Leftists view conservatives as selfish and greedy.  Conservatives view leftists as pompous do gooders who think the masses are too stupid to take care of themselves.  The current economic crisis has enough greedy  fingerprints and do gooder DNA on it to keep a crime scene investigator busy for a long long time.

Just to be honest, few of us here in small town America understand this mess.  It makes no sense to those of us in the Heartland.  We understand that we have to pay our bills; our mortgage payments, our car payments, our credit card bills or we will lose our homes, cars etc.  We understand that if our law office, convenience store, hardware store, farm, car dealership etc. can't pay its bills then we will have to shut the doors or at least file bankruptcy.  Asking the Federal government to bail us out?  Yeah right.  We wouldn't even consider such a ridiculous idea. 

Another  thing that makes no sense to us is the idea of  the GSE.  Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac were known as government sponsored entities.  Supposedly, that means they were privately run but with a guarantee, implicit perhaps, that the Federal government would protect them.  Either a company is privately held or it isn't.  If you splice a duck with a pig all you get is a bunch of muddy feathers.  Private businesses have inherent risks associated with their actions.  Apparently, the big dogs at these two CSEs weren't worried about the inherent risks because of the sponsorship of the Federal government.  The closest analogy my unsophisticated small town mind can draw is there is no reason for Paris Hilton to worry about driving her car into a telephone pole because Daddy Hilton will cover the bill for any mess.

Another puzzling aspect of all this is the pressure that do gooder groups like ACORN put on do gooder liberals to demand that people with no assets or incomes be eligible for home loans.  Here in small town America, we believed that in order to buy or build a home we had to be able to afford that home.  Apparently, that is a parochial narrow minded view.

Starting with the Jimmy Carter administration, there has been a move afoot to expand homeownership to deadbeats.  Excuse me, lower class individuals who have been denied the American dream by discrimination.  There, does that make it sound better? 

Do you remember the newspaper headlines about "redlining" from the 1990s?  Lending institutions were viewed as discriminatory because they expected to only loan money to those who had enough money to pay the payments.  Politicians began getting pressure from community activist groups (ACORN was one of those) and as a result, the Clinton Administration's Justice Department threatened to sue these lending institutions if they refused to change their lending policies.  During the Clinton Administration, the Federal Reserve demanded that banks and other sources of loans look at unemployment payments and SSI checks as "income" for purposes of home loans.

What did they think would happen to those loans?  Of course these people defaulted.  Now, the sophisticated and powerful are shocked.  Of course Claude Rains was "shocked" to find gambling going on at Rick's Place in the movie "Casablanca" too.

Now, they want us, small town America, to bail them out.  I say "small town America" because a study in 2000 showed that over half of us still live in communities under 25,000 in population.  They want us to provide cover for the businesses.  They want us to give cover to the deadbeats who didn't pay their bills. 

The establishment elites, both right and left, are constantly arguing that small town America isn't bright enough or sophisticated enough to run this country.  If you don't believe me check out how similarly a supposed conservative like David Brooks and a kook leftist like Paul Krugman express their disdain for Sarah Palin.  The sophisticated elites, both the greedy Wall Street conservatives and the do gooder Northeastern liberals, believe they are smarter than us.

We weren't the ones who made this mess, though, the elites did.  It's time for small town America to shake up Washington and inject some small town common sense into their "sophisticated" world.

I resent the condescending tone leftists use toward conservatives in arguments as if we had experienced the "wisdom" and "compassion" of leftism we wouldn't be so strident. I'm sure you have seen it too.  If you would step out of your narrow minded bigoted cocoon you would enter into the light.

No, I haven't lived in a commune.  I have avoided living in cities, except when I went to college, and it was my parents, who first preached the evils of leftism.  My brother served in Vietnam, and while my parents were Republicans even before Vietnam; the Viet Cong flags, open drugs and sex of the VISIBLE portion of the anti-war movement made them even stronger against leftism.  Like I've said before, where I come from, even Democrats aren't leftists.

I use the term leftism because people like Barack Obama aren't liberals in the sense of classical liberalism.  They are leftists.

My first real exposure to leftism was when I was a freshman in college.  It was a small Methodist junior college in my home county, but the tenured religion professor was a borderline Marxist and actually denied the deity of Jesus.  Yep, that was a culture shock.  I stood toe to toe with him in class for a couple of years.  The discussions became pretty heated at times.  I know,  that shocks you.  I was the only kid in class that would challenge him and he had a couple of students in there that were just as far left as he and as vocal as me.  Still, my belief wasn't shaken.  It simply made me study harder in order to answer each challenge.

When I got to the University of Tennessee, as a political science major, the professor that was assigned to me  as faculty advisor turned out to be the most committed leftist on campus.  I mean protests, arrests the whole nine yards.  His parents were loaded and he had been a rebel since he was a kid.

Guess what?  I actually liked him.  He and I got along well.  When he found out how conservative I was, he asked if I wanted a different advisor and I told him "no".  This was the early to mid 1980s.  I was a poli sci major and usually the only vocal conservative in my classes.  The arguments went the gamut, from affirmative action to the Contras to campaign financing to speech to prayer in school to abortion.  Like I said, I was usually the only vocal conservative in my classes.  Even that didn't change my views.  I became more convinced in the wisdom of conservative principles.

Things didn't change in law school.  Again I found myself in the minority.  Again I remained conservative and remained vocal.

And yes, I understand leftism. 

Leftism, at its most benign, believes in governmental power over the economy rather than corporate power over the economy.  Leftists believe that as long as there are fair elections then the government will make sure that the economy is more fair.  Whereas corporations aren't interested in fairness.

That may be all well and good, but it's naive.  Politicians and bureaucrats are only interested in maintaining their own POWER.  They aren't more noble than corporate CEOs and if you guys really believe they are then YOU are the ones who need more experience, not me.  Additionally, bureaucrats aren't elected.  Finally, government has the power of the sword and prison.  Corporations don't.  Therefore, corporate power is less scary to me than government power.

Leftism doesn't believe that economic liberty is as important as freedom of speech etc.  Leftists believe that property rights should be sacrificed for the good of the collective.  That's a view that, if not kept in check, heads us down a slippery slope to where property rights mean nothing.  As a result, as long as you keep advocating for more government control over how I can use my property, I will fight you.

Leftism believes in using taxation for wealth redistribution.  If you don't believe me, read some of Jim McDermott's speeches about the death tax.  He is one of the few in the American Left who isn't afraid to admit that he believes wealth redistribution is a laudible goal.  Personally, I believe my accumulation of wealth and the ability to pass it to my kids is none of your business.

Leftism wants to rewrite history to focus on the warts of our great leaders of the past.  Simply being honest is the reason given.  In truth, the idea is promote a Howard Zinn view of history where the nation state only exists to serve the wealthy and the masses are oppressed and have no country.  I find that view to be repulsive.  No, our Founders weren't perfect.  Yes, this nation, through its leaders, has done some bad things.  But all in all the balance sheet is positive.  Leftism undermines that view by promoting the negatives as somehow diminishing our moral superiority.  Yes, I want to believe that the US is morally superior and I resent leftists trying to change that view.

Leftism wants to redefine morality in such a way where intolerance is the greatest sin, as long as intolerance is defined by leftists.  Traditional morality is viewed as narrow mindedness.  And anything less than a full embrace of nontraditional lifestyles is viewed as bigotry.  You're wrong.  There is no other way to say it.  And don't use the lack of experience canard with me.  I have worked with and for gay people and been friends with others, one of whom is now dead from AIDS.  They were great folks.  I don't deny they had a genetic predisposition to homosexuality, but their lifestyle was wrong and I'm not going to change my view.

Leftism opposes corporate globalism, but favors a more open world where all cultures and beliefs are given equal weight and validity.  EXCEPT traditional Christianity.  Don't say it I'm wrong.  I'm not.  I've had too many discussions with people on your side about this very issue.  They would never attack Hinduism or Islam, or even Mayan human sacrifice the way they attack Christianity.

Leftism equates American dominance with imperialism.  I disagree, but so what.  You should be Americans first and leftists second.  If your team is number one, don't gripe.

Leftism is interested in "saving the planet".  A laudible goal, I suppose, if you believe it needs saving in a physical sense.  However, you want to save it at the expense of consumerism.  That I can't accept.

Leftists claim I'm wrong about how elitist leftism is.  Diane Feinstein supported a handgun ban in San Francisco while keeping a handgun herself.  Ted Kennedy supports alternative energy while opposing  windmills where he might see them.  Barack Obama calls us "bitter clingers" who wouldn't have to cling if our government took care of us.

You claim I don't get leftism.  You're wrong.  I get it.  I hate it.  It will eventually destroy this nation.  I'm fighting against a tide that is too great.  People claim to like freedom, but most really don't.  It's too scary.  Leftism provides some measure of security.

BUT AT WHAT COST?