Daniel Greenfield
5. Multiculturalism - If you haven't seen the billboards yet, liberals love multiculturalism, they embrace all races and religions because they believe in diversity. True? Nope.
Liberals follow the left's paradigm of waging class warfare. Their interest in minorities extends only to enlisting some disenfranchised groups in their class warfare. Contrary to all the multicultural billboards, liberals are primarily interested in unsuccessful minorities, because they can frighten them, exploit them and farm them as voting blocks. Successful minorities such as Asians, Indians and Jews are wanted only as window dressing. And get the short end of the stick when a real issue comes up. Multiculturalism is really only class warfare disguised as opposition to bigotry. Take away all the historical revisionism about the Democratic party's ugly civil rights history and the empty slogans about diversity, and what you have left is naked political opportunism. The Democratic party trafficked in racism when it suited them (and still does) and dons the halo of tolerance when it suits them now. The left was equally at home working both sides of the street, and the views of great socialists from Jack London to Karl Marx on race, differed little from those of the Nazi party.
Multiculturalism isn't a philosophy, it's a political organization tactic to bring the groups they consider part of the working class under one umbrella. It's the same old class warfare organizational tactics applied to race and ethnicity. The goal of these tactics is not empowerment, but to create a voting bloc of people who have been convinced that they're doomed to helplessness, without the leadership of the left "fighting" on their behalf.
Liberals can still be and often are bigots. Their bigotry is just informed by political necessity. As a bonus, having the "diversity" brand allows them to describe the opposition as bigots, without ever being called out for their own bigotry.
4. Feminism - We all know of course that liberals are the biggest feminists out there, except when they're running against a woman. Or when a woman accuses their candidate of rape or sexual harassment.
Like multiculturalism, owning the feminist brand has been convenient. And it was easy enough to manage once feminism became a wholly owned product of academia, funded by liberal groups like the Ford Foundation. This brand of feminism has as much to do with equal rights for women, as African Studies have to do with equal rights for African-Americans. They're basically little more than ways to repackage the agenda politics of the far left in identity colors. That way socialism can be dressed up as a civil rights agenda, and opposition to it becomes racism or sexism.
That leads us to the absurd spectacle of academic feminists declaring that successful female candidates who don't share their politics are not feminists, but male candidates who do, are. Dig down to their real definition of feminism, and it turns out to be liberalism.
None of this has anything to do with women, just as multiculturalism has nothing to do with race. Take away the disguises, and you end up with the same old ideology marketed to target groups as a political organizing tactic. It's no different than selling cereal, except the cereal is red and comes with a few dozen textbooks.
Liberals are not interested in empowering women, except to work for them or vote for them. There is no philosophical commitment here to equality for women, only a sales pitch for liberalism.
3. Friends of the Poor - We know liberals are against poverty, right? Otherwise why all that talk of making the rich pay their fair share. But if you actually look at socialist countries, the poor aren't exactly coming out ahead. What's the problem?
The problem is that liberals are not into enriching the poor, but removing what they consider the upper class, and turning over control of the economy to themselves. But a centrally planned economy leads to more poverty, not less. Take away the ability to go up the economic ladder, and how can poverty end?
It can't. But ending poverty was never the idea. Wealth redistribution is a neat catchphrase, but the reality is that the rich and the middle class are purged to make way for a new rich and middle class composed of party members. Their brand of equality is not about helping the poor, but putting themselves in charge and imposing an artificial standard of fairness in order to build a perfect society. Before Communism came to Russia, the poor begged on the street. After Communism, begging was illegal and the poor were deported to labor camps as parasites. Because once society is made equal, anyone who's still unequal must be an exploiter or a parasite.
You can't end poverty, except through opportunity, and that's the one thing their social system doesn't offer. It's why America under Obama is poorer than ever. Jobs aren't created by confiscating wealth, but by encouraging free enterprise. But when the goal isn't to create jobs, but to create a static society where everyone knows their place, then their way is best. All totalitarian movements are at their heart, reactionary. Even if they're cloaked in red t-shirts and rock concerts. And reactionary movements are often spearheaded by an upper class trying to deny social mobility to the working class. And when you take a magnifying glass to liberalism, that's exactly what it looks like.
Of course this isn't an original observation. Orwell's Oceania in 1984 worked on the same exact principle. Orwell was warning about the rise of a totalitarian left with no regard for human rights. But it's already here.
2. Pro-Peace - The left is peaceful in the same way that active volcanoes are gentle, and tsuanmis are a good way to cool off after a long summer day.
Look around the world at the left of center regimes, and you come away with a horror show of constant conflicts. (The left explains this as the result of vast conspiracies by reactionary forces against the freedom loving peoples of the world and their friendly dictators.) And then count how many liberals wear t-shirts with King or Gandhi on them, and how many wear t-shirts with Che on them.
If you read the official talking points, you would have no idea that America fought most of its wars in the 20th century under Democratic Presidents. Or that the enthusiastic revolutionaries of the USSR and China between them accounted for more dead, than would have been produced by a nuclear war.
But being pro-peace is yet another talking point. The left is not pro-peace, it's against wars being fought by their political opponents. Take a measure of how much coverage anti-war protests received under Bush, and how much coverage they receive under Obama. The war hasn't gone away, even the protests haven't entirely gone away (mostly by the same Marxist-Trotskyist groups that were running them all along) but the coverage has gone down the rabbit hole.
Then let's take a walk back to WW2, when American liberals went from being anti-war when Hitler invaded Poland, to being pro-war when he invaded the Soviet Union. The Trotskyists of the era remained anti-war and the Communist party in the United States helped the authorities deal with them. Because suddenly war was in their interest.
The liberal position on war is that they are against it, unless they are for it. And then when it's over, they are against it, because it didn't accomplish all their goals. Liberals were against WW2, before they were for it, but then they were against it, once those GI's weren't wearing down German tanks anymore, but blocking Soviet tanks from "liberating" the rest of Europe. Liberals were for Israel, when England was against Israel, but they were against Israel, when Arab tanks forwarded from the Soviet Union were being blown up by the damned Israelis.
An easy way to sketch out the liberal position on a war, is to check the political ideology of the government fighting it and how it accords with their own politics, the political ideology of the enemy they are fighting against, and the effect on any left wing regimes. Add all that up and you get the liberal position on the war. The further left you go, the higher the bar goes.
Liberals will support wars by liberal governments against developed countries they consider reactionary. They will generally oppose all wars by conservative governments. They will generally oppose wars by liberal governments against undeveloped countries, sometimes even when those countries are reactionary, unless the government conducting the war is far to the left.
There are ideological complications and rivalries in the mix. There's also the human factor. Some American liberals did support the American invasion of Afghanistan initially, but the left never did. A handful of liberals actually thought the American program was within their own ideology, but they were primarily British, and were quickly ostracized for it. On the other hand, George Galloway, who openly supported Saddam, is still considered a hero of the people. Because as bad as Saddam worse, the general agreement is that America was worse, because it represents capitalism and people with jobs. Which are not things the left likes.
And there you have it. The left's commitment to peace. Or rather a commitment to anti-war rallies, when the war in question doesn't seem to be in their interest, and isn't being waged to protect a left-wing country, or a group that the left is allied with.
1. Patriotic - Every now and then liberals like to claim that they're patriotic. Usually around an election. Of course they're not patriotic in the "wear a flag on your lapel" kind of way. They're more patriotic in the "point out everything wrong with your country and then threaten to move to Canada if you don't win the election" way. Which is fine. America has seen patriots like that before. They used to wear green coats and moved to Canada, right around the time the last British troops left New York on Evacuation Day.
Occasionally when in power liberals will actually try to brand their opponents as traitors or unpatriotic, but like a dog trying to talk, it never sounds right. Mostly they have to defend themselves against charges of being unpatriotic, particularly when they've been caught attending a church whose rousing hymn is "God Damn America".
It's a challenge being patriotic, when you don't believe in American Exceptionalism, or even the value of the Nation-State. When you think that the world would run better if everyone just listened to what the UN tells them to do. When you think that its history is the story of how rich Europeans murdered all the natives and built smokestacks over their graves in order to plunder South America of its fruit-- being patriotic really requires contortionism that would put any circus acrobat to shame.
That's probably why liberals don't do the patriotism thing very well. It's hard to spit in someone's face one day and then hug them the next. For liberal politicians, patriotism is one of those unfortunate election season things they try to get through as quickly as possible. And hope no one asks them if they believe in the Constitution.
When they're forced to, they will say something vague about America's heritage of tolerance, and imply that the WW2 GI's were fighting for socialism, civilian trials for terrorists and opposition to tort reform. They're most comfortable around the Civil War and WW2. Anything outside that comfort zone makes them itchy. They will pose next to Old Glory when they have to, if they have a relative who fought in a war, they will bring him up. If he's not dead, they will drag him out. If he is dead, they will dig him up. But just don't ask them any questions about the application of their vaunted patriotism. Or why if they're so patriotic, they can't actually get behind their country in wartime.
Of course they will answer that true patriotism means undermining your country in wartime. Which means that Benedict Arnold was the original patriot.
Take away these 5 and what do you have left? Nothing but a political ideology that seeks power and will use any rhetoric and trick to get it. And that is the real face of modern day liberalism.
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