Alternate Liberty
There are really two different histories of America -- the one that I know existed based on extensive reading and studying of history, and the one that some of my left of center friends know by repeating what they were taught in School/Universities, what they read in their version of the media, or what they really want to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary. Without someone having an accurate understanding of the past, they have a distorted view of the present, and no ability to understand what's coming in the future. Which explains how they can demand such ruinous things with the glee of a cult follower reaching for their glass of flavor aid. Thus our realities will only occasionally intersect, and when they do, it's usually not a great reaction.
Issue | Lie | Truth |
---|---|---|
Alternate Liberty Trading liberty for ideology. |
Taxes, laws, regulations are the point where guys with guns will kick down your door, and take away your liberty, property or life (if you resist). In order to convince people to make these liberty suffocating things, you have to convince (and usually scare) them into believing the alternatives are worse. You have to give up free speech or people might say mean things, you have to give up guns or people might shoot other people, and anyone that doesn't agree is the enemy and trying to destroy our civilization or progress. Progress towards what is a little vague, but seems to be an authoritarian utopia. We need government thugs, or people would run amok. | If you trust your neighbors, you make guidelines, not laws/taxes. Real liberty is about debating with people, but letting them have the free will to do what they want anyways... not using the tyranny of the majority (50%+1 of votes) to force laws or authority to take away their right to do it. That's fear of what they might do. Examples: Anti-American, Anti-Americans, Backpage, Corporate Personhood & Citizens United, Democratic Tolerance, EPA, Eighteenth Amendment, Eighth Amendment, FCC, FDA, First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Gun Control, Party of fear, Second Amendment, Sixth Amendment, and so on. Without fear, we'd have more status quo, which means less progressive successes... and more harmony. |
Examples
There's real liberty, and the left's version (Alternate Liberty) -- they have very little in common. Real liberty is about arguing with people who don't do what you want, but letting them do it anyways. Telling them not to say things, or arguing against it, but letting them do it anyways. It's about championing your causes, by trying to win in public opinion, not using the tyranny of the majority (50%+1 of votes) to force laws or authority to take away their right to do it. Remember, a law/regulation/tax is the point where a bully says, "do it, or I'll have this government goon take you property, liberty or life".
Issue | Lie | Truth |
---|---|---|
Anti-American | The left claims to love America on one hand, and that's why they criticize it continuously on the other. It's racist, sexist, imperialist, capitalist (spit, ptooey), minority killing, gun toting, inequality, full of ignorance, God, Guns and bigots. Protests against liberty, gays in assless chaps, wars (national interests), foreigners waving foreign flags and demanding the end to America as a county? Those are all good. But protests against too much government waste, too high of taxes, regulation or government power (Tea baggers), or pro-lifers trying to protect viable infants from the abortionists canula and scissors, or just a wholesome 4th of July Parade celebrating Americana? Those are all bad. But they love America? | Of course the truth is that the left doesn't love America in a healthy way, and take pride in what we've done or are doing. Many feel unclean at signs of jingoism and patriotism. Think about it as if they are an abusive spouse -- you love them as they are, that's why you want to criticize them constantly, break them down and destroy their self-esteem, so that you can remold them into something else (better). That's not love, that's something else. They don't love what is, they love having something to criticize, vent at, and take their frustrations out on -- but will never meet their standards. But in trying to meet their standards, everyone would get a lot less freedom to be individuals. |
Anti-Americans | The left wants to use the fallacy of presentism to attack our history (judging the past not against other contemporary examples, but against our values of today), then distort the present based on not having enough guilt over that history. We are all racist, sexist, homophobic, imperialist, capitalist (spit, ptooey), minority killing, gun toting, inequality, full of ignorance, God, Guns and bigots -- and the only cure is to give Progressives complete power to dictate what is acceptable behavior or issues, or not. Look at all the loudest voices preaching this message, and ask what party / side of the aisle they are on. But they love America, and if you question that, you're trying to oppress them. | Of course the truth is that these people don't love America, at least not healthily. They are an abusive spouse that wants to criticize, demean, distort, gaslight and break down and destroy their self-esteem, so they can re-make America in their image. They don't love what is, they love having something to criticize, vent at, and take their frustrations out on -- but will never meet their standards. That's not love, that's something else. |
Backpage | Backpage (Craigslist clone) was supporting sex trafficking and child exploitation, and the heroes in the Obama DOJ came in, arrested the founders and stopped it. A great accomplishment. | Backpage was used for hookups or paid sexual encounters, but the website was not doing anything illegal. Not only were they not trafficking or exploiting Children, they were actively helping the Government find those that were, but the Obama DOJ suppressed that evidence, seized their assets (so they couldn't pay their legal bills) and arrested the founders anyway. |
Corporate Personhood | The Citizens United case invented the concept of Corporate Personhood (that corporations are people), and that's allowed the buying of our elections by corporate interests. We must limit the first amendment for there to be fair expression (individuals to be able to out-shout the corporate interests). | The concept that individuals don't lose their rights by belonging to a group (corporation) goes back to Persian law, and has always existed in American law. This ruling only said that Unions, Government, Churches, marriages and other "corporations", would all be treated the same (instead of allowing politicians to decide which get free speech or not). Before and after CU, Unions and special interests continued to outspend corporations on political donations |
Democratic Tolerance | The lie: I’m a broadminded metropolitan lefty (liberal): that’s enlightened, tolerant and open to new ideas, and loves freedom. | The Truth: they’re narrow-minded, urban-provincial, progressives. They avoid rural areas, red-states, Christians, conservatives, Republicans and “rednecks". If you don’t agree with them, you must be a “FoxNews watcher”, a Republican, or someone who hates the poor. They demand conformity of not only act, but thought. They pass laws and regulations to stop people from doing anything they think is “bad”, which is everything they disagree with. When linguistic intolerance of political correctness wasn't enough, they invented speech codes. |
EPA | The EPA is this great and noble institution that protects our environment, if it wasn't for them, we'd live in squalor and pollution. | Most of the cleanup work had been done by the states long before 1970 and the creation of the EPA. In fact, the rate of cleanup slowed after the EPA was created. Once the fed was doing it, most of the states and municipalities felt, "I gave at the office". |
Eighteenth Amendment | The left doesn't trust individuals to rule themselves, so they sold society that gun-control for alcohol (prohibition) and outlawing individual liberty would change people's behavior. It didn't. And since this was the progressive era, where people were ignoring Historical warnings on federal overreach, they were making many modifications to the Constitution. This anti-conservative/anti-individualism amendment got passed as leading us to a better society. | It succeeded at empowering criminals, creating a profitable black market, teaching contempt for the law and dramatically increased crime. Which gave the left excuses to empower the federal government more to combat the lawlessness, and start gun control over the insurrection that the left had created. It disempowering the law abiding, and turned otherwise good citizens into criminals. Basically it ruined far more lives that it ever helped. The progressive left got the change they wanted, and as is too common, it was a disaster. |
Eighth Amendment | For 200 (or 2,000) years, the Death penalty was not considered cruel and certainly not unusual. Until in 1972 (Furman v. Georgia) the left wing of the court used that Capital Punishment was being applied too infrequently, as an excuse to invent that the "arbitrary application" was Cruel and Unusual, and thus against the 8th Amendment, and overturned all Death Penalties in the U.S. Because if you can't win through legal means, just cheat and make shit up. | Of course the arrogance of 5 Judges thinking that they knew more than all the other Judges who had ruled on death penalty cases in our nations history, as well as the authors who wrote the law (and didn't exclude death penalty when they did), is unfathomable. 37 states quickly made made the rules for applying the death penalty less "arbitrary", and less unusual (more common), and even a few of the left side of the court had to reverse themselves, and respect the Constitution. Thus capital punishment was allowed again. But the permanent damage to the court (and trust in it), was done. |
FCC | The FCC is this great and noble institution that protects our airwaves from anarchy and bandwidth collusion | While the excuse is not in dispute, the reality (lie of omission) is they were created for more reasons than that, and they've done a lot more than that. |
FDA | The FDA is this great and noble institution that protects our food and drugs from anarchy, quackery and food poisoning | While the excuse is not in dispute, the reality (lie of omission) is whether it does a good job at any of those things, and whether it is worth the costs compared to the better alternatives. |
First Amendment | The left loves freedom of speech, the Press, Religion, and right to assemble... | Unless you're talking about Global Warming, hate speech, or Christians trying to pray (or not pay for other people's abortions), or a conservative us trying to talk on College campus, or a right wing organization is buying a TV ad during a campaign (Citizens United), or anything else they don't like... and they don't like a lot. |
Fourth Amendment | We need the power for the government to violate your home, privacy and rights, based on sketchy warrants or secret (no-fly/terrorist) lists that you can't see the details of, issued after some secret tribunal decided you were a threat. Oh, and there's no clear process to appeal those accusations (in the case of no-fly lists). That should make you feel secure in your home, right? | There's no evidence that the red-flag (or no-fly lists) that strip individuals of your constitutional rights, actually does anything good. We have evidence that they get people killed, and certainly make them feel less secure, knowing that at any time, for unknown reasons, they might be red-flagged -- and the accusation of threat to public safety will outweigh your civil rights. That's what governing by fear would look like. |
Gun Control aka People control |
The 2A was about the militia, applied to muskets, and not allowing "reasonable" gun controls is the cause of our higher murder/crime rates, especially assault rifles, and it's all the NRA and gun-fanatics fault. You can't trust your neighbors with guns or tools of the military. Fear the tool, fear those who want guns, vilify those who defend the constitution and want to protect people from tyranny. | The militia was all men, they had fully automatic weapons in the 1700's, and it was never about muskets, we have over 55,000 gun control laws that annoy legal owners and do little to stop crime (lots to increase it), our murder/crime rates are better than most of the world, assault rifle is an invented term by people that don't understand guns, and the problem is there's no way to reason with someone who has a phobia of clowns, or that fear their neighbors having the liberty to own a gun. Both are irrational. |
Party of fear | We need government to protect us from ourselves. But Republicans/Conservatives are the party of fear: they try to control their constituents with fear of immigrants, Iran getting the bomb, criminals so they need guns, and trust in government. They need to be more reasonable, like us | All the scares of the left have proven false: over-population, lack of food production, peak oil, destroying the planet (see many more in the anti-science category). People solved most of those on their own, or they were never problems (at least to the degrees claimed). Democrats try to use fear to control the weak-minded as often (if not more) than Republicans -- for example: why would you need gun-control, if you didn't distrust your neighbors having guns? |
Second Amendment | The left hates and fears guns and individual liberty, thus everything about the Second Amendment. Since they can't repeal it, they just want to undermine it, breaking their oath of office (to defend the Constitution). If you think guns kill people, then of course you want to eliminate all guns. Since those truths aren't popular, they must lie and pretend they're not against all guns. But they are. And the informed know it. | If you know the basics of guns and how they operate, you know that the left has yet to offer a "reasonable" gun control. Every idea for restricting a natural right/freedom only sounds reasonable to the uniformed, but are based on a complete lack of understanding about guns, human nature, crime, the law, and the consequences of their policies. The politicians actively oppose things that might help because doing so would weaken their agenda to eliminate more guns, or to get elected by campaigning against them. |
Sixth Amendment | We need the right for the government to violate your 4th and 6th Amendment rights in Kafkaesque secret hearings, so they can take away your 2nd Amendment rights, in order to protect you and the public from things that someone you don't know, might accuse you of. | There's no evidence that allowing secret proceedings to strip you of your constitutional rights, actually does anything good. We have a lot of evidence that they get people killed, have been abused on small scale here so far... and on very large scale in other places, once this power is solidified. So we have a case of huge risk, low reward, and the left is for it because "guns" shuts down the thinking side of their brain. |
Conclusion
Other than being the party/philosophy that's at least conditionally and often completely against the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 18th, amendments, and gave us the worst encroachments against our individual liberty, the DNC/left is the party of the Constitution. Just like other than knowing our History (and seeing the present through an intersectional marxist lens), and being against almost all of it that they do remember, and hating any outward displays of Americana/Jingoism they're very much proud Americans. But that's kind of like saying that you love your kids, you just hate virtually everything they do or makes them who/what they are... and they'd be better people if they listened to your dictates over every aspect of their lives. You don't get to claim that you value liberty, but you think you should be able to regulate everything from what fuel they can use, what they must eat and drink, what vices they can and can not have, what they have to believe about everything, ad infinitum. That's not what liberty or being pro-liberty would look like.
This isn't just the fringe elements of the left/DNC either, in 2016 Hillary and Bernie both campaigned on much of this, just like Obama and Hillary did in 2008. And that's not counting how many people made it to Congress, Senate, or the Supreme Court with such fringe ideas, let alone their representatives in the Press and on talk shows. The polls show that many of these ideas are popular, especially among the left... unless you start explaining the questions or ask about the implications, then they become far less popular. So the medias and politicians solution is to try to shut down questions about the implications, or anyone that would ask them. And that's truly a recipe for disaster: let's rule based on emotional responses to get things passed that the public will resent and regret, and see how that stabilizes our society. Kinda like, "You have to pass it, to see what's in it"... and then, it's too late.