I have liberal friends.
I try not to be seen in public with them, but I have them. One of them is my mother, which makes for interesting dinner conversations - but that's for another article.
I'd like to give my liberal friends, and my mother, some advice.
Seriously, we disagree on everything, and I hope their political efforts fail, but - friend to friend, son to mom - I'd like to offer them some advice.
Basically, here it is - don't trust the Democratic Party.
I'm not trying to cause trouble, I'm just giving a warning -- a warning based on experience.
Where the liberals are today is where we conservatives were a few years ago. We take turns having our day in the sun, apparently, and this is the liberals' day. They entirely control the federal government. They have the presidency and both houses of Congress. They are the bosses.
Only they aren't. The liberals don't control Washington, the Democratic Party does. That's where, for liberals, the trouble is.
Now, before I go on, let's make something perfectly clear: I disagree with liberals and hope that they get absolutely nothing of what they want. I disagree with them and believe that their philosophy will kill our country. They could not be more wrong.
But I respect them. I respect anybody who truly believes something. And I'm not bothered when people who truly believe something stand up for it.
That's what true conservatives and true liberals have in common -- they both passionately believe in things they think are very important. They both think that what they are doing is the right and best thing. They believe they have discovered and are advocating truth. After all, last I checked, the First Ammendment was still in the U.S. Constitution. That applies to both Republicans and Democrats alike.
Now, as a conservative, I believe my side is right and the other side is wrong. And I understand that liberals feel just exactly the opposite. Which is fine, we're both just being true to ourselves. But we're both also being exploited by our parties. More to the point, we both are played for fools by our parties. They take us for our money and our votes and then they push us to the side. They distance themselves from us and water down our priorities and pit us against one another and sting us along promising victories in the future. The things we believe in, the things that bring us to the political process, they never seem to completely get adopted. Always it's the next election, the next fight, the next round of fund-raising.
With both political parties, for true believers, it's all promise and no pay off. Which brings me back to the advice for liberals. You need to hold the Democratic Party's feet to the fire and make sure that it gives you what you want. Try to get a better deal out of your party than we conservatives got out of ours.
After we gave the Republican Party control of the White House and the Congress, it gave us exactly nothing. None of the issues that fundamentally matter to conservatives were addressed and several of our principles were directly assaulted and dismissed. We got the shaft. After all the years of work, the untold dollars contributed, the hopes and promises, and they spent their season in power doing next to nothing to advance that put them in office.
Conservatives gave the government to the Republican Party and the Republican Party defaulted on the debt just like the Democratic Party is defaulting on its debt to liberals now.
Liberals wanted the U.S. out of the war business. Yet their president has just escalated a conflict from which his secretary of defense has said we may not escape for 10 or 15 years. Liberals wanted the U.S. out of Gitmo. Yet their president has just suggested nothing more than simply moving Gitmo north to an Illinois backwater. Liberals wanted a single-payer government-run health system, or at least a dynamic and dominating public option. It's unclear what is going to pass, but it certainly won't include either of those things. Liberals wanted stringent rules to fight global warming. In Copenhagen, the Democrat government is pushing a policy that has the Third World walking out in a huff.
And how are gays in the military doing? And the illegal aliens?
Can you catch the scent in the wind? The supporters who worked most passionately for the Democratic Party and its candidates are the supporters who are getting nothing. Nothing but the back of the hand.
Now, personally, I believe that the amount of damage Barack Obama does to the nation will be directly proportional to how liberal he is, so I'm glad that he's flaking on some of his promises to the liberals. But - friend to friend, son to mom - I can understand that to the people who were chanting "Yes we can!" this failure to walk the talk is deeply disappointing.
From the liberal standpoint, the Senate health-care deal is not a compromise, it is a sell out. And, from the liberal standpoint, a lot of people who voted for the president and his party were sold a bill of goods. They are getting shafted just like we conservatives got shafted.
Thus the advice. Don't comprimise your principles. You fought this fight for a reason, and you ought not to surrender your victory. You ought not to let the Democratic Party flake on its promises to you. Because it's not conservatives or the Republican Party that are holding you back, it's the Democratic Party. We conservatives have no power. We are completely excluded from the health-care debate in both houses of Congress. And yet liberals aren't getting what they want or what they were promised.
And that's because of Democrats.
That's because of Democrats' dishonesty, and their manipulation of the liberal base that supports their party and gives it power.
I'm not gloating. The same thing happened to us. It was a betrayal that still hurts.
It is a betrayal the liberals should stand up and challenge. It is a betrayal they should not accept.
