My Anti-Liberal Rant

I had started this post a while back, and I just wanted to get it up, you know, just for the hell of it. I wanted to jot down a brief list of a few of the things that just really piss me off about American liberals. The thing is, I really don't have the same thing to say about conservatives. There have been far too many conservative critiques of, say for example, the War on Terror, the War in Iraq, and the Bush administration in general for me to really say that almost anything the government has done over the last seven years has been definitively "conservative." If a big name or influential liberal would come out against everything on this list here, then maybe I won't need to be pissed off. But for now ...

1- Unquestioning support of the public school system.

For whatever reason liberals are almost always opposed to voucher proposals that would allow poor children to leave failing public schools for unquestionably better private ones. I understand that their rationale is to support the public schools, and to support policies to fix the existing system, but why should a commitment to fix the problems of the public schools be made at the expense of those poor kids who are all ready stuck there? Liberals are supposed to be all about compassion and helping the little guy, and that just doesn't seem to jive here.

2- Support of Eminent Domain to take private property for what's really a private use (i.e. the Kelo case in New London).

This is definitely more of a divisive subject amongst liberals, but just like number one, what boggles me is that economic development plans that take the homes of poor people hurt the poor at the expense of the supposed larger good. The thing is when it comes to eminent domain- wealthy politicians- and the rich in general- don't have to worry about having their homes seized for some government giveaway to corporate America. The poor lose their homes so some big company can get a nice big government subsidy. Hardly sounds compassionate towards the little guy to me.

3- General Support of Unions.

Actually, I have no real problems for the support of unions as a general matter, I just have a problem with how they tend to conduct business. First, why should any worker be forced to join a union and be forced to pay union dues. That hardly seems fair to me, although such policies are generally supported by law. And secondly, why all the opposition to scab and replacement workers in the event of a strike? Aren't those the guys who are too poor to have regular jobs or be in the union in the first place?


4- Supporting privacy rights when it comes to sex and abortions, but not when it comes to other personal choices.

Liberals are big on the right to privacy covering sex and abortions, but the same liberals tend to love nanny laws about smoking, trans fats, and helmets. I just don't see how you can say that the government has no business in the bedroom but it belongs in the kitchen.

5- Finally, just the whole anti-corporate spiel.

Be it Wal-Mart or McDonalds some big company is always doing wrong. The thing is, no one would ever dream of imposing the laws on Mom and Pop shops that they'd like to impose on the big boys, yet the laws against the big boys are needed nonetheless to protect the public. Some of the arguments can be down right condescending - the poor are too stupid to know what they're buying, what they're eating, or what they're doing - As can be said about a great number of things, I guess the liberal compassion to the poor doesn't extend to the poor having the right to make their own "wrong" decisions.