Four Canards That Progressives Use to Dupe America, a Primer (by ContraSuggest):

Conservatives are routinely accused by self-professed “Progressives” of leveling baseless criticisms against those on the political left.  Conservatives, we’re told, are just a bunch of uneducated, unenlightened, bigoted, knuckle-draggers, that resort to slurs and hyperbole in an effort to appeal to people’s prejudices.  Due to this false belief, many people who aren’t particularly educated in political matters, but lean conservative, may think that their traditionalist bent is something to be ashamed of, and that the Progressives have got their facts straight.  Well nothing could be further from the truth.  Below are four areas in which Progressives exercise morally and intellectually bankrupt reasoning in order to dupe people into following their failed policies.  So the next time some dopey libtard spouts off around the office water cooler; let ‘em have it!                     

1. Class, Race and Age Warfare

Liberals and Progressives practice the black art of splitting Americans up into groups and then pitting those groups against one another, in order to empower the instrumentalities of the state and expand their own influence.  Whether they’re exploiting the differences between old and young, wealthy and poor, black and white, or men and women, Progressives seek to benefit from the exaggerated divisions and differences that exist among the American public.  Instead of urging Americans to identify with the common bonds that we share as Americans, they instead draw spurious distinctions that stress differences and disharmony, in order to create animosity and confusion.  In that confusion they ally themselves with the “disenfranchised” groups that are largely of their own making, to gain political brownie points in return for votes.  It’s analogous to throwing a handful of marbles on the floor in a crowded room, and picking people’s pockets as they’re stumbling and falling amidst the bedlam.  Demagogic liberal buzz words and slogans (of the ‘Republicans want to take candy away from children’ variety) to listen for:

• We need to end “tax cuts for the rich”
• Any changes to Social Security or Medicare (even ones designed to save the bankrupt programs) will “force seniors to eat dog food,” or “prevent seniors from getting life-saving medical procedures and drugs”
• Any changes to Medicaid (even ones designed to save the bankrupt program) will “hurt the poor”
• Also, watch out for this asinine combination, “Republicans want to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid so they can give tax cuts to the rich.”
• Any changes to the federal government’s disastrous role in providing home mortgage loans will “throw poor minorities into the streets”
• And don’t forget this classic, anything that Progressives advocate, no matter how ill advised, it is always “for the children!”

If you hear any of these intellectually bankrupt lies, immediately “call bullshit;” don’t let the minions of the left hypnotize you with their siren song of mendacity. 

2. Tofu Multiculturalism

Liberals and Progressives are big advocates of what they call “multiculturalism.”  But what they call multiculturalism isn’t very multi and it isn’t very cultural.  It’s actually just a left-wing code word signifying an almost Stalinist thinking that says people should look physically different, yet think the same.  The twisted logic goes something like this: we should be accepting of all other cultures except American culture, which, although not really a culture to speak of, what there is of it, is banal, racist, misogynist, elitist, imperialist, and basically evil.  Anyone who adheres to this way of thinking is hereby inducted into the ranks of the multiculturalists.  Students are taught this kind of tripe throughout their educational experience- all cultures are cool except American culture.  Not only don’t “multiculturalists” hold other cultures to the same impossible standard to which they hold American culture; they hold other cultures to no standards at all, often leaving out distressing historical information and ignoring the commission of culture-specific atrocities.  The cultures that are lionized by the left regularly violate the supposedly deeply held tenets of the left.  Cultures praised by the multiculturalists include ones that practice the severing of limbs as punishment for the commission of petty theft, forced female genital mutilation, brutal persecution of gays, women and minorities, and have histories replete with the commission of wholesale slaughter and genocide; these are the antitheses of the stated tenets of the liberal American tradition.  Yet leftists give a pass to, or are outright celebratory, of cultures that stone women to death simply as the result of an accusation of infidelity.  While at home, American Progressives condemn the passage of laws that prevent partial birth abortion, which is the destruction of a fully formed human child, by drawing her down the womb, piercing the child’s skull with a pair of scissors, and sucking the baby’s brain matter out with a vacuum tube.  Laws against that, we’re told, represent an unacceptable violation of the sacrosanct “women’s right to chose.”  The lack of consistency in those views is emblematic of the left’s moral confusion and paralysis of reason.                    

3. De-legitimatization of America’s Founding Principles

Haven’t you heard?  The American Founders were elitist, racist, misogynist, old white men, who left us with a deeply flawed system of government and a historical legacy of which we should be ashamed.  Not only should we not make favorable mention of any of them, but they actually deserve our disrespect.  Our Constitution was originally a pro-slavery document, which counted each black as 3/5^ths of a person; before it was amended by those wonderful Democrats, who also passed the banner civil rights legislation during the 1960s, ending government supported discrimination.  Bla-bla-bla.  This is the kind of rancid bovine excrement in which idiot leftists regularly traffic, most of which actually passes for fact in history textbooks, primary schools and college classrooms.  Actually, in the Declaration of Independence, the word Men, in the legendary phrase “… all Men are created equal …” meant (and means) mankind; which parenthetically, means women and Blacks too.  The God-given natural Rights outlined in the Declaration, in which the Founders deeply believed, are granted to everyone in the species, not a particular gender or race.  Abraham Lincoln used the sentiments outlined in the Declaration as a powerful weapon that couldn’t be rhetorically countered, to condemn the practice of slavery in the 1850s.  The first three words of the Constitution are “We the People,” not We the States, or We the Rich White Men, or We the Aristocracy, or we The Citizens of the United States (with the exception of the women and the Negroes).      

From the day the new American Constitution was ratified, limits were immediately placed on the institution of slavery, and over time those limits grew greater.  The anti-slavery tone was set while the Constitution was still being debated, as the provisional government under the Articles of Confederation passed into law the Northwest Ordinance (1787).  The Ordinance regulated the settlement of the Northwest Territory, which was eventually divided into several states of the Midwest.  It organized the territory into townships, provided for self-government and religious toleration.  Slavery was categorically prohibited.  It was Northerners at the Constitutional Convention that insisted on the 3/5^th of a person designation for slaves, in order to keep the South’s pro-slavery vote in Congress weaker.  If slaves had been counted as whole persons, the South’s pro-slavery voting power in Congress would have been greatly increased, strengthening the institution of slavery considerably.  The long-term plight of black slaves was improved by the 3/5^ths designation, not hurt by it.

A few historical reminders:

• It was the Republican Party, led by Abraham Lincoln, which supported and embraced the abolition of slavery in this country
• President Lincoln (a Republican) prosecuted a war against the racist, pro-slavery South (Democrats all).  This war prevented the South’s secession, preserved the Union, and assured the speedy destruction of slavery on the North American continent forever, as the Radical republicans drafted and pushed through Amendments to the Constitution that ended slavery, against the resistance of Democrats     
• Republican President Ulysses Grant introduced the first-ever American civil rights legislation in 1871
• More Republicans than Democrats voted for the legendary civil rights legislation of the 1960s

4. Sympathy for America’s Enemies and Denigration of U.S. Foreign Policy

Progressives have an almost genetic predisposition to denigrate America’s positive historic role in the world and to shore up the image of all our post-World War II enemies, whether it’s Soviet communists, South American socialists, or Islamic fascists; the rhetoric is always the same.  It was the left that came up with the suicidal “unilateral nuclear disarmament” doctrine towards the end of the Cold War, which held that a sure way to end the conflict would be for the U.S. to dismantle its nuclear arsenal, without demanding the same of the Soviets.  In this delusional fantasy scenario, they believed the totalitarian Soviets would dismantle their nukes because America had done so, thus no longer posing a threat.  Under the guise of desiring peace, they were willing to leave the U.S. defenseless against Soviet aggression, ignorantly drawing moral equivalence between the foreign policies of America and the “Evil Empire.”

This doctrine was codified against the backdrop of the failed foreign policy of the Carter Administration in the late 1970s.  President Carter believed that most of the strife in the world was due to America’s flawed foreign policy of interfering in the affairs of other nations.  Based upon this theory, he pursued a foreign policy of non-interference, which included cutting off financial and diplomatic support to U.S. friendly autocratic regimes in strategically vital regions during our Cold War struggle against the Soviets.  He exhibited an infuriatingly high level of naïveté in his rhetoric towards, and dealings with, untrustworthy, dangerous figures such as Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.  The effects of this policy were disastrous for the U.S. and the world, as many countries in key regions around the globe were taken over by totalitarian and or Soviet-friendly puppet regimes.  At least half a dozen American friendly regimes were toppled in the wake of losing America’s support.  In the 21^st century, the world is still suffering as the result of the Shah’s overthrow by the Ayatollahs in Iran, as the West has accepted the inevitability of an Islamic-fascist nuclear Iran.  Carter stopped production of the B-1 bomber, gave away our control of the strategically vital Panama Canal, and made human rights the central focus of U.S. foreign policy, instead of U.S. interests and international stability.  As a result of his strategy, the biggest human rights violators in nearly every region of the world gained power and, on the whole, the world became a far more unstable and dangerous place by many orders of magnitude during his 4 short years as president.          

We’ve seen a repeat of some of these dangerous policy blunders from the Statist Obama Administration.  Although the world is a vastly different place today than it was in the 1970s, the sycophantic rhetoric towards our enemies and the betrayal of promises to some of our allies is all too familiar.  We’ve been hearing this type of hogwash from Progressives for a very long time.  From George McGovern and Jimmy Carter to Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn; from John Kerry and Howard Dean to Gore Vidal and Michael Moore, the basic message has always been the same.  These intellectual morons despise America as she exists; the America that they say they love is the one they want to create out of whole cloth, an America in which government technocrats, “intellectuals” like themselves, control and guide ignoramuses like you and me; an America that conducts delusional foreign policy based only upon unsubstantiated, and provably dangerous, leftist criteria.