Many people who considerer themselves to be politically moderate or independent continue to claim there is not much difference between a liberal Democratic Party and a conservative Republican Party, therefore it doesn't matter which to vote for. It matters.
This inability to detect differences in philosophy or outlook results in millions of people voting for a political candidate because "he looks like the kind of person to have a beer with" or "he's a good God-fearing Christian man" so a governmental philosophy doesn't matter. It matters.
It doesn't take long for the Republican Party to get its assault machine up and running. As soon as any Democrat dares to challenge a Republican position or politician, reactionary attack dogs emerge screaming the right-wing mantra, "The liberals are coming, the liberals are coming, the liberals are coming."
The "liberal" label will be hung on any Democrat in an attempt to scare Americans into voting conservative in any election.
But it is evident, when reviewing liberals and conservatives in America, that the nation need not fear liberal rule.
Liberals sought and achieved independence from Great Britain with the Revolutionary War. Conservatives, then known as Tories, opposed independence and fought against it. There were an estimated half-million hard-core Tories (conservatives) in the colonies at the time and about 10 percent of them abandoned America, many taking up arms against American troops. The only Revolutionary-era Tory (conservative) or Tory sympathizer whose notoriety has survived to this day is Gen. Benedict Arnold.
Liberals wrote and adopted our Constitution. Tories (conservatives) hated that document and fought against it. At the Constitutional Convention, Tory (conservative) delegates refused to sign the Constitution after it was drafted. Tories (conservatives) wanted two or three separate nations in order to preserve slavery.
Tories (conservatives) hated the liberal's Bill of Rights and fought against it. Conservatives still hate it, still fight it.
Conservatives launched the Civil War trying to destroy the United States, once again to preserve slavery. Liberals – who were Republicans at that time – kept the nation intact and freed the slaves.
Liberals fought for and achieved safer working conditions and decent pay in US industry while conservatives used police, sheriff's deputies, National Guardsmen and hired goons to beat, maim and kill working Americans who were seeking a decent life.
Liberals fought for and achieved voting rights for women and racial minorities. Conservatives wanted to keep voting restricted to white males.
Liberals championed the civil rights the Constitution has long promised, but had to overcome conservatives who beat, jailed and even murdered freedom-loving Americans during civil-rights struggles that continue today. Conservatives enacted Jim Crow segregation laws to divide the races and destroy lives of millions of black Americans and are now conducting the same war against homosexual Americans. Liberals propose that "equal rights" be applied equally.
In the past century and into this century, conservative presidents have given us recession after recession after recession that destroyed jobs, businesses, families and lives and, of course, the conservatives' crowning achievement, the Great Depression. No liberal president has done likewise. A moderate Democrat, Jimmy Carter, had one recession but it was the shortest (six months), the mildest and was created by oil embargoes, not policy.
Conservatives want to eliminate social assistance programs government has made to assist the downtrodden and excluded; liberals want to eliminate the need for social assistance programs.
After the contentious presidential election of 2000 a researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) pondered if there was a physical difference between liberal and conservative brains. He enlisted dozens of subjects to begin testing, and after the 9/11 attacks on America, he showed images of the victims of the attacks in their agony. Brains of the liberals (Democrats) were activated in the areas associated with concern, caring, empathy; brains of the conservative (Republicans) were unresponsive.
That conservatives are unconcerned about the suffering of others--a well-defined definition of sociopath--has been well observed over the years; this experiment indicates that to be the case and explains the evil political history of conservatism. It shows why Ronald Reagan ignored the AIDS crisis when it hit Americans during his reign and it shows why George W. Bush retards government funding of stem-cell research regardless of the potential it offers. They just don't care about others, and that appears to be a genetic defect in their moral compositions rather than conscious desires to be miserable human beings. And the research explains why right-wingers flock to careers where others' anguish are best ignored, such as the military, policing, insurance (denial of claims) banking (repossessing and foreclosing) and other businesses in which profit is more important than any other consideration. It explains why a right-wing president would start an unnecessary war dreaming of being a modern Alexander the Great only to become a neo-Caligula who would cause hundreds of thousands to die just so he wouldn't have to admit failure.
*****************************************************
Thomas Bonsell is a former newspaper editor (in Oregon, New York and Colorado) United States Air Force cryptanalyst and National Security Agency intelligence agent. He became one of American journalism's leading constitutional experts through years of study at Georgetown University Graduate School of Government in Washington, D.C., and tries (without much success) to be patient with people who argue endlessly on subjects they have never studied. He is the author of "The Un-Americans: Trashing of the United States Constitution in the American Press", a critique of the mainstream media for ignorance of, or disdain for, our constitutional principles of self-government. He left newspaper work years ago, disgusted at the direction the Fourth Estate ~ under the mismanagement of ineffectual, out-of-touch, can't-do executives ~ was taking away from honest responsible journalism and the observation that there was no place in the mainstream media for a progressive, or liberal, constitutional "expert". Bonsell is an honors graduate of Woodbury College (Los Angeles, California) with a bachelor of business administration degree. He is profiled in Marquis Who's Who in America. (Self-portrait, above, was handled to make author/artist appear prettier than he actually is.)
Personal motto: Have brain; will use.
Can you tell me where to find more information about this study:
After the contentious presidential election of 2000 a researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) pondered if there was a physical difference between liberal and conservative brains. He enlisted dozens of
subjects to begin testing, and after the 9/11 attacks on America, he showed images of the victims of the attacks in their agony. Brains of the liberals (Democrats) were activated in the areas associated with concern, caring, empathy; brains of the conservative (Republicans) were unresponsive.
Thank you,
Cal
by
Calvin Leman (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 2 comments)
on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 3:10:58 PM
I don't remember where I read about that conservative vs liberal brain study but I do remember coming across it online somewhere last year or so...
can you post a link to this?
thanks!
by
anechoic (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 50 comments)
on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 4:39:49 PM
the premise in the first paragraph is based upon a false assumption, i.e., that the Democratic Party is liberal.
Much of the Democratic grassroots is liberal and a few Democratic elected representatives are liberal (primarily those in the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which have quite a bit of overlap), but the Democratic Party leadership can not be described as liberal.
When Al Gore ordered all Democratic Senators, who were a majority at the time, not to sign the petition from the Congressional Black Caucus, almost all Democrats, to block Bush from taking office by refusing to count the fraudulent Florida electoral votes, he did not feel their pain. Or the pain of every other liberal in the country for that matter.
When John Kerry broke both his campaign promises and conceded early without bothering to ensure that every vote was counted, he did not feel our pain.
When all Democrats except Barbara Lee voted to illegally invade a sovereign nation, and voted, without even reading it, to let the PATRIOT Act take away our civil rights, they did not feel our pain.
And when the Democratic darlings of the liberals, Nancy Pelosi and John Conyers, announced that they were taking impeachment off the table, they did not feel our pain.
Nor have they, in announcing that they will vote for the Bush defense budget requests, felt the pain of the innocent people being tortured and killed in Bush's secret prisons all over the world, or the innocent people being killed in Afghanistan and Iraq as "collateral damage" in wars based on lies.
If you support the Constitution, support workers' rights, voting rights, civil rights, and a strong economy, you should carefully research the Democrats' voting records in these areas before you vote for them, or you may end up voting against your own best interests.
And don't forget to visit, email, or phone your representatives on Wednesday and Thursday, January 3rd and 4th, 2006, to tell them that you want them to impeach Bush and to vote against his defense budget. Your representatives haven't been able to feel your pain for the past six years, and they aren't likely to now unless you communicate it to them firmly and clearly.
by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments)
on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 5:09:49 PM
This is a great addendum to a great article. The article's author nicely describes differences between liberals and conservatives, and you nicely summarize the similarities between Democrats and Republicans. Together, they say that the Democrats are not liberal which contradicts the rightist propagandists use of the single word 'liberal-Democrat' (which itself is short for the word 'far-leftist-liberal-Democrat'.
Newt, the public face of neoconservative propaganda, was firm that the whole left is the far-left (alternate spelling: extreme-radical) and should always be called that exclusively, especially if you can say 'leftist'. Note that there has been no analogous word 'rightist'. That is why I have deliberately used it already in this post and exhort others to do the same. Conservatives should always be 'radical-conservatives' or 'ultra-conservatives' or 'conservative-extremists' or 'extreme-rightist-radicals'. They can have 'radical' back since they are radical conservatives. They can also have 'elitist' and 'extremist' back, as in 'conservative-elitist' or 'conservative-extremists'.
Rank and file conservative sympathizers cluelessly call themselves 'ditto-heads', and I haven't found much cause to disagree, so I refer to them as such and their ideas as 'talking-points'. I also like to use words like anti-American, anti-egalitarian, anti-freedom, anti-justice, anti-democratic liberally (heh heh). 'Bush's crimes' can be 'Bush's-assault-on-freedom' or 'Bush-felonies'. In fact, since Bush has been found to be in violation of wiretapping laws the breaking of which constitute felonies, 'convicted-felon-Bush' not only has a nice ring to it analogous to 'convicted-felon-Saddam-Hussein', but it is essentially objectively accurate. He was convicted, just not sentenced or punished.
I suggest that we adopt the routine use of language like 'ultrareactionary', 'uberconservative' or 'extremist' in describing ordinary neoconservative ideas and personnel. Descriptions of conservatism need to include words that emphasize their extremist and fascistic tendencies, including 'extremist' and 'fascistic'. Note the wiggle room in the use of that word 'fascistic' compared to the word 'fascist'.
Many liberals and progressives will argue that the use of such methods is immoral and that use of them makes us no better than the neoconservatives. I disagree, just as I disagree that returning gunfire is no different than initiating it. They use the technique unprovoked as an offensive weapon to harm the liberal movement in America. We would be using it, like the gun in the example, in self-defense to restore parity and to advance an agenda of morality instead of one of crime.
Those that still find that objectionable on principle may be right, but I think that they are overextending the principle such as when we overextend a reasonable and feasible principle like nonaggression to an unreasonable extent and also include failure to self-defend which is probably not compatible with survival. We must remember that some principles are not compatible with survival such as the Shaker proscription against biological reproduction or the extreme pacifism of the Quakers in isolation (they can refuse to take up arms and still survive if there are many non-Quakers surrounding them that don't). I say that there is an important moral and intellectual difference between the right's actions and those that I advocate in response, and I believe that American liberalism, already in the ICU and comatose on a ventilator, is fighting for its survival.
Tory is a good word too. It smacks of royalty, aristocracy, and privilege and thus has some of the same cache as elitist or blue-blood. See how easy this is.
by
Yaybob (12 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 174 comments)
on Monday, January 1, 2007 at 7:48:34 AM
Sorry for the typo. January 3rd and 4th will be 2007, of course, not 2006.
But since we don't have the option of editing comments yet, and I had to start a new comment to correct my previous one, I might as well add something that I left out:
When Clinton and Dole pushed through GATT, and the Democrats voted for GATT and NAFTA, they did not feel the pain of the millions of small farmers who would be displaced from their land as a result, or the pain of the millions of workers who would lose their livelihoods and their jobs were outsourced.
Had that researcher compared the reactions of the brains of conservatives with members of the Democratic Leadership Council, or with "Democrats" like Diane Feinstein and Joe Lieberman, he would not have found any differences at all.
by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments)
on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 5:22:05 PM
and he is absolutely right about that assumption by the author. It is unfortunate but very sadly correct that the Democratic Party has silenced and ignored its liberal wing and, instead of the Big Tent Party they have become a slave to corporate funding, being led by the nose by the DLC. This Clinton inspired travesty has caused the leadership to make no statements opposed by the would be large check writers.
The Founders were not liberal vs. conservative but Populist vs Corporatist, Jefferson being the leading Populist and Adams the leader of the right wing so to speak.
by
ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2377 comments)
on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 6:40:29 PM
The Differences Between Right Brain and Left Brain Thinkers
I love this article. This confirms my suspicions that the majority of Republicans are left brained and the majority of Democrats are right brained. From study, I know that right brained people are more artistic, imaginative, see color better, understand spatial resolution better, think more globally, can empathize better, which causes them to be better peacemakers. Left brained people are more mathematical, logic oriented, linear thinking, with forward marching determination because of a reduction of mental peripheral vision, causing them to be better entrepreneurs, accountants, politicians, conquerors, and violent criminals.
Does this sound like someone we know? What's really cool is to take a left brained person and then add on top of that, dyslexia, large amounts of alcohol during youth, early training to be a snob, have a pampered life style, not enough intelligence to read, and then enter into a religion, that absolutely no one can understand without an incredible ability to read, shake it all together and what do you get? Why it's the 43rd President of the United States, silly!
So now what do we do! The leader of the free world is a highly dangerous moron. And furthermore it's our faults, because we are lazy, self-absorbed people who don't want to make waves. We have been conditioned during the last few decades that it is rude and improper to rock the boat, to cause embarrassment. Don't say anything bad about our President (unless of course he's a Democrat). To let the status quo be. Well, they are wrong and their social training has been wrong. We need to arrest that son-of-bitch and put him jail. He is a criminal.
Nothing less will do. If we do not have the gumption to put this dysfunctional, dyslexic, Diebold delivered, dumbass in jail then we deserve to lose our freedoms. If we do not put our white collar criminals in jail, then the world will know that we are a farce. And that we have nothing to teach them or offer them. We will lose everything, reputation, honor, friends, allies, our very lives! That would be a bad scenario in trying to control immigration!
The good news is that left brained people can be taught to be peacemakers. One must be persistent, but it can be done. As a society we must teach peacemaking. We will not survive if we do not. If we do not know and understand peacemaking, how can we survive? If we can't make peace with our own species, how can we have peace with other species that share the Earth; we can't even have peace with our own Earth. Not having peace with the Earth is a not good idea. It's a lot bigger than we are and it can kick our butts. If we push ol' Mother Earth too far, she does have many weapons at her disposal, to make us extinct species number 1,342,056.......Ouch! Better start teaching them left brainers' how to make peace! Or big Momma gonna' abort us.
by
Wayne Osborne (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 5 comments)
on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 7:00:32 PM
"The leader of the free world is a highly dangerous moron."
Imagine an alien receiving this transmission from earth. What must such a creature think about a race of creatures that chooses a submoronic sociopath from amongst all of its inhabitants to make decisions for it? If I heard about such a race of creatures as that on a planet somewhere, I would assume that they were doomed by their dysfunctional governmental system and poor judgment. Frankly, I would be thinking, "Good riddance. Please take your diseased selves out of the universe's gene pool before you learn how to visit other planets."
Of course, as an alien, I wouldn't make a distinction between the dysfunction being planetary or isolated to one nation, i.e., a human deficiency vs. an American failure. But as an earthling, I probably would, unless I was an American. I would probably think, "Isolate the abscess and incise it from the otherwise relatively healthy tissue before it kills everything."
As an American, it would be much harder to come to such a conclusion. But not for the rest of the world, which, like the hypothetical aliens, also recognizes what a threat to the planet the American government is. Undoubtedly, we are unwelcome neighbors and much of the world is rooting for America's extinction by self-implosion. As a non-American, you would have no difficulty agreeing with that.
Notwithstanding the obstacles to doing so, Americans have a responsibility nonetheless to the world to regain control of the runaway locomotive that it has built and turned over to sociopaths.
But we are Americans, and it is difficult for us to think globally when it is an apparent conflict of interest to do so. Plus, Americans are out of practice seeing themselve objectively, admitting error, apologizing, taking responsibility, making difficult decisions or caring about the rest of the world. I doubt that its people can recognize or meet their responsibility, which means that it will fall on the rest of the world to organize itself against us and stop us. I anticipate a pan-European or a Chinese army (or both, as allies) to organize against us out of necessity, and frankly, I wouldn't blame them.
Now, consider this prescient excerpt from the Grateful Dead's 'Casey Jones':
"Driving that train, high on cocaine,
Casey Jones you'd better watch your speed.
Trouble ahead, trouble behind,
And you know that notion just crossed my mind.
Trouble ahead, Lady in red,
Take my advice you'd be better off dead.
Switchman's sleeping, train hundred and two is
On the wrong track and it's headed for you.
Driving that train, high on cocaine,
Casey Jones you'd better watch your speed.
Trouble ahead, trouble behind,
And you know that notion just crossed my mind.
Trouble with you is the trouble with me,
You got two good eyes but you still don't see.
Come round the bend, you know it's the end,
The fireman screams and the engine just gleams..."
by
Yaybob (12 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 174 comments)
on Monday, January 1, 2007 at 12:18:23 PM
Great article! this might take some of the stigma away from being a liberal. Conservatives have almost made liberal a dirty word. Your use of history was nice it demonstrated how political parties can swap ideology when several years pass. The last 15 years we have endured two conservative parties maybe liberals can crawl out of their foxholes and go on the offensive.
by
Gary Denson (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 216 comments)
on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 11:20:48 PM
Decades ago Republicans set out to discredit and destroy liberal ideology with lies and hate-mongering. The first tool they employed, racism to attack desegregation and civil rights was a huge success, and still is. Then they utilized abortion as a means to demonize liberals as baby-killers, followed by religious intolerance to stigmatize both gays and liberals. While all this was happening, Democratic leaders hung in there like punching bags, defenseless, deaf, dumb and blind.
Clearly, hate-mongering is the most effective way to achieve political domination. Also abundantly clear is that the Democrat's submission response didn't work. It never does against sociopaths.
Now Democrats have an opportunity and responsibility to discredit and destroy conservative ideology without lies and hate-mongering. All they have to do is investigate the multitude of crimes committed by Republicans in the last six years. If Democrats shirk their responsibility to "show and tell" the American people the truth, they don't deserve to be considered a political party.
by
rabblerowzer (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 227 comments)
on Monday, January 1, 2007 at 9:28:02 AM
"If Democrats shirk their responsibility to "show and tell" the American people the truth, they don't deserve to be considered a political party."
Previously I posted this supporting opinion elsewhere:
" [The Democrats have] abandoned America and its liberal and progressive heritage. It stands for nothing, certainly not me. I resent them for letting the conservatives establish such a vast infrastructure unanswered.
They should have been screaming from the rooftops when the Fairness Doctrine was gutted. They should have been there with counter measures the day Rush Limbaugh went on the air. They should have fought consolidation of the media loudly and like pit bulls. Instead, they let this go on silently for over twenty years.
They should have been forming their own networks of contributors, think tanks and policy organizations for twenty years to counter the conservatives. They slept while the enemy worked diligently to dismantle the America that was built for its citizens and reconstruct in its place an icon that serves corporate masters instead. That's a dereliction of duty, and I fear that we will never recover from their falling asleep on the job. Nor should they be forgiven or trusted again"
My post above, "George 'Casey Jones' Bush" also elaborates on failed responsibility, but this time, focusing on the American people rather than just the Democratic Party.
You also wrote:
"Decades ago Republicans set out to discredit and destroy liberal ideology with lies and hate-mongering."
Amazingly, this is the subject of another post I left above entitled, "It's the manipulation of language, stupid!", although my analysis is at variance with yours with respect to an adequate response.
But in the main, I'm with you.
by
Yaybob (12 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 174 comments)
on Monday, January 1, 2007 at 12:43:33 PM
This morning I read your article as pointed out by a colleage to me on my web site www.truthtown.org. The timing of your article and my similar article "The Danger of Conservatism: Or Why the US is a Liberal Democracy" (URL http://www.truthtown.org/story/2006/12/30/182740/63) is amazaing.
Keep on writing, and in your case I'll start reading.
Larry Welsch
by
Lawrence A. Welsch (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Tuesday, January 2, 2007 at 3:55:41 AM
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