Today's Politicos vs The Words and Deeds of The Founders
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Example of Liberal Thought …
France is on the same continuum on enlightened liberalism as the United States. Â A friend of mine sent me this article around Christmas …
The homeless were monopolizing the use of these benches.  According to nearby shop owners, drunken homeless people really liked these benches, and would hang out on and about them, frightening customers and leaving trash and empty bottles around the area.  The local government’s solution in Angouleme was to enclose the benches in cages.  Now they are absolutely no use to anyone.
This is a typical liberal solution to a societal problem. Â Rather than address the issue, the answer is always to deprive everyone. Â Better everyone should stand.
- Better everyone be deprived of their right of self defense, than punish those who misuse weapons
- Better everyone be exposed to communicable diseases than prohibit the carriers from illegally crossing our borders
- Better outlaw expression of religious belief for everyone than risk offend a fringe culture
How many examples can you come up with?
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5 comments
Just brilliant. I wonder what the cost was. Symbolic as a cage of the human spirit in a world losing its mind and ability to respond to such absurdities.
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Laughing, laughing, laughing! Even without addressing your philosophical point, wouldn’t it have been cheaper to remove the benches rather than erect these cages?
To your question – we could start with the fanatical inability to label Islamic terrorism what it is. Claiming that the terror group that calls itself the Islamic State is not Islamic. I keep expecting Barack Obama to quote Chico Marx from the Movie Duck Soup – “Who you gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?”
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Laughing, yes I’m laughing but I’m not laughing with you. I’m laughing at the trite presumption that liberal thought is as ludicrous as you claim and the equally silly idea that American liberals are inclined to understand the world and respond to it the same way as liberals in France.
These days one endures conservatives glee poking fun at supposed liberal lunacy in place of a debate. Frankly, if I thought liberals said, thought and did the things conservatives say about them I’d be with them (and you.)
I’m not going to disagree about the all too “bass ackwards” way things are done in France (a great nation, nonetheless.) I’d say the French have a tendency to attach infuriating importance to making rhetorical statements with chosen actions. Common sense, as Americans (and the English thinking world,) understand it is at times overruled by the will to make a point. That is the way many in France would, at least in part, understand those ludicrous cages.
It seems to me that it’s conservatives who do this kind of thing in the American context. One example is the wacko demands right-wingers make in response to any proposal for “comprehensive” immigration reform. I don’t think it’s the just the nutty right fringe element that is demanding things like:
1. an actual wall be built on the border with Mexico.
2. that the 12 million or more illegals living in the US be deported.
3. no exception for those brought to the US as minors by their parents.
4. onerous requirements be established for any path to citizenship by illegals, if allowed at all.
These demands for immigration policy are about as sensible as cages around park benches. Any cost benefit analysis of these policy demands would show that we would pay a very high price for this kind of righteous rhetorical statement on illegals, isn’t that obvious?
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Martin Reply:
February 21st, 2015 at 11:18 am
I will grant that France is not the United States … Thank Goodness! However, there are an awful lot of the liberal elites – like John Kerry – who wish it was and hold things European worthy of admiration and emulation. Ironically, one thing I can’t imagine is French official thinking that bringing James Taylor to sing “You’ve Got a Friend” is a fine example of diplomacy.
The similarity I see in Liberal thinking world-wide is the loss of proportion and judgment. The most important aspect of any policy – private or personal – is how it conforms to the perceived ideal, not how effective it really is, or even if it is, in fact harmful. (LBJ’s “Great Society†has not improved the poverty rate, resulted in major increases in crime and drug use, resulted in a huge increase in black children born our of wedlock, an increase in the number of black children raised without fathers, and numerous other disastrous effects. For which trillions have been spent.)
The other similarity I see is the unrealistic expectation of perfection in life. While the health care system in the United States had its issues, in terms of rising costs and inefficiency, and, horror of horrors, everyone wasn’t covered (some by choice)! Of course, there are now fewer people covered than were covered before ACA, and costs have increased even farther. For many on the Left it is more important that everyone be “equal” – even if that means a reduction in freedom, quality and choice for everyone. Of course, the end game here for the Left is a single payer system controlled by the government. The so-called Affordable Care Act may be intended to fail – so that it can usher this in – prominent members of the Left have said as much.
This expectation of perfection comes through in your ridicule of trying to implement policies to address immigration problems. I, for one don’t propose putting up a wall across 3,000 miles of our southern border. However, fencing some sections has been proven to be effective. Sure, we may not be able to be 100% successful in controlling illegal immigration, but the policies of the Left are going out of their way to encourage it. The Left’s approach to solving problems: lets’ make ourselves feel better, by not enforcing the laws we have, because that is mean. Never mind that this comes at the expense of American citizens. These costs come in the form of crime (in Arizona where I live, a large proportion of crime is committed by illegal aliens – car accidents, car thefts, drugs, and even human trafficking – but it is politically incorrect to talk about this – so newspapers and television news stations go out of their way to avoid mentioning the ethnicity of the perpetrators and are often loathe to even report the names.), and paying for social programs – AHCCS (in Arizona) and education. Meanwhile, we are $18 Trillion dollars in debt.
There is no attempt to reign in immigration and control the scope of the problem. Instead, we offer “sanctuary cities”, go out of our way to not enforce the laws we have, and in fact, prohibit local authorities from doing so. When an illegal alien is apprehended in the course of a traffic violation, AZ cops are now prohibited from turning them over to I.C.E. So, some of these positions are doubtless a backlash and expression of frustration with an administration that appears to be going out of its way to make things worse (with an expectation of changing demographics and voting patterns, no doubt at the forefront.) The Right does not have a monopoly on rhetoric and hyperbole – remember the commercials showing grandma being pushed off a cliff? Remember the graphic video (No Pressure) of environmentalists exploding those who refused to conform with their agenda?
I am not opposed to legal immigration, nor am I opposed to reforming some of the quotas placed on who can come from where. (My grandparents came here at the turn of the 20th century, didn’t speak a word of English, and assimilated. I’m here as a result.) However, arbitrary enforcement of the law is no enforcement, and “feel good” policies frequently do more harm than good. Here are a couple more examples for you:
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To the list of the left’s failings I will add a failure to recognize that political solutions are trade offs. You do A to the detriment of B. The left’s denial of the detrimental aspects of their policies is what makes them such rich bait for conservative humor. But there is nothing funny about the communicable diseases that undocumented minors are introducing into American schools and society. Nor is it funny that the leftist press, after an initial flurry of reporting, no longer connects the dots.
Another dirty little secret no one wants to talk about, although Thomas Sowell has been writing about it for years, is that the effect of racial preferences in admissions at flagship universities is that they reduce the prospects of black students graduating.
Instead the left, our esteemed president is the poster boy, prefers to live in a dream world. In that world, the shooting of 13 people and the injury of 30 others by Nadal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood was an example of workplace violence. Never mind evidence of Hasan’s connection to Muslim terrorists. And so it goes.
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