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After my last post, here’s a reality check. Bill Kristol shows exactly why liberals view many conservatives as homophobic, small-minded and logically-challenged. In a piece titled Don’t Mess With Success, Kristol puts forth his argument for not repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
But, “It’s the right thing to do,” said the president.
Here is contemporary liberalism in a nutshell: No need to consider costs as well as benefits. No acknowledgment of competing goods or coexisting rights. No appreciation of the constraints of public sentiment or the challenges of organizational complexity. No sense that not every part of society can be treated dogmatically according to certain simple propositions. Just the assertion that something must be done because it is in some abstract way “the right thing.”
Kristol and his ilk have shown us time and time again that “the right thing” is a concept not easily understood by the conservative brain. Whether it’s gay rights, global warming or health care reform, conservatives choose to be on the side of “me” and corporate interests over those of the ordinary citizen. If they’re not gay, then there is no need to provide equal rights to those that are. If weather is not affecting them in any adverse way and Exxon thinks it bad for business to deal with CO2 emmissions, then calling global warming a hoax is fair game. If they have adequate health insurance for themselves, then there is no need to consider that a broken health care system is not only killing thousands each year but is, in truth, bankrupting the country.
Kristol goes on…
The advocates of repeal say, it’s a matter of basic rights. No, it’s not. Leave aside the fact that there are difficult and unresolved questions of how our society should deal in various areas of public policy with questions of sexual orientation. There is no basic right to serve in the military. That’s why forms of discrimination we would ban in civilian life are permitted: Women have less opportunity to fight than men. The disabled are discriminated against, as are the short, the near-sighted, and the old.
I won’t bother refuting any of the nonsense Kristol writes here except to point out that comparing discrimination of gays to that of the disabled is in essence to claim that being gay is a form of disablement. This is clearly homophobic belief in its purest form.
If you’ve ever had the misfortune of attempting to debate wingnuts on the big issues, you then surely know that logic and common sense have no effect on them. Your time would be better spent debating a brick wall. They lack the ability to critically think beyond a fixed set of talking points they’ve picked up from the media trash they look to for guidance. And if you try to switch from logic to compassion and empathy, you soon discover that they’re completely devoid of these two humanly traits.
Furthermore, they’re cowards who unconvincingly attempt to mask their bigotry and selfishness in hypocritical rhetoric. Unable to debate on facts, they shroud their true intent and feelings behind an avalanche of lies hoping to smother all truth and honest debate. And when they’re called out for their lies, they throw what they believe is the ultimate insult. They call you a liberal.
Well to every conservative lowlife who has ever called me a liberal thinking it to be a disparaging label, I can only say, thank you. I can think of no sweeter compliment that that.
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i would actually like to read your refutation of “there is no basic right to serve in the military”
kristol is certainly a homophobe, and not only that, he’s terrible with metaphor
keep up the good fight!
your fellow liberal,
brian
the problem as I see it is that people that are liberal/progressive need to make CONservative a dirty word the way it has been done to liberals. these people don’t care about what they do as long as they think they have won, they would let the country get nuked if they had somewhere to hideout, google starve the beast, that is the conservative mentality. the only reason Republicans are calling themselves conservatives is because Republican got such a bad name under the true conservative G.W. Bush.
defolts@7.35p is exactly right. We “liberals” have ALLOWED conservatives to sully our image. Let’s get it back.