I used to think the same thing as well but a large number of people I’ve run into who believe in those things have a strong libertarian bent.
So, obviously, you only read part of the paper (unsurprising, really). Taken from page 16:
You’re welcome.
History dictates otherwise.
A lot of left-wingers claims that the Republicans are waging a “war on women”, based primarily on the fact that the Republicans support letting insurance companies decide whether or not to cover birth control. (Of course most Democrats also supported giving insurance companies that same freedom until a few months ago, and those same left-wingers didn’t accuse the Democrats of waging a “war on women”. I wonder why not?) Meanwhile, the left’s favorite President is actually killing women by dropping bombs on them:
As we now know, on December 17, 2009, President Obama ordered an air attack — using Tomahawk cruise missiles and cluster bombs — on the village of al Majala in Yemen’s southern Abyan province; the strike ended the lives of 14 women and 21 children. At the time, the Yemeni government outright lied about the attack, falsely claiming that it was Yemen’s air force which was responsible.
The Pentagon helped bolster this misleading claim of responsibility by issuing a statement that “Yemen should be congratulated for actions against al-Qaeda.” Meanwhile, leading American media outlets, such as The New York Times, reported — falsely — that “Yemeni security forces carried out airstrikes and ground raids against suspected Qaeda hide-outs last week with what American officials described as ‘intelligence and firepower’ supplied by the United States.” Those U.S. media reports vaguely mentioned civilian deaths only in passing or not at all, opting instead for ledes such as: “Yemeni security forces carried out airstrikes and ground raids against suspected hide-outs of Al Qaeda on Thursday, killing at least 34 militants in the broadest attack on the terrorist group here in years, Yemeni officials said.” While it is certain that dozens of civilians were killed, Scahill notes that “whether anyone actually active in Al Qaeda was killed remains hotly contested.”
I know of a few left-wingers who are upset about this and many other such actions by Obama, but most seem to be okay with it.
Say what? There’s a whole lot more reasons that the Republicans are accused of malice towards women than that.
Me too! Also, a pro-economics party, since neither party seems to have the least understanding in that arena. And most importantly, the “pro concensus” party, which seeks to build consensus, rather than divide the nation along lines that can be captured by a sound byte.
Regarding the OP’s hypocrisy, I found Bush’s slogan “culture of life” amusing given their support of the death penalty. So really, it was a “culture of life that we want, but not the life we don’t”.
To add another hypocrisy, it’s the Bible thumping about gays, while the New Testament rarely mentions it (actually, only mentions “sodomy”, and that only in lists of sins, which usually also include “usury” meaning “lending money with interest”.) Yet Christ frequently mentions helping the poor, and giving away one’s wealth.
Offhand I can’t think of any blatant left-wing hypocrisy, but just left-wing idiocy; the implicit belief that profit is evil and that government money can cure all problems. Don’t worry, it’s pretty well balanced by right-wing idiocy. That’s what makes this country great!
And sometimes they even have a bunch of liberal scientists with bad science to back them up (e.g., “tabula rasa”).
Interesting paper. The abstract starts with something that matches my anecdotal evidence:
Likewise, Fox News uses fear and anger, whereas liberal news use empathy. I find the latter less annoying, but it’s a pretty clear trend in both cases.
Good point, though that’s a matter of private action rather than public policy. Still hypocrisy, but just not embedded in party dogma.
And old one but a good one…
During the Vietnam War, persons protesting military connections to UW Madison detonated a bomb in Sterling Hall killing a researcher in the Physics department which shared a building with the Army Mathematics Research Center.
That was after some of them had stolen a plane in order to drop explosives on an ammunition plant, committed an arson attack on the campus ROTC and a mistaken arson attack on a Primate Research facility (hope the chimps were ok) in an effort to burn down the Selective Service office.
Great way to protest killing and violence, guys! Peace, love, and high explosives. The hypocrites. Violence is bad unless these whack jobs decide to use it to further their goals.
Is this a joke?
What really gets to me is the blatant financial irresponsability. You don’t need to have a degree in economics to understand that our country can’t keep spending money it doesn’t have. Especially when we can look across the ocean to Europe and see an entire continent of first-world countries crumbling before our eyes due to irresponsible fiscal policies. And yet liberals still keep pushing massive deficit spending, knowing full-well that it’s going to bite us on the ass sooner or later. And these days, “sooner” is starting to look more likely than “later.”
You can see this same thinking in any number of inner-cities, where the city leaders rack up massive debts, doing nothing about it, literally until the day their city is declared bankrupt and all financial authority is taken out of their hands. They can’t all be so stupid as to think the gravy train will keep running forever, they just don’t care as long as it doen’t personally affect them.
I hated that goddamned liberal George W. Bush,too.
Well, it’s convenient to assume one is being misunderstood when one is being challenged, disagreed with and demonstrated incorrect, but I’m confident there’s no conventional conservative position that’s beyond my understanding.
Liberals claim to care about minorities and the poor. One of the best way to help the poor is providing a quality education so they can learn skills and get good jobs. However, the largest impediment to school reform are teacher’s unions who do not want there to be any accountability for anyone in the school system. Thus in the last 40 years real government spending on education has doubled while education outcomes have not improved at all. Inner city schools have become drop out factories sentencing generation of poor minorities to a life of poverty.
Liberals claim to care about minorities and the poor, yet don’t care about crime. The only response liberals want to crime is more gun control which is a proven failure. More police, more aggressive policing, and harsh sentencing have all been shown to reduce crime. These tested and proved methods are always under attack from liberals who claim they are rascist or classist. Yet the people who are hurt by crime in this country are overwhelmingly the poor and minorities. Liberals are always anxious to release more criminals into minority comunities to prey on the law abiding while liberals go back to their houses in the suburbs where there only exposure to crime is on CSI.
Liberals claim to care about the poor overseas. They buy fair trade coffee and want the aid budgets expanded. However, the only thing that has been shown to decrease poverty overseas is direct investment such as factories and multinational corporations. When a company does open a factory overseas and locals are lining up to work for at the factory, liberals cry exploitation and pollution and want the factory to close down or put such rules in place that it would never be economical to open one in the first place. Thus trapping the poor in their poverty.
Liberals pretend to care about the poor and middle class in this country. Over the last century we went from being a country where most people were poor to one where most are rich by world standards. The standard of living in this country has risen by 1700% in the last hundred years. Economic growth has made us healthier, wealthier, and wiser. However, liberals want to chain the economic growth in this country. More taxes, more regulations, more spending, more government control which will inevitably slow economic growth. This lack of economic growth will hurt the poor the most.
Liberals claim to care about women and children but they have been attacking the institution of marriage which is the best protection women and children have. They have championed easy divorce laws and tried to tell us that women need men like fish need bicycles. The result of this is called the feminization of poverty. Not only are women more likely to be poor than men 75% of all poor households are headed by women. Married couples have a poverty rate of 5.8%, while single mothers have a 37% poverty rate. Children raised by single parents, are more likely to drop out of school, be violent, go to prison, and be poor as adults. Yet despite all of this evidence liberals are still pushing to change marriage to make it even less stable.
There are many other areas of left wing hypocrisy but time is limited.
puddleglum raises a number of valid points (I don’t know about the “hypocrisy” label, but there are indeed a number of self-defeating positions in modern politics) but that last bit about “Yet despite all of this evidence liberals are still pushing to change marriage to make it even less stable” prompts a follow-up question: what changes are those? Better employment opportunities for women so they don’t need a male provider? The widespread use of laundromats and microwave dinners so men don’t need a female domestic?
I’m gonna need a cite on this.
You are correct. Time is limited, so I won’t comment on the first twenty or so ridiculous comments, but rather on the final one: “despite all of this evidence liberals are still pushing to change marriage to make it even less stable.”
Please explain how they are doing this. Is it the changes in the divorce laws from the 1950’s? Allowing women the vote? Free love? The Lily Ledbetter law? Repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell?” I have never seen, IIRC, an article in any major magazine addressing this subject and I am extremely curious how this is being accomplished.
Which is why the vouchers the opposition want would fix that. The poor would take their vouchers and go compete for spots in better schools against people who could add to the voucher to ace everyone out that couldn’t add to it.
Of course we care about crime. Which is why we want to legalize pot and clear out stupid numbers of prisoners that take up space needed for real criminals. Interesting that you imply that the poor and minorities aren’t liberal. And by the way, it’s pretty obvious which party wants more police feet on the street and which is cutting police and fire all over the country.
Yeah, it’s terrible to protest child labor. Strange how we’re the godless immoral ones though.
Poor is generally figured based on the conditions of the country the poor are in. Large central government is the only counterbalance we have to the growing power of corporations. Without something larger than them to set boundaries, they will make their own rules, rules which will put as many of their costs as possible on the backs of the rest of society.
Might be a bit better for the women if conservatives haven’t opposed equal pay for women since like, oh I dunno, forever. If you want to go back to the 50’s to one earner being able to sustain a household that lets one of the parents devote full time to child rearing, lets talk about reinstating the tax rates that would allow that to work.
It’s far simpler to assign blame in the complexity that is our social and political structure than to really figure out what’s going on, isn’t it?
Believe it or not, there are those who are trying to say that the government should redefine marriage so that it no longer means marriage but any relationship involving love. They then want to force the rest of us to recognize the new definition of marriage.
I’m not sure who these people are: could you point out a few? Even most pro-poly people don’t want away with any legal definition of marriage: the most that most of them want is to enable marriages with multiple spouses, which of course has the huge legal questions that arise whenever you have a multiparty contract.
Could you point out some of these people anyway? I’ve never heard of any of them. Doesn’t mean there aren’t a handful of panamourous people out there who want the legal system changed.
The left is all concerned about the environment, yet it’s almost a cliche that when the left holds a rally somewhere, they leave the area a bloody mess. In contrast, the Tea Party rallies generally left the areas they were in cleaner than they had been before.
The left claims to oppose materialism, even when standing in line to get the latest iPhone. Good thing those Nike shoes are comfortable, and those Oakley sunglasses keep the sun out of your eyes while waiting. It’s the left that is constantly focused on wealth, disparities in wealth, who owns what, who should give stuff to other people, etc. The left is constantly focused on materialist issues.
The left claims to hold the mantle of science and reason, but a lot of crazy anti-science protestors are on the left, protesting against genetically modified foods, nuclear power (even the Cassini mission, because it had an RTG aboard), fracking (even though Natural Gas puts out far less greenhouse gas than does coal), etc.
The left in general has a distrust of ‘processed’ foods and an unnatural fear of pesticides and fertilization, preferring ‘organic’ foods despite the evidence. There’s a much bigger luddite faction on the left than on the right. If someone starts yammering at you about ‘toxins’ in body, there’s about a 90% chance that person is on the left. And yet the left claims to be uniquely pro-science. Hypocrisy.
Democrats claim to be the champions of ‘choice’ and personal freedom, but they constantly interfere with personal choice when it comes to buying products, hiring people, choosing who you want to work for, smoking, eating fast food, etc. The Nanny State is largely a left-wing production. The left thinks you should have the right to smoke pot, but not cigarettes.
The left claims to be all about the poor and downtrodden, and most especially against racism, but they constantly make choices that cut off markets to poor minorities in other countries, usually at the behest of relatively wealthy union workers in America.
The left claims to be about helping the poor and disadvantaged, but their actual policies are increasingly aimed to support relatively wealthy constituencies such as public union employees. For example, they agreed to defer the ‘gold plated health care’ tax in Obamacare at the behest of the unions, and the stimulus was delayed and weakened because of ‘prevailing wage’ demands by the unions that protected high-paying union jobs at the expense of the unemployed and non-union workers. They did the same thing in the GM takeover - the UAW workers didn’t have to take a pay cut at all, but the non-union workers at Delphi were hammered, even though the Delphi employees made less and had fewer benefits in the first place.
Democrats claim to want a colorless world where race doesn’t matter, but they constantly play the race card whenever they perceive partisan advantage. Joe Biden: “They’re gonna put y’all back in chains!”. I happen to think that blacks today are long removed from plantation slaves, but apparently Joe Biden doesn’t agree.
Of course, there are all those wealthy environmental activists who claim that global warming is the biggest threat the earth faces, and yet fly their private jets to conferences and hold parties to ‘raise awareness’ about global warming in their 10,000 square foot homes…
The left claims to be supportive of women, but they went after Sarah Palin tooth and nail. Not just legitimate criticisms of her intelligence or capacity to be president, but attacks on her looks, on her children, speculation that her baby wasn’t hers, questions about whether a woman with such a big family could cope with the presidency, sniggering comments about being a ‘beauty queen’, etc. Increasingly, women are only allowed to be ‘feminists’ if they subscribe to a list of liberal causes. If they don’t, they’re vilified and demeaned by the left, often in very sexist manner. Bill Maher, that icon of the progressive left, called Sarah Palin a “c*unt” and a “dumb twat”, and his audience of liberals roared with laughter. I can’t imagine the response if a Republican had said that of a female Democrat.
Liberals claim to be against the marriage of religion and politics - unless making religious noises gets them votes. No one minded when Obama said that his faith informed all his decisions, or when Reverend Wright was trotted out (before he went nutty) to prove Obama’s religious bona fides. The left even remained silent when Obama went on Reverend Rick Warren’s show and proclaimed that he prayed constantly and supported traditional marriage between a man and a woman because that’s what God told him.
Democrats protested Bush’s opposition to gay marriage and his wars in the middle east. Guantanamo Bay was an abomination. Rendition was the worst thing ever. But when Obama came into power, announced his opposition to gay marriage, ramped up the war in Afghanistan, maintained Guantanamo Bay, and began extra-judicial killings of Americans with drone strikes, all the protestors went home and sat on their hands, occasionally muttering a little disagreement without actually doing anything. Apparently, all this opposition was really just partisan political theater, and not deeply held conviction.
Just a drive by here (sorry, on the road), but the biggest instance of Left-wing hypocrisy to me is the left wing environmental folks, especially wrt nuclear power. I find this nearly infinitely frustrating and infuriating that so many lefties are opposed to nuclear power…and opposed to such an extent that it makes it nearly impossible for new nuclear plants to be built in the US. I think John was questioning earlier whether lefties were as ‘anti-science’ as righties, and while I mostly agree that the right wing tends to be more anti-science than the left, the left is also chock full of anti-science horseshit (as another example consider that most of the 9/11 Truthers are at least nominally left wing types). The real hypocrisy I see is that lefties THINK they are better, smarter and more pro-science (and may be if we set the bar really low), but in fact they have similar faith based sacred cows that they will defend to the death, no matter what facts you show them.
Just my quick take on the OP.
No.