Liberals are the self-proclaimed champions of social justice and redistribution of wealth in the name of fairness and equality. But is their ideology consistent with their lifestyle?
Last September, Roll Call released a list of the 50 richest members of Congress. Lo and behold, the top ten members on the list were all liberals! In fact, Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) tops the list. How could this be? The advocates of the working class? I don’t think so.
Conservatives are lambasted as being the rich and entitled and are guilted into describing themselves as “compassionate” conservatives just to emphasize the fact that they are not out of touch with the middle and lower classes.
There is obviously a mischaracterization of conservatives and what motivates the policies they promote. For instance, conservatives don’t advocate free health care for all. However, the reasoning behind that doesn’t come from a desire to withhold care from those who need it, but from a desire to avoid low quality of care and rationing of care for all. And these things are inevitable with “free” health care — in fact, they’re a couple of the “hidden costs.” We’ve already seen evidence of this in the health care systems of Canada and Great Britain.
True conservatives also oppose the welfare system, but not out of a lack of compassion for the underprivileged. Rather, they are driven to compel people to work hard and reap the financial benefits of that work. This is the philosophy on which our capitalist society was built. To promote a society that encourages dependence on the government for income undermines capitalism and demeans the individual.
Liberals consistently paint an image of their congressional opponents as elitist, wealthy, upper-class citizens who are unable to relate to the common American. It’s sadly ironic to find out that the very members who point fingers at the right wing and characterize them as “entitled” and “out of touch with the American people” are actually the wealthiest and most elite legislators in town. You will not find a true conservative complaining about anyone’s wealth or saying that someone does not deserve to be as wealthy as they are — or that they’ve probably earned enough.
Seems to me the liberals paint a false image of themselves while promoting a big government agenda under the guise of helping the average American. But are they really in touch with the American people? I think it’s entirely unfair that they would lie in order to hijack issues like social justice and health care, because it looks to me as if they have a lot less in common with the average American than they’d like you to think.