The Fruit of Liberalism

Is there anything that liberalism can’t corrupt? From the conscience to communities to corporations to families, churches, schools, and government, its destruction seems to know no bounds. Tragically, the evidence is all around us.

Earlier this year the FBI published its crime statistics for 2013. As noted by a few in the conservative media, the ten most violent cities in the U.S. are all led by democrats. As most would deduce by the use of common sense, (but I’ll provide you with the data anyway) large U.S. cities in general are significantly more violent that rural areas. According to CDC data, nearly 60% of gun homicides in the U.S. occur in the 62 cities of the country’s 50 largest metro areas.

Of course, the political machine in most every large U.S. city is dominated by democrats. All of the 12 largest U.S. cities are led by democrats. Additionally, a report released last year by the real estate website NeighborhoodScout.com revealed that America’s 25 most dangerous neighborhoods all happen to be black—and we all know which political party black Americans overwhelmingly prefer (in spite of what liberalism has perpetrated upon the black community).

And what is the liberal answer to this violence? Make it harder for law-abiding citizens to obtain the necessary means to defend themselves. As the most recent Fort Hood shooting teaches us: good guys—or girls—with guns stop bad guys with guns.

Not only does liberalism breed crime and violence, but also debt and poverty. A recent study from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University ranks the states according to their fiscal solvency. The top five states: Alaska (#5), South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska, and Wyoming (#1)—all very red states where much of the economic boom has been due to fiscal responsibility and an increase in fossil fuel production, both despised by most liberals.

The bottom five states: California (#5), Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, and New Jersey (#1)—all deep blue states (yes, even with Chris Christie in New Jersey) plagued by high taxes and enormous debt, which includes massive public pension liabilities.

What’s more, as Forbes Magazine pointed out in 2012, “the ten poorest U.S. cities with a population of at least 250,000: Detroit, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Miami, St. Louis, El Paso, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Newark. Besides all having poverty rates between 24 percent and 32 percent, these cities share a common political factor: Only two have had a Republican mayor since 1961.”

As the author points out, this is due to the “Curley effect,” which is a political strategy of “increasing the relative size of one’s political base through distortionary, wealth-reducing policies.” In other words, a politician or a political party can achieve long-term political dominance “by tipping the balance of votes in their direction through the implementation of policies that strangle and stifle economic growth. Counterintuitively, making a city poorer leads to political success for the engineers of that impoverishment.” Of course, lately democrats have had significant success with this political strategy on a nation-wide scale.

Besides the ballot box, people can also vote with their feet. Thus, as Obamanomics continues to stifle economies where state and city democrats are eager to tow the liberal line, many residents are simply deciding to uproot themselves and their families. The top ten states that Americans are fleeing: New Mexico (#10), Kansas, Connecticut, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, California, Illinois, and New York (#1).

Half of these states currently have republican (not necessarily devoted conservative) governors, but with most, this is only a recent phenomenon. Additionally, all of the states except for Kansas voted for Obama in the 2012 presidential election.

In addition to national, state, and city balance sheets and arrest records, our government schools (K-12 along with colleges and universities) are another place to take note of when looking at the rot produced by liberalism. In fact, such rot is more prominent in the government schools, as for decades the federal courts and the Department of Education have ensured that liberal philosophy dominates these classrooms.

One need look no further than how government schools are forced (or eagerly choose in many cases) to deal with the moral issues to see the tragic effects of liberalism on so many of our youth. From abortion to sexual promiscuity, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, Darwinian evolution and the like, there are many examples of how liberalism in the government schools is undermining traditional (biblical) American values. However, currently there is nothing that better illustrates where liberal philosophy will ultimately take our youth than the issue of “transgenderism.”

The transgender lie is infecting more and more school districts. Last year California infamously became the first state to pass a law giving special privileges to “transgender” individuals. Thus, government school children in California now have the “right” to use whichever bathroom or locker room they choose, along with the “right” to decide whether to participate in boy or girl sports activities.

Led by liberals, other states will follow. Inevitably the courts will get involved, and just as we are perhaps staring at a redefinition of marriage across all of the U.S., gender redefinition could become a part of the legal code throughout America. This is madness that can come only from a mind and soul corrupted by liberalism. As the Kinks mildly put it in 1970: “Girls will be boys and boys will be girls. It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world.”

Even the church is not immune to the perverse effects of liberalism. In 2012, Ross Douthat of The New York Times asked, “Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?” Nothing exudes “Liberal Christianity” like the Episcopal Church. As the Times put it, “It still has priests and bishops, altars and stained-glass windows. But it is flexible to the point of indifference on dogma, friendly to sexual liberation in almost every form, willing to blend Christianity with other faiths, and eager to downplay theology entirely in favor of secular political causes.” In other words, it sounds a lot like the Church in Thyatira (Revelation chapter 2) who “refuses to repent of her immorality” and will thus be thrown onto “a bed of suffering.”

In 2012, while Episcopalians were voting to approve same-sex unions, they also voted to make it illegal to “discriminate against anyone” (which is pure folly). The objective was to give an official recognition and blessing to “transgenderism.” 

As the “good” Reverend Susan Russell, a deputy from the Diocese of Los Angeles, noted, “It is not just a good day for transgender Episcopalians and their friends, families and allies. It is a good day for all of us who are part of a church willing to take the risk to continue to draw the circle wider as we work to live out our call to make God's inclusive love known to the whole human family.”

The “human family” is where liberalism has wrought the most destruction. Using legislation and the courts, liberal support of abortion, pornography, homosexuality, the welfare state, and a redefinition of marriage, has “succeeded” in wreaking great havoc with the institution upon which our whole culture rests. Like the “Curley effect,” this social engineering has yielded significant political gains for democrats. For once the family is destroyed, where else but Big Government will tens-of-millions of Americans look for sustenance and salvation?

Copyright 2014, Trevor Grant Thomas

At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com