Liberal Bias an Oxymoron?

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic."
--Dresden James

You know what bugs me? Allegations of "liberal bias." For the past 30-40 years, the Far Right has been using this gem to brilliant effect. Somebody or something disagree with you? Just call "liberal bias" and they have to give your perspective even more time than it already gets.

First of all, you know what I think this is? Politically-correct anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism's been a central feature of Christian society for as long as Christianity's been in the regimented, authoritarian form we recognize today, and it was only with the defeat of the Nazis in World War II that it became "uncool" - you don't get rid of something that important in just a generation or two, you just drive it underground, and when it comes back up, it's been rebranded: same concepts and emotions, different superficial details. This all started with Watergate and the New York Times - as notable anti-Semite Richard Nixon said, "What do you expect from a Jewish newspaper?" Keep in mind this was the same guy who created the political landscape we know today with his devastatingly effective Southern Strategy. If you can start by whining about the "evil Jewish liberal New York Times," it's a trivial jump to "evil Jewish liberal New York media" - because New York's a blue state, and the central nerve center of a lot of media, there's no denying that. But like I said, anti-Semitism's uncool now. People have the same prejudices, they're just not allowed to show them - so, all you need to do to make this conspiracy theory a little more mainstream is drop the "Jewish." The right people will know what you're talking about, and many others will go along for the ride. And of course, if you can see a trend in one state, you can follow it to others - we've arrived at the "liberal media" we're all familiar with today. Yes, I know, right-wing Jews like Ben Stein and Bernard Goldberg bash this "liberal media" along with everyone else, but that's the beauty of prejudice: It's completely illogical. All bigots really know is that they're afraid of SOMETHING - anti-Semitism was never about the REAL Jews, but a cartoonish caricature. The hate has been holistically transferred from one caricature to another, allowing those who are technically Jewish but behave sufficiently like white people to act as allies against a common enemy. In the contemporary colloquial, "conservative" has become an ethnic group.

Which brings me to my other, and more important, point: there is no "liberal" ethnic group. Once again, the "liberals" that run the "liberal media" are a cartoonish caricature that exist only in the minds of bigots. This raises the fundamental question: What IS a liberal, and what does it mean to have a "liberal bias"?

Bottom line is, you know what I think? I think "liberal bias" is a brilliant Orwellian oxymoron. A bias is a perspective, a particular angle, (note that when the Far Right talks about *their* bias, they always use the nice word "perspective") but a liberal is someone who listens to every side of an issue - the mindset of a true liberal is post-ethnic. An individual who thinks of oneself as a liberal can certainly have a bias - a New York or California bias, a bias for the Democratic Party, a bias for Marxism or atheism - but "liberal bias" is an oxymoron! The Democratic Party is nothing more and nothing less than an uneasy alliance making the case for everyone in America who is oppressed by the rich, Anglo-Saxon, Puritan, heterosexual male ruling elite. "Registered Democrat" IS NOT equivalent to "liberal" - consider the black Californians who voted for both Obama and Proposition 8. They think in the ethnocentric mindset just like Jacksonian Republicans do. They're Democrats because they're an oppressed minority, not because they understand the mysterious vision of Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, and - dare I say it? - Yeshua ben Yosef AKA Jesus Christ. The Far Right dutifully recites that every perspective deserves equal time, well guess what happens when you listen not only to whites, Christians, capitalists, and men, but also to women, androgynes, blacks, hispanics, asians, American Indians, Eastern Indians, Jews, atheists, Muslims, Satanists, Discordians, Pastafarians, Voudoun, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus, animists, Gnostics, Nordic pagans, Greek pagans, Celtic pagans, Egyptian pagans, Middle Eastern pagans, socialists, communists, and anarchists?

That's right. We ALL deserve equal time. No special treatment for ANYONE. You become a liberal, and you know what?

We've been pampering the Far Right. We've played along, met them halfway, indulged them, listened to their side of the story over and over, and how do they return the favor? They continue to shit on us like they always have.

I am SICK AND TIRED of it.

No more. After Bush, President Obama (I still can't believe it) shouldn't have had to put even ONE conservative in his cabinet. No more meeting them halfway - it's a tug-of-war, and every time we try to win them over with kindness, they take advantage of it. They know true freedom and equality will mean the end of their way of life - they're not going to change.

No more of this "middle ground between liberals and conservatives" bullshit. Liberals ARE the middle ground. We are where all perspectives intersect. I'm sure we could stand to get over our individual state or partisan or religious bias, but the Far Right just wants the same special treatment they got before the Second World War taught us ethnocentrism and imperialism are bad.

Liberalism stands for freedom and equality - and we must never settle for anything less.