Liberalism is a mental disorder...or, "why Billiam White is a liberal!"

Who are these damned dirty liberals?

Before we can answer that question, we must ascertain exactly what a “liberal” is. One needn’t be a mohawked and tattooed dope-smoker in order to be a “liberal”. Just the same, all mohawked and tattooed dope-smokers are not liberals. In fact, many people I know happen to be liberals, and don’t even realize it!

So, exactly, what is a “liberal”? A liberal, in the political sense, is essentially someone who feels that the state (as opposed to the individual) is the best solution to dealing with society’s ills. It matters not if it is poverty, terrorism, drug abuse, property crimes, assaults, et cetera. A “liberal” is called a liberal because he doesn’t mind allowing the state to LIBERALLY take his money and his freedoms by LIBERALLY expanding government regulations, government bureaucracy, and government spending.

Contrary to popular belief, many of our so-called “right-wing conservatives” are very politically liberal. You see, the very notion of “social conservatism” in the world of politics is nothing but a myth. Liberalism, under the guise of “social conservatism”, is what brought us things such as our nation’s children being tried (and sentenced) as adults, mandatory minimum sentencing, our “War on Some Drugs”, our “War on Terrorism”, and so forth. In all reality, these things really do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to even put a dent in the social ills they are supposedly trying to fight. What they do accomplish is making a select few people extremely wealthy, at the expense of our wallets and our rights.

The major difference between “left-wing” and “right-wing” liberals is, quite simply, a leftist has enough balls to speak out and tell you that he wants to take away your rights and your money. A so-called “social conservative” is still going to take away basic liberties, and continue to tax you, but he’s going to hide behind such glittering generalities as “family values”, “public safety”, et cetera.

What’s the biggest red flag, when trying to determine whether someone is a “liberal”? Quite simply, if you see someone doing something that does not directly harm another individual or interfere with his fundamental rights UNLESS that other individual is a consenting participant, and someone says “That should be illegal!”, then that person is a liberal. Here are a few prime examples:

***DRUG ABUSE***
A left-wing liberal will tell you that your money must be taken from you, for the purposes of providing drug treatment and social services to those that didn’t listen in health class and decided to try drugs anyway, while simultaneously telling you that we need to continue to criminalize “only the big fish” who deal drugs in large quantities.

A right-wing liberal will tell you that we need to criminalize ALL acts associated with drugs, including the possession of things which may possibly at some point be used to manufacture or ingest drugs. In the interest of public safety, of course.

A conservative, on the other hand, realizes that you cannot legislate morality and intelligence. He also realizes that laws criminalizing the possession of certain chemicals, houseplants, papers, and tire gauges do absolutely NOTHING to prevent drug use. He also realizes that criminalizing the possession by ALL based upon the actions of SOME is destructive to liberties, and leads to an overall decrease in freedom…just as our “War on Drugs” has consistently done.

***TERRORISM***
A left-wing liberal will tell you that we need to keep those awful dreaded “assault rifles” out of the hands of would-be terrorists…and the hands of everyone else, because terrorists used some box-cutters to hijack an airplane.

A right-wing liberal will tell you that we need to spend $15bil per month on foreign wars to “fight terror”, because they “hate us for our freedoms”.

A conservative understands that when we spend LITERALLY hundreds of billions of dollars every year tampering with the governments of other nations, instead of providing avenues of open trade with these nations, they are going to get very angry at us…and do silly shit, like crash airplanes into our World Trade Center.

***CRIME CONTROL***
A left-wing liberal will tell you that we need all manner of afterschool programs to combat the crime associated with urban neighborhoods, stiffer penalties for crimes committed with firearms, as well as increased penalties for crimes that involve “hate” of certain minority demographics as their motive.

A right-wing liberal will tell you that we need an increase in police presence, less parole release, more criminalization in our penal codes, et cetera.

Both of these are destructive to our freedoms and our wallets. A conservative knows that any prosecution involving a victim named “The People of the State of…” is bogus, and the act being prosecuted should never have been criminalized in the first place. We don’t need laws that make it easier for the police to make arrests. We need less criminal acts on the books that we can be arrested for. A true conservative really begins to understand this when he’s pulled over for not using a blinker and his car gets ripped apart by an overzealous policeman looking for non-existent marijuana.

***GUN CONTROL***
A left-wing liberal will tell you that the only firearms a person should ever need are single-shot rimfire rifles for “sporting purposes”, and until everything else is banned, we should be forced to utilize uber-expensive “smart technology” such as microstamped ammunition, magnetic trigger locks, biometric gun safes, et cetera while registering every firearm in existence, as if this would somehow prevent crimes with guns.

A right-wing liberal will tell you that we need to “enforce the gun laws we already have”, and make the penalties for their violation more substantial.

A conservative knows that, first and foremost, there are far too many laws on the books classified as “Felony”, and many of them should be downgraded to “Misdemeanor” (if we keep them at all). You can be barred from owning a firearm for committing the “State Jail Felony” of vandalizing someone’s car, at an age of 13 years old! Being a “felon” in many states removes the ability to own a firearm completely, and in Texas, you are prohibited from owning a firearm for five years after your final release from custody or supervision, whichever is later. He also knows that a law prohibiting a person from owning a gun does nothing to keep him from owning a gun. A conservative understands that while there are a great many “sporting purposes” associated with firearms, the true meaning of the 2A isn’t the ability to shoot a moose. It’s providing for the defense of one’s liberties, no matter if the aggressor is wearing a badge, a Kevlar helmet, or a do-rag. Any firearm that can be stored in ones’ home without endangering his neighbors (read: ALL OF THEM) should be completely legal…and they were, up until the early part of the 20th century. A six year old was able, at that point, to purchase a Thompson submachine gun via the Sears mail-order catalog, provided he could afford it and spell his address properly. That’s the way it should be today, just as it is in many nations.

***DEATH PENALTY***
A left-wing liberal will tell you the death penalty is evil, and should be abolished, because no one ever deserves to die at the hands of the state…no matter what they’ve done.

A right-wing liberal will tell you that not only should capital punishment be carried out, but that we need to be doing it more often and as a punishment for more crimes! Most right-wing liberals also think that we should just do away with the appeals process, as if it somehow has something to do with the majority of the money spent on having someone executed.

Conservatives, on the other hand, realize the stupidity in this. The state of Texas executes people like it’s cool. We all know this. It costs the state roughly $68 for the chemicals we use to kill a man. It costs several million more to get him strapped onto the gurney. Just the TRIAL portion of the average capital murder case, after deducting the amount of money spent on the average non-capital murder trial, will still be more expensive than housing the average prisoner for the remainder of his natural life.

The money isn’t, for the most part, spent on appeals and drain-o. The housing of a prisoner, and even the equipment used to kill him, are relatively inexpensive when you really think about it. The money comes into play when you must put together enough evidence to prove not only that a person committed the crime of murder, but that the circumstances surrounding that act warrant a penalty of death according to the letter of the law. Even if you have a videotape clearly showing a man’s face while in the act of shooting a cop to death point-blank, that’s STILL not enough evidence on its own to send a man to the death chamber. The person must pass a series of rigorous psych evals, be considered mentally competent enough to not be classified as “mentally retarded”, and also be determined to be a “future danger to society”. You can get a murder conviction for a third of the cost, spend another third on housing, and still have the guy off the streets for the rest of his life.

Now, let’s look at the “limit the appeals and cut down on the cost of killing someone!” approach. Ummm, no. Bad idea. We don’t limit the appeals for someone who gets caught stealing bubble gum. Why the hell would anyone, in their right mind, want to limit the appeals for someone convicted of an act that can cost him his life? Sorry, but no. For every 13 men convicted of a capital offense since the reinstatement of the death penalty in this nation, one of those men has been released due to incontrovertible proof of innocence after the conviction and sentencing. Yes, you read that correctly. For every baker’s dozen set to be killed at the hands of the state, one of these people has been released from prison due to evidence of innocence. Now take into consideration that these are only the people who have been released from death row due to incontrovertible evidence nationwide. In the state of Texas alone, nine people have been freed from death row because their innocence was proven post-conviction. There’s no telling how many innocent people have been murdered by the state because they couldn’t produce evidence of their innocence. Obviously, innocent people are the minority in prison, even on Death Row…but they’re also very obviously there.

Then, of course, we have the ever-present right-wing liberal “for the children” bullshit that calls for the killing of individuals committing crimes that don’t result in the death of a victim. Thankfully, this was overturned by the SCOTUS in 2008, which prevented six states from executing people for child molestation. Obviously, child rape is a very serious crime…but anyone who’s seen the armored car robbery in the opening scenes of “Heat” knows why the death penalty is a genuinely BAD idea for any crime that doesn’t result in the death of the victim. It’s quite simple, stupid! If you’re going to face the possibility of death for the crime of rape, robbery, kidnapping, et cetera, why would you leave a living witness? That’s just universally ignorant and backward thinking.

Let’s move on to the idea that the death penalty somehow is going to be a “deterrent” to murder. Yeah, right. The state of Texas kills so many people that our death chamber has to do creative scheduling, yet people are getting sentenced to death in record numbers around here. New York and Texas have a per capita capital murder rate that is very similar, and they both use the same manner of execution. The difference between the states of New York and Texas is that Texas has executed more than 430 people since the reinstatement of the death penalty and New York has executed NO ONE. New York’s death penalty was ruled unconstitutional under their state constitution in 2004, so it’s really a non-issue there. I would also like to add, however, that states who actively carry out the death penalty on a regular basis tend to have, on average, much higher per capita murder rates. Not just Texas, but ALL states who regularly kill people.

The only thing the death penalty has been proven to do, so far, is to provide a shitload of money to attorneys, psychologists, and other “experts”. It hasn’t brought any murder victims back from the dead. It hasn’t reduced the number of murders committed. It has only resulted in the waste of tax dollars and the undoubted (in my mind, at least) deaths of innocents at the hands of the state.

***CONCLUSION***
So there you have it, folks. A person doesn’t necessarily need to be some dope-smoking hippie lesbian feminazi immigrant art student in order to fit the classification of “liberal”. All you need to do is hold to the ridiculous assumption that the state actually knows what is going on, and actively support legislation that provides the state with the power to strip away your rights and your paycheck. When you provide power to the state, you are taking it away from the individual…from all individuals, including yourself. And if you do this, then you are in fact a “liberal”. You’re willing to LIBERALLY give up your own (and my) money and rights to the state, because you’re under the misguided assumption that it will somehow promote a better society.