What do you think of the quote "If you are not a liberal at 25, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at 35, you have no brain"?
With a nod to the great answers on the history of the saying, the only time I have heard it used by anyone in the last fifteen years or so was by a thirty or forty something conservative trying to put down “liberal idealism”.The version I have heard most often, “If you aren’t a liberal at 20 you have no heart. If you aren’t a conservative at 30 you have no brain.”I think there is some usefulness to thinking about the progression of worldviews as they are affected by living.At 20 we are all heart. Our feelings rule, probably contributed to by the fact that our frontal lobes, where supervisory functions come from, aren’t fully developed until around 30 years old. Being heart centered, compassionate, is seen as a liberal trait.By 30 we have lived some, and had experience with the harsh realities of finances, and been angered by the tax “stolen from our checks”. Naturally, if we “have a brain” our reaction to those cold facts would have us take a conservative viewpoint.That actually makes some sense as I have seen that progression in many people, including myself.However, I have amended the saying to include,“If you aren’t a moderate by 40, you don’t have a heart or a brain, and if you aren’t back to liberal by 50, you definitely don’t have a heart.”If one is paying attention to life, one will learn that it’s never a “heart vs head” choice. In reality it takes both to be a fully functional Human being. We spend our thirties finding that balance, which should bring us to a moderate or centrist view. If we are still stuck in “either or” at that point, we really aren’t growing or gaining wisdom.When we keep paying attention, with a fully functional heart and brain, and gaining wisdom, as we pass middle age we start to see that the really good and important things in life are our relationships, not all those things we thought were important at 30 or 40. We realize that people are more important than wealth or achievement. We miss all those people we have lost. We wish we had been better to some of them. We wish we could have done more to reduce suffering in the world. We come back to our hearts.
What does this mean: "If you are not a liberal when you are 30 you have no heart, if you are not a conservative when you are 40 you have no brain"?
Conservatives used to say this back in the day. I haven’t heard it at all recently, because most people recognize it for what it is — an insult without any punch behind it.If you were a conservative, a common view of liberals was that they were idealists. Liberals were typically in favor of social programs that helped the poor, and the sick, like meals on wheels, and cleaning up slums, and unemployment insurance, and medicare and rehabilitation for drug addicts and criminals, and so on. But you really have to eventually grow up and start looking out for yourself instead, and forget about people who actually might benefit the most from help. There’s a common view among conservatives that is still around today, that if you help people who actually need it, then they will become dependent on that help. So unemployment insurance and medicare and programs for drug addicts and convicts or former convicts really are bad for society (not good for society, the way idealistic liberals think they are). The irony is that they have no problem giving money to people who DO NOT need the help, though.
Doesn't this quote sum liberalism up?
Ronald Reagan — 'It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.'
What is your fun analogy to describe Liberalism?
A famous quote of decades’ duration: “A Conservative is a Liberal who just got mugged.”My answer: “A Liberal is a Conservative whose kid has just been arrested.”On a more serious note, “A Liberal is a recently laid-off Conservative who has just been diagnosed with leukemia,” and “A Conservative is a newly-employed, newly married, former welfare recipient with decades of hard work ahead of her, who remembers everything the Conservatives said and did to humiliate her, denigrate her kids, ignore her need, and get in her way, and hopes the ‘new Liberal’ drops dead.”
Are these Lenin quotes reminiscent of the Liberal Agenda?
From Marx to Lenin and Alinsky, the message has always been the same, crush the producers in a free society, destroy the currency and economy and the society will become controllable. For over a century the progressive movement has sought to burden society with ever more costly programs and regulations that weakens the economy and takes the life blood of the economy out of the private sector. Once currency is taken from the private sector and under the control of the government, stops working to produce more currency. The needed money for the social programs then has to be printed to cover the costs of the socialist programs, further weakening the value of the currency. Our capitalist economy has been in trouble for some time, weakening under the onus of governmental control and costs. The Democrat housing scam was the final straw that broke the camel's back. We are now technically bankrupt, our businesses are in failure and the jobs market is in limbo. As small businesses keep failing, the unemployment will increase. We are technically socialist and have been for some years. We will be ripe for Marxism within the next decade. This is the threat that Marx wrote about in his Manifesto and echoed by Lenin. This is the progressive liberal agenda.
Is the problem with liberals not a lack of knowledge, but a lack of logic and reasoning?
I'll admit that the liberals on here are generally far more knowledgeable than the conservatives (not myself, but the many trolls who pass on political bile). Ronald Reagan's quote is appropriate for this: "The problem with our liberal friends isn't that they're ignorant, but that they know so much that just isn't so." I find that emotion has almost all of the influence over their decisions; even in the face of a $16 trillion debt they still won't budge in cutting a penny of spending unless it's military. This obviously isn't rational thinking (yes I realize you want tax increases, but in order to cover our deficit we would have to more than double income taxes across the board). So, to satisfy their emotions, they propose ridiculous solutions like the "Buffett Rule", which only raises $47 billion. I'm still having trouble grasping their mentality because it is so different than mine, but I think that their fundamental flaw is a lack of knowledge and reasoning, while mine may be a lack of compassion.
As a liberal, what do you think of the saying "ask not what my country can do for me, but what I can do, for my country"?
As a so-called liberal who served for many years in the military, and in other venues of public service, I not only agree with that assertion.. I believe I live it.I think the words “my/your country” refer to the public; the People of the United States. My entire social and political philosophy revolves around the idea of helping people, both through my personal actions, and through the government for which I vote and to which I pay taxes.This idea is enshrined in the first sentence of the U.S. Constitution, which says:“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States..”That is a list of things that the Constitution mandates our government to do. Individuals should help to accomplish these mandates as best they can, in any of thousands of different ways.