To all, I greatly appreciate the props. And @pekenoe, I think what you’re saying illustrates a great problem in the liberal conservative debate. I consider myself to be more liberal and you consider yourself to be more conservative, yet I think on most core issues we agree. I don’t think it’s that 50% of America IS as conservative as they vote, it’s that to people like you, who clearly mean well, they’ve been lied to about what liberalism really is. I honestly don’t know ANYONE who considers himself a liberal who thinks we should waste government money…that may surprise you. None of my liberal friends thinks that we should support lazy people. We all hate when we see people abusing the system every bit as much as conservatives do. But lying ass politicians have convinced people that it’s this pandemic and that liberals want to just throw money at the poor and let them spend it on drugs and boooze, and because of that, Republicans get way more votes than they really ought to.
So it flatters me to hear that I’d get your vote, but I’ll tell you right now, I’m no politician, I speak too much truth to ever run for elected office, plus I don’t look the role, I don’t have any connections, and for me the jury is out on the whole God question…I know I’m a good person with a good head on my shoulders, but I would be DESTROYED…they would call me an athiest, a Satan worshipper, a radical, a Communist, a Socialist…and good, reasonable people who when you get right down to it believe the same things I do would never DREAM of voting for me.
I’ll give you something to chew on. A lot of people on the right think Obama is this radical left winger, not realizing that when you look at political attitudes, he’s actually to the right of moderate (in fact of the 20 people who were running for President at the begining of 2007, only Kucinich and Gravel were actually left of center, EVERYONE else was right). Even your most liberal Democrats in the grand scheme of things are actually fairly conservative from a true reading of things, because our entire system is based on a free market, and no one has ever run on the idea that we should socialize everything (and become socialists).
Now many Dems and liberals, myself included, DO think we should socialize the entire medical system, and I’ll tell you why. Because it serves the public interest. It does not serve anyone but the drug and insurance companies to have drugs that cost several hundred dollars a month that only treat the symptoms but don’t cure the disease, and then to have insurance that costs several hundred dollars a month that fewer and fewer people can even afford. Nothing is getting cured anymore because treatments are more lucrative. One sixth of our population can’t even afford insurance. Millions of people have lost everything they’ve worked their entire lives for because of a disease, illness or injury that just happened to them. THAT’s NOT RIGHT. I support fully socializing the entire medical field to take the profit motive out of it for the good of our society. And I DO believe Doctors and Research Scientists should be paid a LOT of money, to avoid a brain drain (and because they’re worth it), but I DON’T think if you go to the hospital, you should get $30,000 worth of bills from 20 different people, that’s just assinine. I don’t think when people lose their jobs they should have to suddenly be paying $1,000 per month for insurance, while their only source of income is $1,500 a month for unemployment. How do you eat? How do you pay your mortgage? Medical costs are a crisis and it’s BECAUSE of the profit motive…people are not being protected or having their interests looked out for. Again, perfect example of an issue that Republicans would try to slap the “socialist”, “distribution of wealth” drumbeat onto just like @The_unconservative_one was saying.
So, I’ll close by saying this…a lot of conservatives tried to do this to Obama, and the reason he won is because they weren’t successful this time. Sure, with those who have been sold the conservative viewpoint that the lazy are out to steal from the rich (kind of ridiculous when you put it that way, but there it is), a lot of them didn’t buy it, but a lot realized that what the Republicans were saying didn’t fit the profile this time. They really didn’t fit the profile for Gore or Kerry or Dukakis either, but it was easy to paint them that way, because these guys played by the old rule book…they didn’t want to come off as defensive, so they didn’t effectively defend themselves.
Obama did EXACTLY what I’m doing here….he used words to clarify his point, he got his message across, and it came in clearer than the message of those who tried to demonize him as a radical liberal. But you know why I and many others voted for him? The ones of us who never bought into that idea that all liberals just want to give away money to the lazy poor? It’s because of what he said in 2004 at the keynote speech at the DNC. Here is the most important thing he said that night:
“Now, don’t get me wrong. The people I meet—in small towns and big cities, in diners and office parks—they don’t expect government to solve all their problems. They know they have to work hard to get ahead, and they want to. Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they don’t want their tax money wasted, by a welfare agency or by the Pentagon. Go in—Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach our kids to learn; they know that parents have to teach, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things.
People don’t expect—People don’t expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all.
They know we can do better. And they want that choice.”
To me, that was it…that really described to me what it means to be a LIBERAL. I think many people who think they are conservatives don’t really realize what a true liberal is, and they demonize us, and they don’t get that all we want, all we’ve EVER wanted, was a guy like Obama who didn’t either just stick up for buisness, or conversely, who didn’t do a good enough job of explaining what their views were about, so those who were entrenched in power, those who DID only have the best interests of the already wealthy and powerful at heart, could not twist that into something that sounded like bleeding heart, socialist, communist, insert bad, scary thing here. Republicans for decades repeated that lie which said any move to help people, takes away the incentive for captains of industry to create jobs…it was a lie when Nixon said it, it was a lie when Reagan said it, it wa a lie when both Bushes said it, and it’s still a lie. But now Obama has come along, and he’s used his words to articulate that it is a lie, and it helps that we are now seeing how destructive that lie was to our economy first hand. And guys like me are on boards like this, winning over one person at a time.
I think you need to reconsider what liberalism is, and seek out a few liberals and ask them if they believe what YOU think they believe, or if they believe what I’ve stated. I think you’d be shocked.
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