I was so thrilled when I saw that the always engaging Timothy J. (don’t forget the “J”) Parker had responded to my letter. Right off, in the first paragraph, he proved my argument that liberals do little more than name-call nowadays by referring to my “utter ignorance.”

He later accused me of using the word “liberal” 16 times. How is that a problem? Is it not okay to use the term “liberal” when talking about them? If there is a better term, please suggest one.

In the meantime, I’ll go ahead and define my terms, as Mr. Parker no doubt wishes. A “liberal” is someone who is generally a Democrat, who is pro-choice, pro-labor, pro-government solution, anti-corporation, distrustful of the military, hateful (and I mean HATEFUL) toward conservatives and conservative thought, and one who generally feels that the solution to our social problems is to jettison traditional morality and replace it with a live-and-let-live moral relativism.

There, I did it. But I think everyone knew what I meant anyway.

Now to Mr. Parker’s arguments. I’m not sure what he’s referring to when he says McCarthy found “nothing” in his investigations. If by that he means no one was convicted of being a Soviet spy, then he is correct. But that wasn’t the purpose of McCarthy’s investigations. Rather, it was to identify security risks within the government and military and encourage the elimination of those risks through termination or transfer of the suspect individual.

This he did, but his success was hampered by weak-kneed officials and liberal sympathizers who though the whole Communist threat was overblown. Often, they ignored McCarthy’s findings and instead focused on accusing him of paranoia, meanness, and homosexuality.

That being said, I don’t want to bore everyone with a tit for tat on every point. Rather, I’d like to expand the issue a bit. People like Mr. Parker, a.k.a. liberals, love to attack and accuse people like McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, Nixon, Reagan, and G.W. Bush. They point out all of their flaws and accuse them of the basest of motives in all they do.

For example, McCarthy was accused of identifying security threats out of desire for political gain and public prestige. Bush is accused of going to war in Iraq for “oil” or as revenge for Saddam’s attempted assassination of his father.

In other words, a big part of their argument is that the motives of conservative politicians are base, selfish, greedy, and just stupid, whereas the motives of liberal politicians are pure, humanitarian, charitable, and Christian in the best, non-religious sense of the word.
So, no matter what the conservatives may say in explaining themselves, liberals dismiss such attempts as cynical cover-ups of the real motive, which, again, is money or fame or power.

The problem, and the beauty, of such arguments are that they are impossible to prove, or disprove, because you would have to have a God-like ability to read the minds of the people you are accusing. Liberals may be pretty bright, but they haven’t achieved that level of omniscience quite yet.

Rather than attempting to defend every thought and action of every conservative, I would like to make the point that generally speaking, they do things for the right reasons: love of country, love of freedom, hatred of tyranny, love for life, and a healthy appreciation for right and wrong.

McCarthy went after Communist infiltrators because he honestly believed (and subsequent history proved him right) that they were a threat to the country he loved.

Bush went to war in Iraq because he honestly believed (as did most Democratic politicians) that Iraq had WMD and, more importantly, was a rogue state whose support for terrorism and regional instability could no longer be tolerated.

Reagan set out to shrink government and fight Communism because he honestly believed those were the right things to do for the benefit and protection of all Americans.

And I believe most liberals, too, are motivated by wanting to do good and honestly believe they are fighting evil themselves. Problem is, what is evil?

For a liberal, an evil is to deny a woman the right to abort her child. An evil is our country doing something illegal or immoral in the pursuit of a just cause (not that the cause excuses the evil incident, but then the liberal tends to use the incident to characterize the whole cause as evil, instead of recognizing, like a big boy, that sometimes bad things happen when you fight crime or a war).

An evil is telling a homosexual couple that they cannot get married; etc.

Liberals also tend to side with those who are a threat to us, at least indirectly, in their zeal to ensure our government never does anything remotely bad or unpleasant. For example, Cindy Sheehan calling the terrorists in Iraq freedom fighters, or the umpteen thousand apologists for the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Anyway, I think you get my point. So, Mr. Parker, my guys may have their flaws, but they are honestly doing what they believe is right and good for our country, as you do I’m sure. It’s just that conservatives would rather give them the benefit of the doubt than our enemies.

Trey Hoffman
Peachtree City, Ga.

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