{"id":1187,"date":"2006-06-10T11:23:59","date_gmt":"2006-06-10T15:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/2006\/06\/10\/what-good-is-a-liberal\/"},"modified":"2006-06-10T11:23:59","modified_gmt":"2006-06-10T15:23:59","slug":"what-good-is-a-liberal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/2006\/06\/what-good-is-a-liberal\/","title":{"rendered":"What Good is a Liberal?"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>John Gray of Cincinnati, Ohio, highlighted liberals\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 contributions to the U.S. this way: &#8220;Joe gets up at 6 a.m. to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure they are safe and work as advertised.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employers medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it, too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; his bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside, and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree-hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Joe walks to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation days because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s employer pays these standards because Joe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s employer doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s noon time, Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s deposits are federally insured by the FSLIC because some liberal wanted to protect Joe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Depression.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Joe is home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to Dad\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal fought for car safety standards.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Joe arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to make rural loans. The house didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have electricity until some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t belong and demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republicans would still be sitting in the dark).<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Joe is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to. After his visit with Dad, he gets back in his car for the ride home.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Joe turns on a radio talk show, the hosts keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell Joe that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day.) Joe agrees, &#8220;We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives; after all, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8211;thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.opednews.com\/articles\/opedne_jackson__060609_liberal_and_proud_3a_l.htm\">Jackson Thoreau<\/a> at OpEd News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Gray of Cincinnati, Ohio, highlighted liberals\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 contributions to the U.S. this way: &#8220;Joe gets up at 6 a.m. to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure they are safe and work as advertised. &#8220;All but $10.00 of his medications are&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/2006\/06\/what-good-is-a-liberal\/\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,5,10,3],"tags":[1802,2246,317,1365,2247,120,2248,2140,467,2249,2250,604,2251,2252,2253],"class_list":["post-1187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-armchair-activism","category-culture","category-human-rights","category-politics","tag-clean-air","tag-electricity","tag-environment","tag-insurance","tag-labelling","tag-liberal","tag-meat-packing","tag-medical","tag-pollution","tag-radio","tag-safety-standards","tag-social-security","tag-union","tag-water","tag-worker-compensation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}