It's Not Easy Being a Liberal

Exclusive commentary by Greg Lewis
August 5, 2003

Think being a liberal is easy? Just imagine the plethora of minority factions whose special interests liberals have got to accommodate. How can liberal Democrats possibly support the conflicting agendas of all the minorities that make up their "base?" Let's examine what it means to be a liberal 21st-century America.

First, you've got to be careful not to offend gay, lesbian, and transgender people. You've got to be ready to shout "Homophobic!" at the top of your lungs whenever someone suggests that differences in sexuality should not be the basis of whether a group gets granted "club" status at your local high school. Of course gays and lesbians should be able to have meetings on school grounds, and of course they should have their own separate lounge area where they can meet, knowing that those disgusting "straight" students won't harass them.

And I have to say that it's been something of a hoot watching "the wad" (that is, the current gaggle of Democratic presidential candidates, including Howard Dean and John Kerry, Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton) back and fill, trying to cover their asses on the issue of whether or not they favored the United States' going to war in Iraq. Has any collection of supposedly significant people ever been so clownish, so marginal, so insubstantial?

How would you, if you were a liberal Democrat, let alone one of the wad, reconcile with your anti-war base the fact that America has got to maintain its military strength because everything we stand for — freedom of religion (oops, I forgot, you're not really for freedom of religion, unless it's freedom for Islamists to tyrannize moderate Muslims and infidels), freedom of speech (oops, I forgot, you're not really for freedom of speech unless it's freedom to say only what your leftist cohorts deem to be politically correct at any given time), and free enterprise (well, I guess so, except that when you liberals use the word "free enterprise" you mean "enterprise suffocating in a stranglehold of Federal regulations") . . . Ah, hell, forget I mentioned maintaining our national defense. You wouldn't get it anyway.

And how difficult must it be, as a liberal Democrat, to placate the anti-Semitic left? Oh, yes, how stupid of me. You placate the rampant anti-Semites on the left simply by being pro-Palestinian. You don't have to come right out and say that you find Israel's democracy offensive. You don't have to say that you deplore the fact that Israelis have been able, against overwhelming odds, to carve a Middle-Eastern paradise (at least by comparison with other countries in the region) out of 10,000 square miles of forbidding desert legally ceded to them after World War II.

Never mind that to do so you first have to point out that Yasser Arafat, paragon of peace that he is, is "misunderstood," that he deserves "a chance." You, as a liberal Democrat, have to continue to dance to Bill's and Hillary's tune on this issue, and your high-stepping has got to include, somehow, denouncing George W. Bush for having the savvy to at least try to eliminate Arafat from the mix and attempt to find a rational being among the Palestinian leadership to negotiate with.

And it includes having to persist in giving credence to Arafat's intransigence. You have to ignore the issue of your party's ongoing push for the same concessions Arafat has rejected in the past. Bottom line, you have to go on placating the growing anti-Semitic wing of the Democrat Party by continuing to pander to an international terrorist who, until he dies, will countenance nothing less than the destruction of Israel.

But being a liberal doesn't stop there. You've also got to accommodate the misdirected ire of what's left of feminism's advocates in the United States. It's been obvious since the late 1990s that the feminist movement has nothing to do with championing women's rights and everything to do with furthering a socialist agenda. When the last President of the United States became involved in an affair with a female subordinate — which, if entered into by any other corporate executive I can think of, would have been categorically denounced by feminists as a violation of women's rights, but on which, since the perp was Bill Clinton, who talked a hell of a good game when it came to your agenda, you feminists bailed shamefully — most of us knew that you had effectively abdicated your right to speak credibly on any real women's issues.

As you had with Clinton's alleged sexual assault and rape victims earlier in his Presidency, you feminists opted out of your charter to defend the rights of women; that is to say, the rights of all women, and not just those who share your socialist political views. You chose instead to condone sexual assault, rape, and sex between an employer and an employee (as credibly alleged by the President's victims) in order to bask in the sunshine of Clinton's love (apologies to Eric Clapton and Cream).

And, of course, in order to be a liberal, you've got to buck the recent trend — supported by polling data — which indicates that a majority of Americans do not favor liberal abortion laws. Most of us would like to see abortion laws at least tightened up significantly. We think it should be difficult for an American couple — unlike liberal Democrats, we acknowledge that there's also a man involved in the conception of a child — to evade the responsibility that goes with bringing a new life into the world. We think that men and women should not only be aware of the possible consequences of having sex, but that they should also be responsible for the babies they create. Most of us agree that there are circumstances which warrant the termination of life in the womb, but most of us think that such circumstances are extraordinary and that abortion is not something that should be undertaken simply because to give birth would be an inconvenience for the people responsible.

As you can see, it's not easy being a liberal. In order to be a liberal, you've got to pretty much ignore what a majority of Americans think and feel about most of the important issues we face, whether it's sexuality, racism, America's stand against terrorism, America's support of Israel's right to exist and to defend itself against terrorist aggressors, or women's issues, particularly the transformation of feminism from something that at one time reflected a legitimate need to advocate for the rights of all women into something which now represents little more than the usurpation of the cause of women's rights in the promulgation of a perverse socialist agenda.

And so, the next time you cringe when you hear Tom Daschle or Patricia Ireland or Al Sharpton or John Kerry holding forth on some critical issue, don't be too quick to judge. Just try to remember that it's not easy being a liberal.