Are liberals "con artists"?

Question

A close friend of mine had a very interesting perceptive in regard to liberals. He explained that a Liberals goal is to keep minorities down (poor and uneducated) to prevent them from being in power. He also stated that they encourage young unwed minorities to continue to have kids and promise that the government will take care of them (welfare). One thing that really got me thinking was when he said, liberals say that they want minorities to be treated equally, but how come they don't want minorities living in their neighborhoods. I never saw things in that way before. Do you think there is any truth to this? Honest and unbiased opinions please.

Note: For the record, I have very strong liberal views.


Read this, it's very interesting
http://hispanicpundit.com/index.php?p=62

Stony, I really like your answer.

Ok it's obvious that I am black, but I wasn't just speaking about blacks. I am talking about minorities in a whole.

Answer 1

It's an argument which has SOME, if not very little, merit. It's also a VERY cynical argument used by far-right conservatives. These same cons will also blanket all black people as welfare-recipients who are too lazy to work.

Of course, this isn't true.

Liberal policies may have inadvertantly caused an insignificantly small percentage of minorities to depend too much on government aid, but these policies have done far more good than harm.

Whenever you implement local or federal policies to help solve a problem, there will always be that 4-5% of the population who will abuse the policy and give the opponents of the policy reason to find fault and whine.

Welfare is about 7% of our federal budget these days and military spending is 51%. Which one do you REALLY think is having an adverse financial effect on most Americans?

Answer 2

Look up HUD and the red zone. They use federal money to map out the parts of a city that have the most minorities and flag them as not deserving more money for improvements, schools, and repairs.


"I went to places that I would have avoided in my everyday life, and I stretched my comfort level far beyond usual limits. I know that my most uncomfortable moment was when I was told that we were in the "red zone" in North Little Rock. My homeless guide explained the area was so named because the blocks were gang territory of the Crips, or the Bloods. All that sank in was "gang territory" and "red zone". However, the homeless also stayed in the abandoned houses that made up those blocks. Apparently the city really doesn't care what goes on in that little piece of hell, so the homeless weren't bothered by the police inside the Red Zone." - Executive Director of the Arkansas Supportive Housing Network
http://www.hud.gov/local/ar/news/2007-02-09.cfm


Most government policies have the inevitiable effect of creating inflation - ie: raising home prices and cost of living. It doesn't matter if the intervention is framed as helping the poor or helping the market, if they're spending money on it 9 times out of 10 it will result in prices going up. After false inflation in housing, you get to the point where people need the government assistance just to survive. This is when the government offers Section - 8, reduced rent. If there had been no intervention in the first place, this "reduced rent" price would have paid for a mortgage. Instead, you get groups of minorities neatly packed together, paying all the cost of homeownership without any of the actual ownership benefits, and thinking that they'd be even worse off without the government.

Its devilishly clever. I was pretty liberal too, until I took economics and realized what was going on. I realized there's no effective difference between Republicans and Democrats if their policies end in the same economic result (ie: transfering wealth from the bottom to the top.)

The only thing that changes is the marketing strategy. Answer me this: Why was the new deal pushed into power by a racist Southern Democrat (FDR) and whats the difference between LBJ Democrat, Texas and Bush Republican, Texas.

The policies don't change, just the promises.

Answer 3

Liberals have a double standard. Liberals want power and will do anything to get it. They say they want to help poor people and then they turn around and wont let them live near them. Usually the reason they help the poor is for votes and if there is a danger to themselves they enlist everyone else to help without spending their own money. Welfare is the answer for the poor people. It seems to me that if you really wanted to help the poor then you wouldn't be trying to get a welfare program going. You would try to get them jobs. The reason for unwed mothers having kids is so that liberal organizations will have plenty of human cells to research on so that scientists can find cures for the disease so that the liberal wealthy can live longer (even if it doesn't work). Your friend is right. Maybe someone can talk sense into your liberal friends and stop catering to the party line. The truth hurts. Now is your chance to change things.

Answer 4

I'd be interested to know how your friend supported his points.

1) How are liberals keeping minorities down? Virtually every minority in power is a liberal.

2) Liberals encourage young unwed minorities to have a bunch of kids? That's sure news to me!

3) My neighborhood is probably 75% hispanic. I have no problem with minorities living in my neighborhood. I think your friend may be projecting his fear of minorities onto liberals.

Look, there's a reason that 90% of African Americans are Democrats. It's not because they're stupid or they like being kept out of power by abusive Democrats. It's because liberals want to give them the best chance at equality in our country.

Answer 5

Well, do you want those things? Do you want to keep minorities poor and uneducated, living in different neighborhoods than yourself, on welfare, barefoot and pregnant? If not, then perhaps other liberals don't either. I can't claim there aren't any rotten apples in the barrel at all, but to assume that liberals act with such like minded and sinister purpose, well that's just stupid. Do we really look that well organized from the outside?

What Liberals want right now, is to put Americans first, not the companies that they work for.

Answer 6

No....Liberalism is a thought process, where by as new information come in the mind is changed. Liberals were the one that supported civil rights, early liberals wrote our constitution, and most every advancement over the last 200 hundred years were liberals driving it. not all liberal ideas have the same value,nor are all liberals of the same mind on any issue, liberalism is not a political party as some like to think, but a way of processing information, not as dogmatic as conservatism, liberalism is about questioning and looking for answers sometimes in new directions other times from past. liberalism is not for the closed minded or the fearful.

Answer 7

Did your close friend have proof? I doubt it. The fact that there are many minorities in power in the democratic party in comparison to the republican party is proof that your friend is wrong. The fact is that more people are able to get out of poverty and minorities have more opportunities under democratic rule than GOP rule. This goes for poor whites as well. This isn't to say that all minorities are poor because they aren't. That in itself is a racist and prejudicial myth.
I'm actually a minority in my neighborhood which is predominantly Latino and black. Of course, I know I'm kind of the exception to the rule because I have different beliefs than most middle class and upper middle class whites. I welcome diversity and diversity of culture. It would be boring to have a country or a party full of just white people. Especially in America. BTW, my mayor is Latino and we've had black mayors as well. I live in Los Angeles. Again, I don't see the proof in your friend's statement at all. I'm not saying there isn't any racism in Los Angeles, because there is plenty of it from all races toward eachother. And, there are some racist liberals, but they are rare. Most of them that I've met are rich 'liberal' racists from the west side of town. But I don't see the connection in your friend's statement with liberals and the Democratic party in particular if we consider them liberal at all. And not all Democrats are liberal. Some obviously are liberal and some are not. So, I think your friend is basically buying into a myth perpetuated by the right wing.

Answer 8

No. Some of them may be con artists, but so are some conservatives. Sounds to me like your friend is just a member of the blame the liberals for everything crowd.

It is the conservatives who don't want sex education or easy access to birth control. It is the conservatives who do not want any immigrants in this country. A liberal goal is equality, often associated with socialism, that would be the exact opposite of your friends idea that a liberal goal is to keep minorities poor. It was liberals out there fighting for civil rights, not conservatives.

Basically, your friends arguments are very stupid and obviously incredibly biased by his conservative beliefs.

Answer 9

Your friend was correct in describing the perverse economic encentives provided by programs like welfare. Yes, such programs do, in effect, encourage a 'cycle of poverty.' Whether you consider that an intended effect, or an unintended consequence sheds some light on your attitudes. If you have an adversarial attitude towards liberal positions, a tendency to buy into conspiracy theories, or are just plain cynical, you might conclude it's an intentional plot. If you're a bit more charitable, you might consider the consequences unintended. If you're optomistic, you might even think that such problems could be fixed (in spite of decades of unsuccessful attempts to do so).

As to 'not wanting' certain people in 'thier neighborhoods' that strikes me as an unwarranted generalization, and one that would be hard to support with any kind of objective evidence.

Answer 10

I can only speak for myself and I am a conservative. I believe that entitlements like welfare do hold people down. You can't live a fulfilling, productive life while someone else is supporting you. I do think conservatives are very misunderstood on this issue. I don't think that liberals are con-artists - I think they have good intentions. But welfare has been around for decades and there are still alot of people living in poverty - it hasn't solved the problem.