Liberals, Like Fish, Are All Wet

Burt and Yvonne wish all the readers on BernardGoldberg.com a Happy Chanukah and a very Merry Christmas.

One of the many things that make liberals so obnoxious is their hypocrisy. For instance, when campaigning against Christmas symbols, they make a mantra of “separation of church and state,” although those words never appear in the Constitution. They appeared in a letter that Thomas Jefferson addressed to the members of the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptist Association. While insisting that a person’s religious beliefs were a personal matter, he did not expand upon the Constitution’s very specific wording, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Nothing there that prohibits communities from doing whatever they want to do in the way of celebrating Christmas or any other religious holiday. It’s only Congress that is limited. The Founders had a legitimate distrust of the federal government and they didn’t want to risk the establishment of something akin to the Church of England. But they weren’t quaking in their boots over decorated fir trees standing in the town square or people wishing one another a Merry Christmas.

When it serves their purpose, liberals like to quote Jefferson and pretend that he is one with them. However, pretending that Jefferson, the man who filled his Declaration of Independence with references to the Creator and inalienable rights, those rights that can only be granted by God, was an atheist is the sort of self-serving rubbish that liberals make a practice of promoting.

It’s no surprise that Rhode Island’s Governor Lincoln Chafee recently decreed that Christmas trees be referred to as holiday trees. He is, after all, a liberal, although he labels himself an Independent, and therefore, takes his marching orders from the loons at the ACLU.

On the other hand, liberals take strong exception to the Second Amendment, which gives law-abiding citizens the right to bear arms, and they would gladly have it nullified, even though its importance is patently obvious; otherwise, the Founding Fathers wouldn’t have placed it right after the First Amendment, the one guaranteeing freedom of religion, free speech, a free press and the right to peaceably assemble. It’s obvious that the Founders believed that without the Second Amendment, the First risked being merely words scribbled on parchment.

Liberals assume they hold the high moral ground, taking it upon themselves to determine who is a decent American and who is a racist, even though it’s been their policies that have kept so many of those in black communities poor, ill-educated, fatherless, drug-riddled, violent, and as dependent as little babies on the federal government.

For good measure, it’s been the liberal media that has raised such miserable reprobates as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to prominence, anointing them black leaders and providing them with megaphones.

Liberals elected Barack Obama, a man with no particular experience, a foggy past and a circle of friends and mentors who, in a more honest society, would mostly be in jail. They accuse anyone who opposes his socialistic policies of racism, but turn a blind eye and deaf ear to their party leader, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, when she attacks military veteran and fellow member of congress, Allen West. They are also deaf and blind when half a dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus return from Cuba, singing the praises of Fidel Castro, while the Caucus simultaneously slimes millions of decent, law-abiding, tax-paying Americans who have found their voice in the Tea Party movement.

Liberals attacked George Bush for signing the Patriot Act, but have no problem when Obama prolongs it. They called Bush a dictator, but they have no problem with Obama’s giving the NLRB and EPA legislative powers, provided they continue their pro-union, anti-business, agendas.

Although liberals had a conniption fit every time President Bush took off for Crawford, Texas, they have no problem with Obama’s spending more time playing golf and raising campaign funds than trying to curb spending and doing something about our $15 trillion deficit.

Although leftists were always trying to find an excuse to impeach Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, they don’t find it even slightly annoying that 16 of the 20 green energy companies that have received federal loans, Solyandra among them, are owned by major bundlers for Obama.

If Obama didn’t spend so many of his waking hours attacking millionaires and billionaires, it wouldn’t be nearly so egregious that he spends so much time trying to get his hands on their money. Wouldn’t it be nice if once in a while, he would forgo one of his $35,000-a-plate fund raisers and, instead, ask that they voluntarily donate the dough to the IRS? After all, he maintains that seven out of 10 millionaires that he knows would like to see their taxes raised. Isn’t it high time he called their bluff? Perhaps he could start with his pals, Jeffrey Immelt and Warren Buffet.

The world of liberalism, I’ve concluded, is full of bubbles. There’s one bubble filled with liberal arts professors, another filled with mainstream journalists, a third for defense attorneys, a fourth for actors, screenwriters and directors, and so on. These bubbles serve as self-contained universes. It’s not that these vacuum-packed elitists are unaware that other people exist, but they regard them as a sub-species, only fit to buy their newspapers, watch their TV shows, purchase their CDs and pony up their kids’ college tuition. They refer to these suckers contemptuously as the folks they fly over. But even at ground level, liberals feel that they tower, morally and intellectually, over these inferior specimens.

My friend, Bernie Goldberg, who spent nearly 30 years in the trenches at CBS studying liberals in their own environment, came to the conclusion, as he wrote recently, that liberals regard themselves as moderates for the same reason that fish are unaware they’re wet. They simply have no other frame of reference.

Related: The Christmas Grinch Revisited

©2011 Burt Prelutsky.Comments? Write BurtPrelutsky@aol.com!
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Author Bio:

Burt Prelutsky, a very nice person once you get to know him, has been a humor columnist for the L.A. Times and a movie critic for Los Angeles magazine. As a freelancer, he has written for the New York Times, Washington Times, TV Guide, Modern Maturity, Emmy, Holiday, American Film, and Sports Illustrated. For television, he has written for Dragnet, McMillan & Wife, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda, Bob Newhart, Family Ties, Dr. Quinn and Diagnosis Murder. In addition, he has written a batch of terrific TV movies. View Burt’s IMDB profile. Talk about being well-rounded, he plays tennis and poker... and rarely cheats at either. He lives in the San Fernando Valley, where he takes his marching orders from a wife named Yvonne and a dog named Angel.
Author website: http://www.burtprelutsky.com/

Joe

A point that folks seem to keep missing (though I’ve seen it mentioned once or twice in discussions like this) is, if our “unalienable (sic) rights” do NOT stem from a Creator – or at least a force beyond the human – whence do they come? If there is nothing higher than man, then those “rights” are not, in fact, inalienable. They are loans from the State, granted for the purposes of the State, and subject to be revoked, when the suits the State’s purposes. If there is no God (which implies no “natural law”, no “natural rights”) I ask not only what protects us against the abolition of those rights, but why *should* we be so protected? The State giveth…and so the State may take.
Lonesome George

Thanks for the great Christmas present. I look forward to reading your columns every week. I don’t comment often because you say it all!!
Happy New Year!!
Burt Prelutsky

Shirl: A great plan. And, best of all, it’s bi-partisan because it gives those on both the left and the right what they say they want. Happy New Year.

Burt
Shirl

Hope you and yours had a very merry Christmas, Burt. As usual, a very terse and accurate article. Enjoyed reading it and thank you for stating the obvious and confirming my own thoughts. Nice to know I’m not the lonely peasant. When we get a new leader, I think we need a new tax rule: all democrats and liberals get a huge tax increase and republicans and conseratives get a huge tax decrease (sounds fair to me).
Burt Prelutsky

cma: Sometimes I am shocked by the sheer nuttiness of liberals, but I’m never really surprised.

lklwa: I like the hammer analogy.

Burt
cmacrider

Burt: Enjoyable article. However, when you recognize that the liberalism is simply the precursor to nihilism, is it surprising that as they travel that road they expound contradictory (or as you say hypocritical) positions???
Iklwa

I saw Bernie on The Factor when he quoted the song with the line “fish don’t know he’s wet”. Whenever confronted with liberal sentiments, I laugh to myself and remember those insightful words.

It was only last week I saw a news program where all of those participating were congratulating one another on the moderate positions they held. Meanwhile, my head was swimming with their liberal bias and once again the words to that song popped into my consciousness.

Another fellow once commented something to the effect that if the only tool you had was a hammer, everything begins looking a lot like a nail…same idea.
Burt Prelutsky

Rick & Doom: You’re both right. As for that hypocrite, Warren Buffet, most of his money comes to him as capital gains, not salary. And then, being the weasel he is, he has the gall to complain that his secretary pays taxes at a higher rate than he does. Of course, there is nothing to prevent his sending a check for a billion or ten billion dollars to the IRS, just as there’s nothing to prevent Obama from foregoing deductions on April 15th. But that wouldn’t be nearly as enjoyable as griping about millionaires and billionaires not paying their fair share.

Burt
Rick Johnson

The left only quotes our Constitution and our Founding Fathers to suit their purpose. Frankly, they don’t believe in either. More and more, I see anarchy coming from the left by their actions; while they misquote our Constitution to dupe the sheeple.
DOOM161

Warren Buffett pays himself $100,000 a year. He does this to keep himself in a low tax bracket. He has no problem with higher taxes because he isn’t going to pay them, anyway.
Pingback: Liberals, Like Fish, Are All Wet… « THE WAKING GIANT
Burt Prelutsky

Doug: Well, nobody could ever accuse you of using one word when ten others are lying around doing nothing. However, nothing in that proclamation of yours in any way refutes what I wrote. Cities and towns that decide to have Christmas trees or even creches on the lawn of City Hall are not guilty of foisting a religion on anyone, just as people who decide to wear crosses or Stars of David are not guilty of proselytizing. Inasmuch as the Founding Fathers were forever referring to a Creator, it is obvious that they were not a band of atheists and agnostics, as some people would like to pretend. Now try to have a merry Christmas.

Burt
- T.Geloso
  
  Deists, Burt Deists is what they were.
  People who believed in the “sky daddy” but didn’t think he had much if anything to do with every day affairs.
  Remember the treaty of Tripoli in 1799 specifically stating this ISN’T a religious nation. Or is that not part of the religious memory of those who want to forget an inconvienent “burr in their saddle”.
  As to the christmas tree, this was a rip off of pagan rituals in Europe, so for you to claim it as religious is ludicirous.
  What’s you particular “beef” with the agnostics, and athiests. Your want to relegate them to second class citizens like all religionists. What else is new ?
Doug Indeap

What’s with this lefty-righty, goody-baddy silliness? Separation of church and state is not a “liberal” concept, but rather a bedrock principle of our Constitution much like the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances. In the Constitution, the founders did not simply say in so many words that there should be separation of powers and checks and balances; rather, they actually separated the powers of government among three branches and established checks and balances. Similarly, they did not merely say there should be separation of church and state; rather, they actually separated them by (1) establishing a secular government on the power of “We the people” (not a deity), (2) saying nothing to connect that government to god(s) or religion, (3) saying nothing to give that government power over matters of god(s) or religion, and (4), indeed, saying nothing substantive about god(s) or religion at all except in a provision precluding any religious test for public office. Given the norms of the day, the founders’ avoidance of any expression in the Constitution suggesting that the government is somehow based on any religious belief was quite a remarkable and plainly intentional choice. They later buttressed this separation of government and religion with the First Amendment, which constrains the government from undertaking to establish religion or prohibit individuals from freely exercising their religions. The basic principle, thus, rests on much more than just the First Amendment.

That the phrase “separation of church and state” does not appear in the text of the Constitution assumes much importance, it seems, to some who may have once labored under the misimpression it was there and, upon learning they were mistaken, reckon they’ve discovered a smoking gun solving a Constitutional mystery. To those familiar with the Constitution, the absence of the metaphor commonly used to name one of its principles is no more consequential than the absence of other phrases (e.g., Bill of Rights, separation of powers, checks and balances, fair trial, religious liberty) used to describe other undoubted Constitutional principles.

To the extent that some nonetheless would like confirmation–in those very words–of the founders’ intent to separate government and religion, Madison and Jefferson supplied it. Madison, who had a central role in drafting the Constitution and the First Amendment, confirmed that he understood them to “[s]trongly guard[] . . . the separation between Religion and Government.” Madison, Detached Memoranda (~1820). He made plain, too, that they guarded against more than just laws creating state sponsored churches or imposing a state religion. Mindful that even as new principles are proclaimed, old habits die hard and citizens and politicians could tend to entangle government and religion (e.g., “the appointment of chaplains to the two houses of Congress” and “for the army and navy” and “[r]eligious proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgivings and fasts”), he considered the question whether these actions were “consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom” and responded: “In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the United States forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion.”
- Glen Stambaugh
  
  “We the people” who are empowered by diety to believe as we choose without federal government interference. At least it used to be such. We don’t seem to have a problem with government imposed national religion, it’s the government sticking its nose into people’s public celebration of religion. Government imposing a national secularist “religion” (belief system).
  - Doug Indeap
    
    It is important to distinguish between the “public square” and “government” and between “individual” and “government” speech about religion. The constitutional principle of separation of church and state does not purge religion from the public square–far from it. Indeed, the First Amendment’s “free exercise” clause assures that each individual is free to exercise and express his or her religious views–publicly as well as privately. The Amendment constrains only the government not to promote or otherwise take steps toward establishment of religion. As government can only act through the individuals comprising its ranks, when those individuals are performing their official duties (e.g., public school teachers instructing students in class), they effectively are the government and thus should conduct themselves in accordance with the First Amendment’s constraints on government. When acting in their individual capacities, they are free to exercise their religions as they please. If their right to free exercise of religion extended even to their discharge of their official responsibilities, however, the First Amendment constraints on government establishment of religion would be eviscerated. While figuring out whether someone is speaking for the government in any particular circumstance may sometimes be difficult, making the distinction is critical.
    
    As secularism refers to the idea of keeping government and religion separate, it is oxymoronic to treat secularism itself as a religion. Doing so would seem to render the very concept of secularism an impossibility–since keeping government and (real) religion separate would itself be deemed a religion in which the government is somehow joined. I’m picturing a dog chasing its tail. Or a collision of matter and anti-matter.
    - Joe
      
      I suggest that your phrase “real religion” begs the question.
      Are you aware that Jefferson spent real, honest-to-God public, government money, to support Catholic priests in proseltyzing the Indians? Are you aware that, during Jefferson’s administration and for quite some time after, many States *did* have established religions? Nobody, including Jefferson, was appalled by it; nobody seems to have thought it even unusual. So…were these folks who wrote the Constitution prohibiting (as you would have it) government officials from engaging in relgion, even as part of their official functions, blind, deaf…or just stupid, in your view? Were they deliberately ignoring the Constitution, think you? Or might we be misinterpreting, today, what was intended. I think so.
      - Doug Indeap
        
        Jefferson did not spend government money, as you suppose, for “proselytizing” Indians. Rather, Jefferson, with the consent of the Senate, entered into a treaty with the Kaskaskia in which the U.S. traded various items desired by the tribe, including $300 to help the tribe (whose members were largely Catholic, having been converted decades earlier) erect a church and $100 per year for seven years to support a priest, in exchange for nearly 9 million acres of land. That’s it. You see the difference, I trust, between entering into a treaty to bargain with a sovereign nation and, well, any other government action, e.g., passing a law, with the aim of promoting religion. Jefferson, by the way, signed over forty treaties with various Indian nations and only the one with the Kaskaskia said anything about religion; he was hardly pushing religion, rather he was bargaining for land by trading for what they wanted.
        
        You are right to note that, at the time of the founding, nearly all states had established religions. The Constitution and First Amendment, of course, separated only the federal government from religion. It was not until the 14th Amendment was adopted that the states too were constrained by some of the principles set forth in the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment’s constraints on government actions regarding religion. It is instructive to recall that the Constitution’s separation of church and state reflected, at the federal level, a “disestablishment” political movement then sweeping the country. That political movement succeeded in disestablishing all state religions by the 1830s. (Side note: A political reaction to that movement gave us the term “antidisestablishmentarianism,” which amused some of us as kids.) It is worth noting, as well, that this disestablishment movement largely coincided with another movement, the Great Awakening. The people of the time saw separation of church and state as a boon, not a burden, to religion.
        
        This sentiment was recorded by a famous observer of the American experiment: “On my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention. . . . I questioned the members of all the different sects. . . . I found that they differed upon matters of detail alone, and that they all attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America, I did not meet a single individual, of the clergy or the laity, who was not of the same opinion on this point.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835).
Burt Prelutsky

Bruce A.: I’d say that laughing through one’s tears is a totally appropriate response to the words and actions of the hypocrites who populate the Left.

Merry Christmas.

Regards, Burt
Bruce A.

Another great one Burt. I always enjoy reading these but sometimes I don’t know if I should laugh or cry when reading about liberal hypocrisy.