What is Liberal?

I hope we can keep in mind that this thread is about the different ways these terms are understood, so that if I answer you, you will understand that I'm showing you how a conservative regards the ideas you have expressed rather than getting into an argument about it. Absolutely the opposite from the conservative point of view. Liberals are for managing every aspect of life by government power, forcing us to pay high taxes for social programs we may object to, forcing laws on us via a leftist judiciary, against the "will of the people" that was SUPPOSED to be the foundation of our laws as reflected in our representative legislature. These take away the rights of the people, the very freedoms enjoyed by the American colonists that the founders wanted to preserve. Also, as Tal pointed out, liberals are against the constitutional freedom of the right to keep and bear arms (against a tyrannical leftist government perhaps, if it ever comes to that). Liberals are also for "hate speech" and "hate crime" laws, which are a serious encroachment on personal freedom, especially the freedom of speech but even the freedom of thought (hence the term "Thought Police" by which the right characterizes the left), actually daring to take away even our freedom to think things the left disagrees with, and subject us to Washington. They are actually considering treating as criminals those who preach the Bible and those who have an opinion about religions or ideologies that the left disagrees with. Murder is against the law in all sane societies. Redefining it as a "right to privacy" is a bleak joke, sort of like arguing Jeffrey Daumer off the hook by a purported "right" to consume people in the privacy of his home. Yes, I know this is an exaggeration of a comparison for many reasons, but it should make the point.Gays HAVE the right to privacy. What the liberals are trying to do is FORCE THEIR LIFESTYLE ON EVERYBODY ELSE, the opposite of privacy for them or anybody else. It is the liberals who are trying to cram gay marriage down the throats of everybody else, and the conservatives are merely reacting, not forcing anything on anybody. Also, it's basically only gay marriage conservatives object to, not any basic rights. Gays HAVE all the rights and freedoms of society already and if they want to form personal unions legally there's no problem with that either. The problem is with government tyranny forcing a redefinition of marriage against the will of the majority. Some definition of "freedom" the left has. You already said this. Again, the controlling is coming from the other side and conservatives are trying to fight it. As for sodomy laws, we've taken away just about all of them by now, and they hadn't been enforced in years anyway, so this is a nonproblem. And again, calling murder a "choice" is really a diabolically clever word trick I must say, and ---- denying religious freedom? You MUST be joking. Who is taking down all the symbols of our once-Christian civilization? Who is making it impossible for Christians to rent space for events because it might be a violation of the "separation of church and state." What a joke THAT is. Who is taking all expressions of Christianity out of our public schools, so that kids can't even show their Christian affiliation there with a t shirt or a prayer or an essay about a Bible character --as if a child were the Congress making a law establishing a religion -- which is what the First Amendment is about. Meanwhile what they are actually doing is "preventing the free exercise thereof" -- the other half of the First Amendment. Except that apparently OTHER religions are allowed expression. Who is calling the expression of Biblical truths "hate speech?"Teaching children in the public schools that homosexuality is a natural option is interfering with the religious rights of many children and their parents. Handing out condoms in the public schools is interfering with the religious rights of many children and their parents. Etc. etc. etc. This is why I'm for Christians leaving the public schools. There's no fighting it any more. The public schools are absolutely committed to taking away the religious rights of Christians, with government force.And I'd add here, really none of these things is "liberal" in the true or old sense of the term. That is why some of us conservatives prefer the term "leftist." This kind of twisting of the idea of freedom into something that is really often the opposite of the constitutional meaning of the term does in fact have roots in Marxist ideology as promoted by the New Left of the sixties, if not *classical* Marxism.

Nobody on the conservative side gives a damn where you put any part of your anatomy as long as you do it in private. The encroachment on freedoms is coming from those who want to force everybody to treat as good right and normal what we do not believe is good right or normal. Nevertheless WE are not trying to legislate ANYTHING along these lines, we're just trying to stop the Left from legislating all kinds of BS the majority doesn't want forced on us. Just leave it alone. THAT's freedom.

Please be coherent. Thank you.

I can't tell from a brief glance through that very lengthy report exactly what it is about. There seem to be questions concerning incitement against gays and that I don't approve. Mere speech is the issue here.This thread is supposed to be about DEFINING what is liberal and what is conservative, not just continuing to engage in the usual battles about our differing positions, though that's difficult and I go over the line easily myself. Nevertheless if your point is to help define the distinctions this long legal report is no help. The definition of the task of the Supreme Court is interpretation, not lawmaking, which is the province of the Legislature, and Thomas Jefferson even argued forcibly that the way the court was set up invited abuses of just the sort we are now experiencing. For decades now the judiciary has essentially been making laws. A state court takes a case such as Roe v Wade and decides in favor of Wade, and when it is appealed to the leftist Supreme Court, they find an excuse to reverse the decision --unConstitutionally according to many judges -- and not only at that point does that state have to allow abortion but somehow the entire nation is required to legalize abortion -- against the will of the people, who, again, according to the Constitution, were supposed to be the voice of the government. No more, the justices are running the country, against the Constitution and the will of the people.However, again, you are simply having an argument and stating your liberal case, instead of helping to define the categories -- Liberal, Conservative, and also Right Wing, Left Wing, and so on.And again I don't even know what your liberal case is in the first example. What was the "crime" committed exactly? I don't have time to read through the whole thing.

You don't know what you are talking about. Nobody is forcing religion on anyone. What is happening is that traditions that have been in place SINCE THE FOUNDING are being TAKEN AWAY by liberals. If those traditions were in any way at odds with the Constitution they would not have existed. The Founders themselves instituted Christian prayer in government functions and many Presidents have called for Christian observances, including fasting and prayer, and many early Supreme Court decisions DID define the nation as Christian, despite all the leftist revisionist claptrap people have swallowed in recent years, including this idiotic revisionist defintion of the "separation of church and state" that was just invented in the last few decades and has nothing in common with what the founders meant by it.

It amounts to making laws, as I said, no matter what legalistic language is used to make it appear to be mere interpretation. The conservative position is that they long ago left their Constitutional role. They overturn laws by redefining the Constitution according to their own leftist vision rather than according to original intent.The conservative argument is that abortion is murder, not "biology" and you simply betray your leftist mentality by insisting on such terminology.Let's try to stick to sorting out what the different political positions ARE, as that was the aim of this thread. My position is that your views are leftist. You may not consider the Supreme Court leftist, but I do, and many conservatives agree with me.

That is correct. Liberals ignore all the Christian practices instituted by the founders and try to pretend that laws such as these you list imply the founders intended a secular nation. Conservatives understand that such laws had specific purposes and in no way contradict the basic Christian nature of the nation and its government. In fact truly they reflect the Christian nature of the government that was intended. I only found two Supreme Court cases. In this talk by David Barton he mentions various court decisions, not just Supreme Court, on various aspects of Christian nature of the nation in relation to the Ten Commandments: Another one from David Barton's site: A Mormon site lists a few: And I just like how this guy said a few things:
http://www.geocities.com/guysworldtx/separate.html No, I agree with that as stated. The problem is with the current aggressive attempt to define the government as secular, even using such definitions as this which means no such thing, which ignores the Christian practices that have always been a part of our government, and the Christian law and philosophy on which the very concept of our form of government was based, and the testimony to the Christian character of the entire nation which was attested not only by many of the founders and early courts but by Toqueville and others.

Well a lot went down while I was answering arach, and now I'm not up to answering more. Except to say to jazzns I can agree with some of what you say. I'll have to take a look at it later.It would really be nice if by the end of this thread we had a classification system for the terms liberal and conservative and all the others which I thought was the purpose of the thread -- though I've been off track too -- easy to do.

The quotes from the pamphlet appear to be out of context. If they aren't I can't figure out what they are saying. They don't make sense as flat statements. And their being in a pamphlet seems defensible to me off the top of my head.The problem with that link wasn't JUST the length, it was the arrangement of the material. I couldn't tell exactly what the crime was, and I'm still not completely sure. But maybe later I'll read it through and tell you how wrong you no doubt are. Yes, it was that being proud to stand up for your liberal beliefs that was something other than taking the topic of the thread seriously.

I'm talking about practices OF the government. I was clear about that. Presidents calling for CHRISTIAN observances by the entire nation, Congress opening with prayer, Congress VOTING to open with prayer, CHRISTIAN prayer. Not MEMBERS of the government, the government functions themselves. And you are misinterpreting what Thomas Jefferson said, as liberals do.

It is not a theocracy but it WAS Christian up until very recently, NOT just the population, the government. What I wrote showed that arach, you are just ignoring everything I put in that post.This message has been edited by Faith, 07-21-2005 03:03 PM

The point was simply courts that stated the Christian nature of the nation. There are certainly quotes by various founders affirming similar ideas.But really, I was afraid this thread would turn into this kind of debate, and though I try to keep up with it to some extent I'd really rather just stick to attempting to define the differences between the viewpoints without debating their merits, as there does seem to be quite a bit of confusion about it. bobbins put in a proposal a few days ago about certain media in the UK that Canadian Steve called "leftist" though bobbins thinks they are something more to the center, I THINK, or maybe liberal but not left, I forget. I'm sure there are criteria that could be spelled out to explain why Steve views them as he does and why bobbins doesn't.Anyway, there IS a lot of confusion about how the terms are used on both sides and it doesn't really help to be getting into the same old debate.There are many ways to come at the idea of America's Christian character and I'm not going to give it up just because you find objections to this or that example. Each one no doubt can be debated endlessly.

It's a terrible reason. The real reason is that marriage is for heterosexuals. That's fine with me as long as the state doesn't tell me I have to call it a marriage.But aren't you the one who started this thread and have you given up on getting "liberal" and other categories defined?

The point of the separation between church and state was to protect religion from the encroachment of government, not to protect government from religion. That ought to be obvious from the fact that Jefferson was writing to a church body that was worries about being persecuted by an established sect that opposed some of its doctrine.

The point of the separation between church and state was to protect religion from the encroachment of government, not to protect government from religion. That ought to be obvious from the fact that Jefferson was writing to a church body that was worried about being persecuted by an established sect that opposed some of its doctrine.