Liberals
David over at The Volokh Conspiracy pulls some choice text from a liberal:
Nor do I believe that conservatives should never receive honorary degrees. There are conservative scholars who do work that is respected within academia—many economists, for example—and they would not be inappropriate candidates for such an honor. Nor would I have a problem with conservative pundits, so long as they’re sane and genuinely distinguished (which these days admittedly narrows the field to practically zero), such as the late William F. Buckley. I’ll even grudgingly accept the reality that conservative Republican elder statesmen are regularly awarded these things. Though even here there are limits—while personally I wouldn’t protest the awarding of a degree to George H.W. Bush, even though I find him pretty hateful, far-right lunatics like Cheney, Dubya, and Jesse Helms should be entirely out of bounds…. as much as conservatives may whine and scream to the contrary, liberalism and conservatism are not moral equivalents. Because, on the one side you have the thinkers and activists who have advanced freedom, social justice, and human rights, and on the other, you have those who have attempted to thwart all those things.
And one wonders how liberal became a dirty little world.
I imagine not a single one of my readers would agree with this. Refrain from posting the painfully obvious comment that there are conservative who speak like this as well. To that I would say, well no shit Sherlock.
May 13th, 2008 at 7:56 am
So then the question becomes, why do you do some much defending of d-bags like bill o’rielley? You claim to be a libertarian, but you do an awful lot of bashing of liberals while giving the conservatives a free pass at every turn.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Yup, extremists ruin every position.
May 15th, 2008 at 12:49 am
“I imagine not a single one of my readers would agree with this.”
Say something like that, and I just -have- to prove you wrong.
“liberalism and conservatism are not moral equivalents.”
Of course they aren’t. Just look at the parties. You have a party of two-faced republicans who speak of small government when the government actually grows faster (either in absolute terms or as a percentage of GDP) when a republican is president. They then conceal this by bankrolling tax cuts off state debt. When a democrat is in power, he has to deal with that, and despite cleaning up the deficit mess left by republicans the economy still grows faster on average when a democratic president is in charge.
“Because, on the one side you have the thinkers and activists who have advanced freedom, social justice, and human rights, and on the other, you have those who have attempted to thwart all those things”
Social justice and human rights are no-contests for the liberals - you have economic conservatives such as yourself who openly scoff at such concepts; it is therefore disingenuous to suggest that conservatives hold as much respect for these principles as liberals do.
Freedom is an interesting case. Yes, you have partisans all about the political spectrum who have tried to tie all sorts of agendas ranging from abortion rights to rifle ownership under the guise ‘freedom’ - but this is just a glittering generality to disguise partisan agendas. The type of freedom that is most in danger at all times and therefore most important to protect is the freedom to criticize the state.
For the moment, let’s look at just American history. Liberals beat conservatives in terms of exercising and thus advancing this freedom.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protest_marches_on_Washington%2C_DC
Out of an (admittedly nonrandom) sample of around 50 instances of criticism of the state, almost all of them are driven by some sort of liberal agenda. You don’t have to agree with Vietnam war protesters to acknowledge that American conservatives have not in this century organized in criticism of the state on that scale.
Two more points to drive home the non-moral-equivalence argument:
For the last century of American history, people calling themselves conservatives have consistently provided the opposition to movements in support of equality for minorities such as women, homosexuals, or people of color.
Additionally, religious conservatives are currently the most vocal opponents of an empiricist framework for formation of knowledge, and we both have acknowledged that empiricism is the sole path to utility, at least within the context of prediction.
Why has liberalism become a dirty word, supposing for a moment that it even has (outside of limited circles)? Weren’t you the one arguing that was because conservatives breed faster?