I am a died-in-the-wool, tried-and-true, unapologetic liberal. I know that some of the folks on the far right create stuff like this just to piss me off and spread their propaganda to world. Try as I might, I couldn't possibly formulate one short, pithy, general response to this horrific bastardization of the English language, so let's take these one at a time, shall we?:
1) You believe the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of funding. The lack of funding for education and prevention does have a direct effect on the spread of the virus -- I'm sorry, but that's not debatable. "Abstinence only" education is one of the main reasons that new infections are on the rise throughout the country.
2) You are against capital punishment, but for abortion on demand, in short you support protecting the guilty and killing the innocent. The flawed assumption here is that the only way to properly punish those guilty of capital crimes is by imposition of the death penalty. That is incorrect. Personally, I have no problem with giving those convicted of particularly heinous crimes a sentence of life without the possiblilty of parole. Frankly, I think that that is in many ways a harsher punishment than lethal injection. But, further, I don't believe that the state should be in the business of handing out death sentences -- the death penalty has been abolished in nearly all the civilized countries of the free world. Most of the countries that still allow capital punishment are nations (China, North Korea, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq) that have been cited by Amnesty International and other Human Rights organizations for a plethora of human rights abuses.
There's also the issue that the death penalty, as curently administered, may be racially biased (blacks are far more likely to receive a sentence of death, rather than life imprisonment, than whites committing factually similar crimes) and that reversable errors have been found to frequently occur in capital cases -- DNA evidence has completely exonerated hundreds of men scheduled to be executed (See, the cases overturned by Barry's Scheck's Innocence Project at Cardozo Law School, as well as dozens of other cases nationwide).
The system doesn't work and certainly the killing of innocent people (as has happened often in the US) is the shame and degradation of any truly civilized society. This isn't about liberalism, it's about justice.
3) You believe that the same public school teacher who can't teach 4th graders how to read is qualified to teach those same kids about sex. The flawed assumption is that all or most 4th grade public school teachers are unqualified, which simply is not true. Further, last I checked, sex education in any school requires consent of the parent -- if the parent doesn't want their child to participate, the school doesn't force it onto him or her. The fact is that most parents are loathe to discuss sex with their children, and as a matter of public health (and for the good of the children) public education attempts to educate kids to protect themselves -- so necessary in this day and age.
4) You believe that trial lawyers are selfless heroes and doctors are overpaid. Huh?
5) You believe that guns in the hands of law-abiding Americans are more of a threat than nuclear weapons in the hands of the Red Chinese. The RED Chinese? Is this 1973? Did Henry Kissinger write this question?
6) You believe that global temperatures is not affected by cyclical, documented changes in the Sun, but is really affected by SUVs. That's right, car emissions have absolutely no effect on the environment and that global warming is a myth -- ooh, somebody give me a tree to hug.
7) You believe that gender roles are artificial but being gay is natural. Um, yeah. "Gender roles????" That's right -- she better be barefoot and pregnant and have my dinner on the table or there will be HELL to pay .... Where's my Levitra?
8 ) You believe that businesses create oppression and governments create prosperity. Well...... I suppose that's true of SOME businesses (like Halliburton) and SOME governments (like this one under Clinton), but otherwise ..... um, NO.
9) You believe that hunters don't care about nature but animal rights activists who've never been outside Seattle do. Well, not sure exactly who believes the first half of that, and as far as the second half, PERSONALLY (and I do mean personally) -- if it's referring to PETA -- since they don't believe in ANY medical testing on animals (whether it be for AIDS drugs, cancer drugs, Alzheimer's drugs, etc...), I personally don't support them. I can't speak for any other liberals on that.
10) You believe that self-esteem is more important than actually doing something to earn it. Didn't realize this was a political point, but, as far as early childhood development is concerned, that is often the case. Instilling a child with confidence and self-belief is often a self-fulfilling prophesy -- a child who believes he can do certain task is far more likely to be able to accomplish that task than a child without that belief. This is also true of adults. Not sure what the hell this question is criticizing about liberals ......
11) You believe there was no art before federal funding. OK, exhaustion is starting to set in........ Yeah, that's right. The National Endowment for the Arts was established in 1965. Before that -- No Art. Anywhere. Uh-uh. Just didn't happen.... Yeah, federal funding of the arts is just a bad idea -- Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Mozart ..... can't imagine they had any funding -- their wealthy patrons just happened to be, in effect, the main supports of the governments of their times....
Ya know, I could name a thousand masterpieces of art, music, literature, theatre and culture that wouldn't exist were it not for "government" patronage of one form or another, but I'll save that for another time.
12) You believe the free market that gives us 500+ channels of entertainment can't deliver the quality that PBS does. First, I didn't realize conservatives hated PBS. Only liberal children watch Sesame Street? Mister Rogers? Nova? Nature? Tucker Carlson's Show? Damn Liberals!
And if the conservatives look at all of those other 500 channels and think "oooh, quality entertainment," well then, god bless 'em.
13) You believe the NRA is evil, because it stands up for the Constitution, while the ACLU is good, because they attempt to create a new Constitution out of thin air. Nice to see that there's no slant in any of these statements. The ACLU represents the First Amendment, regardless of the parties seeking its protection. Over the years, the ACLU has represented Nazis, the Klan, the Panthers, and groups from the ultra-right and ultra-left wing of the political spectrum. They are non-partisan. They've never tried to "create a new Constitution" -- rather, they've tried to protect the old one from misinformed swipes such as this one.
14) You believe that taxes are too low but ATM fees are too high. Yep (actually, just taxes on the top 1% of the populace -- the rest of us could use a real tax break, which we haven't seen in the last three-and-a-half years)
15) You believe that Harriet Tubman, Cesar Chavez and Gloria Steinem are more important to American history than George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Dolly Madison or Thomas Edison.
A poorly constructed, cheap and dishonest comparison. Washington and Jefferson are unassailable. The others are great Americans of extraordinary and groundbreaking accomplishment (though, I find it interesting that the most acceptable white woman to them was Dolly Madison -- I guess they find Susan B. Anthony and Margaret Sanger too "radical"). I notice they omitted Martin Luther King, Jr. from their none-so-subtle attack on non-traditional American heroes -- guess it would hurt their pathetic little argument.
16) You believe that standardized tests are racist, but racial quotas and set-asides aren't. OK, I'm not falling for this one -- we all went through this argument a decade ago with Hernstein and Murray's "The Bell Curve" (and the hundreds of essays refuting it, some which are contained in the Jacoby and Glauberman edited "The Bell Curve Debate") -- which unearthed long-discredited crackpot neo-eugenics theories of ethnic inferiority that some on the press initially found worthy of discussion.
It is unquestioned that at various times, cultural biases have been found in certain questions on the SATs and other standardized tests -- the College Board has had to throw out hundreds of questions over the years for this reason. I won't take the time to go into what the various reasonings behind them were.
"Quotas" and "set-asides" have been buzz words in the "reverse discrimination" scare tactics of the right-wing going going back to Reagan and before. The fact is that these were NEVER a regular occurrence. These were, in nearly every instance, punitive court-sponsored remedies that were put into place in extreme cases of racial discrimination in which the only reliable method of desegregating a particularly resistant school district or business entity was to place fixed numerical goals upon them. Such measures took place very rarely and only after evidence that repeated voluntary programs had proven ineffective (and/or ignored).
The vast majority of affirmative action plans involved voluntary attempts on the behalf of education or business groups to increase the diversity of their ranks, without any mandatory goals or interference of legal entities of any kind.
17) You believe that second-hand smoke is more dangerous than HIV. Not worth dignifying -- next question (and, for the record, I love second hand smoke)
18 ) You believe Hillary Clinton is really a lady and Rosie O'Donnell is really funny. Um, far as I know, Hillary Clinton is biologically female. Beyond that, damn right she's a "Lady" and a damn fierce one.
As far as Rosie -- cheap shot.
19) You believe that conservatives are racists, but that black people couldn't make it without your help. ....where to begin..... you know what? I won't...... myths and lies, myths and lies........
20) You believe the only reason socialism hasn't worked anywhere it's been tried is because the right people haven't been in charge.
It strikes me that Republicans are the ones these days who are advocating a brand of "socialism" -- the producers possess the political power and the means of distributing all the goods within the economy. And frankly, in 2004, and if I am reading the statement above correctly, I guess that the current administration is proof that such a system can "work" and exist (in ways the Russians never imagined) -- though not in terms of classic theoretical socialism, but in terms of oligarchy, where all the power (political, social and economic) is held in the hands of small ruling elite ..... and, yes, I know, I'm going to catch hell for saying that ......
21) You believe that posting the "Ten Commandments" in schools will hurt the children, but putting "Heather Has Two Mommies" or "Ask Alice" (on the internet) won't. Not a question of whether the Ten Commandments do or don't hurt children (they probably don't -- any more than Barney and the Teletubbies hurt them..... never mind), but there's a little thing called the Establishment Clause of The First Amendment -- Separation of Church and State. Teach the Ten Commandments until you're blue in the face at home, but teachers in public school "shalt not," at least according to our founding fathers. And "Heather Has Two Mommies" is an utterly harmless little story of inclusion and acceptance -- it doesn't
promote anything.
22) You called Vietnam Veterans "baby killers" but think that allowing a woman to suck her baby into a sink is a constitutionally protected right.
Such an artful turn of phrase -- it's almost like poetry....
23) You think sexual harassment is rampant, date rape pervasive, domestic violence common and Paula Jones is lying.
That's right ..... so suck me down a sink already!
24) You think trees have feelings, animals can conceptualize and the fetus is a blob of protoplasm. Well .... I'm generally not drawn to trees for my emotional relationships (though I have an ex who was roughly as warm as a scotch pine), and generally speaking, "animals" are not my preferred intellectual sparring partners, but, sorry, by definition, a fetus IS a "blob of protoplasm." That's not such a bad thing -- some grow up to be very nice, if emotionally withholding, scotch pines......
25) You consider the Catholic bishops noble and idealistic when they oppose capital punishment and welfare cuts but dangerous fanatics trying to legislate their theology when they defend the right to life. No, I pretty much consider most of them to be unrepentant pedophiles and dangerous homophobic hypocrites .... but thanks for asking....
See, liberals CAN be fun.........
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
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"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Updated On: 7/16/04 at 08:09 AM
You believe that businesses create oppression and governments create prosperity. 
