Letting The Air Out

I decided to let someone else debunk some of the liberal misconceptions for a change. I do my best to explain my point but it often doesn't get across. Sometimes people can better get the message when it comes from someone they're not familiar with. Why I don't understand, but some people just think that way. Hopefully this will help change a few more minds. If not just straighten it out for others.



Excerpts from Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies

By Gregg Jackson

If conservatism is to prevail in the ideological and political war of ideas and sustain a substantial majority in our country, those who are dedicated to its preservation and advancement…will have to arm themselves with the facts to overcome the false and misleading claims the liberal left habitually makes….The goal of my book is to provide ideological conservatives, independents, and conservative Democrats with factual information on key contemporary issues to refute the claims and assertions of the left and ensure the protection of our founding principles and values now under attack. (pp. xi-xiv)

Claim: It is uncertain when human life begins; therefore it’s a religious question, not a scientific one.

Response: It is an undisputed biological scientific fact that human life begins at conception.

Scientifically life begins at conception.…this new, unique, human creation is a defined sex and is alive, complete and growing….The new developing baby has the same 46 human chromosomes he or she will have until death…. Bernard Nathanson, a former abortionist who was personally responsible for 75,000 abortions…in the New England Journal of Medicine…[Nathanson} admitted he has come to know life begins at conception. “There is no longer serious doubt in my mind,” he wrote, “that human life exists from the very onset of pregnancy.”

The sacred protection of life should be the final word on this topic. The United States Declaration of Independence affirms that the first and most sacred right is the right to “life.”…No human being should be discriminated against based on his or her stage of development, place of residence (inside the womb), or arbitrary notion of “when life begins.” (pp. 11-12)

Claim: The Constitution mandates the separation of church and state.

Response: The First Amendment ensures freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

The First Amendment clearly spells out that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion; or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The First Amendment was written with the intent of preventing the United States from establishing a national religion, to give American citizens total religious freedom without the fear of being coerced to show devotion to any particular national religion….The complete discussions of the Founding Fathers vis-a-vis the First Amendment is contained in the Congressional Records from June 7 to September 25, 1789. Nowhere in these discussions is the term “separation of church and state” ever mentioned. (pp. 44-45)

Claim: Republicans are the party of rich corporate special interests.

Response: In 2002, of the top ten donors to federal candidates and political parties gave overwhelmingly to Democrats.

Of the $59,305,429 donated by the top ten donors, 92.4 percent ($54,798,216) went to Democrats. 7.6 percent ($4,507,212) went to Republicans….Of the top ten individual contributors to “527s” in the 2004 election, the vast majority of money spent came from very wealthy liberal donors and went almost predominantly to Democratic organizations. Only one private donor…gave to GOP organizations.

Big money to Democratic 527s from nine of the ten top donors: $31,802,503; Big money to Republican 527s from one of the ten top donors: $1,020,000; 97 percent to Democrat 527s and 3 percent to Republican 527s! So who’s really the party of the rich special interests? The Democrats!…The richest members of the U.S. Senate are almost exclusively multi-millionaire Democrats. The only senators worth over $200 million are all Democrats. Eight of the top eleven richest senators are Democrats.

Net worth of fourteen richest Democratic senators in 2004: John Kerry (D, Massachusetts) $620 million, Jon Corzine (D, New Jersey) $400 million, Herb Kohl (D, Wisconsin) $300 million, John Rockefeller (D, West Virginia) $200 million, Dianne Feinstein (D, California) $50 million, Ted Kennedy, (D, Massachusetts) $30 million, Mark Dayton (D, Minnesota) $20 million, John Edwards (D, North Carolina) $15 million, Hillary Clinton (D, New York) $8 million, Jeff Binghaman (D, New Mexico) $8 million, Bob Graham (D, Florida) $8 million, Bob Nelson (D, Nebraska) $6 million, Barbara Boxer (D, California) $5 million, Harry Reid (D, Nevada) $2 million. (pp. 62-69)

Claim: The Republican Party is racist.

Response: The Democratic Party has had a long history of racism that is still alive and well today.

The Republican Party was founded in 1854 to abolish slavery….Democrats founded the Ku Klux Klan… Democrats instituted Jim Crow laws throughout the south…. Democrats were the original segregationists who opposed desegregation and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (including Sen. William Allen Fulbright, to whom Bill Clinton awarded the Medal of Honor, and Sen. Al Gore Sr., who vehemently opposed equal rights for blacks). If not for the support of white northern Republicans, LBJ would not have been able to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act.… Democratic Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia was a Kleagle in the KKK and used the term “white nigger” twice in a TV interview [in 2001].

In 1991, Democrat Sharpton railed against the “diamond merchants”—code for Jews….After mobilizing hundreds of protesters to march in a Jewish neighborhood to protest the accidental killing of a seven-year-old black child…Sharpton leads chants of…“Kill the Jews!” The result of Sharpton’s incendiary action was that his mob surrounded a Jewish man, Yankel Rosenbaum and stabbed him to death…. There are currently more blacks, Hispanics and Asians in the Bush administration than in any other administration in history. (pp. 57-59)

Claim: Tax cuts—such as the Reagan and Bush tax cuts—cause budget deficits.

Response: Tax cuts have increased tax revenues to the federal treasury.

In the 1920s, ‘60s and ‘80s, taxes were cut across the board. All three cuts stimulated the economy substantially…and resulted in increases in tax dollars to the federal treasury.… As part of the Revenue Acts of 1921, 1924 and 1926, taxes were cut across the board. Top marginal rates decreased from 73 percent…in 1922…to 24 percent in 1929.…tax cuts resulted in greater tax payments, especially by those in the highest tax brackets. When taxes were reduced from 60 percent to 25 percent on top income earners, taxes paid increased from $300 billion to $700 billion a year.

…JFK…[cut] income tax rates…across the board by 20 percent….[and] JFK also proposed a 10 percent reduction in corporate income taxes to spur economic growth and job creation…. From 1962 to ’66, employment grew by over a million jobs…[and] tax receipts to the federal treasury grew from $48.7 billion…to $68.7 billion in 1968.… In 1981, Reagan cut marginal tax rates across the board…income taxes to the federal treasury doubled [from 1983] to…more than $1 billion per year in 1989. (pp. 292-293)

Claim: Bush exaggerated the case for war in Iraq by lying about WMD.

Response: Bush made the decision for going to war in Iraq based largely on findings of the UN and International Atomic Energy Agency weapons inspectors, as well as those of other governments.

…President Bush’s most harsh critics from the Democratic Party made a case for war with Iraq, nearly identical to the President’s. President Clinton…said…“Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons.” Vice President Gore…said, “If you allow…Saddam Hussein to get…chemical weapons, biological weapons, how many people is he going to kill with these weapons?”

…Senator John Kerry…said, “Saddam Hussein has already used weapons and has made it clear that he has the intent to continue…to do so…. Richard Butler, who headed the teams investigating Iraq’s weapons programs, said, “Saddam Hussein is a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction.”…Iraqi officials later admitted they had hidden more than 100,000 gallons of botulinum toxin, more than 22,000 gallons of anthrax, more than 500 gallons of aflatoxin, four metric tons of VX nerve gas and 2.7 gallons of ricin.

[T]he Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on prewar intelligence found…that neither Bush nor any of his administration officials, “attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities.” …President Bush didn’t mislead Americans with regard to the threat Saddam posed to the United States. (pp. 214-217)

Claim: Children who are raised in same-sex homes fare as well, if not better, than children raised in divorced or step-families.

Response: There is little hard clinical data to suggest “same-sex” family configurations would be a healthy environment for children.

…children raised in same-sex couple households…are comparable in terms of well being to those in single-parent households…. Of all the essential elements which lead to a child’s proper development…the most important factor is the marital status of the parents…. “Regardless of which surveys are looked at,” said Sara McLanahan of Princeton University, “children from one-parent families are about twice as likely to drop out of school as children from two-parent families.”

…Pre-school children who live with one biological parent and one step-parent are forty times more likely to become a victim of abuse than children living with a biological mother and father”…. Children residing in a home with a step-parent are eight times more likely to die from maltreatment than children living with two biological parents.

…National studies show that children from divorced and remarried families are more aggressive toward their parents and teachers, experience more depression, have more learning difficulties and are two to three times more likely to be referred for psychological help at school than their peers from intact families. More of them end up in mental health care clinics, have earlier sexual activity, have more children out of wedlock, have less marriage, more divorce and experience more psychological problems than children of intact marriages. (pp. 247-249)