Leftism

Progressive Death

5/2/2010 – Paul Kengor –
Progressivism is all the rage nowadays, with liberals having jettisoned the “liberal” label for the less maligned tag of “progressive.” In truth, “progressive” is a better name, more accurately describing the movement and its extremely broad, precariously unpredictable direction.

Here is the essence of the problem with progressives and their movement, which is a gigantic problem for all of America: One of the only things we really know about progressives, and that they know about themselves and their ideology, is that they favor constant “change,” “reform,” an ever-shifting, ongoing “evolution,” or, yes, progression. [Read more…]

Daily Kos Article Says Number of Abortions is “Too Low”

4/30/2010 – Sarah Knoploh –

April 28 was apparently Abortion Uber Alles day at the liberal Web site Daily Kos. Aimee Thorne-Thomsen of the Pro-Choice Public Education Project stated that the number of women who receive abortions is “too low” in “Keep Abortions Safe and Legal? Yes. Make it Rare? Not the Point.”

A separate article blasted the new law in Oklahoma that makes it mandatory for woman to receive ultrasounds by making crude comparisons and calling it “blackmail.”

Even though 1.21 million abortions were performed in 2005, this was not enough for Thorne-Thomsen. She wrote, “On the other hand, if those 1.21 million abortions represent only the women who could access abortion financially, geographically or otherwise, then that number is too low. Yes, too low.” [Read more…]

Obama’s Greatest Deficit Is Wisdom

4/28/2010 – Tom White –

It is often said, by both supporters and detractors, that President Barack Obama is intelligent, smart, well-educated, and even cerebral. However, President Obama is never described as wise. Wisdom is a special quality reserved for a few rare individuals. And wisdom is the most important characteristic which distinguishes ordinary leaders from extraordinary leaders.

Obama’s wisdom deficit is not necessarily a flaw or defect in his character. It is simply a quality that does not yet exist within the man. The old adage “with age comes wisdom” hints that wisdom takes time to acquire, but not all people become wise. [Read more…]

Why Left Talks about “White” Tea Parties

Dennis Prager
Dennis Prager

by Dennis Prager | 4/27/2010

Opponents of the popular expression of conservative opposition to big government, the tea party, regularly note that tea partiers are overwhelmingly white. This is intended to disqualify the tea parties from serious moral consideration.

But there are two other facts that are far more troubling: The first is the observation itself. The fact that the Left believes that the preponderance of whites among tea partiers invalidates the tea party movement tells us much more about the Left than it does about the tea partiers.

It confirms that the Left really does see the world through the prism of race, gender and class rather than through the moral prism of right and wrong. [Read more…]

America’s Great Divide: Tax Payers vs. Non-Payers

Human Events | by Martha Zoller | 4/23/2010

“So I’ve been a little amused over the last couple of days where people have been having these rallies about taxes. You would think they would be saying thank you.”—President Barack Obama, April 15, 2010

Mr. President, with all due respect, you don’t get it. The Tax Day Tea Parties weren’t about taxes alone, they were also about spending.

And the tax cuts the President often talks about are, by and large, one-time checks that will do nothing to protect the taxpayer from future tax hikes. And he is concealing many tax increases in his budget right now. [Read more…]

Cultural Marxism in Education: The Gathering Revolt

American Thinker | by Chuck Rogér | 4/18/2010

For decades now, American schools corrupted by cultural Marxism have been eroding the moral fiber and judgment skills of schoolchildren. Unless sensible parents and teachers put a stop to the indoctrination, today’s free speech-crippling political correctness, tolerance of immorality, and lack of knowledge of our country’s birth will continue to grow until America is no more. To stop the indoctrination, parents and teachers must understand how cultural Marxism came to permeate school curricula. [Read more…]

What the Popes Have to Say About Socialism

TFP.org | by Gustavo Solimeo | 2/24/2010

Anyone who examines the ideology of socialism will see the contrast between the socialist doctrine and the doctrine of the Church. All the same, it is not out of place to review the condemnation of the popes starting with Pius IX and ending with Benedict XVI. Thus, we present what the popes have to say about socialism as they condemn the socialist doctrine thoroughly and entirely. This is not a comprehensive compilation, but just some samples.

Pope_Pius_IX.jpg
PIUS IX (1846-1878):
“Overthrow [of] the entire order of human affairs”
“You are aware indeed, that the goal of this most iniquitous plot is to drive people to overthrow the entire order of human affairs and to draw them over to the wicked theories of this Socialism and Communism, by confusing them with perverted teachings.” (Encyclical Nostis et Nobiscum, December 8, 1849)

LEO XIII (1878-1903):
Hideous monster
“…communism, socialism, nihilism, hideous deformities of the civil society of men and almost its ruin.” (Encyclical Diuturnum, June 29, 1881)

Ruin of all institutions
“… For, the fear of God and reverence for divine laws being taken away, the authority of rulers despised, sedition permitted and approved, and the popular passions urged on to lawlessness, with no restraint save that of punishment, a change and overthrow of all things will necessarily follow. Yea, this change and overthrow is deliberately planned and put forward by many associations of communists and socialists” (Encyclical Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884, n. 27).

[Read more…]

Same Old: Liberals Then and Now

American Spectator | by Ben Stein | 4/15/2010 (1976)

Back in 1976, when Gerald Ford was President, Ben Stein, then a consultant on Washington and conservatism for the Normal Lear show All’s Fair, sent this memorandum to its creators:

What I don’t like is the way rich liberals, who have made their money through the operations of the capitalist system and who would be miserable bureaucratic cogs in a socialist system, are nevertheless socialists. I suspect that a large part of their motivation is a style of asceticism which has been fashionable among the rich since the time of the Pharisees. Another motivation for the rich liberals to dislike the capitalist system is that they have already gotten theirs and they don’t want to be challenged by other people coming along and getting theirs.

I don’t like the way liberals of any income group assume that they have a monopoly on morality and that the only conscionable position on issues is their position. A sanctimoniousness runs in the liberal mind which is a direct descendant of the Calvinist assuredness of moral superiority. [Read more…]

Prophet Jim Wallis and the Ecclesia of Economic Ignorance

Jim Wallis
Jim Wallis

Acton Institute | by John Couretas | 4/14/2010

This class of the very poor – those who are just on the borders of pauperism or fairly over the borders – is rapidly growing. Wealth is increasing very fast; poverty, even pauperism, is increasing still more rapidly. – Washington Gladden, Applied Christianity (1886)

For three decades, we have experienced a social engineered inequality that is really a sin – of biblical proportions. We have indeed seen class warfare, but this war has been waged by the wealthy and their political allies against the poor and the middle class. – Jim Wallis, Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street (2010)

One of Jim Wallis’ long running aims at Sojourners is to cast himself as a moderate or centrist (God is not a Republican. Or a Democrat). This is howling nonsense to anyone who pays attention to his policy prescriptions or watches the progressive/liberal company he keeps. With his new book, Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street (Howard Books, 2010), Wallis drops all pretense to holding the center as he piles on with the horde of religious left activists and others now demonizing Wall Street. [Read more…]

Liberal Narcissism and Anti-Christian Phobia

American Thinker | by Deborah C. Tyler | 4/11/2010

Americans have always expected national television broadcasters to steer clear of degrading epithets. On April 14, 2009, CNN’s Anderson Cooper established a new low in television journalism when he labeled millions of Americans in the Tea Party movement with a vulgar sexual term. Other mainstream media journalists and personalities gleefully followed suit. There was no outcry from the “anti-hate community.” Many liberals do not merely tolerate contumelies against conservatives, but they delight in them.

In the years after World War II, psychologists (many of whom were European Jews who had escaped Nazism) intensively studied how fascist and authoritarian states could bring ordinary people to commit extraordinary crimes against minorities. [Read more…]