I don’t have a problem with actual Liberals being religious and actually if I had to guess just at looking at the Democratic Party, Liberals tend to be religious. But as a Liberal myself, I have a problem with being both religious, or an Atheist, because I simply don’t know if there’s a God, or not.
Liberalism, is based of reason and evidence, not faith. And if you take the position that God doesn’t exist, but you can’t prove it, because no one actually knows, if we were all real about this, you have faith even as an Atheist that God doesn’t exist.
I just don’t work that way as a non-religious person who generally doesn’t go by faith. I trust people, sure, because they’ve given me reason to trust them. But again that is based on actual evidence. Not having some grand vision and beliefs that there is some higher power out there watching over everyone.
There isn’t some Liberal God (at least that I know of) giving Liberals all of their powers and ideas. We developed them based on knowledge and evidence from what works. Education, freedom, responsibility and let people make their own decisions.
And because I don’t have faith in whether there’s a God or not, I’m neutral on the subject. I’m an Agnostic and I take strong positions on issues where there’s clear evidence one way or the other. Which is how I have my liberal principles that are built around individuality, choice and responsibility. Because that is where the evidence suggests that I should be.
Liberals believe in putting out all of the facts and information about all of the issues on the table. (Just don’t eat them) Educate everyone as best as possible, but at the end of the day let people make their own personal and economic decisions and hold them responsible for them.
I don’t hold these values, because I have faith that they will work, but because there’s clear evidence that they will work and have worked. Religion, is the opposite of that at least as it relates to God. “We can’t see God personally, but we know he’s there looking after us, because we have in faith in him.” That doesn’t mean anything to me and I’m not impressed by that. But others of course can make their own decisions. Which is what I believe in as a Liberal.
It is one thing to have strong moral religious values about how you look at life. It is another to say: “this is what is right, because God told us that.” How would you know that, did you ask him? Did you see him write that down somewhere? How do you know that God is a man? I don’t have to answer these questions, because I don’t believe in God, because I don’t know if one, or many exist, or not.
I don’t have a nice way of putting this other to say that Greg Gutfeld has an interesting and even good sense of humor. And is entitled to his liberal First Amendment rights like all other Americans. All of these collectivist socialist values that comes from Europe, that he was talking about, are exactly that. Collectivist socialist values. Illiberal in most cases, because Liberals believe in liberty, which is where the word comes from and Socialists believe in the collective and seeing to it that you have a big enough government to see to it that no one has to go without.
To suggest that people who are successful regardless of political ideology, live by conservative values, would be like saying anyone who is against racism, believes in free speech and expression even as it relates to pornography and offensive speech , things that the liberal ACLU defends in court everyday, must be Liberals. And if you believe that gays should be treated equally under law, you must be a Liberal. Right? Am I at least in the ballpark on this one? If this is case than most Americans are Liberals, because we tend to believe in these things and oppose discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion and even sexuality. If same-sex marriage was on a national ballot, it would probably win 60-40 now. Does that mean 3-5 Americans are liberal? I could argue that we are. But same-sex marriage is just an example of that.
You don’t have to be a Conservative, or even live by conservative values to be successful in America. If you believe in personal freedom constitutional rights, individual rights, civil liberties, equal justice under law, values that tend to unite Americans, are you a Liberal? No, because these are simply Americans values that tend to bring Americans together. Instead of trying to divide a country of three-hundred-twenty-million people between Right and Left. And doing it in a way that suggests Liberals are simply about collectivism and just another way of say Marxist. And people who believe in productivity, hard work, education, responsibility, fiscal responsibility, etc, aren’t conservative necessarily who live by the conservative ideology. They’re just good productive Americans who in many cases also believe personal freedom, including privacy, equal justice and rights under law, a very liberal freedom of speech, etc.
If you’re going to accuse people of being liberal and followers of liberalism, which Liberals tend to take as complement, by the way and not as an insult, so I don’t know what Greg Gutfeld is getting out of here other than maybe some laughs (perhaps at himself_ and some new followers people who already agree with him, at least have the decency to know what the hell you’re talking about. Instead of going off bogus (to be kind) liberal stereotypes from the 1950s and 1960s. Join the rest of the country in the 21st Century where many Americans now embrace so-called liberal values, that I’ve already laid out, as well as Greg Gutfeld’s so-called conservative values. If the Right had to talk about actual Liberals and not just people who call themselves Liberals , because they don’t have the balls to be called Socialists, or are called Liberals in by the mainstream media, or hyper-partisan rightists (such as Greg Gutfeld) the Right would lose all the time if they had to debate Liberals and liberalism for what we really are. Because Americans now tend to embrace these so-called liberal values.
“As blue jeans, beards, body adornments, natural foods, legal marijuana, gay marriage, and single parenthood have gained acceptance in mainstream American society in recent years, it is now clear that the hippies won the culture wars that were launched nearly fifty years ago. It was in the mid-1960s that one of America’s oddest social movements, the hippies, suddenly appeared.”
“The New Culture Forum’s brand new publication “The Long March Through The Institutions: How the Left Won the Culture War” may be downloaded free of charge from our website:The New Culture Forum…
The one thing That I like about the 1960s culturally other than the music, the movies and Jim Morrison, were the Hippies.
And as much as todays so-called Progressives claim to love the Hippies and respect them, the Hippies represent the opposite of what today’s so-called Progressive represent.
Hippies, Liberals were true, because they were anti-establishment and pro-individualism. Today’s so-called Progressives, are anti-individualism and pro-big government to the point that they want government to check what people eat, drink and even what we can say to each other with their so-called political correctness movement.
Today’s so-called Progressives are not anti-establishment: to the contrary, they support the biggest establishment in the world: its called the U.S. Government and think it’s too small.
Hippies back in the mid 1960s (let’s say) at least were true Liberals, because they were individualists. They got the memo, or bothered to look at the calendar and figured out that it was no longer 1959 and that the 1950s was finally over. They were born either post-World War II, or during that war and did not remember any of it and decided that they did not have to live their lives of their parents and grandparents.
Hippies knew the 1940s and 1950s was not so swell after all. That mom did not have to stay home and raise the kids, while dad came home every night Between 6-7 and said: “Honey, I’m home! What’s for dinner? I’m starved. Gee, what a day. ” (Or something like that from Leave it to Beaver) Thank God that was before my time. Hippies / Liberals, we’re tired of black and white TV, or sitting around in the living room listening to the radio and were looking for a different lifestyle.
There’s a discussion among historians about when the Counter Culture actually began. Some people say 1965 with the start of the anti-war movement. I point to the 1963 March on Washington as not just one of the most important times and best times in American history, but where you literally had a million people from all over the country from all sorts of races, ethnicities, cultures, lifestyles, who were anti-establishment and were all looking for a better and different America.
If there was one point in history that I wish I was old enough to have been there and experienced it would be the 1963 March on Washington. The dawning of a new America where you had all sorts of different Americans all together at the same place having a good time together and enjoying each other with all sorts of great entertainment groups all together.
These Americans were looking for their own place in America and the freedom to be individuals. And not feel they need to work at their father’s factory, or his company, or get married and stay home and raise kids.
If you were a women back then while your husband went to work and earned a living for his wife and kids. Gays came out of the closet in the thousands in the 1960s. And according to the Christian-Right, America has-been going to hell ever since. As they’ve forgotten one of their own commandments: “Love your neighbor as yourself own.” In other words: treat others as you would treat yourself. Show respect to the other people as you want to be respected. These values are mainstream today, but fifty years ago America was going through, well a Cultural Revolution.
Romantic couples having pre-marital sex, living together before they were married. Perhaps better known as domestic partnerships, unmarried couples raising their kids together, homosexuality, marijuana, women working and managing business’s, men who cooked and spent a lot of time with their kids, marijuana, I mean all of these things are mainstream today. (More examples of why the Christian-Right believes America is going to hell)
But these cultural changes were started back in 1963 and then a mid-1960s by the people who were literally trying to change America if not the world. Not the New-Left from the late 1960s that literally wanted a different form of government for the United States and a completely different economic system and force democratic socialism if not communism on the country. The Hippies, wanted to create a new culture in America and new way of life.
The reason why the Hippies and Liberals won the Culture War has nothing to do with new arguments, or these different ways of debating issues. It has to do with the children and grandchildren of the Hippies are now grown up and experienced their parents and grandparents attitudes when it comes to things like tolerance and multiculturalism and integration and have decided that there’s nothing wrong with people living differently as long as they aren’t hurting innocent people with what they’re doing.
They know and are friends of people from other races, ethnicities, cultures, religions and even sexualities and know that they’re good people too. So why put them down, or look down upon them simply for being different from how they Are and how they were born. It took 1-2 generations of people for Liberals to win the Culture War, but we did and America is not going back to the 1950s.
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