Why are liberals obsessed with social programs?
465375
I honestly think liberals in general think government should be there to protect the weakest among us. While that is a noble goal, I think we can see from example that it rarely works out that way.  A good example is the so-called "Great Society".  Here we are in 2006, and poverty is still as big an issue as it was in the 1960's.  We could have handed every poor person in the country a check for a million dollars and spent less than the trillions of dollars we've wasted on failed government social programs.
537881
see... asmul8ed is the typical example of why we are cutting and why we have social programs in the first place...\n\nConservatives preach that it should be left up to private companies and people to give to chairty, yet when it actually comes time for these people to give... they say things like asmul8ed said "I don't quite have it and how do I know where it's going?"... excuses, excuses... they never have enough money to justify giving some of it away\n\nSimply put, the majority of the rich don't want their money to go to anyone but themselves, through taxes or through donations. Granted there are some who generously give, but they appear to be the vast minority. Consider how many trillions are made every year, yet many are still in need. Clearly many are not giving and don't care too (and never will)\n\nSo if it wasn't for these programs, many of the poor would simply die in our country... if your a Christian, you should understand that blessed are the poor and we should all try to help them any way we can... \nI do think that our welfare system needs much more oversight, and a work for food program would be great, but eliminating program is simply taking a step back to a third world mentality where the poor die in the street and the rich barely care enough to step over them...
92656
because liberalism is a serious mental disorder!!!
838594
With moral decay, children need a replacement to the family element.  Thus the government comes in.  Liberals want the government to control our lives.  \n\nRush Limbaugh says it best \n\nRUSH: People struggle to define conservatism and liberalism, and you can make it as complicated as you want, and you can take it to the Nth degree if you want. It's actually a little simpler than it appears. At its root, what is life all about? Life is about people, and life is about relationships. Nostalgia generally reminds you of your pleasant memories. Very few people go back and have horrible thoughts about nostalgia. You just have those in your nightmares and your dreams unless you have some kind of problem and dwell on them, but when your life is done and you look back at it, the things that you'll remember that will have defined you and will have contributed to your happiness are the relationships you've had with people you've loved, from family, to friends, to spouses, to children, to whoever. That's what everybody will reflect on near the end of their lives, not what they acquired when, not when they scored their first touchdown. Those things matter at the time, and they're important at the time, but when you reflect on things, that's generally what happens. So people and working with and playing with and dealing with people and interacting with them is the fundamental behavioral aspect of humanity, and everything descends from that.\n\nNow, conservatism, people who are conservative will look at a culture and look at a society, such as ours, and we will have the utmost faith in the individual. We believe that the individual, when properly educated and informed (and, by the way, unshackled), we believe the individual has the ability to triumph over whatever odds that individual faces. We believe that extraordinary people are simply ordinary people could go extraordinary things. The great among us never set out to be great. They became great by virtue of accolades as a result of their achievements. Liberals on the other hand look at the average American with condescension. They don't think the average American has what it takes. The average American is stupider than the liberal. The average American doesn't have the ambition or the wherewithal to overcome these odds -- and besides they make a victim out of everybody, and they do it by saying, "That black doesn't have a chance because of racism and white people. The illegal doesn't have a chance because of the nativist and protectionist among us. Women don't have a chance because of sexism and so forth," and so the liberal mind-set and construct of people is entirely negative. It's condescending; it is arrogant, and it is almost holds people in contempt.\n\nConservatism is just the opposite. Now, everything descends from that. When liberals get power, politically, and start putting together policy, what's the policy going to be? "Empower government, because those schlubs out there cannot live their lives properly, happily, without us. Senior citizens won't eat; the poor won't get off the soup lines. The only people that make it big are the rich, and we've gotta find a way to take away from them what they've worked for." Conservatism, when it gets power and starts defining policy, you get things like welfare reform, which is rooted in the belief that people who work, which is where many people derive their identity, will experience achievement and pride, will be motivated to go even further. You can take this simple definition of conservatism versus liberalism and apply it to virtually any aspect of the political spectrum, and you'll see that it applies. So it's not complicated at all to explain the difference. This is what has been missing in Republican Party politics, philosophically for way too many years, and needs to return.\n\nBREAK TRANSCRIPT\nRUSH: I want to expand a little bit on
188346
I used to think so. I always said that politics is just a mechanism to drive people apart. I felt that everyone, when it got right down to it wanted the same things; security, food, opportunity and a positive outlook. Liberals seem to want this but their approach is more motherly. they want to establish govt programs to equalize the playing field so that nobody can fail. Conservatives want to limit the amout of support so that those that are ambitious and creative are rewarded while those that do not produce are not rewarded with the fruits of those who are industrious. Either way, everyone really does want the same things, hopefully we can find a way to get along and make it work.
927847
Because liberals, like most people, are ignorant when it comes their own political ideology. I believe a lot of liberals haven't really thought about their positions hard enough to see the inconsistency. \n\nThey don't like the idea of the government telling them who they can sleep with, but they have no problem with the government telling them who they can do business with, and under what terms. They don't like paying to promote certain religious positions with tax dollars, but don't see anything wrong with tax dollars going to support certain cultural or artistic positions (i.e. art subsidies).\n\nThough tangerine is partly right; conservatives are just as guilty of being hypocrites. You can't really argue that the state must regulate our behavior to make us "moral", but that it shouldn't regulate our behavior to make us "fair."
1052808
Liberalism is a mental disorder
791863
They aren't understood; they are manipulated for political purposes. Currently, the Reps do it more...labeling liberalism as something so bad.
749790
You must be forgetting the political patronage jobs thrive on overtime caused by the mountain of paperwork.  The simplicity of just coming out and saying each person on entitlement programs has x amount to live on instead of making people waste fuel running from one office to the other and the federal employees filling out forms.  The liberals love to waste time doing nothing and that is the real reason for the lack of coordination.
876006
LOL - BECAUSE you only asked for working liberals to answer the question.\nNext time - Liberals on WELFARE and see what that will get you!
470225
Liberals are monkeys.
1053408
Probably from the phrase "My heart bleeds for  you."  In other words, "I'm totally sympathetic to your plight."  It was applied to liberals by conservatives who have no sympathy for those less fortunate than themselves.  They firmly believe that a person who was raised by a drug-addicted mother and had to quit school to support himself has exactly the same chance in life as a person raised by a loving upper-class family and therefore deserves no help from government agencies.  Liberals, however, believe that if government assistance can raise a person's chances to make a good life for himself and be a productive member of society, then let's help out.
346707
"They" are called "liberals because their scope of concern expands to include everyone (Jesus was one of the first Liberals). Most liberals even have compassion for jerrks like you too!
595172
they are mostly lapdogs for liberals, since they all seem to have been educated by the same socialist type professors with the same buzz words to know each other by...\n\ndont pay any attention to news that doesnt give you competing sides of every issue and let you make your own mind up...
802470
Liberals, for the most part, believe that the Federal Government should be in charge of most all decision making, basically saying we highly educated and well bread politicians know how to spend your money better than you do.\n\nAn example, the Liberals want a National Health care program so that everyone is covered.  Sounds like a good thing, right?  Then think about it, and look around the world at countries that have such programs.  Your choices will be even more limited than they are with Private Insurance, you add another layer of beaurocracy to the already too large Federal Government, you increase the need for higher taxes, and the quality of health care goes down.  At the moment, I know at least my local hospitals don't turn anyone away because they lack insurance.  However, they will usually be billed, some will try to pay with resources they dont have, some will get lower credit ratings.\n\nLiberals don't want to interfere with freedoms?  That's BS.  It depends on what freedoms you are talking about.  In this case both parties are guilty of hypocrisy, but I think the Liberals are more guilty.  Yes, the Liberals don't want the government telling a pregnant woman to carry her child to term, let's give credit where it's due.  However, liberals do want to take away your right to bear arms, they don't want you to have a choice about smoking cigarettes, as stated earlier, they want to control your health care, they want to impose all manner of restrictions and penalties on businesses.  Liberals make nice speeches that sound nice about good intentions and we must do it for the children, but in truth, we need balance.  Liberal ideas are welcome, but they need to be balanced with reason.  Liberals seem to believe a utopian society can exist, realist know differently.\n\nLiberals tout "tax the rich to feed the poor", but the rich include me, who makes less than $70,000 a year, and too often, the poor are those who have decided they don't want to work.  With the shift in congress back to Dems, if the Dems win the White house in 2008, prepare to see the value of the US dollar take a nose dive\n\nLiberals say they are tolerant, but that is only if you agree with them.  If you espouse Conservative ideas, liberals attack en mass.  Labeling them in a most non open mindedness fashion.\n\nThis is not to say conservatives don't have their problem issues as well, but I had to add a dose of truth after some people posted that Liberals are all that is good and right and truthfull in this country and Conservatives are all evil warmongering money grubbing souless A$$holes
428876
because the bleeding heart liberals think they know how to live your life better than you do!
869215
education creates more liberals.