Archive for the ‘Liberals’ Category

7 Reasons Why Liberals Are Incapable of Understanding The …

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil. Charles Krauthammer

Even liberals who've accomplished a lot in their lives and have high IQs often say things on a regular basis that are stunningly, profoundly stupid and at odds with the way the world works. Modern liberalism has become so bereft of common sense and instinctually suicidal that America can only survive over the long haul by thwarting the liberal agenda. In fact, liberalism has become such a toxic and poisonous philosophy that most liberals wouldn't behave differently if their goal were to deliberately destroy the country. So, how does liberalism cause well-meaning, intelligent liberals to get this way? Well, it starts with...

1) Liberalism creates a feedback loop. It is usually impossible for a non-liberal to change a liberal's mind about political issues because liberalism works like so: only liberals are credible sources of information. How do you know someone's liberal? He espouses liberal doctrine. So, no matter how plausible what you say may be, it will be ignored if you're not a liberal and if you are a liberal, of course, you probably agree with liberal views. This sort of close-mindedness makes liberals nearly impervious to any information that might undermine their beliefs.

2) Liberals sources of information are ever present. Conservatives are regularly exposed to the liberal viewpoint whether they want to be or not. That's not necessarily so for liberals. Imagine the average day for liberals. They get up and read their local newspaper. It has a liberal viewpoint. They take their kids to school, where the teachers are liberal. Then they go to work, listen to NPR which has a liberal viewpoint on the way home, and then turn on the nightly news which also skews leftward. From there, they turn on TV and watch shows created by liberals that lean to the left, if they have any political viewpoint at all. Unless liberals actively seek out conservative viewpoints, which is unlikely, the only conservative arguments they're probably going to hear are going to be through the heavily distorted, poorly translated, deeply skeptical lens of other liberals.

3) Liberals emphasize feeling superior, not superior results. Liberalism is all about appearances, not outcomes. What matters to liberals is how a program makes them FEEL about themselves, not whether it works or not. Thus a program like Headstart, which sounds good because it's designed to help children read, makes liberals feel good about themselves, even though the program doesn't work and wastes billions. A ban on DDT makes liberals feel good about themselves because they're "protecting the environment" even though millions of people have died as a result. For liberals, it's not what a program does in the real world; it's about whether they feel better about themselves for supporting it.

4) Liberals are big believers in moral relativism. This spins them round and round because if the only thing that's wrong is saying that there's an absolute moral code, then you lose your ability to tell cause from effect, good from bad, and right from wrong. Taking being non-judgmental to the level that liberals do leaves them paralyzed, pondering "why they hate us" because they feel incapable of saying, That's wrong," and doing something about it. If you're against firm standards and condemning immoral behavior, then your moral compass wont work and youll also be for immorality, as well as societal and cultural decay by default.

5) Liberals tend to view people as parts of groups, not individuals. One of the prejudices of liberalism is that they see everyone as part of a group, not as an individual. This can lead to rather bizarre disparities when say, a man from a group that they consider to be powerless, impoverished victims becomes the leader of the free world -- and he's challenged by a group of lower middle class white people who've banded together because individually they're powerless. If you listen to the liberal rhetoric, you might think Barack Obama was a black Republican being surrounded by a KKK lynching party 100 years ago -- as opposed to the single most powerful man in America abusing the authority of his office to attack ordinary Tea Partiers who have the audacity to speak the truth to power for the good of their country.

6) Liberals take a dim view of personal responsibility. Who's at fault if a criminal commits a crime? The criminal or society? If someone creates a business and becomes a millionaire, is that the result of hard work and talent or luck? If you're dirt poor, starving, and haven't worked in 5 years, is that a personal failing or a failure of the state? Conservatives would tend to say the former in each case, while liberals would tend to say the latter. But when you disconnect what an individual does from the results that happen in his life, it's very difficult to understand cause and effect in people's lives.

7) Liberals give themselves far too much credit just for being liberal. To many liberals, all one needs to do to be wise, intelligent, compassionate, open minded, and sensitive is to BE LIBERAL. In other words, many of the good things about a person spring not from his actions, but from the ideology he holds. This has an obvious appeal. You can be a diehard misogynist, but plausibly call yourself a feminist, hate blacks, but accuse others of racism, have a subpar IQ and be an intellectual, give nothing to charity and be compassionate, etc., etc., and all you have to do is call yourself a liberal. It's a shortcut to virtue much like the corrupt old idea of religious indulgences. Why live a life of virtue when you could live a sinful life and buy your way into heaven? If you're a liberal, why actually live a life of virtue when you can merely call yourself a liberal and get credit for being virtuous, even when you've done nothing to earn it?

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7 Reasons Why Liberals Are Incapable of Understanding The ...

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B.C. Liberals election defeat post-mortem document says vote not winnable at start

The Liberals will elect a new leader in February, with four candidates already vying for the job

Renee Merrifield brought up the matter on behalf of an organization of 4,500 parents across B.C.

He says he was not infectious when he was at the legislature between April 19 and 22

Candidates have until Nov. 30 to declare whether they are running

After the call, the Conservatives said Trudeau raised neither of these incidents with OToole

Wilkinson had previously said he would stay in his role till a new leader were to be selected

Elections BC says there are about 600,000 mail-in and absentee ballots across the province still to count

A day after the debate, Horgan revised his answer on Twitter, admitting it could have upset people

Jane Thornthwaite said shes sorry for commenting on Bowinn Mas looks during roast for a retiring politician

Susan Mathies resignation follows MLA Laurie Throness LGBTQ controversies

Andrew Wilkinson urges sales tax holiday for 60-90 days

$1.14 million was more than winner Andrew Wilkinsons budget

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Conservatives Greatly Outnumber Liberals in 19 U.S. States

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The residents of most U.S. states are more likely to identify as conservative than as liberal in their political ideology. In 25 states, the conservative advantage is significantly greater than the national average, including 19 "highly conservative" states in which conservatives outnumber liberals by at least 20 percentage points. Meanwhile, in six states, there are more liberals than conservatives.

Nationally, the conservative advantage in ideological identification is nine percentage points, and reflects a narrowing of the conservative-liberal gap from 21 points in 2004.

These findings are based on aggregated data from Gallup's 2018 tracking poll in which respondents were asked to indicate whether they describe their political views as liberal, moderate or conservative.

States in which the conservative-liberal gap is 20 points or greater are considered "highly conservative." The "more conservative than average" states have gaps of between 15 and 19 points. "About average" states' residents prefer the conservative description by seven to 14 points, and those with gaps of zero to six points are considered "less conservative than average."

The number of states in which more residents identify as liberal than as conservative is down slightly from nine in 2017. Many of the changes are within the margin of error for the state's sample -- states that barely tilted liberal in 2017 barely tilted conservative in 2018 -- so it is unclear how meaningful these changes are.

Mississippi ranked as the most conservative state in 2018, with 50% of residents identifying as conservative and 12% as liberal, for a gap of 38 points. Twenty-nine percent of Mississippians said they are moderate, and 9% had no opinion.

Massachusetts was the most liberal state in 2018, with 35% of its residents describing their political views as liberal and 21% as conservative. Massachusetts was the first state Gallup measured with more liberal than conservative identifiers (in 2008) and has been the state most consistently leaning more liberal than conservative.

The full results for each state follow.

State Ideological Identification, 2018

Editor's Note: The story has been updated to correct the sample size of national adults.

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Conservatives Greatly Outnumber Liberals in 19 U.S. States

Opinion | How Liberals Can Be Happier – The New York Times

This view garners further support from the research on happiness. A Pew Research study, for instance, ties the Republican attainment of happiness advantage over Democrats in part to more marriage, greater family satisfaction and higher levels of religious attendance.

In a separate study of the conservative-liberal happiness gap, the psychologists Barry R. Schlenker, John Chambers and Bonnie Le explore liberal disengagement from family and faith. They note, Liberals have become less happy over the last several decades, but this decline is associated with increasingly secular attitudes and actions (e.g., less religiosity, less likelihood of being married, and perhaps lessened belief in personal agency).

In our survey, we found a modest gap between conservatives and liberals age 18 to 55 in being very happy with 22 percent of conservatives reporting they are very happy compared with 17 percent of liberals (conservatives are also a bit more likely to say they are pretty happy). This gap is not explained by socioeconomic differences in income, race, age and gender between the two groups. But once we control for marriage, parenthood, family satisfaction, religious attendance and community satisfaction, the ideological gap in happiness disappears.

On Thanksgiving, a holiday so many of us spend with our loved ones, we emphasize that of all these social factors, the biggest factor predicting overall happiness is satisfaction with family life. Certainly this doesnt determine the direction of causation, but the findings advance the case that support and social connections particularly at home are important for happiness.

As part of our research, we spoke to a number of Americans about family. The case of Katie, a 38-year-old Virginia married mother of two, illustrates the point. This right-leaning woman has noticed a difference between her life before and after she married and had children. Although she has less time for herself, she much prefers her new status as a married mother. Shes less lonely and finds more purpose and meaning in the mundane day-to-day life, as well as exciting times when my kids hit certain milestones.

She reported a fuller happiness now as a wife and mother, in part because it is shared with her husband, children and extended family members as well as friends who are also raising families with whom, she said, she often has a common ground to talk about.

The connection between social ties and happiness also applies to those on the left. Julie, a 46-year-old, self-described progressive mother of four in Salt Lake City, has been married for more than two decades and is engaged in community volunteering; shes also active in her local church. She works full time and balances a dizzying array of responsibilities. Its her home life, however, where she finds the greatest joys and the greatest struggles. But each commitment, she said, brings an opportunity to connect with people around me.

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Opinion | How Liberals Can Be Happier - The New York Times

Liberals, NDP pass motion to resume hybrid format in House of Commons – Castlegar News

Members of Parliament are able to work from home again after passing a motion Thursday to resume hybrid sittings of the House of Commons.

Liberals and New Democrats joined forces to pass the motion over the objections of Conservative and Bloc Quebecois MPs who had wanted to fully return to normal, in-person operations.

The motion gives MPs the option of participating virtually in proceedings, including votes and debates in the Commons and its committees, starting Friday and continuing until the House breaks for the summer in June.

It passed late Thursday by a vote of 180-140 after the NDP supported the Liberals in putting an end to two days of debate on the matter.

MPs first adopted the hybrid format a year ago, aimed at limiting the number of members in the Commons to avoid spreading COVID-19. But the all-party agreement to allow that format expired last June.

Since Parliament resumed Monday after a five-month hiatus, all but one of the countrys 338 MPs have been in the Commons because there was no unanimous agreement to return to hybrid sittings.

The missing MP Conservative Richard Lehoux tested positive for COVID-19 on Saturday, two days after attending an in-person Tory caucus retreat.

Government House leader Mark Holland welcomed the return of the hybrid format, saying it will allow Lehoux and anyone else who falls ill or has to isolate due to exposure to the virus to continue working remotely.

In an interview after the vote, he said he hopes unvaccinated Conservative MPs also opt to work from home and not cause an issue around public health.

I still would like to know how many there are and I would like the assurance from the leader that hes not going to allow these unvaccinated individuals in the chamber.

Conservative Leader Erin OToole has said all his 118 MPs are either fully vaccinated or have a medical exemption. He has refused to say how many are exempt and Holland has questioned the statistical probability that multiple MPs would have valid medical reasons to not be immunized.

The motion specifies that MPs who choose to participate in person must be fully vaccinated or have a medical exemption based on the limited exceptions spelled out by the Ontario health ministry and the National Advisory Committee on Immunization.

Earlier Thursday, OToole accused the Liberal-NDP coalition of shutting down Parliament.

He argued that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his fellow Liberals were content to call an election and attend campaign events in September and to gather with thousands of people at the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow a few weeks ago.

While they were willing to do those things because it suited them, he said they are today shutting down debate and limiting democratic accountability because it bothers them.

It is hypocrisy of the highest order, OToole charged.

But Holland countered that theres a big difference between people choosing whether to attend events and requiring all MPs, regardless of their health circumstances, to be physically present in the Commons if they want to participate in proceedings.

This is a very different situation. We have people flying in from every corner of the country, spending a week together, commingling in a very, very small space and then going back to every part of the country, he said.

Holland said hes heard from some MPs who are immunocompromised and are afraid to be in the chamber, particularly when the Conservatives refuse to say how many of their members are unvaccinated or whether those members are self-isolating after being exposed to Lehoux last week.

That is absolutely unacceptable in a pandemic to put people who are in a vulnerable health circumstance, to force them to be in a situation where their health is at risk, he said.

During debate on the motion Thursday, Conservative and Bloc Quebecois MPs argued that virtual proceedings allow the government to avoid scrutiny. They noted that in the last session, cabinet ministers frequently didnt turn up in the Commons even though they were in their Parliament Hill offices.

Holland promised that a majority of ministers, including the prime minister, will be in the House in the future.

New Democrat MP Laurel Collins spoke in the chamber while holding her seven-month-old daughter in her arms. She said travelling back and forth from her Victoria B.C., riding with an infant is never easy but its nerve-racking during the pandemic.

Should her daughter catch a mild cold or have a teething fever, Collins said she wouldnt be allowed to board a plane with her. And should that prevent her from travelling to Ottawa, Collins said shed be denied the right to participate in proceedings if there is no hybrid format.

Women deserve the choice to participate, she told the Commons, adding that the chamber was built by men, for men and we have a long way to go if we want equal access.

But Conservative MP Raquel Dancho countered that during the last session there was frequently only one Liberal MP in the chamber, the rest participating virtually.

Not all the other ones had COVID or were having babies, she said.

Joan Bryden, The Canadian Press

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Liberals, NDP pass motion to resume hybrid format in House of Commons - Castlegar News