Enjoying what’s left of your freedom? Thank a liberal

When I was a college student, I attended a prayer group that met in a friend’s home. We sat in a circle, reciting needs and concerns. A sick child. A parent with cancer. A couple going through divorce. I asked the group to pray for my overworked university instructors.

A woman took up my request.

“God,” she said, “we just pray for those people working at the university because, Lord, it’s so— liberal there.” I smiled, which was OK because everyone’s eyes were closed. That was a decade ago. The never-ending demonization of liberals is getting old. Honestly, conservatives, you won the hearts and minds of this year’s electorate with your fear-mongering and intolerance. Isn’t that enough?

Nah. The campaign against icky liberals must continue. And the rhetorical strategies just get weirder. New adjectives for liberals include “elite” and “highly educated.”

We’re told (repeatedly by mindless numbnuts from Bill O’Reilly to Sean Hannity) that these educated elites don’t care about Middle America’s good old-fashioned values.

If only liberals were dumber, the O’Nitys say. Then they’d “get it.”

It’s a contagious bugger of a paradox. In a Dec. 13 column, Mortimer Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, repeats the idea Democrats don’t understand the average American’s “repugnance … for the trashier offerings of Hollywood, cable TV, popular music and pornographic websites.” Society’s decay, as evidenced by TV shows like Desperate Housewives, is the left’s fault.

Forget about Clinton’s v-chips, Mort? Ever hear the name of Democratic Sen. Joe “Censor the Media” Lieberman?

“Many people feel the Democratic Party has largely become elitist,” Zuckerman writes, “dominated by the sophisticated, liberal values of a progressive, highly educated class that condescends to the less educated and their traditional values.”

Sophisticated? Yup. That’s me. Highly educated? Some are. Some aren’t. Since when did education become a negative?

In a broader-minded view, liberals are simply people who look around and say, “Hmm, this world could be better. Let’s try.”

Conservatives, in the most literal sense, are those who want to maintain the status quo—as my dictionary says: “Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.”

So let’s consider history without individuals who provoked progress.

For starters, the American Revolution wouldn’t have happened. Conservatives who oppose change support the government in place.

No emancipation for slaves in the South. Evil, educated Abe Lincoln wouldn’t have dared to tell plantation owners how to run their businesses.

Only white guys with property would be able to vote. Those feminazi liberals in the National Women’s Party who were ridiculed, beaten up and thrown in jail in 1917 for demanding to vote? They would have learned to keep their mouths shut and stay home waiting on hubbies. Wait, you say. Conservatives enjoyed those changes. Conservatives who enjoy change are liberals.

Thankfully, American colonists opted for freedom. Black slaves were emancipated in the Southern United States. Women could vote by 1920. And in 1965, due to pressure from liberals who refused to shut their educated mouths about racial inequality, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, an attempt to stop state officials from preventing African Americans from voting.

So, go ahead, O’Nity and friends. Pretend that liberals “don’t get it.”

We’re going to put our asses on the line for your rights and freedoms anyway. You can thank us later.