What if I said Liberalism is the gutless choice (or it's easy to be a liberal)?

Recently one of my Facebook friends posted a link an article called "Anti-intellectualism is killing America."  The article pretty much stated that anyone who doesn't support the liberal agenda is a moron.

Here, read for yourself paragraph #3 of the article:

In a country where a sitting congressman told a crowd that evolution and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the pit of hell,”, where the chairman of a Senate environmental panel brought a snowball into the chamber as evidence that climate change is a hoax, where almost one in three citizens can’t name the vice president, it is beyond dispute that critical thinking has been abandoned as a cultural value. Our failure as a society to connect the dots, to see that such anti-intellectualism comes with a huge price, could eventually be our downfall.

The way I read that paragraph, anyone who supports the conservative agenda is as stupid as the idiot who can't name the vice president.  So I'm supposed to take this lightly?

Now, consider if I stated the opposite.  Consider the following.

Rush Limbaugh says that liberalism is the gutless choice.  By this, he means that it's easier to be a liberal (or progressive) than it is to be a conservative.  The reason is that all you have to do to be a liberal is to show empathy and emotion. and then come up with solutions someone else has to pay for.

And if a Republican criticizes you, all you have to do is tell them they are a heartless, thoughtless, racist, sexist, homophobe who doesn't care about the needy. Or, as in my example above, all you have to do is tell them they are "anti-intellectuals."

Most people just use the dumbed down version of this, which is "stupid."

Others will simply site an insult to Rush Limbaugh, such as, "Rush Limbaugh is getting to your head," or "Rush Limbaugh is an idiot," or, "Rush Limbaugh is a meany."  Of course Rush Limbaugh, like other conservatives, are perceived as mean because they understand and openly talk about painful truths.

You may also use a more polite approach by saying something like, "You're being negative again," or "You are a backwoods person,"

Or, to be more crafty, you could say something like, "You're a right-winger," or "You're from the religious right."

All of these are personal attacks, which are all much easier than citing truths.  Since liberalism is based on feelings more so than facts, it is much easier to toss vitriol at those who agree with you than facts.

If you talk about your conservative viewpoints, they look at you as though you are stupid, insensitive, homophobic, racist, backwoods, or vitriol they can think of at the moment.  This is because they think they are normal, mainstream, and anything a conservative says is no longer mainstream.

If you defend the traditional view that marriage should be between a man and a woman, they call you insensitive and homophobic, even though that's not even close to the truth.  If you say the law should be followed and illegal immigrants sent back home, they say you are an insensitive racist.  If you defend the second amendment gun law, you are backwoods.  They look at you as though you are an idiot.

Regarding this, Rush Limbaugh said:

I know this is gonna be hard for people to believe. It's a psychological thing. Most uber-leftists do not even think of themselves as that. I mean this psychologically. They think they are normal. They call themselves pragmatists. Anything not them is what's odd, weird, kooky, major, major minority, really, really small, unhip, uncool, whatever. They are ideologues, but they don't have to calculate their ideology every day. It's just who they are and it's how they operate. And it is what guides them. I mean, they are that first, second, and third. They are liberals first, liberals second, liberals third, whatever else they are then weighs in.

So you see Radical Islamic Thugs in France killing innocent victims.  You have Liam Neeson out there saying, " There are too many F*^*ing guns out there. Especially in America. I think the population is like, 320 million? There are over 300 million guns. Privately owned, in America. I think it’s a f#%#ing disgrace. Every week now we’re picking up a newspaper and seeing, ‘Yet another few kids have been killed in schools'."

So all you have to do to be a liberal is to show that you care and then to champion for a law to take away a natural liberty.  You care about the poor people who are killed by a thug, so the solution is to make laws to take away guns.

Making laws like this make them feel good about themselves.  Conservatives ask: Does it make sense? Liberals say, "Does it make me feel good."  Yes, gun laws make me feel good.  No, they don't make sense because they don't work.  A good example is Chicago, which has the strictest gun laws in the world, and the highest crime rates. 

What these people fail to do is to ration that if you take away guns from law-abiding citizens, bad guys will still have them.  This means that law abiding citizens will be unarmed, and only the thugs will have guns.  That means...

And then, assuming you do manage to take away all the guns, the bad guys, who will still exist, by the way, will still find weapons.  They will probably carry knives.  Or maybe they would go back to swords.

That logic simply slips by them.  When they hear such logic they don't know what to do, so they toss vitriol at you.  

You can look at other areas too.  Ben Franklin once said: "I am for doing good to the poor... I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it."

The modern liberal doesn't think the same way Ben Franklin did, as such logic slips right by them.  They don't see any empathy in not letting the poor in the country feel too comfortable in their poverty.  Instead, they see empathy as forcing hard working people to pay for entitlement programs that make the poor comfortable in their poverty.  

The logic that this creates more poverty slips right by them. The logic that higher taxation and regulation creates fewer jobs slips right by them.  The logic that lower taxes create more wealth, slips right by them.  The logic that lower wages create more jobs, slips right by them.

All that matters to them is that they have empathy for the poor and did something about it. It doesn't matter that their ideas do not work and never have.  It does not matter that their ideas do nothing but create chaos. 

It was based on this philosophy that Bill Clinton said to an AIDS activist in 1992, "I feel your pain." Yes, he does feel your pain, and to show he cared he forced people like you and me who are trying to make a living to pay for it. 

So, you see, this is what I mean when I say that it is easy to be a liberal.  To be a conservative it takes a lot of time educating you.  You have to read a lot and think a lot about what you read.  You have to take ideas and twist them around to find solutions that really work.

Being a conservative means more than just having empathy, it means using logic to solve problems.

Further reading:

1. Psychology Today: Anti-Intellectualism is killing America
2. Rush Limbaugh: Liberalism: The most gutless choice you can make
3. Crazy leftists, they think they're normal