Is being liberal really such a bad thing?

Why not a Liberal?

Half Sigma explains why he is not a liberal:

I am not a liberal because liberals are ruled by guilt. This is why liberals seldom care much about the middle class. Liberals only want to help the poor. Liberals think that the middle class in the United States has it so much better than the rest of the world so that by helping the middle class they are increasing the inequality of the world. Liberals truly do hate America because they feel guilty about American being such a great country and they want to alleviate their guilt by ruining America.

Now I am not a bleeding heart liberal either and lie somewhere in the moderate middle. But I do identify with many liberal concerns but also agree with Half Sigma’s contention that liberals tend to ignore the middle class and focus too much on the poor. The Indian middle class is growing exponentially these days and few weeks back there was a major discussion in the Indian blogosphere on the treatment of the middle class by the government. However, Half Sigma’s last line is way off the mark because I don’t believe the quest for social equity is ruining America; in fact, it defines America and sets an example for the rest of the world to follow.

“Why not a Liberal?” [Short URL: http://www.ipatrix.com/?p=1461] was published Thursday, June 15th, 2006 at 3:00 am by Patrix, filed under Governance, Philosophy, Politics, and tagged as Governance, Philosophy. Both comments and linkbacks are closed.

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gawker
I just love it when the half sigmas and the coulters of this world clarify our thoughts by letting us know what we liberals are supposed to think. I also love it when they use the word “liberal” to define who the hell knows what section of the populace and then proceed to liberally smear them by treating them as a giant ball of flesh without individual beliefs and thoughts. I guess half sigma would like to simplify the world where there exist only two types of people : the liberals and enlightened demigods such as he. Well good for him if he prefers to live such a black and white existence.
http://www.retributions.wordpress.com confused
Half Sigma lost me when he said liberals hate America. I wont say that even for Vinod Mehta and his kinds.
A lot of liberals including Howard Dean supported the invasion of Afganistan and they were sceptical(rightly it turns out) of Iraq war. I am not sure why that should count as hating America.
Also, Liberals in this country focus on middle class, they cannot deride it the same way as Mehta does and hope to get away with it. What they rant against is giving tax breaks to the rich; which means people making more than 200,000$ a year.
Less said about Coulter, the better. Remember her latest rant against 9/11 widows, now that what I would call hatred.
http://palscape.wordpress.com BongoPondit
The ‘liberals hate America’ has been a highly effective right-wing blogospheric propaganda. It is easy to convince people of such a balck-white demarcation rather than engage in a nuanced dialogue. It has been carefully orchestrated by using a combination of extreme nut-jobs like Michelle Malkin, Coulter etc and following it up with the so-called moderate/liberatarians like Instapundit.
http://ipatrix.com Patrix
Gawker, I usually enjoy Half Sigma’s writing and tend to agree with his analyses but in this post that I quote he uses the emotional argument that he accuses the Left of. The world is simply not bipolar as there is this huge swinging middle who tend to think through each opinion they are offered.

Confused, the political awareness and economic understanding is better in the US than in India where still emotions tend to rule. Things have been changing in the US too and rhetoric has worked at least for Bush.
Bongo, accusations usually work at least in the short term even if they aren’t true. John Kerry found it the hard way and as Confused says, less said about Coulter and Malkin the better. Instapundit has been increasingly tilting toward the far right in spite of his claims of being in the centre. At least he supports gay marriage but only haltingly and certainly not as vociferously as he supports the pro-war faction.

Nerve Endings Firing Away

Why not a Liberal?

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