Liberals (stemming from the word LIBERTY) believe in equal rights for each citizen, both positive freedom (freedom to do) and negative freedom (freedom from restraint).
You'll find that most conservatives believe in the same basic thing. The difference is that they believe that "positive freedom" should be self-determined, not granted by the state.
Liberals today are more like 'deontological liberals' coined by John Rawls. Deontological liberals believe that each person is granted unalterable basic rights.
Unalterable? Inalienable? Declaration of Independence? Here's a clue - we all believe that (the only difference in terminology being that your definition means they can't be changed, whereas the Declaration's definition means they can't be transferred or taken away - semantic at best). For all your dislike of conservatives they have no desire to deprive you of your "basic rights." Furthermore, the fact that a certain group of liberals stands for this does not mean that all do - or that this is a complete view of liberalism, which has many more tenets that conservatives are more apt to dislike.
I can't stand it when neo-cons and rednecks use 'liberal' in a derogatory fashion.
So you mean to say that liberals are the only ones who represent liberty and the conservatives represent...what, anarchism?
Those idiots don't realize that they are bashing the 9th Amendment when using the word in that fashion.
Here's your argument: Liberals represent liberty and the unspoken rights alluded to by the Ninth Amendment. Those rights are defined by liberals (and not by you - or at least not in this post). Bashing liberals is bashing the 9th Amendment which is bashing these rights.
Here's the problem. What are those rights? The Constitution doesn't implicitly say. Roe vs. Wade, for instance, yielded a decision that the Ninth Amendment cedes a limited right to abortion. Is there a right to abortion? Until we can completely put to rest the debate about whether or not a fetus is a living human being, there's no way to tell.
That's the problem with the Ninth Amendment. It was meant to limit governmental power, ie keep the government from sticking its nose in people's business in ways the Founding Fathers couldn't anticipate. However, the government
has to stick its nose in our business every now and then. Or do you favor the legalization of homicide?
1. They believe that everyone is born with the same opportunity. They often site examples of one-in -a-million, extremely lucky people who are born into poverty, but overcome it. They then think they can judge everyone on economic status.
Here we agree. For the most part.
2. Conservatives believe that money in the hands of the rich will 'trickle-down' into the economy. B*** S***! All this does is give the rich (the small minority) control of the nation's economic destiny. All rich folks usually do is invest their surplus in hedge funds, etc. and pay immigrants to build large townhouses (all that money goes to Mexico). If the govt. would help the poor with basic needs (food, meds, rent,etc), the extra discretionary income the poor would have would be recirculated back into the domestic economy ten times as fast as the rich recirculate it (the little money the rich actually do recirculate into the domestic economy). I call this 'Trickle-Up Economics'--I invented it--you heard it here first!
Take a good, long look around you. You're surrounded by corporate America, aren't you? Those corporations, which employ millions of Americans, were all started by a little something we call "entrepreneurs" - venture capitalists. Those people took a fairly decent chunk of money, invested it in a company, and from there the company grew and grew - making that entrepreneur a very rich man but also creating tons of jobs for working class stiffs like me. That is the essence of trickle-down - put money in the hands of investors so they can invest and create more jobs.
As for your "Trickle-Up" economics - besides bringing a number of Salvador Dali paintings to mind - I have a strange feeling that this will also be the last place I hear it. Your theory only works so long as those poor people you're talking about have jobs. If the government starts flipping off corporations left and right - where are those jobs going to come from? Without gainful employment the poor would have no "discretionary income" to invest in the domestic economy.
3. The third big conservative mistake is that Conservatives believe that taxes are an 'UNnecessary evil.'
Those are libertarians and most mainstream conservatives consider them to be radicals. Besides, with your talk of the domestic economy, I'd have figured you to be in favor of lower taxes (less burden on the poor) and a higher tariff (to protect American industry, bolstering the domestic economy and trumping international trade).
How would they fund their oil war..um, I mean 'war on terror' and their hypocritical expansion of government (yes.. the Dept. of Homeland Security) if it weren't for taxes. The largest ammount of tax receipts ever collected (which is THIS year) is under Bush's administration. Conservatives today are a complete joke!!!
These are what we refer to as "neocons." Most conservatives themselves acknowledge the difference. Ask USMC or Dave and they'll both tell you that the expansion of government under Bush has made them cringe, and they're both pretty darn conservative. (Have you debated with them yet? Sorry, I'm forgetting that you're still relatively new here.)
What I'm getting at is that Liberals today believe in:
basic rights for everyone;
Conservatives believe in basic rights for everyone too. Emphasis on "basic" and on "rights."
they have the balls to admit that taxes are a necessary evil;
Conservatives want lower taxes, not no taxes. No taxes would be nice to them but they live in reality too and recognize that it'd be a plain old bad idea.
they have the balls to actually pay their taxes;
Please. There's plenty of tax fraud to go around so don't just point the finger at conservatives and blame them for it. Henry David Thoreau was an environmentalist and an anti-war protester - and a he was guilty of tax evasion, for not wanting to help fund a war he thought was unjust. Today he'd be a liberal hero.
they don't believe that the world is only 4,000 years old and that Jesus is going to come floating down from the clouds in a Chevy pickup and smite all the Muslims and teenagers who have had abortions;
Ah, secularism. The funny thing is that according to the Bill of Rights, we have freedom of religion in this country - which means that conservatives can and will believe whatever they want to about Jesus' choice of automobiles (that said he'd totally have a VW bus and you know it). The whole "separation of church and state" argument has been done in another thread but it can be repeated here if you really want to beat that particular dead horse.
they can actually understand high school science and realize that the more CO2 you put in the air, the hotter the atmosphere becomes;
Again, we agree.
and finally, they believe in having solid proof of WMDs before they go and destroy the birthplace of civilization.
In today's international intelligence community, you can't find "solid proof" that the sun rises in the East. We have the most advanced intelligence gathering service in the history of the world - and not nearly enough people to analyze it all. Picture a gymnasium full of paperwork and only you to go through it all - and that's what the average intelligence official in this country deals with on a daily basis.
Besides, WMDs weren't the only reason we went to war in Iraq. Saddam was a very, very unpopular dictator. Getting rid of him was good enough reason for me - he was an impediment to self-determination, one of the principles that our country was founded upon. Now that he's gone all that's left for us is to get the Iraqi defense forces into good enough shape to keep their country in working order and then we'll be done.
Many of the reasons for the Iraq War stink. A lot. That is no reason to turn tail and run now - which would have a severely detrimental affect on the Iraqi people. The way I see it, we got them into this mess - its our job to get them out of it, or to at least see things through until they can get themselves out of it.
