What Liberals Think...and Why

I know this is an old post that's been wiped but, figured as a progress I'd go through these and maybe add some commentary.

1. Liberals are pro-choice. I wouldn't say we view it as "forced slavery" (that's a bit redundant anyway) just a matter of rights, and what is the federal governments role. I don't think the government should be telling anybody what they can and cannot do with their body. To me that's the very definition of "big government". How do you even enforce those laws anyway? We say that before abortion was legal women would attempt to use whatever means to abort the pregnancy which usually ended up with them greatly hurting themselves. Some women's bodies can't handle pregnancy, there's just to many variables, and what if someone miscarry's or has a still birth? Do we charge them with murder? It's just to personal and to complicated of an issue to have the federal, or even state government coming in and telling women what to do. I say it's best to leave up to the woman, her family, and her doctor.

2. Liberals are pro-environment. One thing I'd point out that conservatives often fail to address when discussing the environment is that it's also directly tied to our economy. According to the WHO about 1 million people die each year do to air pollution alone. The more polluted and screwed up the environment gets, the more we end up paying for it in health care costs, depleted resources, and opportunity costs which add up extremely fast. And renewable energy isn't just about avoiding pollution or climate change, we have a limited amount of oil and natural gas on this planet and we're running out fast. Making the switch now when oil's cheap will be much better then trying to manufacture solar panels wind farms at 10 or 20 dollars per gallon of gas.  Also, while population control is a future issue, it's not really a big one. Usually the healthier and more educated a society is the less children people tend to have because they no longer run the risk of losing children due to disease and what not. So it's not about forcing people to have some arbitrary number of kids, it's getting people around the world educated and health so they don't need to have 8 kids each.

3. Liberals believe that the government is responsible for the safety and well-being of it's citizens. Well... Isn't everyone? That's kind of the point of government. To look out for the safety and well being of it's citizens. We can debate over specific programs and ideas like gun control and welfare but others are just no-brainers like Social Security and Medicare. You take those programs away and our economy will crash faster than you can say, "wait, what?"

4. Liberals are against the death penalty. Pretty much. Also, considering the massive amount of bureaucracy you have to go through to execute somebody it's cheaper to just keep them locked up in prison for life. Now I often hear SOMEONE say, "well just take em out back and put a bullet in their head!". To which I'd reply, I CONSTANTLY hear conservatives tell me government cannot do anything right, do you really trust it to execute people IT finds guilty? I know you don't hear them often but I know I've heard a few stories of people who've been released after being in prison for 30-40 years after new evidence finds them innocent. It's a gamble I just don't thinks worth it considering it's so much cheaper to just keep people locked up. 

5. Illegal immigration/amnesty. I don't support amnesty. It's a tough situation, they ARE here ILLEGALLY, but at the same time I support people looking for the American dream. I think we need to start setting up guest worker programs that make it easy to enter the country and get a working visa while not just granting blanket amnesty. I think the DREAM act would be a great start because it gives citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants who join the military or have shown outstanding work in education and wish to become graduate students here in the US.

6. Liberals believe that the Judeo-Christian ideology has been oppressive. I think that's WAAAAAAY to generalized. I know liberals who're border line fundamentalist Christians. I'm an Atheist myself though.

 Would that same person have sneered at an "ethnic" faith?

Eh, I think all religious or spiritual faith is pointless. Be it Christian, Buddhism, Islam, etc. I think the reasons most liberals don't mention Buddhism though is because it's very self contained. You don't see many Buddhists trying to push their faith on other people.

7. Gay marriage. Liberals think that the ability to marry the person you want to marry (regardless of gender) is a civil right. Not just Liberals, the Supreme Court has said it's a right. 18 times.

8. Globalism. Liberals think that we're all in this together, and we all need to cooperate to solve the problems that plague mankind. (poverty, disease, war, etc..) Somewhat true. We need unified action to tackle certain problems. For example the US can't be the only country trying to combat global warming, every country does. But do we need a global body telling us what to do all the time? Hell no. But we do need some organized way to tackle the problems that effect all of us.

9. Liberals think that human nature is basically good. lol, that actually made me laugh. Humans kind of suck, but we're a nifty species, and I have a lot of hope for us. When we get past the labels and ideology and actually discuss issues we can make some great things happen.  But is human nature inherently good? No, human nature is inherently motivated for survival. That's it. We'll do whatever it takes to survive and make our lives as great as possible in the time we have.  Which is great for innovation and is what drives a free market, but we can't just let people do whatever they want. We saw what happens when we give bankers a free market and they screwed us, stole all our money, and made themselves rich in the process. That's why we organize and form governments to protect us from ourselves and everyone else in the world that would try to take us over. 

Anyway, that's my two cents.