From: coolidge@speaker.wpd.sgi.com (Don Coolidge)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.dan-quayle
Subject: Re: "Liberal" - A Misnomer
Date: 25 Aug 92 23:35:30 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.


Fred,

This article seems little more than a collection of mean-spirited
Orwellian Newspeak, where somehow you've turned all the important 
words on their heads. Were it not for your careful sentence
construction and almost-excellent (by Net standards) spelling, I'd
assume you were just trying to bait us all. But you come across as
sincere, and so I feel compelled to confront your errors.

In article <1992Aug25.115945.2018@wkuvx1.bitnet>, barnejd@wkuvx1.bitnet writes:
|> Let's face it - the term "liberal" is a misnoner.  Some of the 
|> most intolerant people I've ever met are liberals (of course, I'm
|> sure there are good-hearted, if misled ones, out there). 

Uh-huh...check up on the dictionary definition of liberal.
It's *defined* using words like generosity, tolerant, etc.
Methinks you've bought into the demonized rightwing definition
of the word, rather than what it actually means.

Now, if you'd only appended a smiley...

|> Anyone
|> who has any convictions at all, anyone who stands up for what they
|> believe in, is insulted, slandered, etc., etc., etc.

Even if that were so, what's your point? I would imagine that
you're trying to say something about the slanderers and insulters,
but the context says otherwise. I would point out that most of
the current national slander and insult is directed at the so-called
liberals, rather than issuing from them. Is that the point you were
trying to make?

|>   Most liberals nowdays don't want the name liberal.  I say we 
|> call them what they are - hypocrites (only the ones who are).

Hypocrites know no political colors. I would include in that
category a) all balanced-budget-amendment proponents who have
ever voted for a budget deficit, b) right-to-lifers who favor
the death penalty, c) family-values prophets who hide many skeletons
in their respective closets, d) those who decry the former liberal
Supreme Court, then insist on litmus tests for all conservative
nominees, e) environmental Presidents who turn their VP and other
stooges loose to gut the environment in the name of "competitiveness",
f) education Presidents who are doing their best to destroy public
education in America, g) tax-cutters who then borrow to make
up the deficit, ensuring that we'll have to pay the borrowed amount
not once, but many times with compounded interest, h) etc. etc. etc.

Who do *you* call hypocrites?
  I
|> put them in the same category I do David Duke - they refuse to come
|> out and say what they really believe, that morality is wrong, that 
|> if you tell someone they're wrong you're intolerant and bigoted, 
|> that if you have any sense of decency at all you're some kind of 
|> neo-Nazi.

Here's where it becomes ever-more-Looking-Glass-ish...David
Duke and the "liberals"???

Genuine liberals do not believe that morality is wrong. They 
believe it is immoral to force one religion's narrow view of 
morality on the public at large. They do not believe that someone 
who tells someone else he is wrong (as I am doing now) is necessarily
bigoted, though that may in fact be the case if such lecturing
is based on a narrow worldview rather than a liberal one :^)

As for the Neo-Nazi tag, I can't think of anybody remotely
connected with liberalism (or even genuine conservativism,
for that matter) who has ever tarred decency with the Nazi
label. David Duke has neo-Nazi leanings. So do skinheads.
Ditto for the Aryan Nation in the Northwest. Where's the 
decency in any of them?

|>   They've got control over Congress and the media; God help us if
|> they get the Presidency as well.

If you think that liberals control the Congress, you've been
paying too much attention to Bush and Quayle and not enough 
to CSPAN, the Irangate hearings, the Thomas confirmation hearings,
the Souter confirmation hearings, the Scalia confirmation
hearings, the Kennedy confirmation hearings, the Gates confirmation
hearings....your assertion is flat wrong.

|>   One more thing - Albert Gore.  The biggest "tax-and-spender" in
|> Congress, a man who was raised with the silver spoon of the politic-
|> ally connected in his mouth.  The only reason I'd vote for him would
|> be to get him out of Tennessee.

Other than empty namecalling, I don't see any substance or 
substantiation here. Did I miss something you meant to include?

|> P.S. - I want to make two things crystal clear before I go.  First,
|> like I said before, I don't make this as a blanket statement about
|> all liberals (strangely enough, not like many vocal liberals do about
|> conservatives). 

I don't know of any liberals who blanketly condemn conservatives.
I do know of many thoughtful Americans who correcly condemn the acts
and aims of those who are trying their best to economically, socially,
and politically destroy this country in order to enhance their own
economic, social, and political power.

If you have any examples, please raise them for discussion.

|> God gave you the ability to chose; use it with care and wisdom.

???????????? Pardon me if I fail to see you taking your own advice.
Though you seem to really believe everything you've said, you'd be
doing yourself a favor if you found out facts, instead of repeating
the mistakes of others. Don't let anybody, left or right, consevative
or liberal, Democrat or Republican, tell you what your ideas are. And
don't let them tell you what words mean, either. Humpty Dumpty may have
made words mean whatever he meant them to, but that was only in Alice's
adventures...

Don Coolidge
coolidge@speaker.wpd.sgi.com
Newsgroups: alt.fan.dan-quayle