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Why Liberalism Doesn't Work
Townhall.com ^ | December 11, 2012 | Bill Murchison

Posted on 12/11/2012 7:19:06 AM PST by Kaslin

Reason No. 1 not to tremble at the prospect of liberal ascendancy, world without end: Liberalism doesn't work. At any rate, not the way liberals commonly suppose it's going to work when they devise enormous taxpayer-funded, government-run programs, minimally connected, if at all, to the realities of human existence.

An article in the Dec. 9 New York Times, of all places, gleams in the darkness of the present political moment as the Obama administration works to rub away resistance to its vision of an all-encompassing federal government. "This is painful for a liberal to admit," admits Nicholas D. Kristof, a Times columnist who, oddly, doesn't see his job as requiring regular trashing of conservatives, "but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America's safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency. Our poverty programs do rescue many people, but other times they backfire." Do tell. Kristof's careful examination of anti-poverty programs in Appalachia presents a viewpoint far more nuanced than, say, a Barack Obama speech urging the overhaul of capitalism. He finds that giving people too much free money for too long can create disincentives to live non-dependent lives. He talks about parents who pull illiterate kids out of literacy programs to avoid forfeiting a $698 monthly Supplement Security Income check meant to "help" the intellectually disabled.

Kristof (unlike various think tank and media figures) notes the complexity of the poverty issue. Part of that complexity, he reports with amazing realism (notwithstanding a well-earned personal reputation for realism), consists in the seductions of money.

Kristof understands marriage as "one of the best forces to blunt poverty. In married households, only one child in 10 grows up in poverty, while almost half do in single-mother households. He sees intellectual disability as a category unrealistically enlarged: presently covering "a full 8 percent of all low-income children," at an annual taxpayer cost of $9 billion. "Those kids," he says, "may never recover: a 2009 study found that nearly two-thirds of these children make the transition at age 18 into S.S.I. for the adult disabled. They may never hold a job in their entire lives and are condemned to a life of poverty on the dole -- and that's the outcome of a program intended to fight poverty."

Better, he continues, to work at creating environments favorable to helping welfare clients stand on their own feet. He praises the efforts of the aid group Save the Children, whose Appalachia staff visits "at-risk moms," helping "nurture the skills they need in the world's toughest job: parenting."

He notes a growing body of research suggesting that "the most effective strategy is to work early on children and education, and to try to encourage and sustain marriage." As in -- Kristof didn't say this; I'm saying it -- ye olden tyme, before the welfare lobby conspired with Congress to make welfare the solution of solutions to every human plight.

Kristof's insight, it is fair to note, has major antecedents. Charles Murray, in "Losing Ground," was first to make in sustained fashion the point that welfare, by fostering dependency, undermines social stability. Last January, Murray followed up, in "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1920-2010," with chilling confirmation that a "great divide" exists between new classes, upper and lower.

"Changes in social policy during the 1960s," he writes, "made it economically more feasible to have a child without having a husband if you were a woman or to get along without a job if you were a man..."

The old social norms have broken down. Who's to reconstruct them now? Conservatives? By themselves? What about conservatives, joined by liberals such as Kristof -- eyes on both sides of the philosophical spectrum bulging with horrified recognition of harm inflicted in the name of salvation.

Conservatives can do business with liberals who, so to speak, get it -- unlike the hierarchs of the new/old administration in Washington, where denial of plain facts seems to many the plainest proof of virtue. For now.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: 2012; democrats; liberalism; liberals; progressives
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1 posted on 12/11/2012 7:19:10 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

In Short — Liberalism is neither logical nor rational. That about covers it.


2 posted on 12/11/2012 7:27:25 AM PST by txnativegop (Fed up with zealots)
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To: txnativegop
The problem is, it simply doesn't matter if it works or not.

He's a prime example. The main cause of the 2008 financial meltdown was the collapse of the housing bubble. The housing bubble was caused by the socialization of the mortgage industry through Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. These GSE's where created, builtup, and protected by liberals in Congress. The 2008 financial crisis was a direct result of liberal policies.

But Republicans took the blame. Why? The left has done a great job in putting liberals in positions in society were they are able to direct all blame for anything bad on conservatives, and all credit for everything good towards liberalism. Look at the power that journalists, and teachers have in controlling public opinion.
3 posted on 12/11/2012 7:38:08 AM PST by MMaschin
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To: Kaslin
Liberalism certainly doesn't work, but because foolish people are so addicted to it, they try to force it to work. It's like pounding a square peg into a round hole because you love square pegs.

The damage done by those doing the pounding is always appalling. Individuals, families, communities, and nations have all been totally destroyed by the pounders before the inevitable collapse of their house of cards.

Those who try to force the inhuman and unworkable upon Mankind have what the Bible refers to as a depraved mind - a mind that does not work in the normal and natural way. We see this most clearly in the current widespread hatred of God. Not just rejection. Outright hatred.

IMHO, those who present a clear and present danger to our very civilization are criminals and should be apprehended, tried and executed for treason. Certainly, the bar should be set very high for such a conviction, but the Bill Ayers's of the world desire my death and the death of everything I hold dear.

If the collapse of Liberalism and the attendant destruction of our civilization is on the horizon, I won't be surprised when I see some of the architects of that collapse hanging from trees on the Capitol Mall.

4 posted on 12/11/2012 7:50:08 AM PST by Dr. Thorne ("How long, O Lord, holy and true?" - Rev. 6:10)
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To: MMaschin

Either than or sending jobs to China.

And out of America.

(one of those)


5 posted on 12/11/2012 7:52:55 AM PST by Cringing Negativism Network
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To: Kaslin

It’s THE LAW OF EFFECT. Generally, you will receive more of the behavior you reward and less of the behavior you punish. This is why liberalism/socialism/communism never works. If you reward people for not working, you will have more people who don’t work. If you punish people for working hard, you will have fewer people working hard. The dirty little secret is that the Democrat leaders know this. They just don’t care. They’re Grifters out to enrich themselves and they could care less about their effects on our country.


6 posted on 12/11/2012 7:53:25 AM PST by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer")
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To: Kaslin

“The first priority of any serious program against poverty is to strengthen the male role in poor families.” George Gilder

Feminists will fight this one tooth and nail


7 posted on 12/11/2012 7:58:23 AM PST by SMARTY ("The man who has no inner-life is a slave to his surroundings. "Henri Frederic Amiel)
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To: Kaslin

Liberals have never wanted anything to work. They only want to channel more money through their own hands, which money somehow gets “lost” in the system. This is the basis of communism, socialism, Marxism or any other big government scheme, and why such failed ideas have continued, despite every evidence they don’t work.


8 posted on 12/11/2012 8:01:41 AM PST by Missouri gal
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To: Kaslin
Liberalism does not take into account human behavior.
9 posted on 12/11/2012 8:01:46 AM PST by ryan71 (Water, food and ammo.)
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To: ryan71

Liberalism is nothing more than a symptom of the disease.

The disease is Totalitarianism. It is human nature to dominate. Humans are barbaric. It took the US Constitution to stop the barbarism. That’s why the left wants it destroyed.

The only way to stop the onset of totalitarianism in the United States is not by getting rid of the leaders of the left, but getting rid of their minions in the media. “If you control the message, you control the people.”

Change that and we are halfway there.


10 posted on 12/11/2012 8:22:50 AM PST by EQAndyBuzz (You cant bring something to its knees that refuses to stand on its own)
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To: SMARTY

As Max Tucker proves it, they fight the idea of man dominance with tooth and nail, but liberals are so hateful, if spun as a triumph, the will think of it as evil genius and bow to it slavishly. Any other reasoned argument they will reject. They need it as a force of itself.

Liberals think that with gambling with votes or money they are not gambling with the loaded chamber of a murderous tyrant as in RUssian roulette.

The Chinese were correct when they called us Paper Tigers, and that is because if things are presented as anti-war and gambling with money and hope, it looks better. However when anti-war is faced with russian roulette, it looks crazy.

And, yet, in this nuclear age where Soviet greed has been replalced with Oligarchic greed and financial chaos in the world, we are loading our heads with real bullets.

Washington is in denial about playing with our moneys with blacks who have been stabbing our backs with feminists while we were fair with them. They do not want to see it that way. Gambling is gambling, and gambling with national security and this man vs. that man instead of thinking right is loading for Russian roulette.


11 posted on 12/11/2012 8:24:29 AM PST by JudgemAll (Democrats Fed. job-security Whorocracy & hate:hypocrites must be gay like us or be tested/crucified)
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To: txnativegop

Socialism is utter failure. And communists, by “socialisting” the worker has effectively killed the worker of its skill value in exchange for a social value. In effect, what wins is the nuclear worker, the weapon holder. But Marx was no such hard scientist. God does not play dice, or Russian roulette, that is, and liberals want to avoid any and all arguments, it is in this that they find solace in look good slogans instead of bothering with true arguments.


12 posted on 12/11/2012 8:27:57 AM PST by JudgemAll (Democrats Fed. job-security Whorocracy & hate:hypocrites must be gay like us or be tested/crucified)
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To: ryan71

Indeed, liberal slogans have the same force effect as racism, which in turn has the effect of promoting a tribalist type leadership which will favor his or her own tribe and genocide of others, just like in Africa.

Racism and liberal sloganism breeds dictatorship and murder. Some power out there has hidden from us the way blacks and feminists have talked trash behind our back while smiling at us during the day. Go in a street and give them the look of “yeah, I know how you voted with hate and talking trash about me behind my back”, and watch their faces of guilt. These people are wussies, unexpressable empty anger at anything in their path and hypocrites.


13 posted on 12/11/2012 8:33:22 AM PST by JudgemAll (Democrats Fed. job-security Whorocracy & hate:hypocrites must be gay like us or be tested/crucified)
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To: Kaslin

It doesn’t work because it is devoid of the wisdom of God.

“A great disaster had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”

“The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering but in the development of the soul.”

...Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn


14 posted on 12/11/2012 8:35:47 AM PST by SumProVita (Cogito, ergo....Sum Pro Vita - Modified Descartes)
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To: blueunicorn6

You’re right about the Law of Effect. But “the Grifters” aren’t working to enrich themselves. Their goal is to redefine the economic landscape. The more takers they encourage — and the more producers they DIScourage — the greater the strain on the system, until it finally collapses. Then the State steps in and encouragement or discouragement don’t matter anymore. Citizens are slaves who will do as they’re told or they will be eliminated as enemies of progress.

For the time being, we have a choice of being a maker or a taker. After the Fall, we’ll all make whatever we’re told to make and we’ll all take whatever we’re allowed to take.


15 posted on 12/11/2012 8:38:31 AM PST by IronJack (=)
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To: Cringing Negativism Network

This is the whole hidden stupid issue about “illegal imigration”. The truth is it is “illegal EMIGRATION” of US assets and welfare to foreign lands and into liberal oblivion pseudo charities for themselves.

They attack CEOs for avoiding taxes abroad and getting mail order brides so as to personaly avoid taxes by taking foreign citizenship. They try to tax that. But what the FRACK is the problem with getting at illegals from Mexico? It is the same problem, but it is spun as illegals.

Liberals talk their heads into their own arses because they feel like the MExican, they want the assets to be illegaly desiminated left and right. This is in essence the Obama policy of domestic redistribution and betrayal in foreign aid to muslim.

Stephanopoohpooh and Julia Roberts’ consent with a “just a tax” with Obama care which is illegal in its exemptions since congress is not exempt from the law of the land, is just such massive examples of liberal cowardice and let go’s.


16 posted on 12/11/2012 8:38:31 AM PST by JudgemAll (Democrats Fed. job-security Whorocracy & hate:hypocrites must be gay like us or be tested/crucified)
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To: Kaslin

There was a cover story in either Newsweek, or Time, in 1980. It showed an African-American family, five generations of it, all on welfare, with no end in sight. It’s the last time I ever saw a liberal publication admit that liberalim’s string had run out. Reagan won in a landslide.


17 posted on 12/11/2012 9:45:52 AM PST by Daveinyork (."Trusting government with power and money is like trusting teenaged boys with whiskey and car keys,)
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To: Kaslin
Liberalism doesn't work. At any rate, not the way liberals commonly suppose it's going to work when they devise enormous taxpayer-funded, government-run programs, minimally connected, if at all, to the realities of human existence.

But facts and logic do not matter to libtards, because they are emotionalists and are motivated by their feelings. Their feelings of guilt and pity outweigh reality and reason.

18 posted on 12/11/2012 9:47:13 AM PST by mjp ((pro-{God, reality, reason, egoism, individualism, natural rights, limited government, capitalism}))
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To: MMaschin

We are living under lies and corruption, chaos and confusion. The only government able to govern man is the Kingdom of God and His Messiah. And it’s coming. That’s why the father of lies is busy. His time is short and he knows it. Fear not.


19 posted on 12/11/2012 9:53:53 AM PST by Twinkie (HY)
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To: Kaslin

What’s wrong with this guy? Of course liberalism works - to obtain liberal outcomes. You do everything you possibly can to achieve a dependent population, then rule.

In the meantime you have built up a hatred for a group of people - Jews, whites, rich people - from whom you confiscate wealth and kill them...and no one cares.


20 posted on 12/11/2012 9:56:08 AM PST by mom.mom
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