Very well done.

More conversations with Patrick.

For the uninitiated Patrick is an interesting character. He's a regular on a message board I frequent and an ardent libertarian. He's also a militantly pro-life vegan. He derides carnivores as "speciesist" and is equally hard on abortion proponents. He's very bright and also owns his own business if you believe what he says on the boards. (I do.)

Anyway, here's one of our exchanges. My repsonse is dashed off and I wish I had more time to talk about it but here goes:

How do liberals think? What goes on inside their minds? I've often wondered that.
I know what they want: abortion, racial quotas, multiculturalism, gay marriage, socialized medicine, big government, big taxes, suppression of religion, decrease in national sovereignty, political correctness, etc - but what motivates them? Why do they think the way they do? What would it seem like to be in the mind of a liberal?

I think you ascribe motives to them that would likely not apply broadly. I think if you frame things differently, you'll see the forest for the trees. I do not think that your average liberal views things in the context you do. I find most of them are well meaning to a fault. That sort of thing where they help someone and accidentally create a moocher rather than help someone to help themselves. Example: public housing. It's a trillion dollar debacle that nobody dares to point out it's failure. Rather than gut the program or make it temporary, it's become a permenant solution and a very bad one. The idea started with "hey, we need to help poor people find housing otherwise we'll have children living on the streets!". To some extent they are correct but ignoring the long term consequences of their actions give us places like Cabrini Green and Camden.

Point by point, I think you end up with the following:

Abortion = "it's my body I can make my own choices." That is, I want a quick way out of my irresponsible behavior. Liberals correctly realize that saddling a teenager with a child creates hardship on both mother and child. Not to mention the rest of the family if there is one. It is a huge financial setback that can close many doors of opportunity b/c of the responsibilities associated with childcare.

Racial quotas are deemed to be a redress of grievances. The problems are: Those who were actually discriminated against by law are far beyond it now. Those who did the discriminating are quite a bit older and many of the younger generations cannot fathom discriminating against someone b/c of their race or ethnicity. It also creates resentment and likely fosters feelings of bigotry where there were none or where they were dying. It creates a huge opportunity for grievance suits by minorities who believe they were terminated or passed over b/c of their race. Also, there is no end to this program. There is no time limit set, it's open ended. How can we ever get past this if there are to be preference in hiring forever?

Mulitculturalism started as an appreciation for things exotic and foreign and has mutated into a "Death to Western Civ." movement. All cultures are supposed to be equally valued no matter how abhorent or primative. Only Christian (and at the extreme left and right Jewish) tradition can be denigrated.

Gay marriage is supposed to be a way to "strengthen" traditional marriage somehow. (See Andrewsullivan.com for reams [pun intended] on the subject). Sort of like removing the net from tennis to make it "for everyone to enjoy playing".

Big government = Military spending bad, social welfare net/hammock good. "Openmindedness" good. Belief in Christian faith unthinking lemmings and killjoys.

Big taxes = those evil rich people won't voluntarily give money to worthless hack artists or fund feelgood leftie programs so we need to get their money to create these programs.
Suppression of religion = I don't want anyone to judge me or my lifestyle no matter how destructive, self-destructive or abhorrent my behavior. It it not just about tolerance anymore, everyone must be accepted, no matter how perverse they are.

Decrease of national soverignty = hand in hand with multi-culti crap. Only a cowed America is a good one. Same reason the world loved us after Sept. 11th and hates us now. We were victims then and now we're showing our strength again. Europeans (and US hard leftists) hate the fact that we are so far ahead of the rest of them that they cannot constrain us in any meaningful way. They have missile capacity but militarily they're nothing. Economically they're strangling themselves with regulation and taxes. They refuse to abandon the latter to fix the former and in some cases deny there's a causal relationship.

Political correctness started as a campaign to give some dignity to people who were handicapped or otherwise would have been scorned 30 or 40 years ago. From there it mutated into some bizaare half breed that changed "disabled" into (no, I am not making this up) "super-abled". My child is autistic and the preferred moniker for such children here is "exceptional child". While it is true that he is "exceptional" as in exception to the rule (or norm). It conjures up images of kids who win awards for superior performance. I think this is a mistake but it's a well meaning one. Many parents of autistic children have problems with denial (I did.) and the language seems to make things easier.