Liberalism has caused every major issue in the world today
That sounds like a political rant… and it is. But it is also supported by facts.
For instance, let’s take the current financial crisis. It was caused by the collapse of the mortgage market, which in turn was caused by the government forcing banks to make loans to people who couldn’t pay them back and couldn’t afford the interest payments. This government mandate, called the Community Reinvestment Act, forced banks to make loans to poor people under threat of monetary penalty and loss of their charter. The intent was to make sure that everyone who wanted a home could get one, whether they could actually afford it or not. After all, it is “unfair” if only some people own homes. This liberal concept of “fairness” is the direct cause of the collapse of the economy.
Let’s take the Social Security system next. Here is a concept that is pure liberalism. Someone somewhere decided that it is the government’s job to force people to save money for their retirements, and decided to Do Something About It. That alone qualifies as liberalism… the idea that it is the government’s job to interfere in the decision making of individuals. Not content with mandating that people save for their retirements, whether they want to or not, the government also decided that they and they alone should be the entity that controls those retirement monies. After all, it isn’t enough to tell people to save money and invest it. They have to do the investing for us. The idea that people are too stupid to do their own investing and therefore the government has to do it is also a liberal attitude. Never mind that any bureaucracy is by its very nature less capable of decision-making than individuals and less efficient at implementing those decisions once they are made. The government believed that they were the sole party capable of handling our money. Not content with simply having that money in their control, they then decided to use that money for purposes other than paying benefits for people’s retirement. They made Social Security money part of the government’s general fund, and used those funds for any program that needed funding. As a result the Social Security system is broke. This idea that the government is the sole caretaker of our retirements is pure big-government liberalism, and the result is a broken retirement system.
Here’s another issue of great importance to many Americans… the loss of jobs to foreign workers. In some cases these foreign workers are in foreign countries. In other cases the foreign workers are here in the USA illegally. How did this come to be? Well, in the case of jobs that have been shipped overseas, it is most often due to the high costs of operations in the USA compared to overseas. The costs of running a business in the USA have been driven up by government interventions in the markets. Taxes, regulations and minimum wage requirements all drive up our costs of operations, and the only way for businesses to remain profitable (forget competitive) is to ship jobs overseas where the costs of labor, taxes and regulation are much lower. And in the cases where the jobs have been taken by illegal immigrants, labor costs have forced some businesses, where jobs cannot be shipped overseas, to use unskilled illegal labor, which is cheaper than the minimum wage requirements. Government intervention, albeit for the best of intentions (safety regulations, making sure workers get paid a fair wage, and making sure that government has enough money to operate) has conspired yet again to accomplish exactly the opposite of what was intended. Liberal intervention in the markets at work again.
Worried about gas prices? It is the liberal environ-mentalists who are keeping us from digging for more oil which would lower oil prices. The liberals also want government to fund research intro alternative fuels instead of letting the free market system work on the problem. Here’s a hint: government has never, ever invented any piece of technology, much less developed it into a working system that the people could use on a day-to-day basis. All such technological breakthroughs come from corporate America, not the government. They happen when someone in the private sector sees an unfilled need and provides a solution to that need to be sold for a profit. Alternative fuels should be no different. Government places so many regulations, caveats and requirements on anyone who does any work for them that they can never accomplish the task required. Letting the government solve technological problems is naïve liberalism.
How about foreign affairs? Don’t like the war in Iraq? It only happened because the UN, that bastion of Liberalism, allowed Saddam Hussein to break every agreement he signed after the cease-fire at the end of the Gulf War in 1992. Leaving aside the oil-for-food scam, in which the UN was involved up to it’s neck, the UN also allowed Saddam to acquire the components of WMDs, including biological agents, chemical agents, and nuclear weapons materials… including 500 TONS of weapons-grade yellowcake uranium, now sitting in US storage facilities. (Bet most of you missed that little bit of information. The liberal media kept it pretty quiet.) The UN allowed Saddam to abuse his own nationals with rape, torture, mass murders and “disappearances” of “political dissidents”. All of the reasons that we went to war with Iraq were direct results of the workings (or non-workings) of the UN. Liberalism at its worst.
How about Darfur? Another problem we can chalk up to UN mismanagement. Heck, half of the UN officials who have worked on Darfur have been involved in the rapes and abuses they were supposed to prevent.
China’s human-rights abuses? This is caused by a mixture of China’s communist leanings and the UN’s mismanagement. China’s environmental abuses? The liberal idea of the Kyoto Treaty actually pays China for not meeting its requirements under the accord. Another case of liberal naiveté.
Problem after problem throughout the world can be traced directly back to liberal ideas, positions and activities as the direct causes. Either because the liberal solution to the problem was ineffective and/or counterproductive, or because someone who wasn't inclined toward peace took advantage of liberal naiveté.
So why in the world would anyone vote for the most liberal Senator to ever run for the office of President when the policies he advocates are the direct causes of all the biggest problems we are trying to deal with as a society?
Elliot
