Based on the subject matter of the past few posts to this site I was accused Wednesday of hating Democrats.
Rubbish.
I don’t hate Democrats. As the saying goes, some of my best friends are Democrats. (No, really, some of my best friends are Democrats.)
I don’t hate them and hate is such a strong word anyway. My problem with Democrats is that I so vigorously disagree with so much of what they believe. My disagreements are not personal. They’re not even philosophical. My disagreements with Democrats arise solely from an adult life spent observing the results that Democratic policies produce.
The point that I have been trying to make of late — for which I now stand accused of hating Democrats – is that 50 years of Democratic policies have produced an empirical record. Examining that record and coming to conclusions about it is not unreasonable. Here are three examples.
First: once great American cities like Chicago, Baltimore and Detroit have been run almost exclusively by Democrats for 50 years or more. To one degree or another, all three stand in physical, fiscal and societal ruin – and these three are far from the only examples.
Second: our welfare system was designed and advanced by Democrats and sold to taxpayers as a means toward eradicating poverty. Nothing even close came to pass. Far from reducing poverty, our monumentally expensive welfare system has instead served to create a permanent welfare class while making poverty all but inescapable for millions of people.
Third: America’s public schools have been under almost total Democratic control for 50 years. The results have been catastrophic.
If, in any of these three examples, the results were better, I’d be a Democrat.
In the 1960s, the arguments over these things were largely academic. A half century later, there is a record to examine. The puzzlement that has driven my commentary these past few weeks is this; why isn’t there more intellectual honesty when it comes to examining that record?
Throughout our history, our politics have largely been played “between the 40s” – to use a football metaphor. My fear is that, given the parlous state of things, if the country chooses another Democrat in 2016, we’ll never get back to midfield again. And based on 50 years of results in places where politics have come to be played all the way on the left end of the field, I fear for our future.
But that still doesn’t mean I hate Democrats.
Democrats–liberals in general–are difficult to understand in rational terms. When they continue to deny their obvious failures, is it because they are simply stupid, or is it envy of those more successful in life? It seems to be a mixture of both in the case of liberal voters, but in the case of elected Democrats, cynical opportunism drives them more than anything. There’s a reason the Harry Reids of the world go to Washington poor and then retire rich!
Paul I agree with you .However well intentioned those give away programs were they failed because human nature being as it is.If a person (too many of them) can get something from someone else,they think they’re entitled to it.The dems know this but won’t say it publicly,because those do nothings are their ticket to winning another term in office.They perpetrate the myth of the downtrodden and their voters go along gladly.People in true need deserve our help .But not forever.And the true needy don’t want help forever.Because if pride is present,food stamps,welfare and other govt. freebees are embarassing. Hopefully Willis Martin Tyler Tx.
When your opponent in an intellectual and rational argument (that is based on historical facts) resorts to the irrational charge that your opinion can’t be valid because you have HATE in your heart for their party, you are dealing with a FOOL that is incapable of LEARNING from the empirical evidence that destroys their point of view. It is a waste of time to argue with a fool and to address their false charge that puts you on the defensive.
It is the FOOL that holds to a foolish dogma that repeatedly fails to achieve the so-called “stated goals.” The Democrats (and their Marxist dogma) are blind followers of a LIE based on an irrational view of mankind – a view that considers mankind an animal that needs to be domesticated and ruled as livestock “for their own good.”
My view is that the Democrat Party is nothing like the Democrat Party of Truman (after WW2) and is a Marxist Party that keeps the name “Democrat” in order to hide their true goals to turn this country into a tyrannical oligarchy. Their so-called “benevolent goals” (that can never be achieved) are just a Trojan horse that is designed to enslave their victims to become docile and dependent voters that must support the Marxist agenda to survive.
I forgot to mention a key point.
It has been my experience that the Left (Democrats) always charges the Conservative with a personal defect (such as hatred) that is, in fact, a reflection of their own deficiency in order to demonize their opposition and avoid a debate that is rooted in rationality that they can’t handle.
I have to agree with all the above, but I would add one more explanation for democrat – oh, yes, and even republican – intractability, the most basic one as I understand it. For many who identify with “the Party”, it is a matter of religion: the Party has become their god (some even with a capital “G”).
As can quite easily be observed, each individual invests him-/herself in faith – actually trust – of some sort, whether it is in God or in idols. Those are the only two options God Himself identifies in His “Message” to us. “Some trust in chariots”, including those with “4-on-the-floor”, steel tracks, wings, etc. Others trust in the almighty dollar, in their own minds, in technology, in a social or economic or political theory which, unfortunately for us all, has yet to be proven. Still others in science (or even pseudoscience – “global warming”, “climate change”, …), in “the goodness of man” (not sure what proof there exists for that, especially in the news), in dead philosophers, poets, or “religious leaders”, or in those naive “alliances” we attempt to forge with fragile, fickle humans. Anything will do, as long as it in some even small way distracts us from the personal responsibility of answering to a personal God.
Invariably, as the Apostle Paul pointed out in Romans, Chapter 1, when we “exchange the truth of God for a lie”, we begin the descent into reprobation or, as the more astute among us has noted, INSANITY – losing touch with reality!
Paul,
One of the main reasons that the empirical evidence of the FAILURES (of the all-pervasive Democrat policies presented by Conservatives) DO NOT PENETRATE the brains of today’s Democrats is because they IDOLIZE the Marxist ideology. Marxism is their religion and real-life facts of its failures based on 50 years of evidence can’t overcome their faith in their Church of (the all-powerful) Big Government that can do no wrong. Notice that their answer to any failed policies that you may cite is ALWAYS More Big Government Spending and More Eradication of our Liberties.
In summary, you are trying to have an intellectual argument based on evidence and the Democrat is having a religious argument based on their faith in Marxism. The twain shall never meet; hence, you must HATE Democrats. Translation: Democrats HATE the Constitutional legacy of a FREE America based on unalienable rights endowed by our Creator (that they reject) and the resultant prosperity that made us the most successful human experiment in the history of civilizations.