The following statements in boldface are taken verbatim from Dennis Prager's Are You a Liberal? I comment briefly on each in turn. Mirabile dictu, it turns out I am not a liberal! I could make of each of these items a separate post. (And you hope I won't.) I don't want to hear anyone complain that I am not arguing my points. I argue plenty elsewhere on this and my other sites. In any case, that is not my present purpose.
How many of the following do you believe? The more you believe the more liberal you are.
No. People should be judged on an individual basis, by merit. They should all be held to the same standard. The race, sex, or creed of the applicant ought not be considered in hiring decisions. In the excellent words of Martin Luther King, Jr., they should be judged "not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
By the way, the phrase 'people of color' is a piece of silliness only a liberal could dream up. So Turks and Greeks and Italians don't have a color? And pasty white is not a color? And how can one reasonably object to 'colored people' if one employs 'people of color'? The fact that Prager uses 'people of color' is a mistake on his part. Conservatives ought never talk like liberals since half of the battle is fought on linguistic terrain. It is a foolish conservative who acquiesces in such question-begging epithets of the Left as 'homophobia' and 'Islamophobia.'
Finally, 'people of color' is a phrase as idiotic as 'people of race,' which, as far as I know has yet to be used. But it is coming down the pike. I can sense its approach.
2. Bilingual education for children of immigrants, rather than immersion in English, is good for them and for America.
No. It is not good for immigrants in that it impedes their assimilation. It is not good for America since it promotes division, lack of communication, and ultimately ethnic Balkanization.
3. Murderers should never be put to death.
No. Justice demands the death penalty in certain cases such as the case of Tookie Williams, that darling of certain Hollyweird liberals.
4. During the Cold War, America should have adopted a nuclear arms freeze.
No. It was the non-adoption of such a policy, inter alia, that led to the defeat of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.
5. Colleges should not allow ROTC programs.
No. If journalism and law can be legitimate professions, then so can the military.
6. It was wrong to wage war against Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War.
Perhaps, if the case for non-interventionism had been strong. But I don't see that itwas strong.
7. Poor parents should not be allowed to have vouchers to send their children to private schools.
No. Parents who send their children to private schools face a double-whammy: they must support the public schools with their taxes and they must shell out for private education to make sure their children get a good education as opposed to politically correct indoctrination. So it is only fair that they should receive vouchers. Besides, competition breeds excellence. Competition with private schools can only redound to the benefit of public schools. This is of course opposed by teachers' unions, bigtime Dem supporters, who want neither excellence nor competition.
8. It is good that trial lawyers and teachers unions are the two biggest contributors to the Democratic Party.
No, but it says something about the Dems. Ambulance-chasing shysters like John Edwards are a good part of the reason why medical costs are so high. Physicians and hospitals have to defend themselves against malpractice suits. Just last night I spoke with a retired urologist who told me of a physician whose medical malpractice insurance costs him $200,000 per year.
9. Marriage should be redefined from male-female to any two people.
No. The State is involved in marriage in order to promote a legitimate common interest, namely, that there be healthy families in which men are tamed, women are protected, and children are socialized. There is no reason to extend these protections to any two people who choose to cohabit. On the other hand, the State should not prohibit cohabitation. This position may be consistent with the allowance of carefully crafted civil unions.
By the way, one of the problems of conservative politicians — as opposed to conservative intellectuals such as Bill Bennett — is their inability to articulate their positions in a coherent way and to argue for them. Is G . W. Bush intellectually capable of giving the answer I gave in the preceding paragraph? I doubt it. The man couldn't rub a subject and verb together to form a sentence. All he could do was stammer, "Marriage is between a man and and a woman." But that's no argument. Conservatives tend to be doers, not thinkers. They often have the right positions, instinctually as it were, but are incapable of arguing for them.
Reagan was another example of this. He was right about abortion, but then he would say stupid things like, "Medical science has proven that the fetus is a human being." But that is not the issue, and we don't need medical science to prove it. Of course the prenatal offspring of human beings are human. What else would they be? Lupine? Bovine? So it is with some justification that liberals consider conservative politicians to be stupid. What they lack is verbal ability, something prized by liberals and perhaps wrongly equated with intelligence.
10. A married couple should not have more of a right to adopt a child than two men or two women.
No. If you understood the immediately preceding comment, you will understand why.
11. The Boy Scouts should not be allowed to use parks or any other public places and should be prohibited from using churches and synagogues for their meetings.
No. This is too idiotic to commment on.
12. The present high tax rates are good.
No. Higher taxes, less liberty. Liberty is good. A fundamental difference between Right and Left, as Prager often says, is that the Right stands for liberty, the Left for equality. That is a simplification, of course, but it is on the right track. Leftists are willing to sacrifice liberty on the altar of material equality. Material equality should be distinguished from formal equality. Everyone is for formal equality: equality of opportunity, equality of treatment, equality before the law. But equality of opportunity is not the same as, and need not lead to, equality of outcome, the latter being up to the individual.
A typical fallacy of libs and lefties is to think that if there is no equality of result, then this could only have come about from a lack of equality of opportunity. But this is a blatant non sequitur.
13. Speech codes on college campuses are good and American values are bad.
No. Beneath refutation.
14. The Israelis and Palestinians are morally equivalent.
No. Are non-terrorists and terrorists morally equivalent?
15. The United Nations is a moral force for good in the world, and therefore America should be subservient to it and such international institutions as a world court.
No. Were they able to handle Saddam Hussein or the outbreaks of African genocide?
16. It is good that colleges have dropped hundreds of men's sports teams in order to meet gender-based quotas.
No. The quota mentality is politcal correctness at its most idiotic.
17. No abortions can be labeled immoral.
No. If you can't see that partial-birth abortion is morally offensive, then you are morally obtuse.
18. Restaurants should be prohibited by law from allowing customers to choose between a smoking and a non-smoking section.
No. Tobacco extremism is a prime example of the misplaced moral enthusiasm of contemporary liberals.
19. High schools should make condoms available to students and teach them how to use them.
No. If I have to explain this to you, then you are too stupid to profit from any explanation.
20. Racial profiling for terrorists is wrong — a white American grandmother should as likely be searched as a Saudi young male.
No. Profiling, racial and otherwise, is a legitimate law enforcement technique.
21. Racism and poverty — not a lack of fathers and a crisis of values — are the primary causes of violent crime in the inner city.
No. Poverty no more causes crime than wealth causes virtuous behavior.
22. It is wrong and unconstitutional for students to be told, "God bless you" at their graduation.
No. Why are liberals so contemptibly stupid?
23. No culture is morally superior to any other.
No. Could anyone with a brain believe this?
Those are all liberal positions. How many of them do you hold? And if you don't hold to this liberal nonsense, why on earth are you still a Democrat?