Leftism

Bleeding Heart Tightwads

Liberal Tightwads Hypocrites by Nicholas D. Kristof –
The problem is this: We liberals are personally stingy.

Liberals show tremendous compassion in pushing for generous government spending to help the neediest people at home and abroad. Yet when it comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are cheapskates.

Arthur Brooks, the author of a book on donors to charity, “Who Really Cares,” cites data that households headed by conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than households headed by liberals. A study by Google found an even greater disproportion: average annual contributions reported by conservatives were almost double those of liberals.

Other research has reached similar conclusions. The “generosity index” from the Catalogue for Philanthropy typically finds that red states are the most likely to give to nonprofits, while Northeastern states are least likely to do so. [Read more…]

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Free Enterprise and Fiscal Sanity Aren’t Social Darwinism

Free Enterprise Economic Freedom by Jay W. Richards –
On Tuesday, President Obama denounced Representative Paul Ryan’s budget proposal, which would modestly reduce the rate of growth in the federal budget. Ryan’s plan is a “radical vision,” says the president, which amounts to “thinly veiled Social Darwinism.” Understandably, Ryan has called the comments “surreal,” since the Wisconsin Republican seeks to reform entitlements such as Medicare in order to save them. That doesn’t sound like Social Darwinism.

In fact, “Social Darwinism” is an old left-wing catch phrase used to disparage free enterprise. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes reportedly said that one good catch phrase can stop thinking for fifty years. This one certainly has. [Read more…]

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Time to Stop Being Intimidated by the Left

Fight the Left, Anti-Communism by Steve McCann –
Over the past twenty years, the American left has been largely successful in intimidating much of the conservative movement and creating the impression that leftists are much smarter and thus able to stay one step ahead. Things have evolved to the point where every utterance or action by the current titular leader of the left, Barack Obama, is analyzed and dissected by many conservatives as if they were part and parcel of some grand strategy.

In fact, those on the left, including Barack Obama, are not as intelligent as they perceive themselves to be (and often are perceived to be by others), and oftentimes their actions and words are not part of a master plan, but rather symptomatic of either their personal failings or being mind-numbed robots promoting the left-wing agenda. [Read more…]

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Progressive Inhumanity, Part Two: The State against the Churches

The State against the Churches Christian Persecution by Anthony Esolen –
A small town in Vermont has recently been ordered to cease its immemorial tradition of opening meetings with a prayer. …
The order came from a judge who does not live near. A public school in the city where I am writing these words has banners hanging from its gymnasium ceiling, one of which featured a prayer written by a student of the school many decades ago. It has been removed, also by order of a distant judge. Since the citizens of the town and the school district no longer govern themselves but have become dependent upon regular infusions of green federal blood, they could not reply, “You and whose army?” The prayer and the banner are gone.

We Catholics hold that man, unique among creatures on earth, finds his fulfillment only in what transcends him. He will not compose symphonies in honor of a good housing market. He does not whistle an air for low inflation. He will pen poetry born of love, but if the object of his love is a Clodia rather than a Beatrice, even his love poetry will degenerate into satire and cynicism. Man is made for God. [Read more…]

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Why Don’t “Progressives” Debate Conservatives?

Dennis Prager
Dennis Prager
by Dennis Prager –
Apparently, many liberals were disappointed in the administration’s performance before the Supreme Court. They felt that the government’s lawyer, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, did not respond effectively to the challenges of some of the conservative justices.

The editor of Commentary, John Podhoretz, offered an explanation on his magazine’s blog. “American liberals,” he wrote, “know their own language, but they don’t know the language of their ideological and partisan opposite numbers. … Conservatives speak liberal, but for liberals in the United States, conservatism might as well be Esperanto.”

I have argued this point for many years. In my book to be published later this month (“Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph”), I argue that the left is a victim of its own brainwash. How could they not be? All they hear, see and read from childhood on, from elementary school through graduate school, on TV and in the movies, are leftist ideas. [Read more…]

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Christianity or Thoughtcrime?

Thoughtpolice Christian Persecution by Cindy Simpson –
“Thoughtcrimes” — opinions and ideas that oppose the status quo — were pursued and punished by the Thought Police in the future world described by George Orwell in his novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.  Could politically incorrect thought be declared illegal — a type of “hate” crime against individuals or the State — someday in America?  Since much of Christian thought seems to be considered politically incorrect these days, might it also be declared hate speech?

Although such notions may seem the stuff of futuristic science fiction, just last week, Big Journalism ran a column with the subtitle “Shorter Ann Curry: Your religious beliefs represent hate speech!”  The column by John Nolte described Curry’s recent NBC Today interview with Christian actor Kirk Cameron.

What did Cameron say to deserve Curry’s “attack”?  When, a couple of weeks earlier, the actor was asked his views on gay marriage by CNN’s Piers Morgan, Cameron, within a much longer answer, made these particular statements: “I think that it’s unnatural.  I think that it’s detrimental and ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of our civilization.” [Read more…]

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Obama Supports Planned Parenthood and Unrestricted Abortion

Obama Supports Planned Parenthood and Unrestricted Abortion by Jennifer Hartline –
Our current President has made his position crystal clear and has demonstrated time and time again that he will always defend Planned Parenthood; he will always defend abortion-on-demand, without restriction; he will always promote the culture of death. He will even shred the constitutional rights of the Catholic Church and all people of faith.

With the lovely backdrop of the red room at the White House behind him, President Obama made a video of encouragement to Planned Parenthood supporters in America, pledging his continued and unwavering support for the abortion giant.

A sitting President went out of his way to publicly vow to protect the interests of America’s largest abortion provider and ensure their federal funding is not discontinued. He publicly declared his commitment to standing between PP and Congress, between PP and the American people, to preserve the hundreds of millions of tax dollars PP gets each year. He and Cecile Richards are so tight not a ray of sunlight can come between them. [Read more…]

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On Restoring American Individualism

America Liberty Individualism Freedom by Daren Jonescu –
Much of the political crisis facing America today stems from a disintegration of the ethical basis of the free society. That is why the core of the 2012 election fight is not tax rates, job growth, or the national debt. These issues, though of enormous practical importance, are merely the policy manifestations of underlying moral sentiments. The fundamental battle to be waged concerns nothing less than the nature of man, and the moral implications of that nature. If public disapproval of particular Obama policies is to become a lasting movement toward societal renewal, then the conservative’s primary objective must be the restoration of American individualism.

The problem is that the warm quilt of entitlement and dependency which the left has so cozily tucked around American society not only restricts freedom of movement; it also effectively reinforces the anti-individualist morality that makes the left’s advances possible. In the doublethink names of “fairness” and “security,” soft despotism of the modern leftist sort produces a siren-song promise of carefree mother’s love forever — with its corresponding appeal to a toddler’s moral myopia, the inability to concretize and respect the wishes and wills of other people. Thus, creeping socialism ushers in a hitherto unknown ethic, which we might dub “collectivist self-absorption.” [Read more…]

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Are the “Less Fortunate” Less Fortunate?

Dennis Prager
Dennis Prager

by Dennis Prager –
In his front-page-of-the-business-section “Economic Scene” column in The New York Times last week, Eduardo Porter wrote, “The United States does less than other rich countries to transfer income from the affluent to the less fortunate.”

Think about that sentence for a moment. It ends oddly. Logic dictates that it should have said, “transfer income from the affluent to the less affluent,” not the less fortunate.

But for Porter, as for the left generally, those who are not affluent are not merely “less affluent,” they are “less fortunate.”

Why is this? Why is the leftist division almost always between the “affluent” and the “less fortunate” or between the “more fortunate” and the “less fortunate”?

To understand the left, one must understand that in its view the greatest evil is material inequality. The left is more troubled by economic inequality than by evil, as humanity has generally understood the term. [Read more…]

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Pity the Poor Working Chump

Working Taxpayer Punished by Anthony W. Hager –

Leftists promote entitlement programs as necessary to meeting essential human needs, and there’s an element of truth in their position, for there are essential human needs. However, leftists omit a key fact. There exists no right to receive life’s essentials at another person’s expense.

Fifty years’ worth of war on poverty has produced little benefit, save for a few valuable lessons.  For instance, we’ve learned about the valiant struggle the disadvantaged wage against capitalist oppression.  The homeless, the hungry, and the downtrodden are victims of free-market greed.  But there’s one participant in Washington’s war on poverty who’s routinely ignored, one whose plight the pointy-headed elites never champion: the working chump. [Read more…]

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