Everything I Know about Liberalism I learned in Grade School

In 2005 Michael Savage wrote a bestselling book entitled “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder.”  A lot of people probably dismissed it as right-wing hyperbole, just a bit of mean-spirited name calling to attract attention for the book; but anyone who’s listened to Savage even once understands that there was no facetious intent in the title whatsoever.  He was dead serious and furthermore, he was dead right. 

Though I have never read the book, the title struck home with me because it finally answered the question that conservatives have been asking each other for as long as I can remember:  Why?

Why do liberals do the things they do?  Why do they hate the U.S. but love Cuba?  Why do they encourage behaviors that create dependency?  Why do they deprive themselves of critical water for the sake of an inconsequential fish? Why were they outraged by accusations of sexist jokes by Clarence Thomas but unmoved by allegations of rape and molestation against Bill Clinton?   The inconsistencies and self-destructive positions have left us scratching our heads for decades, but it all makes sense when you understand that liberalism is a mental disorder.  Then the question becomes, what is the nature of this disorder and how did they get it?  I don’t know what Mr. Savage ascribed it to in his book but I have my own theory and to understand it we need to go back to grade school.

There is probably not a day that goes by when I don’t witness the misbehaviors of liberals and I am transported back in time to my grade school days where memories of similar behaviors by long lost classmates evoke disturbing parallels.  As I watched the recent riots in Baltimore and Ferguson, for instance, I remembered the senseless - albeit less viciously destructive - vandalism that was the plague of every school when I was growing up.  It seems the ability to destroy what others have built gives some children a sense of power and that mentality carries through to adulthood.

I recall the physical and psychological bullying that went on in school.  Now I see leftists hang Sarah Palin in effigy, I see shop owners chased out of business when they won’t bend to the Left’s will, I see leftwing news editors posting the home addresses of law-abiding gun owners in their newspapers to intimidate them, and I see a supposedly good-hearted liberal (Joy Behar) taunting conservative Sharron Angle with the words, “Come here, bitch! Come to New York and do it!" on national TV.  Yet it is conservatives, we are always told, who are the bullies.  As a student I watched with dismay as the teachers and administrators - all liberals - ignored bullying while giving phony lip-service to how “bullying won’t be tolerated;” And as an adult it’s Déjà vu all over again as the leftwing media pays no attention whatsoever to an endless parade of liberal bullying even while they wring their hands and wrinkle their brows over bullying in our schools. 

Today, when I see gaudy gay pride parades, “environmentalists” protesting to save the Delta smelt or Dennis Rodman flying his entourage to North Korea to show us he can make nice with tyrants, I remember my school days when some kids would do just about anything for attention. 

When I hear liberals like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton loudly proclaiming that they “accept full responsibility” for failures occurring on their watch but then they subsequently bristle at any suggestion of actually accepting blame or consequences, I am reminded of school kids who were quick to embrace the more rewarding aspects of adulthood (dressing, smoking, swearing, sex, etc.) but disinclined to accept the responsibilities that go with it.  Children often know how to say things to sound like adults, but rarely do they know how to actually be the adults.

When Barbara Streisand swooned to Oprah about how “swell” Bill Clinton was and when record millions of Democrats converged on D.C. for the privilege of witnessing the coronation of the “first black president,” I recalled my school days when elections rewarded personal popularity and outer image over substance and achievement.

When I recall the cruel peer pressure in grade school and the punishment of non-conforming kids who were labeled “geeks” and “nerds,”  I am immediately reminded of today’s battle over “climate change,” and how scientists and others who won’t conform to the Left’s agenda are ridiculed and stigmatized as “deniers.” 

I remember how some kids would receive poor grades, and rather than take an honest assessment of their own failures, would declare that their teachers “hate them.”  Fast forward to the adult world where liberals blame their failures and bad behaviors on racism, homophobia, sexism or partisanship.

I recall how in grade school teachers had to continually monitor the halls, the cafeteria and the playground because too many kids still lacked the maturity to be trusted to follow the rules.  Now I see that the rules still don’t apply to liberals like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

In school I remember being puzzled by the kids who were mean and rejecting to many of their classmates but who would anxiously raise their hands to give smiling, text-book perfect answers on how to ‘make the world a better place.’  The teacher would pat their little heads and give them their gold stars, after which these same kids would go to recess and resume their mean-girl (or mean-boy) ways, oblivious to the gross contradiction.  Fast forward to adulthood, and I see the very same behavior acted out over and over by the Left, who are always given the presumption of being kindly, big-hearted, open-minded supporters of free speech despite the reality of their behaviors.  Actress Julia Roberts sneeringly quipped that, “Republican comes in the dictionary just after reptile and just above repugnant,” and yet a drooling reporter from The Washington Post tells us, “…there's just something about Roberts's infectious enthusiasm and spirit that defies dislike.”   Isn’t that special?  Martin Bashir called Sarah Palin "America's resident dunce" and a "world-class idiot" and suggested she should have to eat feces because she had the audacity to compare saddling our children with massive debt to slavery, but if you ask him why he’s a liberal he will tell you it’s because he believes in free speech and conservatives are mean.  Oh, and we should see no irony in kindhearted, feminist-supporter Ed Schultz calling Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut,” or in how much his insult amused those righteously liberal ladies of “The View.”  The inability to see the disconnect between what they say and what they do is a trait some liberals just never outgrow.

Back in school we rebelled against our parents, dismissing their experience and advice in the mistaken belief that defiance equals independence; but when we played with matches and were burned, had sex and became pregnant or drove recklessly and hurt others, we learned the value of their experience and guidance.  Now, conservatives are the adults and liberals are the rebellious children who balk at the traditions and rules that evolved from generations of experience and hard-learned lessons.  Like children, they insist on being burned before they will believe that playing with fire is dangerous, only now we all get to feel the pain.      

Liberalism is the absence of mental maturity.  It requires that one’s ego be gratified at any cost.  A century ago the disease of liberalism had difficulty spreading because there were natural deterrents in the form of logical consequences to liberal behaviors and because Americans believed in their rights and wouldn’t allow those consequences to spill over onto them.  Over time, however, little by little, liberals have managed to change that, and the disease has spread like any other disease that thrives when it learns how to get past the body’s natural defenses.  The cure is the same as it is for the spoiled child who has become a brat.  You stop spoiling him and make him suffer the consequences of his actions as nature intended.  The question is, are we too late to stop the epidemic?

~CW