(Mark A. Bard, Headline USA contributor) There is a universal moral principle that governs all human interactions. It is often referred to as “Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself” and it is a precept underlying every major religion and philosophy. For everyone who believes that all people are created equal, this moral demand for reciprocal treatment is self-evident.
Also known as the “Golden Rule,” this overriding moral principle simply obligates each of us to treat others the same way that we believe that we deserve to be treated by them. This treatment can be summarized as: Everyone is morally obligated to never violate and always protect the Love Thy Neighbor (LTN) Rights of every other citizen.
Every American’s LTN Rights
Although there would certainly be differences as to detail and emphasis, most morally decent Americans would agree with the three categories of LTN rights that follow:
- LTN Natural Rights: As cited in the Declaration, LTN Natural rights include the Rights to Equality, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Liberty includes the Right to Do Things (including Free Expression) and the Right to Not Do Things that are against one’s conscience. The Pursuit Rights include the Right to Voluntarily Contract with others and to Own Property that has been earned, produced, or gifted.
- LTN Dignity Rights: Every American is endowed with rights to human dignity. These Rights include Respectful Treatment, Physical Well-being, Environmental Safety, Honest Representations, Honest Institutions (including government), Privacy, Compassionate Care, and the Right from Bigoted Hatred.
- LTN Morality Rights: Every American has the LTN Rights to enjoy their brief mortal existence as a Morally Decent Person living with Morally Decent Others in a Morally Good Society. A morally decent person is a citizen who consistently strives to never violate and always protect the LTN rights of all Americans.
A Moral Conflict over Social Elements
All conservative versus liberal disputes focus on the morality of America’s social elements.
A social element is defined as any component of society that in any way impacts the LTN rights of individuals – either by protecting those rights or violating them. Examples of social elements include abortion restrictions, affirmative action quotas, criminal deterrence, cultural customs, defense spending, federal debt, illegal immigration, popular culture, and our welfare system.
Conservative Positions on Social Elements
As demanded by the LTN principle, conservatives support social element positions that protect everyone’s LTN rights and oppose those positions that violate them. Below are 12 examples.
- Support Abortion Restrictions: Protect the LTN Rights of viable and consciously aware unborn children to Life and Compassionate Care.
- Support Defense Spending: Protect the LTN Rights of present and future Americans to live in a Morally Good Society that strives to protect everyone’s Natural and Dignity Rights.
- Oppose Election Fraud: Protect the LTN Rights of every voter to Equality and Honest Government.
- Support Fair Environmental Regulations: Protect the LTN Rights of every American to Physical Well-being and Environment Safety while providing fair consideration for the Liberty and Property Rights of all citizens.
- Oppose Unnecessary Federal Debt: Protect the LTN Rights of future generations to Property Ownership (including their right to use their earnings for their own health care and charitable needs).
- Support Free Enterprise: Protect the LTN Rights of all Americans to Liberty and to Voluntarily Contract with Others and Own Property.
- Oppose Unreasonable Gun Controls: Protect the LTN Rights of all citizens (especially women and those threatened) to Life and Physical Well-being.
- Oppose Government Controlled Health Care: Protect the LTN Rights of all Americans to Liberty, Privacy, and to Voluntarily Contract in an incentive-based healthcare system.
- Support Legal Immigration: Protect the LTN Right of all Americans to Honest Government (that enforces immigration laws and equitably processes all immigration applicants – including those from women, the elderly, and the disabled).
- Oppose Vulgar Popular Culture: Protect the LTN Right of every child to a Morally Good Society and to become a Morally Decent Person who will strive to protect everyone’s Natural and Dignity rights (especially those of women and girls).
- Oppose (all forms of) Racism: Protect the LTN Rights of all Americans (regardless of their race) to Equality, and Respectful Treatment and from Bigoted Hatred that is promulgated by such theories as Woke that imply that non-subscribing whites are inherently racist.
- Support an Effective Welfare System: Protect the LTN Rights of all deserving citizens to Compassionate Care provided by a comprehensive social safety net that efficiently provides necessities while discouraging dependency.
Immorality: Violations of the LTN Rights of Others
Immorality is defined as human behavior whereby the individual selfishly pursues some sort of gratifying pleasure for him or herself with actions that violate the LTN rights of others.
There are two types of immoral behaviors: immoral personal and immoral social element.
As an example of (1) immoral personal behavior, suppose that a wolf and a lamb are members of the same society. One day, out of the blue, the wolf pounces on the much weaker lamb and devours the poor creature for lunch. The wolf surely enjoyed his gratifying pleasure and the innocent lamb’s right to life was certainly violated.
With (2) immoral social element behavior, for pleasure-seeking reasons, an individual supports an immoral social element even though that element violates the LTN rights of others. As Benjamin Franklin so pessimistically feared “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.” In that situation, the immoral behavior is the wolves – as an entitled coalition – voting to create the immoral social element titled the Federal Lamb Slaughtering Agency.
The Entitled Liberal Coalition
According to every respected psychologist, humans are born selfish. It’s simply against human nature for an individual to sense a moral obligation to forgo available pleasures so as not to violate the rights of others. Those morally decent individuals who overcome their instinctual selfishness were likely nurtured by morally decent others in a morally good society.
An entitled liberal (EL) is an American who supports immoral social elements because he or she believes those elements will best provide him or her with their desired gratifications. EL gratifying pleasures are varied and include those that are egotistical, financial, physical, and voyeuristic as well as relief from the sacrifices demanded by their LTN obligations to others.
Given our selfish natures, it’s not surprising that, within our democracy, an immoral coalition of ELs, like Franklin’s two wolves, would arise that exerts its power to support immoral social elements that provide its members the particular pleasures that they most desire.
Since the mid-1960s, the EL Coalition has been increasing its political and cultural clout. Over the past six or so decades, this coalition has successfully reversed the moral implications of such social elements as abortion restrictions, election integrity, equal treatment, illegal immigration, marriage commitments, patriotism, popular culture, and religious freedom.
EL Coalition’s (Rationalized) Perception of Conservatism
The rationalization that unites ELs is their perception that conservative positions on social elements are oppressive. To ELs, these conservative positions are evil because they deny lictims (liberal + victims) of the gratifying pleasures they are righteously entitled to enjoy.
The “EL Coalition’s Perception of Conservatism” is (1) Oppressive Conservatives support (2) Conservative Positions on Social Elements that (3) Oppress the Lictims by denying them of their entitled gratifying pleasures.
- Oppressive Conservatives are all conservatives, but especially white, Christian, straight, non-impoverished, rural men.
- Conservative Positions on Social Elements such as abortion restrictions, strong national defense, efficient government, election integrity, deterrent criminal sentencing, legal immigration, free enterprise, and a more wholesome popular culture.
- Oppress the Lictims which include women, minorities (especially African Americans), gays and lesbians, every non-Christian, the non-wealthy, felons, illegal immigrants, and other demographically defined groups.
The Four Groups within the EL Coalition
The EL Coalition consists of four symbiotic groups each motivated by their own selfish gratifications: Lictims, Leorists, Lorkers, and Lastros.
The Lictims (various entitled gratifications)
Below are 12 examples of the sorts of gratifying pleasures provided to lictims by liberal social elements (that would be denied by conservative ones):
- Undeserved payments such as fraudulent welfare, race-based reparations, excessive stimulus checks, and student loan forgiveness that violate the compassionate care, physical well-being, and property ownership rights of current taxpayers and our posterity.
- Relief from the sacrifices of parenthood by violating the right to life of viable and consciously aware unborn children.
- Preferential treatment in admissions, employment, promotions, contracts, grants, and scholarships based solely on race, gender, or other demographic characteristics that violates the right to equality of all discriminated-against citizens.
- Leniency for felonious violence that leads to violations of the life, well-being, and property rights of innocent children, women, and men.
- Free services such as health care and college educations to those financially capable that violate the property ownership rights of current taxpayers and our posterity.
- Enjoyment of a more ethnically pure society by the elimination of “populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” (Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s rationalization for unrestricted abortions that violate the right of life of unborn children).
- Relief from the moral duty to pay fair taxes to finance legitimate government functions (including national defense) and to prevent unnecessary federal debt that will violate the property, physical well-being, and morally good society rights of future Americans.
- Voyeuristic pleasures provided by a vulgar popular culture that violate the rights of our children to be nurtured in a morally good society.
- Smug hatred toward our military members and police officers violating their dignity rights and imperiling the life, liberty, and property rights of all present and future Americans.
- Protections afforded by unfair labor regulations to the extent that they violate the liberty and contracting rights of employers, honest and potential employees, consumers, and the community’s citizens.
- Joys of self-pitied victimhood – the satisfaction of believing the reason that he or she has not received their entitled egotistical, financial, and sympathy gratifications is due to the moral and intellectual inferiority of non-liberals (violating their dignity rights).
- Feelings of superiority derived by unjustly accusing conservatives (including Christians) of racism, misogynism, or other evil isms that violate their right from bigoted hatred.
The Leorists (mostly egotistical gratifications)
Leorists are ELs who are mostly motivated by egotistical gratifications. They crave the pleasures of fame, acceptance, and feelings of superiority in terms of compassion, intellect, and just being “really cool.” To enjoy these pleasures, they publicly and emotionally espouse theories that reinforce EL Coalition’s Perception of Conservatism.
There are two kinds of leorists: lennons and lisciples.
(2a) Lennons are public figures (such as actors, comedians, journalists, musicians, professors, and athletes) who use and enhance their fame by attacking conservatives and their social element positions. They seem to particularly focus their hatred on social elements that they perceive as influencing conservatives such as Christianity, Western Civilization, and patriotism. Celebrated lennons include Rachel Maddow, Springsteen, Whoopi Goldberg, Madonna, Kaepernick, Jon Stewart, George Clooney, and Miley Cyrus.
(2b) Lisciples are entitled liberals who profess their admiration for lennons and their hatred for conservatives and conservative social elements. Lisciples are usually motivated by their egotistical desires to be accepted by their peers as intellectually and compassionately superior and especially as being “really cool.” Many liberal college students are lisciples such as those Harvard students who conducted a “Satanic Catholic Mass,” those Notre Dame students who orchestrated a spiteful protest of Mike Pence’s commencement address, and those Syracuse students who staged a dramatic “Sanctuary Campus” protest.
The Lorkers (mostly financial security and organizational status)
Lorkers are those ELs who support liberal social elements because they provide gratifying pleasures of financial security including jobs, above-market compensation and benefits, organizational status, and profits. The two kinds of lorkers are lolfs and landerers.
(3a) Lolfs: Conservatives are grateful for the diligent and essential work performed by the majority of America’s 28 million government workers. But, at the same time, they are fearful that the minority of entitled others (lolfs) support liberal candidates and liberal social elements because of the financial and egotistical pleasures that their employment by a bureaucratic government provides. The funding of wasteful government programs by liberal politicians to bribe lolfs not only violates the honesty rights of ordinary Americans but many of their liberty and pursuit rights as well. The happiest citizens in any socialist country – be it Russia, China, Cuba, or Vietnam – are surely not the common everyday peasants. The happiest are those comfortably employed by the powerful government bureaucracies. And, in those nations, it is those happy bureaucrats who are the most fervent supporters of their brutal regimes. (As far back as 1975, a government employee union official accurately boasted “We have the ability to elect our own boss.” And in 2020, that’s exactly what they did. Without the support of faithful government employees, independent research concludes that Biden would have undoubtedly lost the 2020 election.)
(3b) Landerers: Like lolfs, landerers derive financial and organizational gratifications from liberal social elements. However, landerers are not government employees. Landerers include executives and employees of organizations receiving government payments made under 900 different federal programs that expend nearly one trillion dollars annually. These include educational institutions and nonprofits such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (including NPR) and Planned Parenthood, both of which annually receive more the $500 million from federal sources. Landerers also include entitled liberals employed in organizations not receiving government support. For example, those employed as (or gain profit from) abortion clinics, marijuana growers and retailers, purveyors of our vulgar popular culture, and sabotaging employees protected by unjust union regulations.
The Lastros (lust for power)
President Lincoln keenly observed, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Should a politician have an entitled character, they would have no moral objection to supporting social elements that violate the rights of innocent individuals if in doing so they acquired the pleasures of power that they so strongly craved. Lastros is the name given to these EL politicians.
Examples of lastros include: Biden, who uses the Nuremberg defense to reconcile his public statements that his Catholic conscience dictates that life begins at conception with his zealous support for unrestricted abortion rights; Clinton, who used his office to seduce a college girl to indulge his perverted sexual desires; Obama, who made his liberal bones by leading the liberal defeat of the Illinois Born Alive Act; and Gore, who made millions with his environmentally alarming film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” while residing in a grossly extravagant home that consumed nearly 10 times as much energy as his neighbors
The Lisguideds
If an individual voted for Biden in the 2020 election, he or she is likely a lictim, lorker, leorist, or another lastro. There is, however, a percentage of Biden voters who are not part of the EL Coalition.
The lisguideds are morally decent Americans who lean conservative on many elements but consider themselves liberal because there are one or just a few issues that they consider to be most important to the moral decency of our society. Many of these well-intentioned citizens support liberal positions on certain social elements because of their sincere concern for the poor, minorities, and/or our environment.
It is incumbent on conservatives to make convincing arguments that their positions on social elements most equitably fulfill our obligations to provide compassionate care to the poor, equally protect minority rights, and provide moral stewardship for our environment. Thus far, to the lisguideds anyway, conservatives have failed to effectively make those arguments.
Reversing America’s Immoral Decline
The immoral decay of American Society fits the description of “creeping normality.” Under this concept, a social change that would be deemed shockingly unacceptable if it occurred during a brief period, would be barely noticed and accepted as normal if it gradually occurred over a prolonged period, say six decades.
There’s no way – that overnight – we would have gone from a federal debt of $317 billion to $31.7 trillion, from legally protecting viable unborn children to publicly financing their late-term murders, from enforcing fair immigration laws to condoning 30 million illegals, from applauding Doris Day to idolizing Lady Gaga, or from electing JFK to empowering Biden. (Please refer to the fable of the “boiling frog.”)
If America is to reverse its immoral decline, two suppositions must prove true. First, morally decent Americans come to realize that entitled liberal positions on social elements are immoral because they violate the LTN rights of the innocent. Second, it turns out that a majority of Americans are truly morally decent.
Editor’s Note: The above piece is an opinion piece. Although Headline USA does curate and edit them for style purposes, the views expressed in it do not necessarily represent those of the publication. Headline USA did not receive nor provide any compensation for the submission.
COMMENT: Entitled Liberals Flout Universal Moral Principle of ‘Love Thy Neighbor’
(Mark A. Bard, Headline USA contributor) There is a universal moral principle that governs all human interactions. It is often referred to as “Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself” and it is a precept underlying every major religion and philosophy. For everyone who believes that all people are created equal, this moral demand for reciprocal treatment is self-evident.
Also known as the “Golden Rule,” this overriding moral principle simply obligates each of us to treat others the same way that we believe that we deserve to be treated by them. This treatment can be summarized as: Everyone is morally obligated to never violate and always protect the Love Thy Neighbor (LTN) Rights of every other citizen.
Every American’s LTN Rights
Although there would certainly be differences as to detail and emphasis, most morally decent Americans would agree with the three categories of LTN rights that follow:
A Moral Conflict over Social Elements
All conservative versus liberal disputes focus on the morality of America’s social elements.
A social element is defined as any component of society that in any way impacts the LTN rights of individuals – either by protecting those rights or violating them. Examples of social elements include abortion restrictions, affirmative action quotas, criminal deterrence, cultural customs, defense spending, federal debt, illegal immigration, popular culture, and our welfare system.
Conservative Positions on Social Elements
As demanded by the LTN principle, conservatives support social element positions that protect everyone’s LTN rights and oppose those positions that violate them. Below are 12 examples.
Immorality: Violations of the LTN Rights of Others
Immorality is defined as human behavior whereby the individual selfishly pursues some sort of gratifying pleasure for him or herself with actions that violate the LTN rights of others.
There are two types of immoral behaviors: immoral personal and immoral social element.
As an example of (1) immoral personal behavior, suppose that a wolf and a lamb are members of the same society. One day, out of the blue, the wolf pounces on the much weaker lamb and devours the poor creature for lunch. The wolf surely enjoyed his gratifying pleasure and the innocent lamb’s right to life was certainly violated.
With (2) immoral social element behavior, for pleasure-seeking reasons, an individual supports an immoral social element even though that element violates the LTN rights of others. As Benjamin Franklin so pessimistically feared “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.” In that situation, the immoral behavior is the wolves – as an entitled coalition – voting to create the immoral social element titled the Federal Lamb Slaughtering Agency.
The Entitled Liberal Coalition
According to every respected psychologist, humans are born selfish. It’s simply against human nature for an individual to sense a moral obligation to forgo available pleasures so as not to violate the rights of others. Those morally decent individuals who overcome their instinctual selfishness were likely nurtured by morally decent others in a morally good society.
An entitled liberal (EL) is an American who supports immoral social elements because he or she believes those elements will best provide him or her with their desired gratifications. EL gratifying pleasures are varied and include those that are egotistical, financial, physical, and voyeuristic as well as relief from the sacrifices demanded by their LTN obligations to others.
Given our selfish natures, it’s not surprising that, within our democracy, an immoral coalition of ELs, like Franklin’s two wolves, would arise that exerts its power to support immoral social elements that provide its members the particular pleasures that they most desire.
Since the mid-1960s, the EL Coalition has been increasing its political and cultural clout. Over the past six or so decades, this coalition has successfully reversed the moral implications of such social elements as abortion restrictions, election integrity, equal treatment, illegal immigration, marriage commitments, patriotism, popular culture, and religious freedom.
EL Coalition’s (Rationalized) Perception of Conservatism
The rationalization that unites ELs is their perception that conservative positions on social elements are oppressive. To ELs, these conservative positions are evil because they deny lictims (liberal + victims) of the gratifying pleasures they are righteously entitled to enjoy.
The “EL Coalition’s Perception of Conservatism” is (1) Oppressive Conservatives support (2) Conservative Positions on Social Elements that (3) Oppress the Lictims by denying them of their entitled gratifying pleasures.
The Four Groups within the EL Coalition
The EL Coalition consists of four symbiotic groups each motivated by their own selfish gratifications: Lictims, Leorists, Lorkers, and Lastros.
The Lictims (various entitled gratifications)
Below are 12 examples of the sorts of gratifying pleasures provided to lictims by liberal social elements (that would be denied by conservative ones):
The Leorists (mostly egotistical gratifications)
Leorists are ELs who are mostly motivated by egotistical gratifications. They crave the pleasures of fame, acceptance, and feelings of superiority in terms of compassion, intellect, and just being “really cool.” To enjoy these pleasures, they publicly and emotionally espouse theories that reinforce EL Coalition’s Perception of Conservatism.
There are two kinds of leorists: lennons and lisciples.
(2a) Lennons are public figures (such as actors, comedians, journalists, musicians, professors, and athletes) who use and enhance their fame by attacking conservatives and their social element positions. They seem to particularly focus their hatred on social elements that they perceive as influencing conservatives such as Christianity, Western Civilization, and patriotism. Celebrated lennons include Rachel Maddow, Springsteen, Whoopi Goldberg, Madonna, Kaepernick, Jon Stewart, George Clooney, and Miley Cyrus.
(2b) Lisciples are entitled liberals who profess their admiration for lennons and their hatred for conservatives and conservative social elements. Lisciples are usually motivated by their egotistical desires to be accepted by their peers as intellectually and compassionately superior and especially as being “really cool.” Many liberal college students are lisciples such as those Harvard students who conducted a “Satanic Catholic Mass,” those Notre Dame students who orchestrated a spiteful protest of Mike Pence’s commencement address, and those Syracuse students who staged a dramatic “Sanctuary Campus” protest.
The Lorkers (mostly financial security and organizational status)
Lorkers are those ELs who support liberal social elements because they provide gratifying pleasures of financial security including jobs, above-market compensation and benefits, organizational status, and profits. The two kinds of lorkers are lolfs and landerers.
(3a) Lolfs: Conservatives are grateful for the diligent and essential work performed by the majority of America’s 28 million government workers. But, at the same time, they are fearful that the minority of entitled others (lolfs) support liberal candidates and liberal social elements because of the financial and egotistical pleasures that their employment by a bureaucratic government provides. The funding of wasteful government programs by liberal politicians to bribe lolfs not only violates the honesty rights of ordinary Americans but many of their liberty and pursuit rights as well. The happiest citizens in any socialist country – be it Russia, China, Cuba, or Vietnam – are surely not the common everyday peasants. The happiest are those comfortably employed by the powerful government bureaucracies. And, in those nations, it is those happy bureaucrats who are the most fervent supporters of their brutal regimes. (As far back as 1975, a government employee union official accurately boasted “We have the ability to elect our own boss.” And in 2020, that’s exactly what they did. Without the support of faithful government employees, independent research concludes that Biden would have undoubtedly lost the 2020 election.)
(3b) Landerers: Like lolfs, landerers derive financial and organizational gratifications from liberal social elements. However, landerers are not government employees. Landerers include executives and employees of organizations receiving government payments made under 900 different federal programs that expend nearly one trillion dollars annually. These include educational institutions and nonprofits such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (including NPR) and Planned Parenthood, both of which annually receive more the $500 million from federal sources. Landerers also include entitled liberals employed in organizations not receiving government support. For example, those employed as (or gain profit from) abortion clinics, marijuana growers and retailers, purveyors of our vulgar popular culture, and sabotaging employees protected by unjust union regulations.
The Lastros (lust for power)
President Lincoln keenly observed, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Should a politician have an entitled character, they would have no moral objection to supporting social elements that violate the rights of innocent individuals if in doing so they acquired the pleasures of power that they so strongly craved. Lastros is the name given to these EL politicians.
Examples of lastros include: Biden, who uses the Nuremberg defense to reconcile his public statements that his Catholic conscience dictates that life begins at conception with his zealous support for unrestricted abortion rights; Clinton, who used his office to seduce a college girl to indulge his perverted sexual desires; Obama, who made his liberal bones by leading the liberal defeat of the Illinois Born Alive Act; and Gore, who made millions with his environmentally alarming film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” while residing in a grossly extravagant home that consumed nearly 10 times as much energy as his neighbors
The Lisguideds
If an individual voted for Biden in the 2020 election, he or she is likely a lictim, lorker, leorist, or another lastro. There is, however, a percentage of Biden voters who are not part of the EL Coalition.
The lisguideds are morally decent Americans who lean conservative on many elements but consider themselves liberal because there are one or just a few issues that they consider to be most important to the moral decency of our society. Many of these well-intentioned citizens support liberal positions on certain social elements because of their sincere concern for the poor, minorities, and/or our environment.
It is incumbent on conservatives to make convincing arguments that their positions on social elements most equitably fulfill our obligations to provide compassionate care to the poor, equally protect minority rights, and provide moral stewardship for our environment. Thus far, to the lisguideds anyway, conservatives have failed to effectively make those arguments.
Reversing America’s Immoral Decline
The immoral decay of American Society fits the description of “creeping normality.” Under this concept, a social change that would be deemed shockingly unacceptable if it occurred during a brief period, would be barely noticed and accepted as normal if it gradually occurred over a prolonged period, say six decades.
There’s no way – that overnight – we would have gone from a federal debt of $317 billion to $31.7 trillion, from legally protecting viable unborn children to publicly financing their late-term murders, from enforcing fair immigration laws to condoning 30 million illegals, from applauding Doris Day to idolizing Lady Gaga, or from electing JFK to empowering Biden. (Please refer to the fable of the “boiling frog.”)
If America is to reverse its immoral decline, two suppositions must prove true. First, morally decent Americans come to realize that entitled liberal positions on social elements are immoral because they violate the LTN rights of the innocent. Second, it turns out that a majority of Americans are truly morally decent.
Editor’s Note: The above piece is an opinion piece. Although Headline USA does curate and edit them for style purposes, the views expressed in it do not necessarily represent those of the publication. Headline USA did not receive nor provide any compensation for the submission.