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What is a Liberal?

Liberal not equal to Democrat

It should be noted at the outset that the terms "Liberal" and "Democrat" are not synonymous. The Democratic party tends to run left of center, but can on rare occasion be non-liberal in its politics. Within the Democratic Party, you will find many liberals/socialists, a group of centrists, and a very few conservatives.

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The Short Answer

Since this is not a blog about liberalism, I won’t spend a lot of time defining a liberal - at least not beyond the basics. That said, I won’t pretend that the definition I propose is objective or terribly accurate. It is simply what I have observed. So my quick observations, liberalism is:

  • aggressively intolerant of ideas, thoughts, words, and actions that they disagree with (despite very vocal proclamations to the contrary)
  • committed to the ends, tolerating any means necessary to achieve their objectives
  • committed to death (abortion, euthanasia, defunding combat troops, and gutting the military and intelligence organizations)
  • antagonistic to traditional family values, religious belief and their expression
  • incredibly successful in "educating" and winning the hearts (sadly not the minds) of young, captive audiences
  • antagonistic to God-given rights and constitutional authority
  • as comfortable with lies and deception as they are with the weighty moral authority of Hollywood luminaries

Defining Principles of Liberalism
(Source: Conservative-Resources.com)

  1. Belief in positive law: Liberals see man as the ultimate author of what of is right and wrong, good and evil. More to the point, it is the government that grants and guarantees rights. This is not to say that many liberals are not "spiritual", but most are non-conventional in their beliefs, often distrusting organized religion.
  2. Faith in progress: Liberals do not advocate progress to some ideal or utopia. They believe they can make tomorrow better than today through political and social experimentation. Using the government as the mechanism for crafting and imposing their “progressive” ideas.
  3. Preference for equality over liberty: When forced to choose between equality and liberty, liberals see it to be the greater good to minimize liberty to ensure/enforce equality. (See the definition of a conservative for a more complete description of this tradeoff.)
  4. Belief in the benevolence of government and individuals: To liberals, humans are good by nature and if they are corrupted, society or economic injustice is to blame. To prevent such an injustice, government can and should play an active role in the lives of its citizens, particularly the disadvantaged.
  5. Belief in the perfectibility of human beings: Liberals believe that every individual and each government can be virtuous and contribute positively if properly educated (loosely defined as a person’s upbringing and sum of life his experiences). By extension, it is critically important that everyone receives a proper education - one best crafted and delivered in a way that liberals approve of and the state directs.
  6. Belief in the community: To liberalism, rugged individualism is not a virtue but a sellout. Society is much better off when all individuals are working together towards a common end. At its root, liberalism is a desire for the kind of community that can only be achieved through comprehensive equality and "progress" and then giving oneself to that community.

Liberal Hot Buttons
(Source: Conservapedia.com)

  • Taxpayer-funded and/or legalized abortion
  • Banning of prayer in classrooms and school sponsored events
  • Support for gun control
  • Support of obscenity and pornography as a First Amendment right
  • Income redistribution, usually through progressive taxation (higher tax rates for the wealthy)
  • Government-rationed medical care, such as Universal Health Care
  • Taxpayer-funded and government-controlled public education
  • The denial of inherent gender differences
  • Legalized same-sex marriage
  • Implementation of affirmative action
  • Political correctness
  • Support of labor unions
  • Teaching acceptance of promiscuity through sexual "education" rather than teaching the young to abstain from sex.
  • A "living Constitution" that is reinterpreted as liberals prefer, rather than how it was intended
  • Government programs to rehabilitate criminals
  • Abolition of the death penalty
  • Environmentalism
  • Disarmament treaties
  • Globalism
  • Opposition to an interventionalist American foreign policy
  • Opposition to full private property rights
  • Reinstating the Fairness Doctrine (Requires radio stations to provide equal time for differing points of view. So, if a station runs the Rush Limbaugh show, they would have to run a liberal talk show of equal length, regardless of profitability or the audience preferences.)
  • Most likely supporters of the theory of evolution and other atheistic ideologies in the Western World
  • Opposition to domestic wire-tapping as authorized in the Patriot Act

Liberal Organizations