Mike Gallagher - 50 Things Liberals Love to Hate

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Contents

To my Denise,
whose love of life and hearty laugh made the world a better place.
You are always in my heart.

This book is for everyone on the right, left, and middle who is willing to laugh a little and realize that we truly dont have to hate each other just because we disagree.

This book is about liberals. Not Democrats, who are not that much different from Republicans in many respects. No. This book is dedicated to that peculiar brand of American who self-identifies as a liberal, lives life as a liberal, and wishes more of us in America were liberal. Think Michael Moore. Think Nancy Pelosi. Think your local college professor. Think the checkout help with the Masters in Gender Studies wearing the Che Guevara headband at your local Whole Foods. You get the picture.

It doesnt take much heavy lifting to understand the surface characteristics of liberals. Most of them are exceedingly well educated, and rarely miss an opportunity to tell you so. Most of them are exceedingly upper middle class, which I know because it takes real money to support a twice-a-day double-decaf habit at Starbucks, not to mention yoga sessions for the wife and pets.

They tend to gather in clusters, huddling up in tight quarters like San Francisco, Boston, Washington, D.C., and New York City, all places where sushi is readily available.

And they dominate professions that leave a large cultural footprint on this country. Professions like journalism, the arts, academia, the music industry, and Americas fastest-rising group of entertainersCirque du Soleil acrobats.

But that large footprint has little to do with the size of the liberal population in America. A recent Gallup/ USA Today Poll revealed that 42 percent of Americans called themselves conservative, 35 percent moderate, while 20 percent used the L word to describe themselves.

Who are these people who call themselves liberals? And how does such a small group have such a big impact on our culture? What motivates them?

I am in an excellent position to answer those deeper questions because Ive been watching liberals closely for over thirty years. Ive studied liberals like Jane Goodall studies her chimps. In their natural habitats, and without judgment. In silence mostly, because we barely speak the same language.

I have been tireless in my research. I lived with liberals, and broke bread with them. Ive humored them, teased them, prodded them, imitated them, and yes, even loved them. Some of my best friends are liberals. Some are even members of my own family.

My commitment to understanding liberals sometimes worried my conservative friends. Some even questioned my mental health. But my passion to understand this misunderstood minority knew no boundaries. For as many years as I can remember, I read the New York Times from cover to cover each day. And yes, that included Paul Krugmans column. And even... gasp... Frank Richs.

I read New Yorker magazine. I went to see The Vagina Monologues, and listened to NPR whenever I got the chance. And I even watched my carbon footprint. As much as a guy can who loves V-8s and has owned a well-cooled 3,750-square-foot home in the Dallas suburbs. Boy, I watched it, all right.

I also made sacrifices for the cause. I went without meat for a week, put off NASCAR races for two, went without church, skipped Dallas Cowboys home games, and some years ago, took the deepest dive of all and rented an apartment in the Ground Zero of liberalismNew York City. All in order to get inside the liberal mind.

What did I learn from my three decades of research? I learned that liberals dont love many things about this world. They are endlessly trying to correct, fix, mend, and adjust every aspect of other peoples daily lives.

I learned that they spend a whole lot of time thinking about Americas faults, and how to correct them. About Americas ills, and how to cure them. Liberals love to hate things most Americans love, and spend the rest of their lives endlessly trying to take those things away from us. And they are convinced they do it all because they love us.

Thus was born this book, 50 Things Liberals Love to Hate .

This list is not dispositive, but suggestive. Indeed, I urge those of you who know a liberal, work with a liberal, have a liberal friend or a liberal lover, to add to this list.

For all of you who call yourselves liberals, know that this book was written with the deepest care, and yes, with love. You may not like what you read in the chapters to come, but you will recognize yourself. And you will stumble upon some truths that only someone who cares deeply about you would tell you.

So think of me as your ideological psychotherapist. No. Thats too 1970s Woody Allen. Its too Annie Hall. Think of me as your ideological life coach.

Consider this the cheapest self-help book youll ever buy. And the best.

Who stole my happy meal?!

If you could build a time machine and go back in timenot far, say fifty years or soand you told the first American you saw that in the future, man would walk on the moon, that wed all carry video telephones the size of a deck of cards, and that poor Americans would be fat, I guarantee you the response would be: Wow! Really? Poor people are fat ?

Because, of course, poor people are supposed to be skinny. Theyre poor .

But the astonishing rise in standards of living since the 1950s, coupled with advances in food preservationnot to mention the brilliant invention of the triple cheeseburgerhave meant that the once-universal indicator of wealth, the big fat belly, is now an indicator of the working class.

Rich people in America today look like old photographs of poor people during the Great Depression. Poor people today look like the corpulent, trouser-bursting cartoon sketches of the Robber Barons of the 1890s.

Hollywood liberals go on juice fasts and colon cleansesdont ask; its as appetizing as it soundsand eat organically raised tofu. Normal Americans cruise though the drive-in and stop off for a slice of pizza.

Now obviously, its not good that so many Americans are fat. The skyrocketing levels of obesity and Type 2 diabetes that affect so many of usespecially childrenare something to worry about and something to address.

But heres how liberals want to address it: They want to pass laws.

Laws against sugar and junk food, as liberals in San Francisco are trying to get enacted. Laws against buying certain kinds of food with food stamps, as liberals in Florida are trying to pass. Laws about portion size, about the location of fast-food restaurants, about what parents can pack into school lunchboxesall of which have been suggested by liberals all across the country.

Conservatives see a fat person and think: Lay off the bread. Take the stairs. Would it kill you to have a salad once in a while?

Liberals see a fat person and think: We should immediately pass laws forbidding this kind of obesity, establish new federal programs and guidelines to correct this behavior, and create ways to federally subsidize weight-loss programs.