Liberal – Conservapedia: this is not a joke

Yes, convinced that Wikipedia, aside from its real sins, is a hotbed of “liberal bias”, people have come together to create a serious Conservative (US sense) alternative. Let’s see how they define “liberal” — and anything more parochial and US-centred is hard to imagine. No, this is not Landover Baptist Church. I only wish it were.

Liberal – Conservapedia

[Note that links here are Conservapedia’s and do not open in new windows or tabs. — N]

A liberal supports many of the following political positions and practices:

• A government with large spending on social programs, and high taxes to support such programs
• Taxpayer-funded and/or legalized abortion
• Income redistribution, usually through progressive taxation
• Government-rationed and taxpayer-funded medical care, such as Universal Health Care
• Taxpayer-funded public education
• The denial of inherent gender differences
• Wanting men and women to have the same access to jobs in the military
• Legalized same-sex marriage
• Implimentation of affirmative action
• Political correctness
• Censorship of teacher-lead prayer in classrooms and school sponsored events
• Support of labor unions
• Teaching “comprehensive” sex-ed programs instead of abstinence-only programs.^[1]
• A “living Constitution” that is reinterpreted in a modern context, instead of how it was originally intended
• Support for gun control
• Government programs to rehabilitate criminals
• Abolition of death penalty
• Environmentalism^[2]
• Disarmament treaties
• Globalism
• Opposition to an interventionalist American foreign policy ^[3]
• Support of obscenity and pornography as a First Amendment right^[4]
• Opposition to full private property rights^[5]
• Reinstating the Fairness Doctrine
• In 2005, it was reported by CBS News that liberals were the most likely supporters of the theory of evolution. Support for the theory of evolution which is a key component of atheistic ideologies in the Western World.
• Opposition to domestic wire-tapping as authorized in the Patriot Act
• Calling anyone they agree with a “professor” regardless of whether he earned that distinction based on a real peer review of his work (see, e.g., Richard Dawkins and Barack Obama).

Feel free to express your disbelief! I seriously thought this to be satire, but am convinced after looking at other articles that it is not.

After that definition comes more detail which you can check for yourselves.

I of course immediately looked up Kevin Rudd, John Howard (both showing my own parochialism of course), and then evolution and global warming.

Of course this, unlike Wikipedia, is “objective” isn’t it? No bias here! Yeah, sometimes, but not often… Otherwise, from what I have seen this is as tendentious and dishonest a project — dishonest in its naked political agenda — as I have ever seen.

Am I too harsh?

The horrible thought is that for some this could become knowledge and teh TROOF!

Oh, and if you do think I am too unfair, check their funny little cartoon beside the definition of “liberal”.

And do note, just for fun, how “liberal” by the definition above John Howard turns out to have been. Yes, he also scores rather well on “conservatism” in the eccentric US sense in some areas, but he famously supported gun control, ran a government-funded medicare program (even if attenuated perhaps), did have progressive taxation as all Oz governments have (though skewed in his case), spent on social programs, and maintained our position on the death penalty — we don’t have one in Australia. Why, Johnnie H was almost a Commie!

God save us from US conservatives! I may add, too, that there is almost no resemblance between that brand of conservatism and the conservatism that imbues the work of Alexander McCall Smith, whose recent novel I mentioned earlier today, much of which I can empathise with, sometimes even agree with; and even, dare I say, there is not much in that brand of conservatism that would appeal to very many in our own Liberal [i.e. Conservative] and National Parties, certainly not to the ones I have actually spoken to, though it has gained more traction in some circles than it merits.

RELATED

What Would Jesus Wiki?  Cool headline there in Wired, but we could all do with reminding that Jesus is not/was not a conservative American. As many American Christians well know.

UPDATE 24 July

See Entries tagged as ‘Conservapedia’ on Submitted to a Candid World