In contempt: The left vs. American values

UnionLeader.com ^ | 4/16/08 | Unknown

[red state girl]

BEING A LIBERAL politician in America is more difficult than being a conservative politician for one simple reason. To get elected, liberals have to hide their contempt for so many core American values.

When Sen. Barack Obama explained to wealthy San Francisco donors that those small-town yokels in Pennsylvania "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigration sentiment or anti-trade sentiment," he expressed a fundamental left-wing belief about non-urban America: It's stupid and reactionary.

Sophisticated urbanites respond to economic hardship rationally, Obama was suggesting. But those unenlightened small-town folk, their response is primitive. They turn to guns, God and nativism.

Obama did not misspeak. He misunderstands. He is not alone.

[Hugin]

The left believes the only "real" issues are those based on economics, specifically the government spending more; health care, education, etc. Issues based on moral values are not "real" issues, they are only "wedge issues" that devious conservatives use to "distract voters from the real issues" (the stuff the left will supposedly give them) and "vote against their economic interests". Leaving aside the fallacy of their assumption that most people would be better of under their socialist model, they utterly fail to understand that for some people moral standards are more important than economic self-interest. They just cannot seem to wrap their brains around that idea and therefore keep saying condescending things like that.

[TBP]

BTTT.

[philly-d-kidder]

God Bless the POPE!

[Daaave]

Clinton: "I can spend your money better than you can."

January 20, 1999

(President William) "Clinton was asked why not a tax cut if we have a surplus. Clinton's response: "We could give it all back to you and hope you spend it right..."

gargaro.com

My second favorite Clinton quote, after "I did not have sex with that woman..."

[driftless2]

"moral standards"

That was supposedly at the heart of Thomas Frank's book "What's the Matter With Kansas." Mister Frank was thoroughly confounded by the fact that average Kansan's continually voted against what he earnestly believed were the own "economic interests". Like most libs Frank just cannot understand the mindset of conservative Americans who distrust big government. Libs just can't understand why people wouldn't like someone to take care of them and make all their decisions for them. That belief lies at the core of liberalism.

[Freedom4US]

“Reactionary”? I think the author mis-spelled righteous indignation.