Why am I politically liberal? Is it because liberal ideals conform to my own sense of morals about how a just society should function? According to some, that idea is laughably wrong. Let me share with you an exchange from facebook:
Me: The michigan house passed the doctor tax. Time to write and call your state senator to remind them that taxing the person providing the service you need is really freakin’ stupid.
Conservative friend: You’ve gotta LOVE those Democrats in Lansing…just keep taxing and spending and taxing and spending….If this fucking thing passes the senate and governor, I think I’m getting the hell out of Dodge. In fact, I think all doctors in Michigan should STOP taking Medicaid, just out of protest.
Random dude who thinks he knows me: If you voted Democrat, suck it up and pay the taxes. You deserve it!
CF: I agree! But what about the Republicans? Can we just opt NOT to pay the taxes?
RDWTHKM: I couldn’t agree more. Taxes have become the ruination of our country. Unfortunately, too many people have too little common sense to understand how detrimental taxes are to our country.
CF: And the worst part was last November, on the evening of the election, watching all of those sheep cheering in the streets because they get to pay higher taxes! It’s like I could almost hear them shouting, “YEA! Obama won!! Now the government can take MORE of my hard-earned money and spend it frivolously on more useless entitlement programs! … HOORAY!!!” …
RDWTHKM: I’ll never understand how anyone voted for Obama. He was not Bush; and I think that is all that mattered to those voters. Common sense dicates you don’t vote for someone with as many skeletons in his closet as Obama. You can call him a socialist, a big government radical, an anti-war demagogue, either way, he is bad for America, bad for liberty, bad for freedom and most certainly bad for the unalienable right of the pursuit of happiness.
Me: And every time he smiles, Baby Jesus weeps. I also heard that he sacrifices goats in the Roosevelt Room. Prove that its not true.
CF: And that, my friends, sums up why a liberal is a liberal. They fear that all things conservative equal a vote for baby Jesus and those evil evangelicals. So, they’d rather pay a few extra thousand (or tens of thousands) per year in entitlements to keep that Jesus-y stuff out of the White House…
RDWTHKM: I’ve come to realize that because doctors require so much schooling, their liberal professors have way too much time to indoctrinate them into the false premises of Liberalism. I’m still hopeful that these unbelievably intelligent people will forget that thier professors are kooks, and someday will wise up to the ways of the world. Just because you can heal a broken arm doesn’t mean you know how to heal a broken economy. Taxes are for fools. Any by the way, when you resort to Baby Jesus and the Roosevelt room, its usually a strong indication that your rhetoric is more powerful than your ideas.
Where does one even start with this?
CF, with whom I disagree on many if not all political issues, understands something fundamental: this is ideologic. I really am willing to pay more taxes in my worldview, but not endlessly. I agree more with the ideology of the left than the right, but I’m not stupid enough to support every policy of the left. My worldview is not about taxes however, it is about social justice, which includes the traditional American separation of church and state. Taxes happen to be one of the facts of living in a civilized nation. Taxation that is too high or applied unfairly is bad, and where to draw that line is a good place to start arguing. Marx understood (sic) that everything is economic. I think that’s wrong, but apparently conservatives agree with him.
Now, Random Dumbass Dude, he’s a piece of work. Because I believe in a different set of principles, I must have been brainwashed by the academic commissariat. Or maybe I’m dumb, because “anyone with common sense” wouldn’t vote for Obama. Taxes are for fools, dontchaknow.
No, Dumbass, taxes are for people who live in a civilized nation. We have a representative democracy to decide if and how much we should pay for the shared services we require. Do you think that the wars that you apparently support (and that Obama doesn’t?) are going to pay for themselves?
I don’t agree with CF, but I see where he’s coming from. He is all about economics. I’m not, but I get it. Dumbass though, he represents the fundamental problem with American politics. He doesn’t have an ideology beyond the nano-economic. Anyone who disagrees with his twisted version of America is an idiot. Well, at least we agree on one thing: there are a lot of idiots out there.