A Liberal Paradise
THERE IS A COUNTRY I would like to tell you about. It is a country like no other on the planet. Many of you, I am certain, would love to live there.
It is a very, very liberal, liberated, and free-thinking country. Its people hate the thought of going to war. The vast majority of its men have never served in any kind of military and they aren't rushing to sign up now. They abhor guns and support any and all efforts to restrict the usage of personal firearms. Its citizens are strong supporters of labor unions and workers' rights. They believe that corporations are up to no good and should not be trusted.
The majority of its residents strongly believe in equal rights for women and oppose any attempt by the government or religious groups who would seek to control their reproductive organs. In overwhelming numbers, the people of this country I speak of believe that gay and lesbian people should have the same opportunities as straight people and they should not be discriminated against in any way.
In this country nearly everyone wants to have the strongest protections necessary to ensure a clean environment. And they take personal responsibility by doing a number of things every single day to cut down on pollution and waste.
This country is so far to the left that 80 percent of its people believe in universal health care and racial diversity on college campuses.
This country I know of is so hippy-dippy-free-love and all that jazz that only a quarter of its people believe that drug users should go straight to jail-perhaps because, as their president has, 41 percent of the citizens have admitted to using illegal drugs themselves! And when it comes to holy matrimony, the number of people who live together and don't get married is up 72 percent in the past decade, and 43 percent of them have children.
I'm telling you, this country is so commie-pinko-weirdo, its conservative party can never get more than 25 percent of its recurring voters to join it, while the vast majority of its citizens define themselves as either members of the liberal party, or worse-independent or anarchist (the latter just simply refusing ever to vote!).
So, where is this utopia I write about, this land of liberal-lefty, peacenik tree-huggers (and how soon can you and I move there)?
Is it Sweden?
Tibet?
The Moon?
No! You don't have to go to the moon because . . . you're already there! This Land O' Left paradise I speak of is none other than . . . the United States of America!
Surprised? Don't believe it? Finally convinced my last screw has come loose? I don't blame you. It's hard to think of the U.S. of A. as anything but a country that is ruled by a conservative majority, a nation whose moral agenda seems set by the Christian Coalition, a people who appear to be cut from the cloth of their Puritan ancestors. After all, look who's in charge at the White House! And look at the approval ratings he gets!
But the cold bitter truth-and the best kept political secret of our time-is that Americans are more liberal than ever when it comes to both the lifestyles they lead and the positions they take on the great social and political issues of the day. And you don't have to take my word for it-it's all there in the polls, just the facts and nothing but.
Now, say this to any liberal and they won't just snicker (liberals stopped laughing a long time ago, which is part of the problem), they'll shake their heads and repeat the mantra they've learned from a media with a vested interest in making them believe they're on the losing side every miserable day of their lives: "America has gone conservative!" Ask any liberal-leaning person to describe this country and you'll hear a series of invectives about how we live in a nation of pickup trucks and gun racks and flags flying everywhere. They will speak with a tone of defeat about how much worse things are going to get, and resign themselves to four more years of whatever crap we've been eating for the last four (or fourteen or forty) years.
The right must rejoice every time they hear this surrender-and then they reinforce it with whatever sledgehammer they can grab. Yes! America supports the war! Yes! America loves its Leader! Yes! All of America was watching The Bachelorette last night! So, if you are not part of All-of-America, then just shut the fuck up and go crawl into that phone booth with the Noam Chomsky fan club, you miserable loser!
The reason the right is so aggressive in trying to squash any and all dissent is because they're in on the dirty little secret the left doesn't get: that more Americans agree with the left than the right. The right knows this because they look at the numbers, they read the reports, and they live in the real world that has become increasingly liberal in the last decade or so. And they hate it. So, in the tradition of all propagandists, they lie. They create an opposite truth: AMERICA IS CONSERVATIVE. Then they pound away with that false message so hard and so often that even their political opponents come to believe that it's true.
I want everyone reading this book to stop repeating this Big Lie. And to help you break this habit, I am going to give you the simple, indisputable facts. What I am about to share with you is not information that comes from liberal think tanks, the pages of the People's Daily or my handlers in Havana (to whom I report on an hourly basis). It is from sources that are as straight and mainstream as the Gallup Organization and as American as the members of the National Rifle Association. The polls were taken by organizations including the Harris Poll, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Harvard University, National Opinion Research Center, PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, The Los Angeles Times, ABC News and, yes, Fox News (for the complete list of poll sources, see Notes and Sources).
Please, allow me to introduce you to your fellow Americans:
Fifty-seven percent of the American public believes that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Fifty-nine percent think abortion should be decided between a woman and her doctor, while 62 percent don't want to see the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade. In fact, a solid 53 percent think the legalization of abortion was a GOOD THING for the country (compared to just 30 percent who thought it was bad), and a full 56 percent of us want to leave a woman's access to an abortion as it is now or- get this-make it easier!
No wonder the right has lost its marbles-THE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS ARE BABY-KILLERS!
Since it became legal in 1973, there have been 40 million abortions in this country. One in three women will have an abortion by the time she's 45, and of those who do, almost half will have more than one.
What does this mean to conservatives? It means that women are deciding when life will be brought into this world. Women are in complete control of this decision. That is a tough pill for conservatives to swallow; after all, it's only been eighty-three years since women were even allowed to vote. To give them the power to decide which of us will get to be born-whoa! That means the next Sean Hannity might be getting flushed down into some medical waste jar right now as we speak! Imagine how helpless this makes right-wing men feel. We Impregnate, You Don't Decide. That's the way it always was until just a few years ago. A multi-millennial change takes some getting used to.
A whopping 86 percent of the American public say they "agree with the goals of the Civil Rights movement." Four out of five Americans say "it is important for colleges to have racially diverse student bodies." Hell, even the U.S. Supreme Court has come around on this one! And more than half of us believe affirmative action is necessary to help those who have been historically denied these opportunities. Seventy-four percent disagree with this statement: "I don't have much in common with people of other ethnic groups and races"-which puts us ahead of Great Britain, France, Germany, and Russia, when the same question is asked in those countries. Seventy-seven percent of us would adopt a child of another race, and 61 percent say they have friends or family members who are dating or are married to someone of another race. And, in fact, in the last twenty years, the number of interracial marriages has more than doubled, from 651,000 to 1.46 million.
THAT'S RIGHT! WE AMERICANS ARE A BUNCH OF RACE MIXERS AND RACE TRAITORS!
Oh, you can just see the conservative blood boiling, can't you?
What happened to everyone knowing their own place and sticking with their own kind? J.Lo! That's who's responsible for this! Taking all the good, white men with her. Next they'll start having kids and we won't know how to identify them by race, and if that happens, we might realize how ridiculous race is and start working together on the problems that really matter. And that, my friends, does not include much that is on the right wing's agenda.
Eighty-three percent of Americans say they are in agreement with the goals of the environmental movement. Three-quarters of us think environmental problems pose a serious threat to the quality of life in the United States. Eighty-five percent are worried about pollution of rivers and lakes, 82 percent worry about toxic waste and polluted drinking water, 78 percent worry about air pollution, and 67 percent worry about damage to the ozone. Eighty-nine percent of the people recycle and 72 percent check the label to avoid buying toxic products, while 60 percent would rather see the government push for more energy conservation than an increase in production of oil, gas and coal. When given the choice between "economic growth" or "environmental protection," assuming you couldn't have one without the other, Americans choose environmental protection. Even two-thirds of Republicans in one poll responded by saying they would vote for an environmentalist candidate over a non-environmentalist. Four times as many Americans trust environmental organizations to know what's better for the ecology than they do the government. THAT'S RIGHT, AMERICANS ARE ECO-WACKOS! They would actually put the survival of some spotted snail fish over having a few more dollars in their pocket each week. How misguided is that? Don't they get it-this is OUR planet and we can do with it what we damn well please! Give these Americans a chance to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles (industry experts expect hybrid cars to soon make up 10Ð15 percent of America's annual car sales), and they flock to the showroom floor! What's the world coming to-the world?
Ninety-four percent of the American public want federal safety regulations enacted on the manufacture and use of all handguns- and 86 percent want this even if it makes guns more expensive! Seventy-three percent of Americans want a mandatory background check on anyone buying a gun. They want a five-day waiting period before you can actually get a handgun. They believe that you must have a police permit before you can own a handgun, that guns should be childproof, and that if you beat up your spouse, you shouldn't be able to own any gun. And in states like New York, 59 percent want an outright ban on all handguns.
In the 2000 election, The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence was able to defeat nine of the twelve candidates on their "Dangerous Dozen" list of elected officials who were deep in the pocket of the gun lobby. The NRA spent more than $20 million that year, focusing most of it on two of the largest hunting states in the country -Michigan and Pennsylvania-in the hopes of electing pro-gun governors and defeating Al Gore. What happened? Gore won both states, and the people of Michigan and Pennsylvania elected governors whom the NRA labeled as "anti-gun." This came two years after the NRA-backed Republican incumbent in Michigan, U.S. Senator Spencer Abraham, was defeated by anti-gun forces.
The NRA is so out of touch with even their own members, that, when NRA members in Michigan were polled, this is what the Lansing-based market-research company EPIC-MRA found out:
- 64 percent of NRA members favored mandatory reporting of private handgun sales;
- 59 percent favored regulations requiring that guns be stored unloaded;
- 68 percent supported creating uniform safety standards for domestic and imported guns;
- 56 percent supported a law requiring a five-day waiting period before purchasing a gun;
- 55 percent were in favor of banning high-capacity magazines that hold the ammo.
AMERICANS WANT THE GUNS PRIED FROM THEIR COLD, DEAD HANDS! Only 25 percent of us own a gun. The majority know they are less safe with a gun in the house. Why is this? Because more than a million of us have been killed by guns since Kennedy was assassinated. We couldn't have killed that many of our countrymen if we'd fought the Vietnam War another fifteen times! That means everybody knows somebody who at one time or another was shot with a gun. And you know what happens when that many people see firsthand the tragedy of gun violence-they end up hating guns! And that's the majority of the country.
Eight in ten Americans believe that health insurance should be provided equally to everyone in the country. And 52 percent say they would be willing to pay more in taxes or insurance premiums to see that happen. It's not surprising we want national health insurance since, per capita, we spend $4,200 a year on it already, while countries with universal health care pay far less: $2,400 in Germany; $2,300 in Canada; and $1,400 in the United Kingdom.
YES, AMERICANS ARE SOCIALISTS AND THEY WANT SOCIALIZED MEDICINE! Why? Because they get sick! Who doesn't get sick-and who doesn't want to get better? C'mon, this one's a no-brainer. So many millions by now have seen their life savings go up in smoke because of one accident or one horrible illness. They don't give a damn what it costs at this point. They just want it fixed. As the baby boomers' joints start to ache with arthritis and they lose a testicle or two, watch how quick we get universal health care. The only reason we don't have it already is that the politicians who oppose it are all covered 100 percent by very generous health plans. They've rarely paid a doctor bill in their lives and they don't intend to have you stop paying your bills now. Nothing seems crueler-or more ironic-than these upper crusters who never pay a dime for their high-priced shrinks or reflexology sessions to call those who just want that tumor removed from their uterus a bunch of commies. Well, the revolution is at hand and let's hope all those uninsured commies give the rich such a headache that a whole bottle of Advil won't be enough to take away the pain.
Sixty-two percent of the people you share this country with support changing current laws so that fewer nonviolent offenders are sent to prison. That's right, they want criminals roaming the streets! Eighty percent want more community service for those who break the law and 76 percent believe that offenders would do better being on the outside making restitution to their victims than by being locked away. Seventy-four percent prefer treatment and probation for nonviolent drug users.
AMERICANS ARE SOFT ON CRIME! They are a bunch of bleeding hearts! And they are dopers themselves! Ninety-four million Americans have used illegal drugs at least once in their lives. No wonder they want to let the potheads run amok!
Eighty-five percent of Americans support equal opportunity in the workplace for gays and lesbians. And 68 percent want laws enacted to punish anyone who would discriminate against homosexual employees. Seventy-three percent support hate crime laws and banning discrimination in housing. Half now say that gay and lesbian couples should receive the same benefits enjoyed by married couples, and 68 percent think gay couples should be entitled to Social Security benefits while 70 percent support employee-sponsored health insurance coverage for gay spouses. And half of us have no problem with gay and lesbian couples adopting children.
AMERICANS ARE A BUNCH OF LIMP-WRISTED PANSYLOVERS! The country has gone to the fags! The U.S. Supreme Court has just legalized sex between consenting homosexuals. What's next-gay priests?! How are we going to get all macho for the next war if our men have all gone soft on the soft men? Not everybody can have David Crosby's baby!
According to a 2002 Gallup Poll, 58 percent thought labor unions were a good idea. An AFL-CIO poll put union approval ratings at 56 percent and even a fair and balanced poll from Fox News (Oops! Don't sue me! No, sue me!) showed that half the country had a favorable impression of unions (while only 32 percent were opposed). With only 13.2 percent of the country's workers belonging to a union, all this extra support must be coming from half of the nonunion workers who would join one if given the choice. On top of all that, 72 percent believe that Washington gives too little consideration to working Americans.
The average working American has come to completely distrust Corporate America: Eighty-eight percent have little to no trust in corporate executives; 68 percent think these executives are less honest and trustworthy than they were a decade ago; 52 percent have very little or no trust in corporate accounting, while 31 percent have only some trust; 65 percent think there needs to be major reform of Corporate America; and 74 percent think the problems in Corporate America are due to greed and a lack of morals. They know that these bastards are constantly up to no good and should be watched every waking moment of every bloody day.
AMERICANS HATE THE MAN! Especially the boss-man! They believe they should get their fair share of the pie. They believe that the workplace should not be the place where they die. They believe that the employers must be forced to behave properly.
As you can see, we live in a nation of people who believe in racial equality, women's rights, labor unions, a clean environment, and fair treatment for gays and lesbians. Even on the one issue where Americans skew conservative-the death penalty-support for capital punishment has dropped dramatically in the past five years (thanks, in part, to the work of those students at Northwestern University who found at least eleven innocent people on death row in Illinois). While over 80 percent of the public used to believe in the death penalty, that number has dropped to 64 percent. When asked how they felt about capital punishment if it was guaranteed that a first-degree murderer received a sentence that would never let him out of prison, support for the death penalty drops to only 46 percent. This is a stunning drop in support of one of our nation's weirdest and cruelest activities, one that is practiced by no other Western industrialized country on this planet. In fact, a recent CNN poll found that 60 percent of Americans now support a nationwide moratorium on executions while a commission studies whether the death penalty is applied fairly.
How did this happen? It happened because the American people have a good heart and an active conscience. The majority will never support the killing of an innocent human being, even if they still believe in the death penalty as a concept. That is why we will see an end to capital punishment in the not too distant future. As people become educated about how we may be putting innocent people to death, they will not continue to support such a risky endeavor.
This goodness that I believe is at the core of most of my fellow Americans is what leads them down the liberal road more often than not. They do not want others to suffer. They want everyone to get a fair break in life. They want their planet to be around for their grandchildren to enjoy.
Conservatives know this is the real America-and it drives them crazy to live in such a liberal nation. You can hear them any day of the week on talk radio or the Fox News Channel; screaming, foaming-at-the-mouth right-wingers. Have you ever wondered why they're all so angry? I mean, listen to them. They spend all day, every day, just spewing so much bile about traitors, liberals, faggots, liberals, weasels, liberals, the French, liberals-I sometimes worry that they are going to choke on their own venom and then someone is going to have to invent a Heimlich maneuver for hate. Here are a few examples from our sacred airwaves:
"OH, YOU'RE ONE OF THE SODOMITES. YOU SHOULD ONLY GET AIDS AND DIE, YOU PIG. HOW'S THAT? WHY DON'T YOU SEE IF YOU CAN SUE ME, YOU PIG. YOU GOT NOTHING BETTER TO DO THAN PUT ME DOWN, YOU PIECE OF GARBAGE? YOU HAVE GOT NOTHING TO DO TODAY, GO EAT A SAUSAGE AND CHOKE ON IT."
- Michael Savage
"ANYTHING [liberals] CAN DO TO BRING DOWN CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM IS GOOD FOR THEM. BECAUSE THEIR MINDS ARE WARPED, BECAUSE LIBERALISM IS NOT A PHILOSOPHY, LIBERALISM IS A MENTAL DISORDER."
- Michael Savage
"GOD SAYS, 'EARTH IS YOURS. TAKE IT. RAPE IT. IT'S YOURS.'"
- Ann Coulter
"WE NEED TO EXECUTE PEOPLE LIKE JOHN WALKER IN ORDER TO PHYSICALLY INTIMIDATE LIBERALS, BY MAKING THEM REALIZE THAT THEY CAN BE KILLED, TOO. OTHERWISE THEY WILL TURN OUT TO BE OUTRIGHT TRAITORS!"
- Ann Coulter
"WE SHOULD INVADE THEIR COUNTRIES, KILL THEIR LEADERS AND CONVERT THEM TO CHRISTIANITY!"
- Ann Coulter (on September 11 terrorists)
"I WILL TELL YOU, WHEN MICHAEL MOORE SAYS THAT THIS PRESIDENT IS AN ILLEGITIMATE PRESIDENT HE CROSSES THE LINE, HE CROSSES THE LINE . . . HE CROSSES THE LINE INTO ANARCHY ALL RIGHT."
- Bill O'Reilly
"IT IS TRUE THAT IF YOU ARE POOR AND CAN'T AFFORD A GOOD LAWYER, YOUR ODDS OF GOING TO PRISON SKYROCKET. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? TOUGH!"
- Bill O'Reilly
"FEMINISM WAS ESTABLISHED SO AS TO ALLOW UNATTRACTIVE WOMEN EASIER ACCESS TO THE MAINSTREAM OF SOCIETY!"
- Rush Limbaugh
"YOU GUYS ON THE LEFT, YOU WEREN'T THERE IN THE COLD WAR, YOU'RE NOT HERE NOW. IF WE EVER LISTEN TO YOU, WE'RE ALL GOING TO BE BOWING AT THE FEET OF SOME DICTATOR SOMEPLACE ELSE!"
- Sean Hannity
"THEY'RE A BUNCH OF GUTLESS, SPINELESS COWARDS!"
- Sean Hannity (on Hollywood leftists)
"CANADA IS A LEFT-WING, SOCIALIST BASKET CASE. WHAT KIND OF FRIENDS ARE THEY?"
- Sean Hannity
One day, I was talking to the actor Tim Robbins-often an object of the right's bellicose babbling-and he said, "Why is it that they are so mad and angry all the time when they already control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, Wall Street, all of talk radio, and three of the four cable news channels? They got their war, they got their tax cut, and their commander in chief has a 70 percent approval rating! You'd think they'd be happy, but they're not."
It does seem pathological to be unhappy when you are in charge of just about everything. Imagine how we would behave if Jesse Jackson were president, the liberal Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, Mario Cuomo and Ted Kennedy sat on the Supreme Court, and The Nation had the biggest news channel on TV. Man, we would be in seventh-no, eighth!-heaven, and you'd hear the joy in our voices and see the smiles on our faces.
And that's when it hit me: The right wing is so upset precisely because they know they are in the minority. They know Americans, in their hearts, do not really agree with their side, and they never will. Americans, like most humans, don't want to be around people who are filled with hate and meanness of spirit. And that is why they are so angry, because they know they are a dying species. They know the chicks and spics and the fags are taking over and so they are trying to get as much damage done as possible before their political breed becomes extinct. They howl the howl of a dying dog and they wail as the dinosaurs must have in their final days. Instead of fighting them, we should pity them.
Of course, most Americans would never describe themselves as "liberal." In the last two decades, it has become the dirtiest word in American politics. All a Republican has to do is brand an opponent "a liberal," and that's supposed to be the end of that loser. It hasn't helped that liberals have played right into their hands, first by stopping their own use of the word and then by acting as minimally liberal as possible. Liberals have acted and voted conservatively so often that they have redefined the term "wimp."
This is why Americans usually hate to vote for liberals. A "liberal leader" is often an oxymoron-liberals don't lead, they follow. Conservatives are real leaders. They have the courage of their convictions. They don't bend, they don't break, and they never give in. They are relentless in pursuit of their ideals. They are fearless and they take shit from no one. In other words, they actually believe in something. When's the last time you ran into a liberal or a Democrat who stuck to a principle just because it was right?
That is why most Americans don't trust liberals. You never know which way they will bend. At least with Republicans and conservatives, what you see is what you get, and in these scary times, that reassurance is comforting to millions.
The other problem is that many liberals aren't much fun and they certainly don't look like they're having a very good time. Who wants to hang out with that crowd?
But Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines the word liberal this way: "Not narrow or contracted in mind; not selfish" and "not bound by orthodox tenets or established forms in political or religious philosophy; independent in opinion; not conservative; friendly to great freedom in the institution or administration of government. . . ." Liberal is also defined as generous, "and implies largeness of spirit in giving, judging, acting, etc."
And that is exactly how the majority of Americans think, act, and behave these days. Though they won't use the word itself, they are the living, breathing definition of liberal in their everyday words and deeds. Just as most independent, free-thinking women rarely use the word "feminist" anymore; their actions speak louder than their lack of a label, and feminist is exactly what they are.
So let's not get hung up on the terms. Most Americans don't approach the world with labels, but with common sense. To the majority of Americans it just makes sense that the air and water should not be trashed, that the government has no business poking around an adult's bedroom or genitals, that it isn't right to deny people a chance simply because of the pigmentation of their skin. Americans don't define these as political issues, but as basic logic. While this attitude may actually be a textbook definition of "liberal," why don't we start to look at it and define this cultural shift in an entirely different light?
Let's start saying the following: A new Common Sense Majority rules the land. Is it common sense to have 75 million people go without health insurance for most, if not all, of the past two years? Of course it isn't; that makes no sense. Is it common sense to let just five companies own all the major sources of information and news in America? Absolutely not. Is it common sense to see that every person has a job and makes a livable wage? You bet-that makes good sense.
What decent-thinking person wouldn't be for these things? We need to set the common-sense agenda and start calling the shots. The small group of right-wingers who now control most facets of our lives are the No Sense-or nonsense-Minority. They do not represent the vast bulk of this country.
You may be thinking, "Yeah, well, if that's true, then why does Bush have such high approval ratings?"
To me, the answer is simple. America was attacked. More than 3,000 people died. It's basic human nature that if you have been attacked, you will rally behind your leader-no matter who that leader is. The high ratings for Bush are not an endorsement of his policies. Rather, it is the response of a frightened country that has no choice but to back the man charged with protecting them. America has not fallen in love with Bush-it's more like "love the one you're (stuck) with."
Let me say it again: The overwhelming support for the war in Iraq only came after the war began. Before the war, the majority of Americans said that we should not be invading Iraq unless we have the backing and participation of all our allies and the United Nations. But once the war began, the average American wanted to support the troops, and wanted the troops to come home alive. After all, it is their children who were sent over there. What else were they going to say to the pollster on the phone when it was their son or daughter or their neighbors' kids who were in harm's way?
Support for Bush is actually very weak. The economy is in the crapper. People are struggling every day. And there is no way Bush can keep them and his rich buddies happy at the same time. Although the citizens of America love their country, and want to support it, if they don't have a job-or one that pays all the bills-that is what will be on their minds come Election Day.
So, take heart. And take a look around you. You live in a nation full of progressive-thinking, liberal-leaning, good-hearted people. Give yourself a pat on the back-you won! We won! Let's take a victory lap together and then get to work on fixing the Great Disconnect -how it is that, in a nation of lefties, the right hand controls everything. They do not represent the will of the people, and that has to change. Start acting like the victors you are and get out there to claim the country that is truly ours. |
