What Do Liberals Believe?

Geoffrey Stone is a law professor at the University of Chicago who has delineated 10 propositions of What It Means to be A Liberal for the Chicago Tribune:

1. Liberals believe individuals should doubt their own truths and consider fairly and open-mindedly the truths of others. This is at the very heart of liberalism. Liberals understand, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once observed, that "time has upset many fighting faiths." Liberals are skeptical of censorship and celebrate free and open debate.

Already we see that there is no objective "truth" for liberals. This subjectivity is the realm of "solipsism", a form of idiocy ("idio" from the Greek for "own" or "private"). Dangerous. If there is no objective truth, then there is no morality. If I believe that it's wrong to fly a commercial plane into a civilian building in order to deliberately murder them, and Islamofascists don't, does that make the Islamofascists' truth just as viable as mine?

2. Liberals believe individuals should be tolerant and respectful of difference. It is liberals who have supported and continue to support the civil rights movement, affirmative action, the Equal Rights Amendment and the rights of gays and lesbians. (Note that a conflict between propositions 1 and 2 leads to divisions among liberals on issues like pornography and hate speech.)

I wonder then why they don't seem to give a rat's ass about the people who suffer under tyrannical regimes like Saddam Hussein's and Kim Dong Il's? The appalling misery those people suffer is not even on their radar screen. But the terrorists at Gitmo or at Abu Ghraib reap all their sympathy. Why? They claim that we have no business spreading democracy to suffering people in Iraq - is it possible that they think that those people are not quite "human" enough to wish for freedom and democracy?

3. Liberals believe individuals have a right and a responsibility to participate in public debate. It is liberals who have championed and continue to champion expansion of the franchise; the elimination of obstacles to voting; "one person, one vote;" limits on partisan gerrymandering; campaign-finance reform; and a more vibrant freedom of speech. They believe, with Justice Louis Brandeis, that "the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people."

Tell that to the liberals at Columbia U, where they physically prevented people of differing opinions to speak in a proper forum. How about the liberals who throw pies at Anne Coulter when she speaks? Immature and hypocritical, non?

4. Liberals believe "we the people" are the governors and not the subjects of government, and that government must treat each person with that in mind. It is liberals who have defended and continue to defend the freedom of the press to investigate and challenge the government, the protection of individual privacy from overbearing government monitoring, and the right of individuals to reproductive freedom. (Note that libertarians, often thought of as "conservatives," share this value with liberals.)

Freedom of press? Only when it undermines a Republican or conservative point of view. This freedom seems to apply even when the press is lying. Newsweek lied, people died. Remember Rathergate? Protecting individuals from government monitoring? You mean like protecting me from the PC police who tells me that I'm not allowed to pray in public places? That I'm not allowed to wear a crucifix in a public school? That I'm not allowed to display a cross in a park?

5. Liberals believe government must respect and affirmatively safeguard the liberty, equality and dignity of each individual. It is liberals who have championed and continue to champion the rights of racial, religious and ethnic minorities, political dissidents, persons accused of crime and the outcasts of society. It is liberals who have insisted on the right to counsel, a broad application of the right to due process of law and the principle of equal protection for all people.

Oh sure, the rights of LIBERAL minorities. Remember Clarence Thomas? How about the terrible mudslinging the liberals did to Condoleeza Rice: "Aunt Jemima". Oh and persons accused of crime? How about those who are convicted of crime? It seems that liberals are fixated on the rights of criminals and conveniently forget those of the victims. Look at the scandalous Arizona 9/11 Memorial. It's nothing but a political justification for the murders of those innocents that day.

6. Liberals believe government has a fundamental responsibility to help those who are less fortunate. It is liberals who have supported and continue to support government programs to improve health care, education, social security, job training and welfare for the neediest members of society. It is liberals who maintain that a national community is like a family and that government exists in part to "promote the general welfare."

Yup, that's right. Forget about national security. If the government would only use our tax dollars for education and welfare and force the military to have bake sales in order to fund their budget.

7. Liberals believe government should never act on the basis of sectarian faith. It is liberals who have opposed and continue to oppose school prayer and the teaching of creationism in public schools and who support government funding for stem-cell research, the rights of gays and lesbians and the freedom of choice for women.

Then why are liberals in San Francisco and Oregon permitting the practice of Islam in public schools? Why is it that students there can memorize and recite verses from the Koran and not the Bible? And banning the teaching of creationism in schools? Whatever happened to the "open mindedness" of the above Proposition Number One? Also, let's not forget, the child in the womb has absolutely no rights with liberals. The smallest, most defenseless of beings... perfectly okay to dismember and murder these little ones. So much for defending the little guy.

8. Liberals believe courts have a special responsibility to protect individual liberties. It is principally liberal judges and justices who have preserved and continue to preserve freedom of expression, individual privacy, freedom of religion and due process of law. (Conservative judges and justices more often wield judicial authority to protect property rights and the interests of corporations, commercial advertisers and the wealthy.)

Conservative judges protect the property rights of corporations??? Ever hear of Kelo v. City of New London? There the liberal justices gave private businesses the right to seize an individual's property to use for commercial development.

9. Liberals believe government must protect the safety and security of the people, for without such protection liberalism is impossible. This, of course, is less a tenet of liberalism than a reply to those who attack liberalism. The accusation that liberals are unwilling to protect the nation from internal and external dangers is false. Because liberals respect competing values, such as procedural fairness and individual dignity, they weigh more carefully particular exercises of government power (such as the use of secret evidence, hearsay and torture), but they are no less willing to use government authority in other forms (such as expanded police forces and international diplomacy) to protect the nation and its citizens.

Oh, I see. That's why they don't want profiling. It keeps us safe from terrorist attacks. The idea that liberals respect competing values is absolutely and stunningly ludicrous. Time after time we see how the liberals and their media lapdogs deliberately derail and obstruct any attempt the government endeavors to secure this nation from terrorism. Whether it be the New York Times publishing articles revealing sensitive information to Bill Clinton selling missile secrets to China, you can depend on the liberals to sell out their country.

10. Liberals believe government must protect the safety and security of the people, without unnecessarily sacrificing constitutional values. It is liberals who have demanded and continue to demand legal protections to avoid the conviction of innocent people in the criminal justice system, reasonable restraints on government surveillance of American citizens, and fair procedures to ensure that alleged enemy combatants are in fact enemy combatants. Liberals adhere to the view expressed by Brandeis some 80 years ago: "Those who won our independence ... did not exalt order at the cost of liberty."

Isn't this getting a bit repetitious? Doesn't this one sound just like the 9th one?
(H/T American Thinker)