Why Liberalism is Wrong in Every Respect

Copyright 2004 by Jeffrey Stueber, all rights reserved

I remember staying up late some years ago to watch the Rush Limbaugh television show. A half hour every day would deliver a fine dose of a conservative pundit's opinions to like-minded viewers. Limbaugh was often humorous on television as he was on the radio and this added to my appreciation of the program that is brain candy to a mind such as mine.

Limbaugh's favorite target was liberalism, a political philosophy whose goal is to equalize outcomes at the expense of various religious and traditional dogmas and barriers. This is not made to be a non-Christian political system of thought on purpose, but it does have a strong anti-Christian or anti-tradition strain to it.

My definition agrees rather well with the definition of it by liberals such as David Barash and Victor Kamber and non-liberal critics such as David Koyzis and Robert Bork ⁽¹⁾ Unfortunately, I have found many liberal arguments and positions highly illogical and perhaps only contain a mere shred of sound reasoning.

Affirmative Action

Liberals love affirmative action. To be more specific, liberals love setting quotas for hiring minorities and schooling them. (In this essay, when I refer to schooling being affected by affirmative action, I am referring to non-mandatory higher education.) This includes former presidential candidate Al Gore who, in a televised campaign speech when running against George Bush Jr., said that various things were in jeopardy if his opponent won, including affirmative action. Such desires for leveling outcomes have even culminated in proposals for monetary reparations for blacks to help compensate for past injustices. I have two arguments against setting quotas.

First, the pragmatic argument. Those given jobs they did not acquire by merit will not work to better themselves to get those jobs by merit. Those who do not receive those jobs because they are non-minorities will resent those who get the jobs through the affirmative action quota system. This creates a climate of poorly trained workers and very irate workers that are denied jobs even though they qualify for them. The same applies to education.

Second, the moral argument. Those who get jobs because of their race create a situation where they, or another party, steals jobs from those who deserve them. It doesn't make any difference whether the minorities take the jobs away from the qualified applicants or whether the government, via tax incentives or government penalties, takes the jobs away. Somebody takes the jobs away from those to whom they belong. The same strain in my argument applies to education.

Anyone who wishes to keep the quota system must refute these two arguments. It is extremely unlikely that person can. However, periodically, one encounters worthy efforts.

Thurgood Marshall argued for affirmative action and against the Supreme Court's ruling in Regents of the University of California v. Allan Bakke (1978). The court found that affirmative action is unconstitutional if quotas are used in admission policies for students. However, it ruled that affirmative action is constitutional if quotas are not used. Marshall gave a brief history of bias against the Negro and then stated that "When the Negro child reaches working age, he finds that America offers him significantly less than it offers his white counterpart." This means higher unemployment and less income than whites. Thus, in light of the historic bias against the Negro and the effects of this bias, "bringing the Negro into the mainstream of American life should be a state interest of the highest order." To fail to do so, he said, is to ensure America will always be a divided nation. ⁽²⁾

Marshall's arguments are subject to the objections I previously cited. I support minorities getting jobs or higher education as long as they are qualified. Then I believe employers or schools should be kept from denying the minorities what they are due. Marshall's plan is a recipe for disaster if schools are required to bring into their buildings people who are not qualified or do not have the intellectual abilities to learn what the schools have to offer. The way to fix the problem is to find a way to provide schooling for children so they can learn as much as non-minorities and then allow them to compete in the employment marketplace. This is already happening and I have observed this where I work as well as in management at sporting teams.

Stanley Fish argues for affirmative action and takes a different route. He begins by citing a speech by George Bush Sr. in 1991 that refuted comparisons between Zionism and racism. ⁽³⁾ Racism, like that of the Nazi murder of Jews, is not comparable to the creation of the modern Jewish state because the Jews received their own country after years of oppression. The Nazis had no reason to murder the Jews. This is Bush's point and Fish uses it to jump start his arguments for affirmative action. This is a key example because Fish wants to claim that blacks benefit from affirmative action the way Jews benefitted from Zionism. Fish's point is that one is entitled to something due to the fact he or she was oppressed.

Yet, it is not clear how a minority has an automatic claim to what belongs to others. If, for example, I have been denied a job in computing simply because my last name is Stueber, then I do not have an automatic claim against my friend Paul's job just because I was denied a job in the past. (This is pertinent since I actually do have a friend named Paul in computing.) Paul undoubtedly deserves the jobs he gets and I should not be given these jobs if I do not deserve them. However, the moral path would be to allow me to get jobs on my merit and not be denied them, but not to take away a job from someone who deserves it.

This position obviously leads to political goals that become ridiculous. Suppose the government was to send every white family a bill at year end for, let's say, $50 and it notified them this was to fix injustices among races due to years of oppression. Most families I know would immediately become quite irate because it was not they who owned slaves or caused the repression. Such liberal reasoning can lead to quite personal results that can create resent and revolt among the populace.

Fish recognizes this counter-argument and he himself has undergone this type of reverse racism. He was nominated for an administrative post at a large university. Yet, he was denied it and the position was thrown in the direction of women and minorities. Fish was disappointed, but did not feel the situation was unfair because he was not the real target. Rather, the goal was not to deny Fish a job but to hire more minority and women faculty. One could look at the situation this way and decide that every instance of this kind of reverse racism is not an attack on an individual but on a group. Yet, affirmative action impacts people, individuals, that are denied what they deserve. My arguments against this kind of bias outweigh the arguments for it.

Homosexual Marriage

It is a foregone conclusion that homosexuals are liberal media darlings. This is not because liberals necessarily love homosexual lovemaking, but because the homosexual act is by nature the reverse of heterosexual sex. To glorify this type of lovemaking is to stretch the limits of the nature of the sexual act and therefore redefine what our culture finds acceptable.

It is instructive that the majority of gay-marriage arguments revolve around arguments of fairness. Take, for instance, Christopher Ott. ⁽⁴⁾ He argues that "the single most important principle in our country is that all of us are equal under the law." Despite this, he says, lawmakers, even some in Wisconsin, ignore this equal protection. Then he goes for the jugular vein of conservativism: "That kind of inequality should worry everyone. If our government can exclude one person or one group from equality, it can exclude any person or any group." This kind of argument can be recognized by any philosopher as a slippery slope argument and apparently the people he is addressing don't see this dilemma having these ramifications. He does try to provide a link between this type of discrimination and that of Nazi Germany, but by this time his methodology of arguing his point has bordered on the absurd. Ott does draw a comparison between equal protection for religion under the Constitution and protection for homosexuals, but religion has a specific amendment in the Constitution that addresses that issue while the same cannot be said for marriage. Ott has no other arguments to muster except his complaint about fairness. One can be assured that the fairness argument is probably the only argument gay-marriage advocates have. This is telling and I will say why later.

One might begin an analysis of this debate by asking what is good about heterosexual marriage and why it provides the model homosexuals wish to emulate. Marriage is historically thought to be a union of only two people because only two people, a man and woman, make a mated pair. Out of this union children originate and the marriage should be protected for the good of the children and the spouses. Marriage gives the spouses and child knowledge that there will always be those who love him or her and will support the rest of the family. Child rearing, however, is not the only benefit to come from traditional marriages. Sexual activity among monogamous heterosexual adults is healthy while sexual activity among many individuals over a short span of time is dangerous. Thus comes the stigmatism surrounding numerous sexual conquests. (For women, thus comes the reputation of being a slut.)

Given this fact, Gerard Bradley and Robert George argue for heterosexual marriage and the prohibition of homosexual marriage. ⁽⁵⁾ Their arguments center on the nature of the heterosexual act and its superiority to any other act. Bradley states that "homosexual acts are not and never can be marital. . . . Sex is for marriage, and marriage is (not coincidentally) the morally legitimate setting for bringing children into the world." Of course, homosexuals can adopt children and form a household. However, what they cannot do, as Bradley argues, is form a mated pair from which children derive. He goes on to say, "The marital union of man and woman provides, as nothing else can, the context . . . for the decent procreation and proper education of children; the civil law protects marriage largely for this purpose." Robert George says marriage is in trouble and the recognition of same-sex marriages would abolish the institution by "collapsing the moral principles at its foundation." This is because, as George says, marriage, historically is "a one-flesh union whose character and value give a man and a woman moral reasons . . . to pledge sexual exclusivity, fidelity, and permanence of commitment." If we change the conditions under which marriage operates, we change the rules by which marriage operates and its suppositions.

One could next turn to gay marriage to find what it is about gay marriage that makes it desirable. Here the gay pro-marriage argument breaks down completely, especially regarding the health of homosexual sex. Homosexuality is dangerous, physically. Numerous authors have pointed out the dangers of the homosexual act including Ken Mayer M.D., Hank Pizer, A. E. Wilder-Smith, Margaret Hyde, Elizabeth Forsyth M. D., Michael Fumento, Jeffrey Satinover, and undoubtedly others. ⁽⁶⁾

To begin, AIDS is largely a homosexual disease. In March of 1983, ninety-five percent of those with AIDS were men and two-thirds of them were homosexuals, and an additional few have been bisexuals. Between 1976 and 1981, the Center for Disease Control defined AIDS as a disease occurring almost exclusively among homosexuals. During this period, only one case had involved a female who became infect with AIDS. Ninety four percent of all cases involved men who were homosexual or bisexual. This means that the homosexual act is somehow to blame for these diseases.

A particular danger for homosexuals is anal sex. Several of the previous authors suggest that semen can be introduced to the partner's blood through tears in anal tissue. This exposure lowers the body's immune response. Studies of healthy homosexual men have shown that frequent anal sex has been associated with reduced immune response.

An acquaintance of mine was telling my wife that he knows of a gay friend who must wear what is called a "butt plug." This is because frequent wear occurs to the lining of the anus and its muscles due to the act of anal intercourse. The plug keeps fecal material from exiting the anus and this happens because the muscles that are responsible for keeping fecal material from exiting have become worn with abuse. Obviously the anus was not designed for the sexual interactions that occur in that lifestyle.

Homosexuals have not had a history of revealing themselves to be individuals concerned with the hazardous effects of sodomy. An article in Newsweek by Mark Peyser discusses a feature of the homosexual culture called "barebacking" - unsafe sex. This sudden renewal of unsafe sex is due, as Peyser tells us, to a 23 percent drop in AIDS deaths in the year prior to Peyser's writing due to more powerful drugs. Many homosexuals take a "morning after pill" - so to speak - after sex, this "pill" representing a potent combination of anti-AIDS drugs. It would be easier and better to teach abstinence than allow this climate of perversity to continue because when too many homosexuals feel that AIDS is no longer serious, they drop their guards. Peyser cites a man named Brian who was told "HIV is as easy to treat as the flu" and ended up with AIDS while still at a young age of 14. AIDS is nothing to take lightly and the faintest promise of hope can release a torrent of danger. The homosexual community's attitude is reflected in this quotation from Peyser:

Hard as it may be to understand, some gay men have unsafe sex becaue they want [Peyser's emphasis] to get HIV - or at least skate close to the edge. Danger can be erotic, even the threat of contracting a deadly disease. And men who have had their intimacy wrapped in latex for so many years want to share something - anything - with their partner. "I've met two people who were turned on by the idea of being infected," says Mark, an HIV-positive AIDS activist and frequent barebacker in New York.  ⁽⁷⁾

Given homosexual fairness arguments, gays cannot argue against polygamy. Thence come numerous questions. Why should marriage be confined to only two people? Why not three or four? Is not it a sign of bias to prevent marriage among three people just as it was to prevent marriage between two men or two women? Of course, to dilute the meaning of marriage this far would be to make such a definition of marriage lose cohesiveness. Neither can gay-marriage advocates argue that marriage should be between only two people just because two people have always composed a marriage. It is tradition, after all, that gay-marriage advocates are usurping. If fairness is not a valid argument for allowing gay marriage, then what is a valid argument?

This tension between polygamy and gay marriage was recognized by Charles Krauthammer in an essay I stumbled upon after reaching conclusions about the homosexuality-polygamy link. ⁽⁸⁾ Andrew Sullivan, whom Krauthammer cites, argues that homosexuality is a "state" while polygamy is an "activity" and homosexuality "is morally and psychologically" superior to polygamy. Krauthammer says there is no reason to suspect the need to bond with more than one person is any morally or psychologically superior to bonding with only one. Actually, the homosexual arguments against polygamy can be raised equally against homosexuality. Krauthammer concludes that people won't permit polygamy because "they think polygamy and incest wrong or unnatural or perhaps harmful." That, he says, is what most people think of homosexuality.

Most recently Charlene Gomes writes, in The Humanist, to debunk common conservative anti-gay marriage arguments. ⁽⁹⁾ She focuses on the "sanctity of marriage" argument and religious arguments and the final argument she attempts to refute is "that a host of social ills will result from legal recognition of gay marriage." These ills, she says, come from the assumption the definition of marriage will be stretched to the point of allowing bigamous marriage, incestuous marriages, marriages between humans and animals, and so forth. Gomes does refute Senator Rick Santorum's argument that every society has marriages that revolve around a man and woman. That, however, is not the point. The point is that a definition of marriage that comes only from considerations of fairness and justice has no basis to exclude marriages between more than two people.

Some might say because marriage is for reproduction we must then prohibit marriage to people who cannot reproduce. Here I think a helpful analogy might dismiss this counter argument. Consider, if you will, an automobile. Sometimes an automobile might not run perfectly but if you try to start it or drive it down the road in normal fashion, you are using the car in the manner to which it was intended. If, however, you try to drive the car into a tree, you are not using it in the manner to which it was intended. Similarly, if you engage in heterosexual activity without it culminating in the production of a child, you are at least doing it within the nature of the proper working of the male and female genitalia. Clearly, homosexual sex uses the genitalia and anus in a manner not consistent with their function.

The difficulty for liberals exists in answering two questions conservatives might pose to them. The first challenge is to argue for homosexual marriage without diluting the moral legitimacy of a two-person heterosexual union and meaning of marriage. The second challenge is to argue for homosexual sexual relations by overcoming the natural dangers and obstacles its nature imposes. Clearly these challenges present insurmountable obstacles to any acceptance of homosexual marriage.

Abortion

Abortion is also a liberal darling. F. Laggard Smith says it well: "Abortion is the ultimate backstop for libertine sex." ⁽¹⁰⁾ What he means is abortion is the ultimate contraceptive when all others have failed. For a culture that cannot and will not prevent people from having sex, abortion is the logical thing to have.

It is instructive that the majority of pro-abortion arguments do not argue the fetus is some inanimate object with no human life of its own or potential for it, much like a rock or a cactus. The reason they don't is because they know that the fetus is a tiny unborn human and not some benign lump of flesh.

The fallacies of abortion rights' arguments are many. I have listed them in another publication of mine, a publication worth reading. Francis Beckwith has written a book debunking, I suppose, every abortion argument. ⁽¹¹⁾ I have found pro-abortion arguments rather shameful in the sense they stretch the truth of some moral truths and beg the question rather often.

Recently the publication Congressional Digest featured the commentaries of numerous senators for and against abortion. ⁽¹²⁾ Of particular interest to me are Barbara Boxer's arguments against banning partial-birth abortion. Boxer starts by suggesting misstatements have been made on the Senate floor about this debate and ambles into her first counter-argument. If her daughter were pregnant, Boxer states, she wouldn't take daughter to senator Rick Santorum (a Republican senator against partial-birth abortion). Boxer would instead take her daughter to an OB-GYN (obstetrician gynecologist) to see if the pregnancy is going well and "that her health will not be impaired forever." Boxer assumes that partial-birth abortion is so necessary to save the life of the mother which is odd since the fetus is considered partially delivered and capable of being totally delivered. Boxer also seems to assume the woman is the only individual worth caring about and this seems likely considering her later rant about a partial-birth abortion ban taking away a woman's right to choose. What her arguments do show is Boxer's intellectual blind side to the issues regarding a human life that could be delivered properly and saved. As far as the medical necessity. Mike DeWine, senator from Ohio, refutes that argument by noting the American Medical Association has said partial-birth abortion is never necessary. Boxer does nothing further to successfully argue her case except doing what, among logicians, is recognized as a fallacy of listing information that has no bearing on the argument. (This is done by Boxer when she speaks of high unemployment, lack of prescription drug coverage, and so forth.) If this is the best the pro-choice have, then one can only guess that those who are pro-abortion have very little intellectual arguments on their side. People defend abortion mostly because they conceive fallacious arguments they never seriously think about and continue to believe out of naive persistence.

To Censor What?

Censorship is another subject that raises liberals' hackles. This is because liberals cherish free expression and they want to believe there are no ill effects of any expression. Conservatives, of course, favor a little censorship. Cal Thomas makes an interesting point when he asks "What's wrong with a little censorship?" and issues a reply. ⁽¹³⁾ "A culture defines itself by the limits it sets for its people," Thomas writes, much like a football field is defined by its boundaries. "If men were angels, no restraints would be needed." History does not record that men are angels, however, and, as Thomas shows by referencing history - particularly that of the motion picture industry - restraints were enforced. Standards were defined, many we would consider censorship today. People lived with these standards, but today we are increasingly losing our ability to define our standards. It's as if the lines of a football field were removed and football players were left to roam free. In this sport, anarchy would result and referees would be unable to control the action. Much the same is happening to our culture, except that in our culture properly applied censorship controls the action and sidelines of our cultural conduct.

Pornographic and violent words and scenes undergird a large portion of our media. Those who back the permissiveness of such violence and sex often use slippery-slope arguments. To allow the government to censor some of the lyrics or imagery might lead the government to censor everything. Clarence Page's backing of magazines like Hustler and Playboy is typical: "Today Hustler, tomorrow Playboy. Today Mapplethorpe, tomorrow Time magazine. Today flag burning, tomorrow an essay that advocates flag burning." This is how Page defends 2 Live Crew, a rap group with language in their songs that, as Page notes, is "vulgar, awful, loathsome, odious, nasty, offensive, putrid [and] oral and anal sex are described in graphic terms and women are treated as sexual playthings." ⁽¹⁴⁾ I admit that often censorship can go too far, as in the prohibition of the book Where's Waldo. This book was prohibited because, among many cartoon people, a woman's breast was exposed (the breast being no larger than the tip of a pencil). Yet his worry that a censorship of 2 Live Crew might someday lead to banning Time and even an essay on flag burning is a non sequitur. We live with censorship now and certainly have not approached a totalitarian state as yet. Few realize that scholar Sir William Blackstone argued that some abuses of press merit prior restraint where "the primary requirements of decency may be enforced against obscene publications." Also, as late as 1931 our Supreme Court ruled that society has an interest in decency and morality and may even go as far as to keep publications from seeing the light of day. ⁽¹⁵⁾

Michael Granberry writes in the Los Angeles Times that books are being banned in schools and cites a photograph of Robert Mapplethorpe's, a song called "Cop Killer," and Madonna's picture book Sex. Then Granberry argues that people complain about their taxes being used to fund "trash," but "the rest of us had better wake up and realize that we have tax dollars, too." Isn't a free country worth paying for, he asks. ⁽¹⁶⁾

Yes a free country is worth paying for, maybe even dying for. Yet Granberry's conception of a free country would certainly differ from that of our Founding Fathers. A free country to Granberry isn't a country that is free if freedom is meant doing as you please provided a rather modest and Biblical sense of morality pervades America which government enforces to the benefit of man and his freedom. Granberry's view of freedom is for government to confiscate your money and use it, quite often, to fund activities you find perverse. A more appropriate activity is to allow individuals to fund their own art. It would certainly reduce a great deal of angst and ill will.

Granberry assumes the government has some inherent right to take money from us. This sentiment is echoed in other places such as in my local paper when covering the proposal of a tax on internet transactions. "From the governments' point of view," it says, "e-commerce represents a huge amount of `lost' revenue." ⁽¹⁷⁾ The government does provide numerous services, of course, but the money it receives is not dictated by the laws of supply and demand and market forces. Rather, the money is taken from us by what may be called robber barrons who assume, as Granberry does, the money is there for the taking. The revenue the article refers to is not money properly rewarded to those who have worked for it. Rather it's what the government can grab from us by its power. Calling it revenue won't change the nature of it.

As far as parents' alleged "censorship," Don Feder and David Smith argue that parents have a right to watch what their children are reading and that the "public education establishment" and groups like the People for the America Way are not consistent in their approach. For instance, religious material and material promoting abstinence are kept out of the school but these groups look the other way and never complain when parents excercise the restraint the educators and PAW (People for the American Way) do. ⁽¹⁸⁾ Thomas Sowell even argues thus:

Usually some school or library officials decide to buy a particular book and then some parents or others object that it is either unsuitable for children or unsuitable in general, for any of a number of reasons. Then the cry of "censorship" goes up, even if the book is still being sold openly all over town.

If the criterion of censorship is that the objection comes from the general public, rather than from people who run schools and libraries, then that is saying the parents and taxpayers have no right to a say about what is done with their own children or their own money. ⁽¹⁹⁾

What Sowell's argument does is expose liberal humanist tendencies for what they are: desire to control your children and what they see and hear in every way possible. The "fundamentalist" may prefer to teach his kids his way; the humanist would prefer to teach your kids his way and often does under the guise of words such as "censorship" and concepts like separation of church and state.

The humanist ACLU lawyer from Texas who has defended more pornography publishers than any other was interviewed on a TV talk show. I found his arguments quite interesting. Like all pornography defenders, he immediately declared that we must protect the First Amendment guarantee of free speech and press. According to his philosophy, anything that limits that is "worse than pornography." He then pointed out that the antipornography movement is dangerous because it would "legalize morality." After further questioning, however, he surprisingly indicated that he opposed kiddie porn as despicable and illegal, claiming he would not defend a kiddie-porn publisher.⁽²²⁾

This displays the moral schizophrenia we have in our society because we must legalize some type of morality. I always understood that the reason laws were made is that people felt that certain rules were not only wrong by somebody's conception of right and wrong, but that they were absolutely wrong. Morality is the only thing you can legalize. Yet this lawyer finds himself in a bind between legalizing morality in preventing porn and the personal autonomy he finds hiding behind the First Amendment rights he defends.

Ultimately we discover that our God-experience is like swimming in an eternal ocean of love. It is also like interacting with the unperceived presence of the air. We breathe love in, and we breathe love out. It is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent. It is never exhausted, always expanding. When I try to describe this reality, words fail me; so I simply utter the name God. That name, however, is no longer for me the name of a being - not even a supernatural being or the supreme being. It is not the title for a miracle-worker, a magician, or a rescuer. It is rather something as nebulous and yet as real as a holy presence. It is a symbol of that which is immortal, invisible, timeless. ⁽²⁵⁾

Spong apparently has trouble coming up with a definition or description of God, but he has no trouble coming up with a definition of what God isn't. This is much like a man who claims he has no daughter, but if he had a daughter he knows she would be five feet tall and have blond hair and have other features that he could list with hardly any trouble. Assertions like these should always be looked at with suspicion because it is illogical to claim one has no knowledge or description of something while possessing knowledge of what that thing isn't.