News

By Dale O’Leary

June 6, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Democrat party is in the midst of a great battle and while the pundits recognize that something is going on, none of them seem willing or able to explain the nature of the conflict. At root, the battle is a battle between Liberals and Radicals.

Take the issue of rights. Conservatives believe that everyone has equal rights, no matter their sex or race or ethnic background or religion. Liberals also believe in equal rights, but they believe that equal rights should lead to statistically equal outcomes.  Conservatives accept that giving people equality of opportunity and rights does not guarantee equality of results, but Liberals see inequality of results and assume that there has been some injustice. Therefore, Liberals push for affirmative action, quotas, and other artificial mechanisms, which they hope will create statistical equality. This inevitably replaces one injustice with another.

Radicals are not interested in equality of rights or even statistical equality of results. Radicals believe that all history is the history of class struggle: the rich oppressing the poor, those of European ancestry oppressing those of African ancestry, men oppressing women, heterosexuals oppressing gays, lesbians and transgendered, America oppressing developing nations. It is not enough for the oppressors to stop oppressing and offer equality of opportunity and rights, or even equality of results. According to the Radicals, the oppressors have enjoyed “privileges” that the oppressed have been denied. This privilege consists in belonging to the privileged oppressor class. So even if you personally have never engaged in a single act of racism, sexism, or homophobia, the fact that you are a white, heterosexual male means that you have benefited from being a member of the oppressor class and therefore you are guilty and you deserve to pay.

Justice for the Radicals is forcing oppressors to pay through humiliation, through the destruction of their institutions (like the Boy Scouts), and monetarily through reparations. According to the Radicals, America is an oppressor nation because it is rich and other nations are poor. For Radicals, the economy is a zero sum game. They don’t understand that the American system created wealth. For them all wealth is stolen from the oppressed. Of course, in countries where Radicals have gained control and eliminated the rich, no wealth is created and everyone accept the ruling Radicals is poor (for example, Cuba).

For the Radicals, America is the great Satan, the incarnation of evil; therefore even if America engages in military activities to free other people from oppression, America is wrong and deserves to lose. On the other hand, for the Radicals, terrorists are oppressed and therefore their actions are justified.

Another issue on which Radicals and Liberals part ways is the question of tolerance. For the Conservative, tolerance means allowing other people to speak their minds even when you believe they are wrong. For Conservatives people have rights, but opinions have no rights. It is perfectly acceptable to criticize foolish and dangerous opinions and to believe that you are right and other people are wrong.

Liberals are also for tolerance, but they tend to fall into moral relativism. Liberals believe that not only are all people equal, all opinions are equal. They don’t actually believe this, what they really believe is that moral relativism is the only truth, and anyone who believes that it is possible to make judgments is dogmatic, bigoted, or narrow minded.

Radicals, when they are not in power, vociferously defend their right to freedom of speech, and scream intolerance when, after they have been allowed to speak, someone criticizes their extreme statements. However, when in power Radicals shut down the speech of anyone who disagrees with them. If they don’t have the outright power to censor, they send out goon squads to scream, bang pans, and threaten to riot in order to assure that no voice but their own is heard. We see this occurring in universities that used to be bastions of Liberalism, but have fallen under the control of the Radicals. While persons with extreme Radical views are hired and receive tenure, Liberals who question Radicalism are marginalized, and Conservatives are banned outright. Conservative speakers are denied the opportunity to speak – they are either not invited to speak or are shouted down when they try to speak. 

Although to conservatives Hillary Clinton is an extreme Liberal, she is still a Liberal. On the other hand, Barack Obama has spent his life in the company of Radicals. Rev. Wright’s Black Liberation Theology is the epitome of Radicalism, as is Fr. Pfleger’s ideological distortion of Catholic social teaching. William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn are unrepentant Radicals. 

Barack Obama claims to want to bring people together, but there is not a single example of his reaching out to Conservatives. On the other hand, in spite of the embarrassment they have caused him he has consistent refused to denounce the Radicals in his past, and frankly if he did it now we would have to assume that he was acting out of political expedience not from a real recognition of the danger to our democracy posed by his friends’ Radical views.

In the 1960s Conservatives drew a hard line between themselves and the extremists of the Right – KKK, Neo-Nazi. Liberals, on the other hand, made common ground with Radicals. They now face the prospect of a Radical takeover of the Democratic party. The only way the Liberals can save their party and ultimately save America is to vote for John McCain.