second, it casts the ACLU as a tool of the religious right, which amuses me greatly. Lastly, the liberals gave the religious right yet another example of religious persecution that they can use to rally conservative Americans from the pulpits. What do you do when a liberal tosses a grenade at you? Pull the pin and throw it back!
Crime
The liberal's lenient stance on crime seems to be rooted in the belief that crime is merely a symptom of social injustice and that more resources and effort should be devoted to correcting the injustices instead of prosecuting criminals. The only problem with this liberal premise is that conservatives reject it completely.
Frank in Kansas never discusses the effect of crime and how it might effect how people in Kansas will vote. He talks a lot about how vibrant communities in Kansas that were the bastion of liberalism became the abandoned and hollowed out husks that they are now, but you would think that crime was never an issue if you read any chapter in Kansas. Well crime is a major issue in just about every major city that I know of and the liberal response to it has been pretty irresponsible. The liberal dismissal of crime as the serious problem that it is is multifaceted:
I. Excessive Penalties
The liberal's claim that certain crimes like drug use, theft and vandalism have excessive penalties seems to be an expression of their concept of rights--people should be allowed to do what they want or should be given some leniency because they were born into disadvantaged circumstances. Liberals seem to believe that making penalties or punishment severe enough to deter them or making the consequences more unpleasant is the real crime.
Consider a burglar that breaks into a home to steal a flat screen television. The damages to the homeowner would be about a couple thousand bucks. Nearly of all this could easily be replaced quite cheaply if the homeowner has insurance. If we consider only this, the penalty might be worth a fine and maybe a few weeks in jail.
But what about the homeowner's sense of security? What if he feels he needs to purchase an alarm system or buy a gun to protect himself and his family? What about his neighbors when they discover that a burglary happened in their neighborhood? What would that do to property values?
What about other offenses? Retailers charge a 5-10% margin on their merchandise just to cover shoplifting. It's not the shortages either but the investments in security systems, cameras, checkpoints and security staff. That's a cost that gets passed down to consumers. Drug use creates huge pools of unemployable people that still need to be cared for and even rehabilitated. A few perverts have made millions of parents worry about letting their children out of their homes unsupervised.
All this I'm describing are "minor crimes". I haven't even discussed offenses that seriously hurt or kill somebody. Considering the broader effects crime, how can it be possible to argue that there is such a thing as excessive penalties?
II. Capital Punishment
The debate over capital punishment has heated up in recent years due to a sense of secular humanism that suggests that, as a society, we are supposed to have evolved beyond an eye-for-an-eye system of justice.
Actually, as far as rubrics of justice go, eye for an eye when originally conceived, was an idea ahead of its time. It suggests that the penalty of an offense should not exceed the offense itself. This probably mitigated the effect of personal feelings from perpetuating or escalating violent encounters. In effect, taking a man's eye only entitles him to take one of yours. It doesn't entitle him to kill your family and burn your house down.
Reading about the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and Rwanda or the troubles of the Middle East tell me that a lot of humanity hasn't yet evolved to grasp the concept of justice that eye for an eye represents. It doesn't even happen in the civilized world that much. Go inside any bar in America and shove the first tough guy that you see and see if he would be satisfied by only giving you one shove back.
Then there are the crimes that are so heinous that the perpetrator has forfeited the right to live among civilized men as far as conservatives are concerned. Crimes that are so heinous with such high body counts that eye for an eye seems unsatisfying because we can only execute a person once.
III. False Convictions
Another part of the liberal's opposition to capital punishment are related to claims that some people were wrongfully convicted. The liberals sympathy extends to all wrongfully convicted people of any crime, but it's most pronounced among capital crimes because that person's life is at stake and we can't undue an execution.
Frankly, conservatives don't believe this--flat out. They won't believe a a white-collar liberal either because who would trust somebody who defends and excuses criminal behavior?
Even if there was evidence that somebody behind bars was falsely convicted, conservatives aren't going to believe that the arrest and prosecution were arbitrary. As far as they're concerned, he either had a previous criminal record, has close associates that have a criminal record, or had committed similar crimes in the past that he wasn't apprehended for. This pretty much means that if one chooses a life of crime or befriending people who do, being falsely accused is merely an occupational hazard. I know of many older generations that subscribe to the concept of guilt by association. Back in their days, they knew to stay away from others that were a bad influence for the very reason that they didn't want to be among the accused.
People, in general are aware of where the problem areas are or who the problem people are within a community. There are neighborhood watches and police aren't sweeping or raiding book clubs and soccer practices to look for criminal activity. They typically police the same streets that crimes seem to be occurring and hassle the same people that always seem to be involved in crimes or aiding and abetting them. Conservatives are not going to have much sympathy for the falsely accused.
IV. Gun Control
Frank in Kansas frequently cites hot-button issues such as abortion that conservatives use to rally other conservatives at the polls to encourage them to vote for certain candidates despite such issues being "unwinnable". I would agree with this assessment. However, unlike Frank, I'll go a little further and say that liberals also have their own hot-button issues to rally their forces, and number one on the list is gun control.
Gun control and abortion have a lot in common. They are both intractable and unwinnable social issues in America that have effectively been fought to a standstill. They are also polarizing and appeal to people's emotions to the point that many Americans would be unwilling to discuss them even with close friends and family.
However, these two issues differ in one key respect: The right to own a gun is explicitly stated in the Constitution under the Bill of Rights while a woman's right to an abortion is not. Granted, the fact that abortion, or any other right that isn't listed, isn't sufficient cause for denying such rights. However, the Constitution says that every American has a right to bare arms, period. This distinction matters to conservatives. If liberals don't agree with this, it is their problem as far as conservatives are concerned. Last I checked, membership in the NRA exceeds membership in the largest gun control organizations by at least an order of magnitude and the courts have recently ruled in favor of gun owners. So public opinion is on their side and will be in the foreseeable future.
So how does this stalemate hurt liberals exactly? Because recently conservative gun owners have been borrowing a page from the religious right and cast gun control efforts as persecution by the liberal elite who believe they can tell the rest of America what to believe and think. Every celebrity or liberal elite that advocates for gun control from behind their gated communities while being flanked by bodyguards becomes the poster child of that out-of-touch liberal that believes that they can take a gun from a law abiding citizen and effectively make them more vulnerable to real criminals (whom liberals believe to be the real victims).
Genuine Injustice
After decades of reforming the judicial system to give the little guy a fair shake, liberals seem to have created even worse problems and have fought or sandbagged conservatives every attempt at fixing them. This point isn't exclusively about criminal cases which have plenty of their own problems. Liberals like to complain about false accusations among the poor and minorities who have to rely on a public defender while a defendant such as O.J. Simpson can hire a dream team defense that can get an acquittal. This is simply a consequence of liberal insistence on whether or not arbitrary procedures were followed rather than actually trying to determine guilt or innocence. I'm not talking about due process or the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Conservatives are all in favor of such constitutional protections.
Rulings such as Miranda v Arizona, on the other hand, is considered complete nonsense by conservatives. Anybody who hasn't lived under a rock knows about Miranda Rights. We hear them recited in every crime drama on television so it's pretty much a trivial exercise at this point. That is until a case or key evidence gets dismissed because an officer didn't recite the Miranda Rights. Then it's a big issue. How can a society hope to deter or punish crime when it gets more and more likely for cases to get dismissed for the flimsiest reasons? That's for the criminal cases, anyway.
When it comes to civil cases, it's flimsy reasons that seem to provide adequate grounds to sue somebody or screw them over or avoid responsibility for one's own actions. To get an idea of what I mean we need to consider a couple of examples.
Exhibit A:
A man is being prosecuted for not paying child support and welfare benefits for a child that is not his and is now 24 years old! A paternity test excluded him as the father but he's being threatened with fines and imprisonment anyway because an ex-girlfriend put his name as the father on an application so that she could collect welfare benefits.
Reason would suggest that when a paternity test excluded him as the father of this child, this should be the end of it. The only thing that's keeping this case alive is a judge tap-dancing around issues of procedure when in reality the case is simply groundless and should have been dismissed. Nobody seems to ask why any society should expect a man to support a child that isn't his?
And the injustice doesn't stop there for conservatives. Consider the mother. She was either so sexually promiscuous that when she became pregnant, she didn't know for sure who the father of the child was and guessed when she filled out the welfare forms. Conservatives regard such a woman as a morally bankrupt individual that isn't entitled to any compassion whatsoever. If the woman did actually know who the father was and decided to put down the name of another man anyway, well, morally bankrupt barely begins to describe it.
Conservatives would have approached this case entirely differently. Putting down false information on a federal form is a crime. At the very least, the mother was attempting to defraud the government. It seems like a simple plea bargain might be the way to go. Have the mother cough up the name of the real father and the mother doesn't get prosecuted. Then go after the real father for the back child support. But this simply isn't part of the liberal thought process. As far as they're concerned, the woman is the victim!
A case like this represents a growing social problem that involves men supporting children that aren't theirs (aka: cuckolding or parental fraud) and dealing with a judicial system that is entirely unsympathetic to the problem (think of the children!). Mandatory paternity testing at birth has been suggested as a solution to the problem. If you think that liberals are lining up to support this idea then you were born yesterday.
Reason would suggest that when a paternity test excluded him as the father of this child, this should be the end of it. The only thing that's keeping this case alive is a judge tap-dancing around issues of procedure when in reality the case is simply groundless and should have been dismissed. Nobody seems to ask why any society should expect a man to support a child that isn't his?
And the injustice doesn't stop there for conservatives. Consider the mother. She was either so sexually promiscuous that when she became pregnant, she didn't know for sure who the father of the child was and guessed when she filled out the welfare forms. Conservatives regard such a woman as a morally bankrupt individual that isn't entitled to any compassion whatsoever. If the woman did actually know who the father was and decided to put down the name of another man anyway, well, morally bankrupt barely begins to describe it.
Conservatives would have approached this case entirely differently. Putting down false information on a federal form is a crime. At the very least, the mother was attempting to defraud the government. It seems like a simple plea bargain might be the way to go. Have the mother cough up the name of the real father and the mother doesn't get prosecuted. Then go after the real father for the back child support. But this simply isn't part of the liberal thought process. As far as they're concerned, the woman is the victim!
A case like this represents a growing social problem that involves men supporting children that aren't theirs (aka: cuckolding or parental fraud) and dealing with a judicial system that is entirely unsympathetic to the problem (think of the children!). Mandatory paternity testing at birth has been suggested as a solution to the problem. If you think that liberals are lining up to support this idea then you were born yesterday.
Exhibit B:
A burglar attempting to steal from a high school falls through a skylight while he was on the roof, severely injuring himself. He then decides to sue the school for damages, which is bad enough because the school must devote resources to defend itself in court instead of educating America's youth. But the burglar actually wins and receives a cash settlement!
The obvious question for a conservative is how did our judicial system become so warped as to allow a criminal to sue his victim? A case like this functions as a good litmus test in these types of discussions. A liberal that doesn't recognize any injustice here is probably sitting so far left that he excludes himself from voicing his opinion on the subject. Such a liberal lives in some sort of quasi meta-reality that occasionally intersects with ours.
Second, this case brings up another issue with conservatives. A criminal that gets prosecuted for trespassing on your property gets legal representation at public expense. He also stands a good chance of his case being dismissed if specific procedures aren't followed regardless of how obvious his guilt is. But if this criminal got injured on your property he can sue you for his injuries and you're on your own while you fight it out in court. Even if you win, it's a Pyrrhic victory assuming the defense you mounted doesn't bankrupt you.
This case represents many at the heart of the tort reform movement. Once again, if you think liberals are seriously considering reforming such a system, then you were born yesterday.
Exhibit C
A cabal of left-wing environmental advocates under support from Maryland's Attorney General relentlessly pursue and harass a poultry farmer (video) on Maryland's eastern shore with lawsuits. It seems that a clean water advocacy group flew over the farmer's land and misidentified a deposit as chicken manure being stored improperly. Later investigation revealed the deposit to be biosolids from a water treatment plant that farmers often use to fertilize their fields. The State of Maryland did not find the farm liable for any wrong-doing. If you think that the lawsuit was dropped with a public apology issued, then once again, you were born yesterday. In fact, they doubled down and maliciously prosecuted the case against this farmer and hoped to get a settlement!
Republicans and conservatives can get into some stupid causes. But, how much more stupid would you have to be to bully the people that are feeding you? I've seen how farmers support each other and close rank with each other on issues like this in the past and the video link above also demonstrates this clearly. The farmer actually won with the help of his neighbors and politicians and attorneys that were advocates for agriculture. Not all these cases end happily.
This isn't an isolated injustice either. It is a symptom of a much bigger problem with the left. Contrary to what the liberal left and their NGO's and organic corporations like to claim (PETA, Chipotle and Whole Foods being the primary offenders), nearly all farms and farming practices in the US are family owned and conduct their operations within compliance of the law. If a farmer can do all that and turn a profit in today's market, then it's a good day. In addition, he has no 401k, no pension, he works in a hazardous and dangerous environment, he also lost a lot of his medical insurance because it didn't comply with the Affordable Care Act. In this light, tort reform takes on new urgency because an American family can be literally ruined by ideologically driven lawsuits.
A lot of farmers own their own property as well which is highly regulated. They deal with a level of invasiveness from the authorities and regulatory agencies that most of us 9-5 clock-punchers will never know. Imagine the USDA or EPA coming on your property to test your soil or ground water, or the Health Department coming into your kitchen to do an inspection. Or the fact that people you don't even know are shaking their fists at you or libeling you in the press and their advertising because of a lie about you that your neighbor told. Or you can't use energy efficient appliances because somebody else that you don't know think it's "unnatural" or uses technology that they are ideologically opposed to.
That's unthinkable to us, but farmers have to put up with it constantly. The only people that understand them are other farmers and the people that they elect. So let me ask you--do you think they will vote for liberal policies or conservative ones? How do you think a case like this would effect their vote? Hint: See the epilogue in the video to find out!
All the nuanced discussion about how our justice system needing reform to protect the little guy is superfluous to the fact that normal average people often get screwed because of the liberal reforms of our justice system and not despite of them. Conservatives see cases like this as liberal endorsement of lower class people exploiting the hardworking. Judging by the people that I've talked to that have been through a frivolous lawsuit, cases like this are the most effective way of converting liberals into conservatives. Think about that. Go to your circuit courthouse and count all the frivolous lawsuits in any give year. That's how many votes you're losing, liberals. You effectively have to swing two voters to your cause to negate the effect that each frivolous lawsuit costs you. That's going to be harder to do as time passes.
The obvious question for a conservative is how did our judicial system become so warped as to allow a criminal to sue his victim? A case like this functions as a good litmus test in these types of discussions. A liberal that doesn't recognize any injustice here is probably sitting so far left that he excludes himself from voicing his opinion on the subject. Such a liberal lives in some sort of quasi meta-reality that occasionally intersects with ours.
Second, this case brings up another issue with conservatives. A criminal that gets prosecuted for trespassing on your property gets legal representation at public expense. He also stands a good chance of his case being dismissed if specific procedures aren't followed regardless of how obvious his guilt is. But if this criminal got injured on your property he can sue you for his injuries and you're on your own while you fight it out in court. Even if you win, it's a Pyrrhic victory assuming the defense you mounted doesn't bankrupt you.
This case represents many at the heart of the tort reform movement. Once again, if you think liberals are seriously considering reforming such a system, then you were born yesterday.
Exhibit C
A cabal of left-wing environmental advocates under support from Maryland's Attorney General relentlessly pursue and harass a poultry farmer (video) on Maryland's eastern shore with lawsuits. It seems that a clean water advocacy group flew over the farmer's land and misidentified a deposit as chicken manure being stored improperly. Later investigation revealed the deposit to be biosolids from a water treatment plant that farmers often use to fertilize their fields. The State of Maryland did not find the farm liable for any wrong-doing. If you think that the lawsuit was dropped with a public apology issued, then once again, you were born yesterday. In fact, they doubled down and maliciously prosecuted the case against this farmer and hoped to get a settlement!
Republicans and conservatives can get into some stupid causes. But, how much more stupid would you have to be to bully the people that are feeding you? I've seen how farmers support each other and close rank with each other on issues like this in the past and the video link above also demonstrates this clearly. The farmer actually won with the help of his neighbors and politicians and attorneys that were advocates for agriculture. Not all these cases end happily.
This isn't an isolated injustice either. It is a symptom of a much bigger problem with the left. Contrary to what the liberal left and their NGO's and organic corporations like to claim (PETA, Chipotle and Whole Foods being the primary offenders), nearly all farms and farming practices in the US are family owned and conduct their operations within compliance of the law. If a farmer can do all that and turn a profit in today's market, then it's a good day. In addition, he has no 401k, no pension, he works in a hazardous and dangerous environment, he also lost a lot of his medical insurance because it didn't comply with the Affordable Care Act. In this light, tort reform takes on new urgency because an American family can be literally ruined by ideologically driven lawsuits.
A lot of farmers own their own property as well which is highly regulated. They deal with a level of invasiveness from the authorities and regulatory agencies that most of us 9-5 clock-punchers will never know. Imagine the USDA or EPA coming on your property to test your soil or ground water, or the Health Department coming into your kitchen to do an inspection. Or the fact that people you don't even know are shaking their fists at you or libeling you in the press and their advertising because of a lie about you that your neighbor told. Or you can't use energy efficient appliances because somebody else that you don't know think it's "unnatural" or uses technology that they are ideologically opposed to.
That's unthinkable to us, but farmers have to put up with it constantly. The only people that understand them are other farmers and the people that they elect. So let me ask you--do you think they will vote for liberal policies or conservative ones? How do you think a case like this would effect their vote? Hint: See the epilogue in the video to find out!
All the nuanced discussion about how our justice system needing reform to protect the little guy is superfluous to the fact that normal average people often get screwed because of the liberal reforms of our justice system and not despite of them. Conservatives see cases like this as liberal endorsement of lower class people exploiting the hardworking. Judging by the people that I've talked to that have been through a frivolous lawsuit, cases like this are the most effective way of converting liberals into conservatives. Think about that. Go to your circuit courthouse and count all the frivolous lawsuits in any give year. That's how many votes you're losing, liberals. You effectively have to swing two voters to your cause to negate the effect that each frivolous lawsuit costs you. That's going to be harder to do as time passes.
Personal Responsibility
Issues about personal responsibility rank just as highly as the issues about genuine injustices discussed in the previous section. There are individuals who are socially irresponsible and the liberal solution of enabling this behavior is infuriating conservatives. Consider another couple of examples:
Exhibit A:
Exhibit A:
A woman in Flint, Michigan has been overwhelming local charities for the past 10 years while giving birth to 10 children. For those of you who aren't good at math, this single mother first sought aid through local organizations that help poor families when she was struggling to raise her first 2 or 3 children and remained on these aid programs while she gave birth to at least 7 more children!
For the most part these are local charities so this woman should be well known locally. So why would local charities allow a woman to use her ability to reproduce to exploit the good will of local citizens and effectively have them subsidize her sex life? Why isn't there an individual to say enough is enough? Where is the father (more likely fathers) and why aren't they supporting some of these children? Are we so concerned about not judging or shaming this woman for what she is doing because it might be a hardship to the children?
Conservatives believe, point blank, that one does not bring a child into this world unless you can take care of it. Since conservatives also oppose abortion, this means keeping your own legs closed. A case like this is one of many reasons why conservatives are looking to gut social safety nets such as welfare which eventually ends up clashing with a liberals belief that women should be allowed to express themselves sexually, even if children are the predictable result of such expression.
For the most part these are local charities so this woman should be well known locally. So why would local charities allow a woman to use her ability to reproduce to exploit the good will of local citizens and effectively have them subsidize her sex life? Why isn't there an individual to say enough is enough? Where is the father (more likely fathers) and why aren't they supporting some of these children? Are we so concerned about not judging or shaming this woman for what she is doing because it might be a hardship to the children?
Conservatives believe, point blank, that one does not bring a child into this world unless you can take care of it. Since conservatives also oppose abortion, this means keeping your own legs closed. A case like this is one of many reasons why conservatives are looking to gut social safety nets such as welfare which eventually ends up clashing with a liberals belief that women should be allowed to express themselves sexually, even if children are the predictable result of such expression.
Exhibit B:
A surfer, out of work recording artist, and all around slacker dines on sushi and lobster purchased with food stamps. He doesn't plan on this being a temporary thing. It's the lifestyle he has aspired to so the American public can assume that he'll continue to receive $200/month until he stops breathing. If you don't think this petty amount will anger conservatives then check out the Escalade he's driving.
Yes, this example is from Fox News. That should tell a liberal how much mileage the right is getting out of abuses like this. The blogosphere lit up about this guy when the story was aired so all the discussion about how "biased" Fox News seems to be because it doesn't cater to the liberal agenda falls flat on it's face because the majority of web surfers sees this case for what it is. Also, note that Fox has been the #1 prime time news channel for the past 13 years. Will liberals finally acknowledge that the content of Fox News resonates with a lot of potential voters? Or do they want to keep losing at the polls?
Yes, this example is from Fox News. That should tell a liberal how much mileage the right is getting out of abuses like this. The blogosphere lit up about this guy when the story was aired so all the discussion about how "biased" Fox News seems to be because it doesn't cater to the liberal agenda falls flat on it's face because the majority of web surfers sees this case for what it is. Also, note that Fox has been the #1 prime time news channel for the past 13 years. Will liberals finally acknowledge that the content of Fox News resonates with a lot of potential voters? Or do they want to keep losing at the polls?
Liberals tend to react to abuses like these in one of four ways:
1. They deny that these abuses exist-- This would be analogous to a conservative denying anthropogenic global warming--a phenomenon that is obviously occurring but they deny that they have anything to do with it.
2. Acknowledge that such abuses do exist but they are rare and of no significance-- The previous exhibits were easy to find and there are a lot more egregious ones to read about if somebody were to simply log on to their news aggregator or RSS feed for only a few days. If these abuses are really so rare and insignificant then it should be pretty straightforward to reform the system without effecting the majority of the recipients that the programs are trying to help.
3. Even if such abuses were common, it is a price we must pay to ensure social justice and human dignity-- Oddly, this is a similar argument that conservatives advance for gun rights and capital punishment but liberals summarily reject it. The difference is that likely in the case of welfare of food stamps, the children that are involved are innocent and not responsible for the behavior of sociopathic parents. Unfortunately, liberals haven't recognized how much this actually degrades and debases human dignity and social justice by enabling the behaviors that we are trying to mitigate.
4. It's irrelevant because compassion should be the ultimate deciding factor-- Oddly, a liberal's sense of compassion didn't extend to corporations or banks needing bailouts in 2008, but most assuredly, they would have had no problems providing public aid for the employees that would have lost their jobs if these corporations went under. Same money, different channel. The only difference between the TARP bailouts in 2008 and the social safety nets that enable the poor is that the TARP bailouts were paid back. What would a liberal think about requiring the poor to pay back their food stamps or welfare benefits? Rhetorical.
If there's ever an indication that politics in America has been pulled too far left, it's the sentiment that compassion means protecting people from the consequences of their actions. Shielding people from consequences of their actions is what my two examples illustrate pretty succinctly and it's pissing off the right big time.
One needs to look no further than welfare to see how public opinion can sour on such types of compassion. Welfare was originally conceived to help families that lose their primary breadwinner and there was little reason to argue against it without seeming to be an insensitive heel. But single motherhood and divorce, which used to be unthinkable, become much more common and abuses became much more common as well, followed by public discontent over the program. The left denied these abuses existed at all, or if they did, they felt that they were minor occurances.
Then the media got involved with articles and reports about welfare queens with one notorious case collecting benefits under several different aliases. Public outrage over the program reached such a boiling point that the Republican party gained control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years and passed a welfare reform bill that President Clinton was forced to sign to secure his bid for reelection.
However, it still seems that liberals haven't learned from their experiences from welfare. Currently, a number of states are adopting measures that require welfare recipients to pass a drug test to qualify. My first question is why it took so long to adopt such an obvious reform? One has to pass a drug test just to be gainfully employed in this country. My second question is why so much opposition? Why are liberals willing to go on record effectively saying that we can't demand a recipient of tax dollars to reject a lifestyle that makes him unemployable? Talk about political suicide! And a recent court decision to overturn the drug testing requirement is enough to make any reasonable person throw up their hands in exasperation.
Then there's the unfairness of it all. Why should anybody feel like working hard to make a better life for themselves only to be vilified if they somehow make it to the top 1% while their neighbor can get a free ride while doing nothing? I know of one case where a person fell behind on his mortgage payments after losing his job. His home was foreclosed, converted to section 8 housing and given to a welfare recipient with two children. What would all the liberals who preach of the importance of social safety nets have to say about a government who didn't help a working citizen only to have his assets seized and given to somebody who was not working? Wouldn't a solution to the homeless problem in America be to stop creating more homeless people?
None of this is to say that there isn't a sense of compassion among conservatives on the right. More of them then you would think donate to charities and volunteer their time to help the less fortunate. It's often done through their local churches which makes the liberals assault on organized religion even more troubling. However, they want to be the ones that get to decide which charity cases are worthy of attention and they want to keep it local so they can exert some sort of social pressure or shaming if some charity recipient is sandbagging his way through life or abusing the charity programs. Any liberal who believes that other needs are worth some charity support are more than welcome to open their checkbooks and start donating while convincing others to do the same, but keep the government out of it.
Also, a lot of charity comes in the form of corporate philanthropy. It seems to stem from the acknowledgement of entrepreneurs that despite all their hard work, there was an element of luck and opportunity that everybody else didn't have that made them extraordinarily successful. So why would a liberal protest and demand the tax code be reformed when corporations and the rich wish to deduct the charity donations from their tax returns or reorganize their assets into charitable trusts to reduce their tax liability?
Labor unions are another liberal institution that liberals need to pay attention to and try to learn some lessons. Frank in Kansas reflects on how much unions benefited the working class only to be troubled by their plummeting membership and marginal influence in the present day. Frank doesn't seem to acknowledge the unscrupulous behavior that unions practiced that assocaited them with organized crime in people's minds. It also virtually took a stick of dynamite to get rid of the most laziest and incompetant workers while artificially driving up wages so that companies sought cheaper labor overseas.
Will liberals finally learn some lessons from these failures or will history repeat itself? The whole compassion angle is starting to wear thin with conservatives and a lot of moderates as well.
It's Not About Money, It's Authenticity
Americans lament about how much money is in politics and the obscene campaign funds that are involved in political campaigns, but it's missing the root cause. While a political campaign won't get very far without sizeable funds, there have been plenty of examples of the biggest spenders that end up losing election bids. Clearly, there are other factors. Frank in Kansas also reflects on possible reasons why people vote for conservatives who end up screwing them over. He postulates a concept called authenticity--the tendency of an individual to associate with other like-minded individuals based on some shared values--but doesn't explore this concept beyond the religious right.
In fact, we can see examples of authenticity everywhere we look and it has little to do with religion or money. One can walk into any high school in America and see how cliques form among certain groups of students to the point of excluding or bullying others who don't fit in. A particular school district tends to be populated by people of similar economic and social standing so money isn't the deciding factor in regards to how these cliques form.
It doesn't stop when we're adults either. If peer pressure is what compels students within cliques to act a certain way, then for adults it's keeping up with the Joneses. Advertisers and politicians even rely on this information when targeting certain demographics to sell goods and services or get votes.
I never understood why so many people were eager to move into neighborhoods governed by Homeowner's Associations. Here is another "government" collecting "taxes" from me while enacting petty rules and trying to tell me how to manage my own property. No thanks. Perhaps it's the concept of authenticity at work once again. The people that live there might not mind the petty rules because they already were living that way and want to live near like-minded people that would likely obey those rules too (and peace shall reign!).
While there's a degree of authenticity in regards to money or social class, it's more complicated then it first appears. The wealthy often sneer at the "new money" (aka: Nouveau Riche) or poor white people complain about trailer trash bringing down the neighborhood. For every poor person that believes he was never given an opportunity or was screwed over by "the man", there's a rich man believing he has the right to occupy the highest levels of society because he worked for it and earned it. This attitude is as diametrically opposed to the liberal's concept of social equality and justice as one is likely to get. So what will you do? Call them an elitist? Pfft! These people have been reading Atlas Shrugged. They would wear that label like a badge of honor!
When liberals won both the Presidency and majority rule in both chambers of Congress in the wake of the Great Recession, they seemed genuinely frustrated that they couldn't unite the bottom 99% against the top 1% and pass their tax hikes and reform and regulate the financial sectors. Seriously, people were losing their homes and their jobs with self-worth plummeting by the day, and many of them filed in behind the rich. Thomas Frank must be rubbing his temples right now.
Well, expending their popular mandate to push through yet another entitlement wasn't the most wise course of action. Offering government backed healthcare was unsatisfying to people who were upside down on their mortgages and their 401k's plummeting with stock prices. Despite the high unemployment rate, most Americans still had jobs and were getting health insurance through plans offered by their employer. Which also meant they were too busy to participate in the Occupy Wall Street movements. Hence, conservatives won back majority control of the House during the next midterm and have been expanding that majority ever since.
But I think authenticity explains a lot of this. Despite us shaking our fists from our soapboxes at the big banks for letting us down, many still believe that we have more in common with the CEO in the McMansion that drives a Bentley than with the mother on public aid with 13 children or the slacker using his food stamps to buy lobster. So the liberal wet dream about them uniting all the poor, minorities and gays to take down the rich isn't going to happen. For one thing, we'll know where all the seized wealth ends up (see the examples under Personal Responsibility) and once it's gone there will be no more. If you doubt me, read about any country that has fallen to communism. Or follow current events in South America. Besides, people know that anybody who can take down the rich can squash them like a bug. Who's to say that when the liberals squander siezed wealth in another failed social experiment that they won't come after the wealth of the middle class next? Read about the kulaks in Soviet history to find out how pleasant that was!
Privatizing Costs
It might be hard to believe in this day and age, but there was a time in American history when people were debating whether or not the establishment of a central banking system was really a good idea. President Andrew Jackson vehemently opposed such an idea citing among many reasons that when the bankers made money on their investments they kept the returns for themselves, but when the investments went sour, the losses were passed on to consumers (if he only knew!).
We read a lot about how business owners and bankers privatize profits but socialize costs. In other words, keeping the profits while passing on costs to consumers. Strictly this isn't true. Much excess wealth gets distributed as dividends so all you need to do is be a stockholder. In this day and age, anybody can be one. If you are investing in vehicles such as IRA's or 401k's then you already are one. But there's no denying that a lot of accrued wealth remains at the top.
What we don't hear a lot of discussion about is how government tends to privatize the costs of society by placing the financial burden on business owners. This goes way beyond taxation. Who do you think is responsible for equal opportunity employment, government or business? What about equal housing? What about something as simple as handicap access or printing signs in different languages? Who reimburses the business owners for the expense? Nobody! It's a cost of doing business that is mandated by the government. We might not have sympathy for a corporation struggling to clean up its emissions but what about Joe the plummer trying to rent his duplex? Or what about a small merchant that has to designate one of his two parking spots as handicap parking? What about any small business owner where the government mandates pose a crippling burden (and don't forget those taxes!)? Try telling him its just a "cost of doing business" or its "for the good of society".
Frank in Kansas believes that a conservative revolution in Kansas has flipped the political landscape in America, but I doubt it. Kansas only has 6 electoral votes and this state along with many other states in middle America hasn't really been decisive in presidential elections. I think the political landscape was severely impacted with the passage of civil rights legislation. Until that point, the deep south was a bastian of Democratic support that predated the American Civil War. Racism was probably a part of the opposition to civil rights laws. But I think an underreported factor is that government legislation and court decisions were reaching a critical point of invasiveness into people's lives and people had enough of it. Conservatives chafe over the idea of the government and its liberal supporters believing they can dictate what individual citizens can or can't do with their property, how they should live and how to conduct their business.
This tectonic shift in the political landscape was so profound that it allowed a third party candidate named George Wallace to carry much of the deep south by merely opposing civil rights and allowing Republican candidate Richard Nixon to win the election in 1968. The southern states have generally voted Republican ever since. Think about how profound a shift this was. The south certainly remembers their experiences from the Civil War so the chances of a Republican carrying a southern state lied somewhere between slim and none. Civil rights changed that. The conservative backlash that Frank discusses in Kansas may have spread to Kansas, but it started in the south.
So what can be done?
If you're a liberal that was able to read this far and wonder how liberals can win back America or at least compete with conservatives on equal footing, there is much you can do.- Stop arguing and start discussing. I've been around quite a few discussions on the internet and people seem to feel an urge to refute and debunk points made by the other side instead of reaching for common ground. Then we act all shocked when the politicians we elect act the same way. It starts at home. Aren't conservatives just as guilty of this? Sure, but they are the majority. You are the one that has to convince the American public that liberalism is relevant to their daily lives. Or you can wait for the conservatives to sucumb to hubris or do something stupid, but this doesn't strike me as being an effective strategy and I don't see America being better off for it. A fellow liberal, George Lakoff wrote "12 Traps That Keep Progressives From Winning". It's a little dated but still relevant. Lakoff doesn't discuss specific issues but approaches the problem from a conceptual standpoint. Read and be inspired.
- Consider that today's problems are because of the liberal agenda and not despite of it. Liberals still see some issues that need to be fixed. They'll coin terms such as "white male priviledge" or "hate speech" to try and sway the public that there is still work to be done. I'm reminded of Danielle Crittenden's book What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us. In it she discusses a lunch meeting she had with a few feminist magazine editors who noticed a recent article she wrote about how so many women are as disenfranchised, confused and depressed as Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique. Crittenden demonstrates that feminist progress has created its own set of problems for women that impacts how they marry, raise children and even date by illustrating the cause and effect quite clearly. Needless to say, the feminist editors weren't to keen on the suggestion that they need to get their own house in order, yet this must be what liberals need to do as well. Feminists are trying to rename their movement as equalism while liberals are rebranding themselves as progressives. Switching names strikes me as being futile. You don't repair rotten wood by repainting it. You need to reform your own social movement.
- Dump the losers. Criminals, leaches, mooches, sociopaths, every one of them. Convince them in every way that you can that their free lunch is over. Emphasize that they have a social contract and the obligations they have to society in exchange for excepting a hand out. There are still more responsible citizens in American than irresponsible ones so this shouldn't cost you any ground at the polls. I doubt that there aren't very many registered voters among these groups of people anyway.
- Stop obsessing about the religious right. This is Thomas Franks main fallacy in Kansas. Liberals seem to react to any expression of religious sentiment like the Taliban was about to take over. Reality check-- The religious right failed to keep both Obama and Clinton from being elected (twice) and despite 8 years of Reagan and 12 years of Bush, they still didn't get what they wanted. The religious right is a vocal minority, nothing more. Nothing is going to blunt the religious right more than letting them have their 10 Commandments monument. The last time they were so complacent, the cultural shift of the 1960's completely blindsided them. This also means not allowing lawsuits like "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegience on the court docket.
- Regard the Bill of Rights as legally unassailable. Is there a part of shall not be infringed that you don't understand? At the moment, it seems that conservatives aren't able to mount effective opposition to inferred rights such as gay marriage or abortion, at least not yet. Are you going to wait until they expand their majority so much as to override a veto or ratify a constitutional amendment? Then keep it up. Free speech, freedom of religion and gun rights are all explicitedly stated rights; leave them alone. This also includes sneeky moves like rebranding a viewpoint that you disagree with as "Hate Speech" and then use it to try and pass laws to supress certain viewpoints. Unless, someone is using the rights to impose a clear and present danger to another citizen, then you'll just have to borrow a page from your own book and practice some tolerance.
- Reform the judicial system to focus more on salient points of a case and not procedure. Our judicial system doesn't rehabilitate or deter crime simply because you have convinced a sizeable portion of the population that they are all victims and if they do get in trouble, they stand a good chance of getting a plea bargain, if not, then an outright dismissal. Penalties are "excessive" because this country is one of the few in the civilized world that refused to throw in the towel in crime. Likewise, endorse tort reform. Make the bar for hearing civil lawsuits much higher than it is now. It should be illegal for a criminal to sue his victim. Other lawsuits should demonstrate an intention by the defendent to harm the plaintiff. A loser pays system of civil law should also be considered to deter the more frivolous lawsuits. Make class action lawsuits much more difficult to file. One can be sued by merely having substantial assets if someone can associate you with an offending party; this is exploitation, plain and simple.
- Focus on what's important. We can't have it all so we have to set priorities. Liberals like to preach that they're in favor of individual rights. So it might be worth asking people which rights they feel need protection? I mean, what's the point of fighting for my right to privacy when a telemarketer can hassle me and I need to keep accurate financial records in case the IRS decides to audit me? Why back internet neutrality while leaches have carte blanche to install cookies and malware while spamming my computer? Do you think an average, middle class working stiff that has to tripple deadbolt his door while living paycheck to paycheck is going to vote for a candidate that thinks drug use should be legal and criminals are really victims of social injustice? In the wake of the Great Recession I casually mentioned to others that fiscal conservatism is going dominate politics for a while. Everyone thought I was crazy. Then Tea Party candidates were getting elected. I even added that fiscal conservatism might even override liberal social issues since they consume a lot of government spending. They still thought I was crazy, right before food stamps were cut. Seriously, what do you think all those sequesters and government shutdowns were all about? The State of Illinois is a fine example of how this works. Despite an income tax hike (the only campaign promise Democrat Governor Pat Quinn was able to keep) passing a spending bill that includes funding state pensions has been a brutal fight in our state legislature. This didn't stop a gay marriage bill from whipping through both houses and being signed into law in record time. This bill struck me as a completely pointless gesture since Illinois already legalized civil unions. The act demonstrated to me that law makers cared more about pandering to a gay minority than delivering the workers of Illinois the retirement that they were promised. Apparently most of Illinois agreed and Pat Quinn lost his reelection bid. Are liberals such slow learners?
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