What I Hate About the Left and the Right: the Left
There are so many problems with both the right and left wing that it's not funny. Both sides have some serious issues with their ideologies, and I have an immense amount of disdain for these ideologies. Neither have the full respect of others' liberties as much as they would like to say otherwise. Since this is the last part of this "series", and I have already cut down the right, on to the left!
Democrats
I know, it has been a long time coming for me to write this rant. However, it should be worth the wait. I hope, anyway. There are so many things about (American) liberals that bother me. Some of their ideologies are just so disgusting that I cannot help but to overreact to them. I know I should not get so upset over someone else's ideologies, but the sheer audacity that (American) liberalism has gets me to that point, and there seems to be little I can do to stop it from getting to me.
First thing is first. The name that Democrats take for their ideology. They name it "liberalism", but they are anything but. This makes me angry because what political philosophy I identify with is much closer to true liberalism than the Democrat Party would ever hope to be. For them to be true liberals, American liberals need to not only promote social liberalism (which they do), but also support economic liberalism, and that is something American liberals have never been good at. In fact, they seem quite destined to destroy economic liberalism. Liberals? I think not. They are nothing but a pseudo-liberal creed of emotionally-driven lemmings.
As I started off with in my rant against Republicans, I'm going to attack the "secular-left" position on religion. While some of the right's accusations about the left's stance on religion is a bit exaggerated, I think there is some truth to it. For most "liberals", there seems to be some truth to it. Liberals absolutely hate religion. For whatever reasons they may come up with, they want it removed from anything remotely public. From public schools to Christmas, many liberals will not stop until religion is no longer a part of society. I understand the view that we should not have any organized prayer started by school faculty, and I understand that our government should not have any religious preferences. I completely agree with this. After all, our Constitution states that we have freedom of religion, and any our government should have no favoritism towards any of them. The left just seems to take it farther and want to erase it from privately-owned stores. This is especially evident with Christmas. You see an ever increasing number of stores that no longer uses "Merry Christmas", but a more politically correct "Happy Holidays". It is fine that stores choose this. Just as they should be free to say "Merry Christmas", they have every right to exclude any mention of Christmas during the seasons. It is just unfortunate that liberals are actively seeking the removal of any religious holidays from society.
Speaking of the removal of religion in society, this brings me to Political Correctness. This is the fantasy idea that relativism should be embraced. That since everybody is all different and it is "wrong" to judge others, we should be completely tolerant of everybody's moral stances and views. While, to a great extent, I believe that we should realize that morality is subjective, I still feel that it is completely rational to take a Realist standpoint and criticize the morality of others, so as long as we do not try to enforce our morals through legislation. The idea that we should be completely tolerant of everything is self-defeating. As James Rachels said, "if we did not think that some [social practices] were better than others, there would be nothing for us to tolerate."
We have no right to NOT be offended. Anything and everything can be considered offensive in its own right. There is no way we can escape that. PC tries to make it so, but the truth is, even by being "careful" we are being offensive to the people we are trying to tolerate. For instance, one of my old teachers was a pastor, and he golfs. He would often join up with other groups when play was slow. The groups he would join would often swear, and when they found out he was a pastor, they made an effort to be more courteous. There is nothing wrong with trying to accommodate others, but to go as far as changing who you are and how you act based on someone can be offensive in itself. Being too careful is also self-defeating. This is not to say that we should be as crass as we want to be, as tact is a good thing to have.
The funniest thing about this relativist view that PC tries to convey is often hypocritical. In order to promote this idea of all-inclusive tolerance, one would have to believe that other, less tolerant views are incorrect. Again, it is self-defeating. This leads many people to be hypocritical in their teachings.
Another view of (American) liberals is this common concept of Utilitarianism. This is a concept of believing that everybody is equal and deserves equal things. If someone believe this, they can knock themselves out. It is a respectable viewpoint. However, what makes liberals so wrong in believing in this is that they try to legislate it through social programs and taxation. They so adamantly promote equality of outcome, and this takes away from the people who strive to make themselves better by trying to make them equals to those that clearly do not have the same ambitions. It is not fair or just to promote the government stealing, especially from its citizens. That is a huge flaw in this ideology, it ignores others' rights. If these liberals feel that it is in the best interest of others to do something that negatively affects someone else, it is justifiable. Again, if this altruistic view makes someone happy, then they should go for it. I am not going to stop anybody for living this viewpoint. I just wish liberals had the common decency to limit this viewpoint to those that share it. I am not willing to give up my luxuries that I earned to give to people that I feel do not put forth the same effort as I do. Call me selfish and greedy, but it is my right to be selfish, and nobody has the right to change that.
If liberals want to be altruistic, they can give to and volunteer at non-profit organizations that strive to help others. These private, non-profit organizations do a lot better of a job of helping others than the government programs could ever aspire to. If liberals really want to help out those less fortunate, and treat everybody equally, then they should realize that forcing others, through legislation, to do the same is not treating people, like me, as equals. In fact, it does quite the opposite.
Besides the topic of welfare, my biggest stumbling block with the liberal ideology is their hypocritical views of the Bill of Rights. Whenever a conservative will try to ignore the Bill of Rights, they are right there to stand in the way. As well they should, too. However, whenever it is convenient for themselves, they will ignore the Bill of Rights, as well. This is best illustrated regarding the Second Amendment. Yes, the right to bear arms. For whatever reasons may be, liberals LOVE to ignore this right. What gives them this inspiration? Their Utilitarian views, of course. If they feel that it better suits everybody else that rights of others are trampled to promote overall "benefit", they are more than happy to oblige.
The simple fact of limiting guns does nothing to promote safety and security. The best argument, in my opinion, against this stupid idea of limiting guns is the fact that doing so does nothing to prevent guns from being in the hands of a criminal. It only prevents law-abiding citizens Breaking the law is of no concern to criminals. After all, that is what makes them criminals. They disregard the law to do as they please, regardless of what harm it does to others. If they want a gun, they will obtain one illegally through black markets. It is not a hard thing to do. This egoist view is a prime example of why we NEED law-abiding citizens to own guns. We need guns to protect ourselves from the people that do not have any respect for others. If everybody owned a gun, there would be less of a risk for gun violence, since the would-be criminal would have to contend to the fact that the "victim" would also be armed. Since criminals are egoists (in this case, anyway), they are not going to do anything that would have a very high risk of it ending badly for themselves.
Even if guns were removed from society, it would not remove the desire to do others harm in certain people. There has been violence and murder before there were guns, and there would be violence and murder in the absence of guns. If someone wants to harm another, they will figure out a way to inflict this harm with or without a gun.
It is not the government's job to hold the hands of its citizens, either. Gun accidents are not to be blamed on the fact that these people were allowed to own a gun. Accidents happen with anything remotely dangerous. People accidentally cut their fingers off with machinery and other items such as knives and glass. There is danger in blunt items, as well. It is the responsibility of people to learn how to use items correctly to minimize the chance of harm, whether this be unloading and locking up a pistol to keep away from one's children or keeping one's fingers away from the blade of the chainsaw, especially while it is on.
Public education is another objection that I have with in regards to the liberal ideology. Instead of streamlining our public education and making it efficient, liberals think the problem is underfunding. This is clearly not the case. Taking in account for inflation, our schools receive twice as much funding per student as they did in the 1970s. The education system has been declining. The issue is not the funding. The issue is productivity and poor teaching. Liberals fear a voucher system because they know that the teacher's union would have severely diminished power. We would not want to remove the worthless teachers in our education system, would we? We should, but liberals certainly do not want to.
For whatever reason it may be, liberals are afraid of a competitive market in education. If we were to give parents vouchers and allow them to choose the environment they want their kids learning in, schools would have no choice but to remove excess spending and poor teaching in order to keep the money coming into the school. If they were unable to improve enough, the schools will fail. Contrary to liberal beliefs, this failing of schools would be a good thing. It would allow good schools to expand and improve. European countries follow this, and they are better off for it. They are consistently at the top of test scores, while American schools settle into the middle of the pack. This is not an issue whether or not European teens are more intelligent than American students. This is an issue of the quality of the education. Our system is not working, and money is not the answer. Let Capitalism work its magic and fix what ails our schools. Products are better when there is more than one company to produce the good/service that we desire. This is because of competition. If a product is poor, consumers are not going to buy the poor product, especially for the same price. The same should apply to schools. Why be forced to send your kids to schools that do not meet your standards? If you can get away with paying the same price for a better education, why not?
Minimum Wage is another funny product of American liberalism. I guess one can lump this in with the whole welfare argument that I have above, but I like to think that this is stupid enough of an idea that it merits attention. The fact that very few people actually earn minimum wage is lost on liberals. Either that or they actively choose to ignore this. These bleeding-heart liberals continue to rip away the rights of the companies in favor of talentless employees that do the bare minimum, yet somehow are deserving of more money for their easily replaceable labor. Simply put, the people earning minimum wage do not deserve the money that they already earn. Not only is that true, but the idea of minimum wage is self-defeating (we see this quite a lot in their ideologies, do we not?). By forcing companies to pay their talentless (I know, this seems harsh, but even McDonald's workers are paid more than minimum wage for their 'labor') more money, the costs of their products have to increase to make up for the lost profit due to the higher cost of the production. By making products more expensive, Minimum Wage once again makes it harder for minimum wage workers to afford the things they need. The entire point of having minimum wage is to make it easier for these people to afford necessities, is it not? This is why it is self-defeating.
If people want to make a decent living and to live without worry of financial ruin, they need to pursue more job skills and fix their spending habits. If someone has a middle-class income, they are unable to own a 145-foot yacht (credit to Neal Boortz for this example). Most liberals would agree, then, that they should not purchase a yacht. Yet, they do not apply this concept to poverty-level incomes. If they cannot afford to have any luxuries or a family, they should not have either. Cutting out non-essential spending makes it much more manageable to survive on a smaller income. It is that simple. Do not live above your means. If someone still struggling to make ends meet, this is what caring, non-profit organizations are for. They should go and seek assistance. They are more than enthusiastic to help people in their time of need. It is not an employer's job to see that an employee is financially secure. It is respectable for an employer to do that, but it should not be enforced through any legislation.
Yet another lovely disagreement that I have with American liberalism is illegal immigration. The name says it all, it is the immigration of aliens into our country illegally. There should be no argument with this. If a person does something illegally, they should endure the punishment for the illegal act. If someone comes into America illegally, they should be deported. There is no reason why these people, who are actively breaking the law, should receive amnesty for their actions. Are illegal aliens bad people for wanting to immigrate to America? Of course, not. While it may not make them bad people, it does make them criminals. I know, it is hard to think of these people as criminals, but that is exactly what they are. They are actively breaking the law that others have to abide by in order to benefit themselves. Regardless of how understandable their actions are, they are still illegal.
With that said, I do not disagree with an open-border policy. I think most of these "criminals" should be allowed across the border. The problem with that is before we allow this to happen, we need to make it so that these people do not receive the same luxuries and privileges as American citizens do. They need to be contributing members to society, first, before they can reap the benefits that the rest of us sow. It is only fair for those to reap what they sow before anybody else benefits from our actions.
Unions. Yes, unions. The idea behind unions is not a bad one. It is to help protect workers from terrible working conditions and under-payment for the labor that they do. It helps to keep the balance between workers and employers. What gets me mad about labor unions is that they want it to be that their jobs are secure while they are in negotiations for better working conditions (environment, wages, etc...). This distorts the balance between employers and employees. This tips the balance in favor of the employees, and that is unfair. Unions should not have to worry about this. If their labor is worth that much money, they need not worry about being replaced. However, if one's job is easily replaceable, the company should have every right to hire in new people. After all, if others are willing to work in replacement of the workers in negotiation/on strike, then they must view the working conditions to be acceptable. If someone does not have to risk their employment while demanding better conditions, then they can ask for unreasonable pay increases and benefits that they do not deserve without having to worry about being tossed aside like the trash that they are. Instead, of someone truly believes that they deserve more that they are willing to risk their job security for these better conditions, then they are not being greedy. They are being sincere, and those people deserve to be negotiated with rather than the spoiled brats with job security, stomping their feet and whining for better pay and more benefits.
Overall, everything I have been ranting about has to deal with one, all-encompassing idea. That idea is liberty. American liberals have this twisted view that government should be here to serve us. That is only partially correct. Our government was never made to protect us from every little inconvenience. Our government is here to keep the nation stable and to protect us from external threats. Those threats being other governments or other citizens that are out to attack others. Every other threat to our happiness can be attributed, mostly, to our own carelessness. The government does not and should not have the resources to hold our hands at every turn and every bump in the road we face. We are capable of succeeding on our own, and our government's job is just to see that nobody interferes with that pursuit.
The hearts of liberals are in the right place. The problem is that they allow their emotions to determine what is the best course of action to take. While that may not always be a bad way to make decisions, it should not be what we base our views on. American liberals live in this fantasy world where everybody is altruistic and we all get along. That is not reality, and because of that, we cannot have government policies that embrace this false sense of reality. Liberals only need remember the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have done unto you. If you do not want someone to steal from you, do not support the government stealing from others, and so on. It is that simple. Think rationally, and you will see that CLASSIC liberalism is the way to go instead of American liberalism.