So, How Come You're Still A Leftie?

[Sunni Man]

This about covers it for me.

Proud To Be Liberal - why Liberal values are American values

Very good link Maggie.

Here's my favorite.
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But first, I would like to say what I understand the word, "Liberal," to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a "Liberal"

In short, having set forth my views - I hope for all time - 2 nights ago in Houston, on the proper relationship between church and state, I want to take this opportunity to set forth my views on the proper relationship between the state and the citizen. This is my political credo:

I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, and the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, this faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith, for liberalism is not so much a party creed or a set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of Justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.

I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind. I do not believe in a super state. I see no magic to tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale Federal bureaucracies in this administration, as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and its full responsibilities. Government is an art and a precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it. And this requires not only great ends but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.

Our responsibility is not discharged by an announcement of virtuous ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for these reasons, that liberalism is our best and our only hope in the world today. [Applause.] For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies. And the only basic issue in the 1960 presidential campaign is whether our Government will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we will move ahead in the liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground, of doing in our generation what Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson did in their time of influence and responsibility.

Our liberalism has its roots in our diverse origins. Most of us are descended from that segment of the American population which was once called an immigrant minority. Today, along with our children and grandchildren, we do not feel minor. We feel proud of our origins and we are not second to any group in our sense of national purpose. For many years New York represented the new frontier to all those who came from the ends of the earth to find new opportunity and new freedom, generations of men and women who fled from the despotism of the czars, the horrors of the Nazis, the tyranny of hunger, who came here to the new frontier in the State of New York. These men and women, a living cross section of American history, indeed, a cross section of the entire world's history of pain and hope, made of this city and only a new world of opportunity, but a new world of the spirit as well.

Liberals are empowered by emotion that suspends rational thought.

That's why a simple mantra like "Change and Hope" was like street crack to the liberal mind.

Liberals have a utopian vision for mankind that even science fiction writers would envy.

Where everyone thinks, acts, and lives harmoniously in a monochrome PC world.

 

[MaggieMae]

I think the most comprehensive, albeit brief, explanation came from Thomas Jefferson in 1809, when the tenets of the Constitution were still being debated 20 years after it was signed:

"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government."

PC's OP questions why cities are failed societies, deeply in debt and awash with welfare recipients (not her exact words), and the answer is simple: Cities are where the poor, the uneducated and/or illiterate, the physically disabled, and outcast minorities of all stripes go to find work, or at the very least, find comfort in other people with similar affilictions. The inner cities were where most slaves migrated following the emancipation, and they were basically left there to fend for themselves. We can always argue, rightfully so, that in the decades that followed just throwing money at them rather than welcoming them into more affluent communities was the wrong approach, but we can also argue that conservatives, if they had their way, wouldn't even do that.

 

[Bfgrn]

This about covers it for me.

Proud To Be Liberal - why Liberal values are American values

Very good link Maggie.

Here's my favorite.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But first, I would like to say what I understand the word, "Liberal," to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a "Liberal"

In short, having set forth my views - I hope for all time - 2 nights ago in Houston, on the proper relationship between church and state, I want to take this opportunity to set forth my views on the proper relationship between the state and the citizen. This is my political credo:

I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, and the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, this faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith, for liberalism is not so much a party creed or a set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of Justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.

I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind. I do not believe in a super state. I see no magic to tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale Federal bureaucracies in this administration, as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and its full responsibilities. Government is an art and a precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it. And this requires not only great ends but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.

Our responsibility is not discharged by an announcement of virtuous ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for these reasons, that liberalism is our best and our only hope in the world today. [Applause.] For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies. And the only basic issue in the 1960 presidential campaign is whether our Government will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we will move ahead in the liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground, of doing in our generation what Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson did in their time of influence and responsibility.

Our liberalism has its roots in our diverse origins. Most of us are descended from that segment of the American population which was once called an immigrant minority. Today, along with our children and grandchildren, we do not feel minor. We feel proud of our origins and we are not second to any group in our sense of national purpose. For many years New York represented the new frontier to all those who came from the ends of the earth to find new opportunity and new freedom, generations of men and women who fled from the despotism of the czars, the horrors of the Nazis, the tyranny of hunger, who came here to the new frontier in the State of New York. These men and women, a living cross section of American history, indeed, a cross section of the entire world's history of pain and hope, made of this city and only a new world of opportunity, but a new world of the spirit as well.

Liberals are empowered by emotion that suspends rational thought.

That's why a simple mantra like "Change and Hope" was like street crack to the liberal mind.

Liberals have a utopian vision for mankind that even science fiction writers would envy.

Where everyone thinks, acts, and lives harmoniously in a monochrome PC world.

I totally disagree. And what I see and hear every single day on theses boards reinforces it.

Conservatives are totally consumed by the strongest human emotion...FEAR

Liberalism is trust of the people, tempered by prudence; conservatism, distrust of people, tempered by fear.
William E. Gladstone

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
Edmund Burke

A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
Edmund Burke

 

[Bfgrn]

I think the most comprehensive, albeit brief, explanation came from Thomas Jefferson in 1809, when the tenets of the Constitution were still being debated 20 years after it was signed:

"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government."

PC's OP questions why cities are failed societies, deeply in debt and awash with welfare recipients (not her exact words), and the answer is simple: Cities are where the poor, the uneducated and/or illiterate, the physically disabled, and outcast minorities of all stripes go to find work, or at the very least, find comfort in other people with similar affilictions. The inner cities were where most slaves migrated following the emancipation, and they were basically left there to fend for themselves. We can always argue, rightfully so, that in the decades that followed just throwing money at them rather than welcoming them into more affluent communities was the wrong approach, but we can also argue that conservatives, if they had their way, wouldn't even do that.

Sounds like a few of Jefferson's successors were listening...

"The legitimate object of Government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities. But in all that people can individually do as well for themselves, Government ought not to interfere."
President Abraham Lincoln

"In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human. In all those things which deal with people's money, or their economy, or their form of government, be conservative."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower

 

[shintao]

I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well.

I tend to disagree with this voluntarism, regardless of the good it does. It gives a false impression of the seriousness of the American human condition. It lets society escape responsibility for its own actions. And that help can be gone forever the next day.

Take for instance volunteers that clean school property, and paint walls, etc. If they were gone, the dirty conditions would either be there, or people of society would demand their tax dollars be used to hire workers to do the job. It is then we understand what is really needed to run a school budget.

Nothing wrong with humanitarism, except there needs to be an accounting for it, and there needs to be a payment in kind from society to cover that good will. Even a church demands donations for their works.

 

[Sunni Man]

Conservatives are totally consumed by the strongest human emotion...FEAR

No, it's not fear; but facing reality.

Conservatives face it head on and seek workable solutions to real problems.

Liberals come up with nonsense solutions to manufactured problems.

And then like to brag about how they fix a problem that never existed in the first place.

 

[JakeStarkey]

SunniMan, you are very simplistic and unrealistic. Perhaps they will change for you. That is not what true conservatives feel,think, or do.

 

[shintao]

Conservatives are totally consumed by the strongest human emotion...FEAR

No, it's not fear; but facing reality.

Conservatives face it head on and seek workable solutions to real problems.

You must be the Unicorn Rancher........................ Let me ask you. What is the rights solution to fixing the economy? What is the rights solution to ending the ME war?

Liberals come up with nonsense solutions to manufactured problems.

And then like to brag about how they fix a problem that never existed in the first place.

Give an example........... I can give you a righty example......WMDs.

 

[MaggieMae]

Liberals are empowered by emotion that suspends rational thought.

That's why a simple mantra like "Change and Hope" was like street crack to the liberal mind.

Liberals have a utopian vision for mankind that even science fiction writers would envy.

Where everyone thinks, acts, and lives harmoniously in a monochrome PC world.

On the contrary, liberals (Democrats, as we're not ALL uber liberal, you know) operate from a WHAT IS rationality. It's conservatives who operate in their idyllic BUT WHAT IF state of mind. A more than perfect example is the TARP "bailout." The bank failures were about to take down the GLOBAL economy, including of course our own. But Republicans continued with their "Yes, but what if? Won't the free market if left alone right the situation?" In time, maybe, but in the meantime, i.e., N.O.W, people would be dying in the streets.

 

[Bfgrn]

I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well.

I tend to disagree with this voluntarism, regardless of the good it does. It gives a false impression of the seriousness of the American human condition. It lets society escape responsibility for its own actions. And that help can be gone forever the next day.

Take for instance volunteers that clean school property, and paint walls, etc. If they were gone, the dirty conditions would either be there, or people of society would demand their tax dollars be used to hire workers to do the job. It is then we understand what is really needed to run a school budget.

Nothing wrong with humanitarism, except there needs to be an accounting for it, and there needs to be a payment in kind from society to cover that good will. Even a church demands donations for their works.

I agree with you, some that call for 'charity based solutions' and 'voluntarism' are really calling for someone ELSE to do it or pay for it.

JFK does follow that sentence with: 'But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and its full responsibilities.

Knowing John Kennedy, he believed that public service was the highest calling a person could aspire to. And as our President, he didn't make promises, he issued challenges.


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Many years ago, Woodrow Wilson said, what good is a political party unless it is serving a great national purpose? And what good is a private college or university unless it is serving a great national purpose? The Library being constructed today, this college, itself--all of this, of course, was not done merely to give this school's graduates an advantage, an economic advantage, in the life struggle. It does do that. But in return for that, in return for the great opportunity which society gives the graduates of this and related schools, it seems to me incumbent upon this and other schools' graduates to recognize their responsibility to the public interest.

Privilege is here, and with privilege goes responsibility. And I think, as your president said, that it must be a source of satisfaction to you that this school's graduates have recognized it. I hope that the students who are here now will also recognize it in the future. Although Amherst has been in the forefront of extending aid to needy and talented students, private colleges, taken as a whole, draw 50 percent of their students from the wealthiest 10 percent of our Nation. And even State universities and other public institutions derive 25 percent of their students from this group. In March 1962, persons of 18 years or older who had not completed high school made up 46 percent of the total labor force, and such persons comprised 64 percent of those who were unemployed. And in 1958, the lowest fifth of the families in the United States had 4 1/2 percent of the total personal income, the highest fifth, 44 1/2 percent. There is inherited wealth in this country and also inherited poverty. And unless the graduates of this college and other colleges like it who are given a running start in life--unless they are willing to put back into our society, those talents, the broad sympathy, the understanding, the compassion--unless they are willing to put those qualities back into the service of the Great Republic, then obviously the presuppositions upon which our democracy are based are bound to be fallible.

The problems which this country now faces are staggering, both at home and abroad. We need the service, in the great sense, of every educated man or woman to find 10 million jobs in the next 2 1/2 years, to govern our relations--a country which lived in isolation for 150 years, and is now suddenly the leader of the free world--to govern our relations with over 100 countries, to govern those relations with success so that the balance of power remains strong on the side of freedom, to make it possible for Americans of all different races and creeds to live together in harmony, to make it possible for a world to exist in diversity and freedom. All this requires the best of all of us.

Therefore, I am proud to come to this college, whose graduates have recognized this obligation and to say to those who are now here that the need is endless, and I am confident that you will respond.

Robert Frost said:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I hope that road will not be the less traveled by, and I hope your commitment to the Great Republic's interest in the years to come will be worthy of your long inheritance since your beginning.

Remarks at Amherst College

President John F. Kennedy
Amherst, Massachusetts
October 26, 1963

 

[xotoxi]

So, How Come You're Still A Leftie?

Because it's really hard to change. It takes a lot of practice.

At this point, I am still illegible if not using my left.

 

[MaggieMae]

Conservatives are totally consumed by the strongest human emotion...FEAR

No, it's not fear; but facing reality.

Conservatives face it head on and seek workable solutions to real problems.

Liberals come up with nonsense solutions to manufactured problems.

And then like to brag about how they fix a problem that never existed in the first place.

So you don't think the astronomical rising costs of health care is a problem? You don't think that continued reliance on foreign oil (or even just oil in general) is a problem? You don't think that our ranking in quality of education at 57th in the world is a problem? Each of those are issues that Republican conservatives would love to leave on the back burner as long as possible. Why?

 

[daveman]

You're an idiot.

Try learning to read and getting your information somewhere other than the Glenn Beck show.

I don't watch Beck, and the only "proof" you have that I do is your bigotry against conservatives.

Hint: If you want to be considered an independent thinker, don't mindlessly repeat the usual leftist drivel.

Just so you know, most people like libraries and fire departments.

Indeed. Now where did I say I was against them?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Communists are still stupid.

 

[daveman]

What I find interesting is that the three of us are all over the spectrum and not in lock step.

All three of you are on the Left.

 

[daveman]

Liberalism is trust of the people, tempered by prudence...

That's odd, considering liberals don't trust the people. They think the people are too stupid to take care of themselves and liberals must make all their decisions for them.

How many times have you and your fellow liberals used the phrase "voting against their best interests"?

 

[shintao]

Just so you know, most people like libraries and fire departments.

Indeed. Now where did I say I was against them?

You are guilty by association ~ You are what you sleep with.

 

[Rinata]

This about covers it for me.

Proud To Be Liberal - why Liberal values are American values

Thanks for posting this, Maggie. It's so true.

 

[shintao]

JFK does follow that sentence with: 'But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and its full responsibilities.

Knowing John Kennedy, he believed that public service was the highest calling a person could aspire to. And as our President, he didn't make promises, he issued challenges.

A good point. I think there are some niches where volunteerism impresses me, like time spent with the old and young, or family members, or weekend dads for kids.

 

[Titanic Sailor]

If that link defines liberalism, why on earth would ANY liberal vote Democrat???

Haven't you been kicked in the groin enough by Democrats? Look around you, open your eyes. A century of Democrat abuse and legislation has led us here.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Titanic Sailor, you are not mainstream. Move on, no one with a grasp of reality cares what you think.