When is the Liberal Left's project complete?

At what point do American Liberals become Conservatives? I mean, at what point would government and government control and redistribution be sufficient to satisfy them so that they would cease seeking more, and just stop and try to freeze it in a Conservative fashion, as happened in the Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba, and China?

One of the things that converted me to Conservatism years ago was that none of my Liberal and Lefty friends could or would answer that question. I liked to ask them what arguments they could make against free food, socialized legal insurance and auto insurance, free nose jobs and boob jobs and IQ injections - and free PhDs in Social Justice and Peace Studies for all.

It gradually dawned on me that they had a dream of an eternal childhood of ease, like many peoples' dream of a Florida or Arizona retirement or of being the wife of a hedge fund owner (but with them in control of it, I suppose, to keep the personal dreams and spirits of others stifled for the greater good).

Being a bred-in-the-bone New England Yankee Puritan, I find the idea of ease and irresponsibility to be repellent. Except occasionally...as a treat. We seek effort and additional effort - hence Maggie's Farm.

(Photo is of a life of ease. Even the effort of chasing birds is pure fun for this fine fellow, who has it made thanks to the benevolence of his master.)

Thus our stale repost below from a few years ago for those who haven't seen it -

Posted by Bird Dog in Our Essays, Politics at 12:47 | Comments (15) | Trackbacks (0)

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Good point. I've often raised this argument with my friends, and it truly stumps them. I ask them, "is it going to stop with universal healthcare? No. The Democrats will move on to socializing something else. There are always more things out there to control. Only when the system becomes untenable and starts to collapse (like the Soviet Union), does it dawn on them."

Big government turns adults into children, begging for smaller and smaller scraps.

#1 Vake (Link) on 2010-01-30 15:22 (Reply)

Is that poodle pink?

#2 sean on 2010-01-30 16:10 (Reply)

It is beginning to dawn on the dimmest of Baby Boomers that the promises of The New Deal and The Great Society will not be kept for them. Big Daddy Sam has spent the money he confiscated over all those years.

#3 RickTn on 2010-01-30 16:13 (Reply)

"I find the idea of ease and irresponsibility to be repellent."

Thank you! It helps to know I'm not along in that feeling.
It helps a lot.

#4 katzxy on 2010-01-30 16:46 (Reply)

When you come up against the argument that "no one should have to do without XYZ just because he's poor," there's nowhere to go but your argument: when does it stop? We've so lost the connection between behavior and poverty that we no longer even know how to talk about poverty that results purely from intolerably bad luck, which is the kind that most people don't mind chipping in to ameliorate.

#5 Texan99 on 2010-01-30 17:16 (Reply)

I had a long diatribe ready but melted it down to a few words that describe most of the liberals I have the misfortune to be in contact with: LAZY IMMATURE UNREALISTIC SELF-CENTERED

#6 ricefarm on 2010-01-30 18:39 (Reply)

HUMORLESS INTOLERANT

#6.1 KBK on 2010-01-31 14:26 (Reply)

Mine began in 1977 when jimmy carter became CinC. I was on active duty and for us it was a nightmare of monumental proportions. I was still leaning as a democrat for a few years but voted john anderson in 1980. Mistake. Ronald Reagan was the best CinC I ever served under.

#7 Glenn Mark Cassel AMH1 (AW) USN RET (Link) on 2010-01-31 02:16 (Reply)

They still haven't answered the question of "who is we?". They know in their hearts that "we" is ALL of them coming in illegally. The poor of Africa, South America, etc. The dems no longer have national boundaries in their way of thinking. That is why it is so easy for them to betray the US in words and actions.

#8 another one on 2010-01-31 02:52 (Reply)

For a really good award-winning junior level (Age 10+)fiction book that describes what the world would look like if every leftist impulse came true, The Giver by Louis Lowry is it. And I just discovered it is coming out in movie form in 2011.

#9 Laura on 2010-01-31 15:30 (Reply)

"At what point do American Liberals become Conservatives?"

Better question is when did conservatives become liberals? Today's republicans are far far to the left of the democrats of JFK's day & they, those democrats, were definitely liberals.

In the 40w and 50s I grew up in a world where you could open a bank account just with your signature, where you were not required to show id to a police officer and where it was nobody's business how much money was in your pocket, even when you were crossing the US border.

#10 Jim in Alaska on 2010-02-01 13:03 (Reply)

Policies are not the underlying issues for liberals, they are only the ground that their battle is fought on. What motivates them is the desire to receive the admiration they deserve for being smarter and kinder. They are stuck at a highschool and college level of social maturity.

Underlying drives are a better predictor of their opinions than underlying principles.

#11 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2010-02-01 23:09 (Reply)

in the Twin Cities, we have a great talk show host named Joe Soucheray. One of his favorite sayings about liberals is "When is enough enough?"

#12 elizabeth on 2010-02-13 17:40 (Reply)

Is the liberal-left really the problem?

If you do your homework you will find that the previous eight years of the Bush "administration" you will find that it was easily the world period in USA history.

Plus we now have the spectacle of Fox "news" via Russ Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter as the "respectable" public face of what is now called "conservative" in the USA.

And if Sarah Palin is the future of "conservatism" in the USA then God help both the USA and the world altogether.

And what about the role of commercial TV as the most powerful culturally formative influence on USA culture altogether?

TV "informs" and shapes the common mind.

Turn on your TV--what you see there IS USA culture in now-time. There is nothing else---Amusing Ourselves To Death

TV is the 24/7 propaganda extension of the military-industrial-"entertainment" complex?

The "culture" of death piped into everyones living and bedrooms (and their minds and psyches) 24/7 non-stop.

The USA now combines the nightmare visions of BOTH Huxley in Brave New World, AND Orwell in 1984.

As a result of TV the human world has become a kind of insane sporting event. It is a nowtime lunatic asylum, a collective psychosis, a never-ending soap opera of dreadful insanity.

That absurd soap opera now actually controls the experience and destiny of the total world of human beings. And that collective psychosis is, in its root disposition, totally indifferent to human life, and to the world altogether.

#13 John on 2010-02-16 19:54 (Reply)

Can I have some of whatever you put in your brownies? It must be some good stuff!

#13.1 Glenn Mark Cassel AMH1 (AW) USN RET (Link) on 2010-02-18 10:21 (Reply)

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Saturday, January 30. 2010

When is the Liberal Left's project complete?