Modern Rants Against "Liberalism" are Grounded in Fraud and Ignorance; Real Republicans Used to be

It is astonishing the claims made by the Right Wing today against Liberalism, including some claims I read on ATS. There is an new thread today from which have pulled these bizarre, devoid of facts, and downright silly phrases about the supposed goals of Liberalism from just two posts:

"the loss of all personal freedom"
"handing citizenship to any illegal alien who breaks the law"
"white skin = bad and everyone else = good"
"Liberals just want to spend away everything"

There is nothing even remotely factual about such statements. But here are the facts about some of what "liberalism" has enabled in the U.S. Now I would be the first to agree concepts like the nanny government take things too far, but I challenge anyone here to create even half a list of major accomplishments brought to us by the equivalent of today's Right. It is impossible, because today's Right is racist, corrosive and celebratory of ignorance (see: Sarah Palin, Bachmann, Beck, ad nauseum).

So here is a partial list of major accomplishments of Liberalism. You will note some include major accomplishments of Republican presidents, but those are YESTERDAY'S Republicans. The same today would be reviled as complete liberals.

Child Labor Laws
The successful defeat of the Nazis and Japanese Imperialists
the end of lead-based petroleum that was choking our cities
your kids would still be licking lead walls
basic workplace safety
the women's right to vote
the federal interstate system (Ike)
the national park system (Teddy)
ending segregation
the GI Bill
the Marshall Plan
Food Safety laws
the space program
Social Security (sure, you bitch about it, but dare to tell your grandma she should eat catfood and live in a box)
National Weater Service
the right of all children to an education
basic scientific research funding that has led to most of the great discoveries of the modern era
the Internet
bank deposit insurance
rural electrification
truth in labeling

So, you Righties (speaking of truth in labeling, why don't you just come out and admit you are the Christian Theocrat Party), let's see your list of the great accomplishments of the conservatives, you know, your champions like the intellectual giant and historian sans peer Sarah Palin. God I miss "real" Republicans, like those I voted for in years gone by.

Originally posted by pajoly
So, you Righties (speaking of truth in labeling, why don't you just come out and admit you are the Christian Theocrat Party), let's see your list of the great accomplishments of the conservatives, you know, your champions like the intellectual giant and historian sans peer Sarah Palin. God I miss "real" Republicans, like those I voted for in years gone by.

Not to step on your toes since you obviously spent so much time on the well reasoned and thoughtful rant , but its not liberals most of us "righties" have a problem with, its the leftists. True, liberals have been the useful idiots of the left for a few centuries now, but the left, whether in the States or abroad, have been the most pernicious and serious threat to human history for the past 200 years.

From scientific socialism, marxism, maoism, fascism, post-modernsim, to radical environmentalism, the left has jumped on whatever idology-dejour would most quickly advance control over their fellow man.

So can you denounce the democrats because their party is deeply rooted in slavery?
Or will you say that is a ridiculous claim, also?

Either way this thread just fuels any flames coming from either side.
We need not fight about what party is responsible for what.

Both parties are a forgery to divide a nation.

This thread continues to prove that.

We are humans first, Americans second.
Not left or right.

Those that continue to choose sides will always have their heads buried in sand.
Until one day, when they pull them out, they see the fraud that they believed in.

Troll thread alert.

By the way, you're not talking about liberalism. You're talking about statism. True, or classical, liberals would never have proposed anything on your list (aside from suffrage) because we are about getting the state out of our lives, which is the opposite of all those things.

Originally posted by pajoly
It is astonishing the claims made by the Right Wing today against Liberalism, including some claims I read on ATS. There is an new thread today from which have pulled these bizarre, devoid of facts, and downright silly phrases about the supposed goals of Liberalism from just two posts:

"the loss of all personal freedom"
"handing citizenship to any illegal alien who breaks the law"
"white skin = bad and everyone else = good"
"Liberals just want to spend away everything"

There is nothing even remotely factual about such statements. But here are the facts about some of what "liberalism" has enabled in the U.S. Now I would be the first to agree concepts like the nany government take things too far, but I challenge anyone here to create even half a list of major accomplishments brought to us by the equivalent of today's Right. It is impossible, because today's Right is racist, corrosive and celebratory of ignorance (see: Sarah Palin, Bachmann, Beck, ad nauseum).

So here is a partial list of major accomplishments of Liberalism. You will note some include major accomplishments of Republican presidents, but those are YESTERDAY'S Republicans. The same today would be reviled as complete liberals.

Child Labor Laws
The successful defeat of the Nazis and japanese Imperialists
the end of lead-based petroleum that was choking our cities
you'd kids would be licking lead walls
basic workplace safety
the women's right to vote
the federal interstate system (Ike)
the national park system (Teddy)
ending segregation
the GI Bill
the Marshall Plan
Food Safety Laws
the space program
Social Security (sure, you bitch about it, but dare to tell your grandma she should eat catfood and live in a box)
National Weater Service
the right of all children to an education
basic scientific research funding that has led to most of the great discoveries of the modern era
the Internet
bank deposit insurance
rural electrification
truth in labeling

So, you Righties (speaking of truth in labeling, why don't you just come out and admit you are the Christian Theocrat Party), let's see your list of the great accomplishments of the conservatives, you know, your champions like the intellectual giant and historian sans peer Sarah Palin. God I miss "real" Republicans, like those I voted for in years gone by.

UHHHHHHH... blinks eyes dumb-foundedly
Can't believe you actually put that into text; ever looked around here?
Here's a recent and all too common example of: The right wants to kill kittens( with "illegal" evil guns no doubt!); take food from old people....etc

"it's a conspiracy by the political right, and you may be a part of it and not know it.

It's a conspiracy to remove your freedoms, it's a conspiracy to remove your very citizenship, it's a conspiracy to remove any opportunity you can have for a better life and make sure that there are only two classes in society, the uber rich, and the pesants.

They want to make sure that the wealthiest people in the world have all the power and that the people have nothing. They want to make sure that multinational corporations can drain every natural resource out of this planet, polute every drop of water, polute the air, destroy every tree, mine every mountain, and leave you, the pesant with a baron wasteland while you chear them on.

It's no secret that the political right in this country wants to repeal the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution in order to make sure that only the select few are granted citizenship.

It's no secret that the political right in this country wants to eliminate the public education system in this country thereby making sure that only the wealthy have access to education.

It's no secret that the political right wants to eliminate the EPA so that multinational corporations can polute the air, water, and land that we need to live on.

It's no secret that the political right wants to take your social security in this country and give it to Wall Street. "

A little pot calling the kettle "black" if you ask me; and don't even go into the special hatred and vitriol reserved for the conservative "tea party organization". It's not even worth my day cutting and pasting nasty assumptions' and foul language mods let pass even here.


Ecstasy is bad for the brain you might want to back off some before posting stuff like this....

Real good Alinsky/Sunstein tactics there Amigo! Keep stirring that koolaid. I'm sure you'll find more than a few here who will drink from it like someone just coming out of the desert!

Zindo

reply to post by pajoly


You act as if all those things you listed are good things.

I would argue that they are either harmful, or would have come about naturally by market forces acting on their own without the need for violent looting and savagery.

Let's look at our military "accomplishments" and military benefits. The majority of US citizens were very much opposed to entering WWII and the US could have stayed out of it entirely if we hadn't provoked Japan into attacking us. Hitler would have left us alone if we had stayed out of the mess. The Europeans would have eventually gotten rid of him on their own if they didn't like him. It is impossible to rule a continent if the millions of people living there don't want you ruling them - as we can plainly see by what is happening in Egypt right now.

Further, the GI Bill and other military benefits simply encourage more people to join the military - hardly something most democrats would condone. Encouraging vast numbers of young men to join a military organization that does the bidding of corporate conglomerates is very neo-conservative, not liberal.

Child labor is also something that would go away on its own. No one wants their kids working in a factory. Children HAD to work in factories because conditions were such that everyone in the family need to work in order to survive. As society became more prosperous, children left the labor force for the schoolhouse because less people were required to produce finished products. The industrial revolution saved children from a life of poverty and labor by increasing worker productivity through machines.

We have to remember what conditions were like for those kids before they were working in factories. The alternative was working in the farm fields, which is just as dangerous and even more back breaking.

The truth in labeling acts don't accomplish anything that the market wouldn't take care of. If a company is lying about the contents of their products, they will lose customers. If a company continually engages in lies, they will go out of business on their own because people will not buy their stuff from them.

Womens voting is a joke. This assumes that voting is "good and just" in the first place. It is not. No one should be forced to chose who loots them. It doesn't matter if it is a man or a woman. People have a right to self-governance that is free of "rulers" and other violent looters.

And on and on and on.

Most importantly we must not forget that all of those "accomplishments" were achieved by the government first holding a gun to peaceful persons head and taking their property.

In order for a State to wage war against another State, it must first wage war against its own population by violently looting them to fund the war machine.

That's funny looking at that list:
I realized I never separated our country's history into right or left presidents( as no single man is completely responsible for anything "good"; "questionable", or "bad" coming out of govt.the presidents don't govern in a" vacuum");

just wouldn't occur to me.


Reminds me of the chinese ( zen buddist?)story of the farmer and his son: Paraphrasing from what I remember:

"Harvest time comes around and the farmer and his son are out in the field harvesting grain.The boys leg gets stepped on by the ox; breaking it.The towns folk pass on their sympathy :" oh it so bad his leg is broken before harvest when there's so much to be done"! The farmer replies:
"Eh..." Good"; "bad"; who knows?
two days later the kings army rides into the village collecting all able bodied youth to serve in battle
but the farmers son is passed over.
"good";"bad" who knows????
before you go claiming every "
accomplishment of any administration is necessarily "good" or "bad" I would think of the farmer( happy to have a limping but very much alive son)...

From scientific socialism, marxism, maoism, fascism, post-modernsim, to radical environmentalism, the left has jumped on whatever idology-dejour would most quickly advance control over their fellow man.

reply to post by SirMike


Okay, so even if I granted you the above (which I do not necessarily do), what has this to do with today. Name me -- seriously -- any person with any power today that is of this pernicious stripe. Don't try to say Obama, as he is arguably more right than yesterday's liberal and no more left than was Eisenhower, Truman, Nixon or Ford; he is more accurately labeled a corporatist than any flavor of liberal. Seriously, name me a person of power and influence from this wicked strain of Leftist you speak of. Soros? Maybe, be he is as corporatist as many others. Nader? Maybe and certainly far left, but where's his power, not to mention his actions are hardly an assault on freedom.

As for claims of leftists being fascists, well, the former far left than would find great company among today's Right, who positively reveal in granting power to the corporate elites and take EVERY opportunity to do so, from tax breaks for outsourcing, support of secret offshore accounts, from prevention of any finantical reforms, to willful acceptance of foreign money to support campaigns (see: Chamber of Commerce), to the vile Citizen's United decision. I think an incredibly sound argument can be made that today's Right is the most fascist set of American politicians since McCarthy.

So can you denounce the democrats because their party is deeply rooted in slavery?

reply to post by havok


Havoc, a major part of my point is the nature of labels. History has meaning, but meanings of words change. The democrats that supported slavery do not fit, obviously, into the Democratic Party paradigm of today, any more than the republicans of today share ANY commonality with Lincoln's Republican Party. So it is disengenuous for any Republican of today to give himself or herself streetcred by claiming the mantle of what their predecessors in name only did yesterday.

So my sub-point (if I can call it that) stands that today's Republicans are NOT in fact Republicans, they are quite literally Religiopolitical usurpers from the ultra Right that have wrestled control from the sane and secular intellectual Right. If you don't believe me, ask retiring Republicans or those primaried out; they have often been quite clear and blunt about this fact.

Originally posted by NthOther
Troll thread alert.

Ah, the "troll" label. The online refuge of the intellectually bankrupt. I take it you definition of "troll" = "does not agree with me."

What you label as liberalism is more aptly called anarchy. It is hardly statist to create a structure of civic laws, prevention of gross institutional abuses and investments in infrastructure in a civilized society. I suppose in your ideal world we'd all be on horseback and making our living as fur traders on the frontier.

reply to post by 46ACE


I agree and do not subscribe to the opinion espoused in the thread you mention. I agree that thread is almost as hyperbolic as saying the left wants to eat your children.

Originally posted by pajoly

 

Havoc, a major part of my point is the nature of labels. History has meaning, but meanings of words change. The democrats that supported slavery do not fit, obviously, into the Democratic Party paradigm of today, any more than the republicans of today share ANY commonality with Lincoln's Republican Party. So it is disengenuous for any Republican of today to give himself or herself streetcred by claiming the mantle of what their predecessors in name only did yesterday.

So my sub-point (if I can call it that) stands that today's Republicans are NOT in fact Republicans, they are quite literally Religiopolitical usurpers from the ultra Right that have wrestled control from the sane and secular intellectual Right. If you don't believe me, ask retiring Republicans or those primaried out; they have often been quite clear and blunt about this fact.

That's the problem with Americans today.
Most people want to join a side without even knowing what the party actually stood for.

The more I talk about it, the more I realize how much of a game it is.
I don't get into 'what side does what' conversations because both parties are disease ridden now.

Seems to me there needs to be a new party.
But you can't get 50% of Americans to even believe that gross over spending is bad.

Go figure.

Damn "child labor" crap robbed me of quite a few good earning years.

I couldnt even choose to work if I wanted to. Making that choice for myself was against the law.

Thanks a bunch government! As far as Im concerned they owe me years of unearned salary. Instead they just keep taking.

Originally posted by pajoly
It is astonishing the claims made by the Right Wing today against Liberalism, including some claims I read on ATS. There is an new thread today from which have pulled these bizarre, devoid of facts, and downright silly phrases about the supposed goals of Liberalism from just two posts:

w00t - you got it man!

This is awsome thinking I have only one thing to say for you:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/fa4026992254.jpg[/atsimg]

reply to post by mnemeth1


I geuinely respect the intellectual quality of your response to my thread, but I ask, "What would you have this country be?" I mean, if all voting is stupid and a joke, who would you have making rules or are you just saying no one should have to make rules. What you speak of is a utopian libertarian vision that does not fit human reality (unfortunate as that might be).

Originally posted by pajoly
reply to post by mnemeth1

 

I geuinely respect the intellectual quality of your response to my thread, but I ask, "What would you have this country be?" I mean, if all voting is stupid and a joke, who would you have making rules or are you just saying no one should have to make rules. What you speak of is a utopian libertarian vision that does not fit human reality (unfortunate as that might be).

The progressives are the Utopians.

Believing that violence against the innocent can improve society is ridiculous.

The Utopian vision is a socialist vision, and the word comes from Greeks meaning a perfect society that is intentionally planned and created by man and was popularized by 1516 book:
en.wikipedia.org...(book)

The libertarian vision is one of self-determination, therefore it is silly to apply the word "Utopia" to a vision of a society that categorically disapproves of intentional central planning and government.

The libertarians believe that coercively funded government is incapable of producing a perfect society, unlike progressives who view violence as a way to achieve a perfect society.

This is one of those threads where I honestly think a Conservative posts a Pro-Liberal thread that's as poor as possible so it can turn into a flame war.

No offense to the OP if this is actually sincere and the best they can do.

Originally posted by SirMike
the left has jumped on whatever idology-dejour would most quickly advance control over their fellow man.

Oh wait

The Houses attempt to revise the patriot act

Twenty-six Republicans voted with 122 Democrats to oppose the measure, while 67 Democrats voted with 210 Republicans to back it. Ten members did not vote.

voices.washingtonpost.com...

Thats right, the majority of house Republicans are leftists

Don't drink yer lemonade

cause I just pissed in it!

reply to post by jjkenobi

hmmmmm?

not quite a "star" but damn close!
Question everything???