Strategies for Saving the Liberal Arts Inside Higher Ed (blog) The challenges facing the liberal arts are well-known. Humanities departments, in particular, struggle to attract students. A loss of enrollments at the freshman level, as a result of Advanced Placement and dual degree-early college credits, has ...

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Strategies for Saving the Liberal Arts - Inside Higher Ed (blog)

2009Three decades later, President Carters sorry judicial legacy lives on. A three-judge district court consisting of three Carter appointeesNinth Circuit judge Stephen Reinhardt and senior district judges Lawrence K. Karlton and Thelton E. Hendersonissues a tentative ruling that finds that overcrowding in Californias prisons is the primary cause of the states inability to provide constitutionally adequate medical care and mental health care to its prisoners and that would require Californias prisons to reduce their inmate populations by as many as 57,000 prisoners. The trio asserts that the release can be achieved without an adverse effect on public safety.

Even California attorney general Jerry Brown, usually an ardent supporter of liberal judicial lawlessness, condemns the ruling as a blunt instrument that does not recognize the imperatives of public safety, nor the challenges of incarcerating criminals, many of whom are deeply disturbed.

In May 2011, by a 5-4 vote (inBrown v. Plata), the Supreme Court will affirm the district courts judgment.

In the aftermath of the Courts ruling, the district court will repeatedly be forced to extend its deadline for compliance with its ruling. Only in March 2016nearly five years after the Courts rulingwill the district court determine that California is in compliance. Even then, the district court will retain control over the matter and require California to submit monthly reports.

Read the rest here:

This day in Liberal Judicial ActivismFebruary 9 - National Review

Stan Ivie likens Donald Trump to a Pied Piper, leading we mesmerized villagers into an alternative reality. Lets look at the reality of what I call Liberal Land.

In Liberal Land, so-called feminists march in protest, dressed like womens privates, screaming obscenities that would make sailors blush, allowing their children to carry vulgarity-laced signs.

Madonna announces she thinks about blowing up the White House. Ashley Judd likens Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.

Another featured speaker Donna Hylton, convicted in 1985 of the murder of a New York real estate broker. Before he died, Hylton and others tortured the victim in ways so gruesome this newspaper would not print them. Their mantra abortion on demand. Great role models all.

No boys or girls in Liberal Land. Teachers refer to kids in gender-neutral terms such as purple penguins. Bruce Jenner becomes Caitlyn, the first man to be voted woman of the year.

If youre male, but feel female, its OK to use the womens restroom. The term expectant mother banned in Britain, because it might offend somebody.

Heroes are snubbed (Chris Kyle), thugs iconized (Michael Brown), victims dismissed (Kate Steinle), traitors excused (Bowe Bergdahl).

Patriotism is racist; individualism, taboo; globalism, supreme; national sovereignty, an abomination; killing the unborn, glorified.

Its open season on cops. Black on black murder, ignored. Block the freeway if you feel oppressed. Burning, looting and destroying other peoples property is condoned.

Denizens of Liberal Land hail themselves as pro-feminist, pro-gay/lesbian/transgender and defenders of children, yet laud Islam and Sharia law, which views women as property, supports female mutilation, pedophilia, child marriage, barbaric execution of dissidents, and the murder of gays tossing them alive from building tops.

In Liberal Land, you can marry anyone or anything you want. Same sex marriage is OK. If gender doesnt matter, neither does age. Soon, adults will be allowed to marry children. Marry your dog, your car, a rhinoceros. Whatever you want. Beware the horn.

Free speech? Tolerated so long as its liberal speech. Colleges, historically bastions of the open exchange of ideas, are now little more than dispensaries of liberal propaganda. Conservative speakers are banned from campuses, or forced to flee because of leftist riots.

Those who libs disagree with are given derogatory labels monikers such as racist, fascist, bigot, narrow-minded, misogynist, xenophobe, islamophobe, homophobe and, a Stan Ivie classic, mesmerized villagers.

Ill take the Pied Piper, thank you.

Kevin Jones

Annabella

Link:

Liberal land - Richfield Reaper

Liberal groups sued President Trump on Wednesday over his "two-for-one" executive order issued last week that requires agencies to kill two existing regulations for every new rule they want to institute.

The environmental and advocacy groups the Natural Resources Defense Council, Communication Workers of America and Public Citizen argue that the Trump order is unconstitutional, "irrational" and seeks to scuttle programs meant to protect the public.

"President Trump's order would deny Americans the basic protections they rightly expect," said Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "New efforts to stop pollution don't automatically make old ones unnecessary."

Suh poked at Trump's lack of seriousness in addressing policy, saying "when you make policy by tweet, it yields irrational rules."

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The coalition argued in its lawsuit that any reduction of federal regulations would be inherently harmful, especially if the goal was to prevent overall spending from rising.

"It will be harder to limit pollution, protect consumers, safeguard our food supply, guard against financial abuses or to take any other action to limit corporate actions that impose costs on the public," the groups said in their complaint.

The deregulation order, also known as the regulation budget order, "imposes a false choice between clean air, clean water, safe food and other environmental safeguards."

The executive order includes a section saying: "It is essential to manage the costs associated with the governmental imposition of private expenditures required to comply with federal regulations. Toward that end, it is important that for every one new regulation issued, at least two prior regulations be identified for elimination, and that the cost of planned regulations be prudently managed and controlled through a budgeting process."

The groups filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington.

Also from the Washington Examiner

"I should not have said it. I apologize," Cuomo said on Twitter.

02/09/17 4:39 PM

Sean Higgins contributed to this report

Top Story

The bigger issue, beyond Conway's comments is whether Trump remains too close to his business holdings.

02/09/17 5:11 PM

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Liberal groups file lawsuit to block Trump's deregulation order - Washington Examiner

Economic freedom or economic liberty is the ability of members of a society to undertake economic actions. This is a term used in economic and policy debates as well as in the philosophy of economics.[1][2] One approach to economic freedom comes from classical liberal and libertarian traditions emphasizing free markets, free trade, and private property under free enterprise. Another approach to economic freedom extends the welfare economics study of individual choice, with greater economic freedom coming from a "larger" (in some technical sense) set of possible choices.[3] Other conceptions of economic freedom include freedom from want[1][4] and the freedom to engage in collective bargaining.[5]

The free market viewpoint defines economic liberty as the freedom to produce, trade and consume any goods and services acquired without the use of force, fraud or theft. This is embodied in the rule of law, property rights and freedom of contract, and characterized by external and internal openness of the markets, the protection of property rights and freedom of economic initiative.[3][6][7] There are several indices of economic freedom that attempt to measure free market economic freedom. Empirical studies based on these rankings have found higher living standards, economic growth, income equality, less corruption and less political violence to be correlated with higher scores on the country rankings.[8][9][10][11][12] It has been argued that the economic freedom indices conflate together unrelated policies and policy outcomes to conceal negative correlations between economic growth and economic freedom in some subcomponents.[13]

According to the free market view, a secure system of private property rights is an essential part of economic freedom. Such systems include two main rights: the right to control and benefit from property and the right to transfer property by voluntary means. These rights offer people the possibility of autonomy and self-determination according to their personal values and goals.[15] Economist Milton Friedman sees property rights as "the most basic of human rights and an essential foundation for other human rights."[16] With property rights protected, people are free to choose the use of their property, earn on it, and transfer it to anyone else, as long as they do it on a voluntary basis and do not resort to force, fraud or theft. In such conditions most people can achieve much greater personal freedom and development than under a regime of government coercion. A secure system of property rights also reduces uncertainty and encourages investments, creating favorable conditions for an economy to be successful.[17]Empirical evidence suggests that countries with strong property rights systems have economic growth rates almost twice as high as those of countries with weak property rights systems, and that a market system with significant private property rights is an essential condition for democracy.[18] According to Hernando de Soto, much of the poverty in the Third World countries is caused by the lack of Western systems of laws and well-defined and universally recognized property rights. De Soto argues that because of the legal barriers poor people in those countries can not utilize their assets to produce more wealth.[19] One thinker to question private property was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a socialist and anarchist, who argued that property is both theft and freedom.[20]

Freedom of contract is the right to choose one's contracting parties and to trade with them on any terms and conditions one sees fit. Contracts permit individuals to create their own enforceable legal rules, adapted to their unique situations.[21] However, not all contracts need to be enforced by the state. For example, in the United States there is a large number of third-party arbitration tribunals which resolve disputes under private commercial law.[22] Negatively understood, freedom of contract is freedom from government interference and from imposed value judgments of fairness. The notion of "freedom of contract" was given one of its most famous legal expressions in 1875 by Sir George Jessel MR:[23]

[I]f there is one thing more than another public policy requires it is that men of full age and competent understanding shall have the utmost liberty of contracting, and that their contracts when entered into freely and voluntarily shall be held sacred and shall be enforced by courts of justice. Therefore, you have this paramount public policy to consider that you are not lightly to interfere with this freedom of contract.

The doctrine of freedom of contract received one of its strongest expressions in the US Supreme Court case of Lochner v New York which struck down legal restrictions on the working hours of bakers. [3]

Critics of the classical view of freedom of contract argue that this freedom is illusory when the bargaining power of the parties is highly unequal, most notably in the case of contracts between employers and workers. As in the case of restrictions on working hours, workers as a group may benefit from legal protections that prevent individuals agreeing to contracts that require long working hours. In its West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish decision in 1937, overturning Lochner, the Supreme Court cited an earlier decisions

From this point on, the Lochner view of freedom of contract has been rejected by US courts.[25]

Some free market advocates argue that political and civil liberties have simultaneously expanded with market-based economies, and present empirical evidence to support the claim that economic and political freedoms are linked.[26][27]

In Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Friedman further developed Friedrich Hayek's argument that economic freedom, while itself an extremely important component of total freedom, is also a necessary condition for political freedom. He commented that centralized control of economic activities was always accompanied with political repression. In his view, voluntary character of all transactions in a free market economy and wide diversity that it permits are fundamental threats to repressive political leaders and greatly diminish power to coerce. Through elimination of centralized control of economic activities, economic power is separated from political power, and the one can serve as counterbalance to the other. Friedman feels that competitive capitalism is especially important to minority groups, since impersonal market forces protect people from discrimination in their economic activities for reasons unrelated to their productivity.[28]

Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises argued that economic and political freedom were mutually dependent: "The idea that political freedom can be preserved in the absence of economic freedom, and vice versa, is an illusion. Political freedom is the corollary of economic freedom. It is no accident that the age of capitalism became also the age of government by the people."[29]

In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek argued that "Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends."[30] Hayek criticized socialist policies as the slippery slope that can lead to totalitarianism.[31]

Gordon Tullock has argued that "the Hayek-Friedman argument" predicted totalitarian governments in much of Western Europe in the late 20th century which did not occur. He uses the example of Sweden, in which the government at that time controlled 63 percent of GNP, as an example to support his argument that the basic problem with The Road to Serfdom is "that it offered predictions which turned out to be false. The steady advance of government in places such as Sweden has not led to any loss of non-economic freedoms." While criticizing Hayek, Tullock still praises the classical liberal notion of economic freedom, saying, "Arguments for political freedom are strong, as are the arguments for economic freedom. We neednt make one set of arguments depend on the other."[32]

The annual surveys Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) and Index of Economic Freedom (IEF) are two indices which attempt to measure the degree of economic freedom in the world's nations. The EFW index, originally developed by Gwartney, Lawson and Block at the Fraser Institute[33] was likely the most used in empirical studies as of 2000.[34] The other major index, which was developed by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal appears superior for data work, although as it only goes back to 1995, it is less useful for historical comparisons.[34]

According to the creators of the indices, these rankings correlate strongly with higher average income per person, higher income of the poorest 10%, higher life expectancy, higher literacy, lower infant mortality, higher access to water sources and less corruption.[35][36] The people living in the top one-fifth of countries enjoy an average income of $23,450 and a growth rate in the 1990s of 2.56 percent per year; in contrast, the bottom one-fifth in the rankings had an average income of just $2,556 and a -0.85 percent growth rate in the 1990s. The poorest 10 percent of the population have an average income of just $728 in the lowest ranked countries compared with over $7,000 in the highest ranked countries. The life expectancy of people living in the highest ranked nations is 20 years longer than for people in the lowest ranked countries.[37]

Higher economic freedom, as measured by both the Heritage and the Fraser indices, correlates strongly with higher self-reported happiness.[38]

Erik Gartzke of the Fraser Institute estimates that countries with a high EFW are significantly less likely to be involved in wars, while his measure of democracy had little or no impact.[39]

The Economic Freedom of the World score for the entire world has grown considerably in recent decades. The average score has increased from 5.17 in 1985 to 6.4 in 2005. Of the nations in 1985, 95 nations increased their score, seven saw a decline, and six were unchanged.[40] Using the 2008 Index of Economic Freedom methodology world economic freedom has increased 2.6 points since 1995.[41]

Members of the World Bank Group also use Index of Economic Freedom as the indicator of investment climate, because it covers more aspects relevant to the private sector in wide number of countries.[42]

The nature of economic freedom is often in dispute. Robert Lawson, the co-author of EFW, even acknowledges the potential shortcomings of freedom indices: "The purpose of the EFW index is to measure, no doubt imprecisely, the degree of economic freedom that exists."[43] He likens the recent attempts of economists to measure economic freedom to the initial attempts of economists to measure GDP: "They [macroeconomists] were scientists who sat down to design, as best they could with the tools at hand, a measure of the current economic activity of the nation. Economic activity exists and their job was to measure it. Likewise economic freedom exists. It is a thing. We can define and measure it." Thus, it follows that some economists, socialists and anarchists contend that the existing indicators of economic freedom are too narrowly defined and should take into account a broader conception of economic freedoms.

Critics of the indices (e.g. Thom Hartmann) also oppose the inclusion of business-related measures like corporate charters and intellectual property protection.[44] John Miller in Dollars & Sense has stated that the indices are "a poor barometer of either freedom more broadly construed or of prosperity." He argues that the high correlation between living standards and economic freedom as measured by IEF is the result of choices made in the construction of the index that guarantee this result. For example, the treatment of a large informal sector (common in poor countries) as an indicator of restrictive government policy, and the use of the change in the ratio of government spending to national income, rather than the level of this ratio. Hartmann argues that these choices cause the social democratic European countries to rank higher than countries where the government share of the economy is small but growing.[45]

Economists Dani Rodrik and Jeffrey Sachs have separately noted that there appears to be little correlation between measured economic freedom and economic growth when the least free countries are disregarded, as indicated by the strong growth of the Chinese economy in recent years.[46][47] Morris Altman found that there is a relatively large correlation between economic freedom and both per capita income and per capita growth. He argues that this is especially true when it comes to sub-indices relating to property rights and sound money, while he calls into question the importance of sub-indices relating to labor regulation and government size once certain threshold values are passed.[48] John Miller further observes that Hong Kong and Singapore, both only "partially free" according to Freedom House, are leading countries on both economic freedom indices and casts doubt on the claim that measured economic freedom is associated with political freedom.[45] However, according to the Freedom House, "there is a high and statistically significant correlation between the level of political freedom as measured by Freedom House and economic freedom as measured by the Wall Street Journal/Heritage Foundation survey."[49]

Amartya Sen and other economists consider economic freedom to be measured in terms of the set of economic choices available to individuals. Economic freedom is greater when individuals have more economic choices available when, in some technical sense, the choice set of individuals expands.

The differences between alternative views of economic freedom have been expressed in terms of Isaiah Berlin's distinction between positive freedom and negative freedom. Classical liberals favour a focus on negative freedom as did Berlin himself. By contrast Amartya Sen argues for an understanding of freedom in terms of capabilities to pursue a range of goals.[50] One measure which attempts to assess freedom in the positive sense is Goodin, Rice, Parpo, and Eriksson's measure of discretionary time, which is an estimate of how much time people have at their disposal during which they are free to choose the activities in which they participate, after taking into account the time they need to spend acquiring the necessities of life.[51] In his book, Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman explains [52]the preservation of freedom is the reason for limited and decentralized governments. It creates positive freedom within the society allowing for freedom of choice for an individual in a free society.

Franklin D. Roosevelt included freedom from want in his Four freedoms speech. Roosevelt stated that freedom from want "translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world". In terms of US policy, Roosevelt's New Deal included economic freedoms such as freedom of trade union organisation, as well as a wide range of policies of government intervention and redistributive taxation aimed at promoting freedom from want. Internationally, Roosevelt favored the policies associated with the Bretton Woods Agreement which fixed exchange rates and established international economic institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Herbert Hoover saw economic freedom as a fifth freedom, which secures survival of Roosevelt's Four freedoms. He described economic freedom as freedom "for men to choose their own calling, to accumulate property in protection of their children and old age, [and] freedom of enterprise that does not injure others."[53]

The Philadelphia Declaration (enshrined in the constitution of the International Labour Organization[54]) states that "all human beings, irrespective of race, creed or sex, have the right to pursue both their material well-being and their spiritual development in conditions of freedom and dignity, of economic security and equal opportunity." The ILO further states that "The right of workers and employers to form and join organizations of their own choosing is an integral part of a free and open society."[55]

The socialist view of economic freedom conceives of freedom as a concrete situation as opposed to an abstract or moral concept. This view of freedom is closely related to the socialist view of human creativity and the importance ascribed to creative freedom. Socialists view creativity as an essential aspect of human nature, thus defining freedom as a situation or state of being where individuals are able to express their creativity unhindered by constraints of both material scarcity and coercive social institutions.[56]Marxists stress the importance of freeing the individual from what they view as coercive, exploitative and alienating social relationships of production they are compelled to partake in, as well as the importance of economic development as providing the material basis for the existence of a state of society where there are enough resources to allow for each individual to pursue his or her genuine creative interests.[57]

One of the ways to measure economic competitiveness is by comparing an extent of economic freedom that countries have, which as surveys show can also largely explain differences in economic well-being across the world. Generally, countries with higher economic freedom have higher gross domestic product per capita and its growth rates, as well as better health care, education quality, environment protection, income equality, and happiness results. These trends of increasing prosperity are confirmed even when we compare these indicators within territories of countries. Nevertheless, despite these benefits societies have to be aware that with increasing economic freedom they will have to face going through a phase of increasing inequality, which basically is a result of decreased redistribution, as well as other negative effects from economic liberalization, i.e., running of local enterprises out of business, takeover of competitive firms, enforcing of interests of foreign companies, dependence on foreign capital, deteriorating work rights, harmful manufacturing for the environment, introducing of commercial practices that are not favorable for consumers, as well as endangerment for survival of national cultures. However, on the bright side, these negative effects from economic freedom tend to be felt in a shorter term, and if countries use the opportunities of economic freedom in our increasingly globalized economy in a right way, as research shows their socioeconomic conditions will be significantly better than in a case of less economic freedom.[58]

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Economic freedom - Wikipedia

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is weighing the appeal of President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration, is the federal appeals court conservatives have long ridiculed as the "nutty 9th" or the "9th Circus."

Covering a huge swath of territory nine western states plus Guam the San Francisco-based court handles far more cases than any other federal appeals court, including some rulings that have invoked furor from conservatives over the years.

Among them: finding that the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional, that the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military was problematic long before President Barack Obama's administration ended it, and that states can force pharmacies to dispense emergency contraceptives.

But some legal scholars say the 9th Circuit's liberal reputation is overblown and that the court has moved to the middle as some of President Jimmy Carter's appointees who were considered extremely liberal have taken semi-retired "senior" status or passed away.

A Democratic Congress nearly doubled the number of judges on the court during Carter's tenure, and his appointees faced easy confirmation in the Senate.

The three judges weighing Trump's travel ban are on the case by virtue of random assignment to this month's circuit court motions panel. Senior Circuit Judge William C. Canby Jr. was appointed by Carter in 1980; Senior Circuit Judge Richard R. Clifton was appointed by Bush in 2002; and Circuit Judge Michelle T. Friedland was appointed by Obama in 2014.

Canby, based in Phoenix, was a first lieutenant in the Air Force in the 1950s before becoming a Peace Corps administrator in Ethiopia and Uganda in the 1960s. Clifton, who keeps his chambers in Honolulu, came to the bench from private practice. So did Friedland, who is based in San Francisco.

They were scheduled to hear arguments by phone Tuesday on whether to maintain the temporary restraining order issued by Seattle U.S. District Judge James L. Robart that blocked enforcement of the travel ban from seven majority-Muslim nations.

President George W. Bush appointed six of the court's 25 active judges, but 18 have been appointed by Democrats. The seven appointed by President Barack Obama are generally considered moderate, said University of Richmond Law School Professor Carl Tobias.

Tobias called the notion that the 9th Circuit is liberal "dated." Arthur Hellman, a federal courts scholar at University of Pittsburgh Law School, said the picture of where the court stands in relation to other circuits has become muddier.

"The reputation is certainly deserved based on the history of the last 40 years or so," Hellman said Monday. "It's been more liberal, by which we mean more sympathetic to habeas petitioners, civil rights plaintiffs, anti-trust cases, immigration cases. But it's less of an outlier now than it was."

That history has prompted repeated, unsuccessful efforts to split the 9th Circuit most recently in proposals filed this year by Arizona's congressional delegation.

A bill introduced last week by Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake would put Arizona in a new 12th Circuit with Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Washington while leaving California, Hawaii and Oregon plus Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands in the 9th Circuit.

A House version previously introduced by Reps. Andy Biggs and four other Arizona Republican representatives would leave Washington in the 9th Circuit.

Biggs in a statement said his aim was "to free Arizona from the burdensome and undue influence of the 9th Circuit Court."

"As a promise to my constituents last year, I introduced this bill to protect Arizona from a federal circuit court that does not reflect the values nor laws of our state," he said. "The Ninth Circuit cannot handle the number of states currently entrapped within its jurisdiction, causing access to justice to be delayed."

Tobias said that while the 9th Circuit could use more judges, it makes little sense to split the circuit. California generates so many cases that the 9th is always going to have a heavy workload it handled 11,888 of the 56,244 cases handled by all federal appeals courts in the 12 months ending last June. And Tobias said he doesn't consider the sort of judicial gerrymandering Biggs seeks as a valid reason to split the court.

Judge Alex Kozinski, the circuit's former chief judge, once joked in a New York Times interview that far from splitting the 9th, he was hoping to acquire more territory. He said he had his sights on Utah, for its good skiing.

Read more:

'9th Circus'? Scholars Say Court's Liberal Rep Is Overblown - ABC News

Demagogues like Donald Trump thrive on simplicity. One of the keys to his ascendancy has been the lumping together of his many enemies into a single entity, a group to blame for all the economic anxiety and cultural dispossession felt by a vocal subset of his constituency. And so, various strains of right-wing anger have for some time now been congealing around a single vague word: liberal.

As a political philosophy, liberalism is an untidy confection. But Im pretty sure I am one, at least in part because I subscribe to liberalisms first principlethat everyone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And, like all self-identifying liberals in the age of Trump, recent events have plunged me into a sea of doubt. Which is why I think its important to say this: As well as being a liberal, I am also a xenophobe.

That statement requires some immediate qualification. I am not your garden-variety racist. I do not cultivate hatreds based on skin color or nationality. I do not have an Aryan Viking or a colored egg as my Twitter avatar. A child of the 1980s, and an urbanite, pluralism is part of my cultural inheritance. But the truth is that, for someone who has spent the last decade as a travel writer and literary cheerleader for foreign people and places, I often have a hard time transcending stark cultural differences.

I think its important to say this: As well as being a liberal, I am also a xenophobe.Some examples from my rap-sheet include a month in China, during which my girlfriends red hair invited the kind of swivel-eyed scrutiny you might expect if shed had two heads, was enough to turn me against the entire country. The disdain for punctuality common to Latin America and Africa drives me to distraction. In abject fulfillment of the British stereotype, the worlds widespread inability to queue drives me to silent, haughty outrage. Whilst I am adept at reciting the worlds capital cities, Im also an authority on being judgmental.

Such observations dont generally make the final copy of daily opinion columns, but theres nothing especially novel or incendiary about them. (I suspect few members of the liberal chattering classes can watch the Broadway classic Avenue Q without a wry, self-conscious chuckle at the musicals most famous number, Everybodys a little bit racist.) However, at a time when liberalism as a concept is under attackwhen half of America is blaming it for all the worlds problems, and the other half are catastrophizing about the implications of its demisethis mea culpa may help formulate a better understanding of what liberalism is, and why it is in crisis today.

Crucially, the idea that a liberal can also be a bigot presupposes that a persons politics do not depend on the purity of their soul. Or, to put it more simply, being liberal does not necessarily make you a better person. It just means you believe base humanity is flawed and needs to be contained within a framework of social mores and ethical absolutes.

Liberalism, wrote the controversial philosopher Slavoj Zizek, is sustained by a profound pessimism about human nature. Where the nostalgic conservative sees a past of white picket fences and peaceful cultural homogeneity, the liberal sees centuries of genocide, sectarian war, colonization and enslavement. A right-winger might call it hysteria. A liberal would call it a rational reading of human fallibility. Viewed through this pessimists lens, political correctness is a safeguard, a levee against the dark rivers of our intolerant tribalism.To put it more simply, being liberal does not necessarily make you a better person.

Against this backdrop, a person opposed to liberal ideals comes across as either willfully foolish or worse. Liberals dont brand such people as racist because we think they are. We brand them as racist because we know they are. Because deep down, we know we are too.

And thats the problem. The central weakness of modern liberalism is that the self-criticism required in order to disown this instinctive bias has become a form of blindnessof our own moral imperfection, and of our tendency to offer a prescription for society to which we ourselves struggle to adhere. Three months on from Trumps election victory, and with the anti-liberal backlash continuing to shape politics across western democracies, the vulnerabilities in this picture grow starker by the day.

In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill, among the founding fathers of modern liberalism, wrote that Whatever crushes individuality is despotism. But it seems unlikely that he could ever have imagined how future generations would see, in the ideology he championed, a haunting echo of that same oppression. What emerged as a philosophy of opposition to structural prejudice started to grow sclerotic the moment it assumed the mantle of orthodoxy. The resultan inflexible dogma rooted in secularism and identity politicshas ended up provoking the vengeance of those who feel marginalized by it.

While many liberals complain about the implications of anthropogenic climate change, how many of us refuse to fly?Often, the accusations of hypocrisy marshaled in opposition to liberal points of view are more absurd than effectivewitness, to name one recent example, the thousands of Trump apologists disparaging womens marchers on the premise that those same people hadnt been holding weekly sit-ins to protest the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia. Yet the overarching criticism is valid, for how many liberals can say with sincerity that they are immune to instinctive bias? Can any of us truly claim that we feel as much sympathy for thousands of innocent Syrians immolated by Assads barrel-bombs as we do for European terror victims? While many liberals complain about the implications of anthropogenic climate change, how many of us refuse to fly?

Indeed, the words do as I say, not as I do could be the catchphrase for the entire liberal orderfrom the everyday leftie who decries gentrification while secretly celebrating the increased value of their house to figureheads we eulogize. As people around the world lamented the end of Barack Obamas administration, many pointed out that the man elected US president on a tide of hope and optimism, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize within months of taking office, vacated the White House as the first American president in history to have been at war for every day of his tenure. It doesnt require a huge leap of empathy to understand how someone anathematized to his politics might have seen, in the deluge of liberal tears that accompanied his departure, evidence of an intractable contradiction.

None of this is to say that social liberalism needs to be disavowed. The Trump era, if anything, looks set to demonstrate its importance anew. And while populists would have us believe that 2016 heralded the start of liberalisms downfall, we must keep faith that most people, if pushed, would choose a more self-aware liberal future to Steve Bannons nihilistic vision of religious war.None of this is to say that social liberalism needs to be disavowed.

But as todays progressives confront a newly energized right-wing populism, we must recognize the shortcomings in liberalism that have led us to this juncture. We should be able to acknowledge that, in seeking absolution for our worst instincts, we may have overcompensated by acquiescing to a status quo that has overseen rampant inequality and catastrophic foreign wars. And we should admit that the reactionary ideas fueling the right-wing surgenativism, nationalism, and American exceptionalism among themare understandable, albeit execrable, responses to our transparent balancing act. Trump is sticking a middle finger up to a liberal consensus teetering on feet of clay.

Everyone carries a shadow, wrote the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, and the less it is embodied in the individuals conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. It seems likely, were he alive today, that Jung might suspect liberals of possessing the biggest shadows of all. Perhaps we need to embrace our shadows before we can properly push them away.

Follow Henry on Twitter at @henrywismayer. Learn how to write for Quartz Ideas. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

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All liberals are hypocrites. I know because I am one - Quartz

Have you talked to your liberal friends who dont follow politics today? Whats surprising are the number of liberals who seem genuinely surprised and shocked and horrified and enraged and all kinds of other emotions about the fact that 50 out of 52 Senate Republicans voted to confirm Betsy DeVos as education secretary.

Start with the fact that Republican senators are going to be naturally inclined to confirm a Republican presidents nominees. Move on to the fact that DeVos has spent her career working for school choice, and most Republican senators strongly support school choice.

I know this may shock you, my friends on the left, but most Senate Republicans dont particularly care how much teachers unions furiously denounce DeVos. The teachers unions are among the biggest financial supporters of Democrats. Opposition from teachers unions is a given for just about every Senate Republicans; theres no point in trying to reach out, build bridges, or reach compromise with someone who is determined to defeat you when your term is up.

Republican senators didnt find DeVoss belief that states and localities should set laws for guns in and around schools inherently disqualifying, and didnt find her comment about grizzly bears around schools in Wyoming so laughably absurd.

Senate Republicans dont particularly care if Kate McKinnon imitated DeVos on Saturday Night Live and it was glorious. They dont care that she was ridiculed by Jimmy Kimmel and Trevor Noah. Any Republican secretary of education nominee is going to be ridiculed by Jimmy Kimmel and Trevor Noah. Oh, there was a Facebook meme about Betsy DeVos that was shared a lot? Thats not the sort of thing that persuades a senator. (I see one of the disqualifying criticisms is DeVos never put her children in a public school. Neither did President Obama.)

What, the likes of Pat Toomey and Rob Portman, having just won reelection to a six-year term, should begin by alienating everyone who worked so hard to help them win reelection, and hand a victory to everybody who just spent the past two years trying to defeat them? Have you guys ever watched anything in politics ever before?

If a lot of Republicans in Virginia or New York or California had called up their senators offices urging a vote in favor of DeVos, do you think that Tim Kaine, Mark Warner, Chuck Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand, Dianne Feinstein, or Kamala Harris would have changed their minds?

Eight years ago, most Republican senators voted for most of President Obamas nominees. The only nominees who faced significant opposition were Tim Geithner (34 votes), Kathleen Sebelius (31 votes), and Eric Holder (21 votes). Only six of Obamas picks required more than a voice vote. (There were 41 Republican senators at that time.)

Did that bipartisan outreach and conciliatory approach pay off for Republican senators? Did any liberal or progressive organization or voice salute those senators for their willingness to confirm President Obamas choices and get them on the job as quickly as possible? No, of course not. Ask a liberal today and theyll insist the Senate Republicans were the most obstructionist opposition party of all time.

In an environment where no outreach across the aisle is rewarded by the opposition, why are you surprised that theres so little of it?

In a highly charged partisan political environment, it takes a lot to get a senator to vote against their own party. Liberals want Republican senators to defy the Trump administration, but theres no particular upside for that senator. Its not like the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committees going to give them a pass, its not like grassroots progressives wont try to knock them out of office, its not like any praise from the news or entertainment wings of the media will be lasting or consequential. (Ask Jim Jeffords, Arlen Specter, or Charlie Crist.)

Originally posted here:

Why Are Liberals Surprised by the Senate Confirmation of DeVos? - National Review

It's been a recurring theme the past few months:

Liberals simply cannot accept the fact that Donald Trump is president and are doing everything in their power to depose him.

And now, the non-acceptance has turned to sports.

Following the New England Patriots' victory in Sunday's Super Bowl, the hashtag#NotMySuperBowlChampsshot to the top of Twitter's trending section.

MN Police Dept. Tweets Unique Punishment for Super Bowl Drunk Drivers

Google Home Super Bowl Commercial Sets Off Existing Customers' Devices

It Looks Like Tom Brady's Super Bowl Game Jersey Was STOLEN!

A play on #NotMyPresident, the hashtagwas used to slam the Patriots -- especiallyquarterback Tom Brady, head coach Bill Belichick and owner Robert Kraft -- for their friendships with Trump.

Not all Patriots are on the Trump train though. Tight end Martellus Bennett said last weekhe might skip the team's customary visit to the White House.

Thehashtag has since evolved into more of a joke targeting the refusal of liberals to accept the election results.

Breaking: Jill Stein announces demand for a re-match because Russia hacked the football. Send her lots of money. #NotMySuperBowlChamps

Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) February 6, 2017

#NotMySuperBowlChamps I just heard that Starbucks is hiring 10,000 Falcon fans. #safespace

Hillary Hates Me GWM (@pinepilot) February 6, 2017

Since the Falcons led for the most time, shouldn't they be the winners? #HIllaryLogic #NotMySuperBowlChamps

Joe Kelly (@JoeKelly1073) February 6, 2017

Where are all the protesters at for the Pats Super Bowl Parade?!? #NotMySuperBowlChamps

RP Walsh (@rp_walsh) February 7, 2017

I'm not gonna say Putin hacked the Superbowl, but I had never seen this ref before until last night. #NotMySuperBowlChamps pic.twitter.com/ZTypGrjXag

sqx (@nonsequitur20) February 6, 2017

"So, i'm going with your strategy to make it look like I have no chance, then win." #SuperBowl #SB51 #TomBrady #NotMySuperBowlChamps pic.twitter.com/oK7k7Z3i2v

Tea Party News (@tpartynews) February 6, 2017

#NotMySuperBowlChamps Not your President, Not your Country, Not your Constitution, Not your flag. Not your way, Why are you here?

Bill Periman (@BillPeriman) February 6, 2017

I hope liberals never, ever stop tweeting lol #NotMySuperBowlChamps "Election Night All Over Again"#SuperBowl Tom Brady pic.twitter.com/Q7fNVBdXqR

Tracy (@GigiTracyXO) February 6, 2017

Cry baby leftists are tweeting #NotMySuperBowlChamps & blaming "white supremacy" for the Patriots' Super Bowl win. Liberals are insane

Makada (@_Makada_) February 6, 2017

Winning against all odds is now a conservative thing, while Whining after losing is officially a liberal thing, #NotMySuperBowlChamps

Elijah Okon (@ElijahDbliss) February 6, 2017

Maybe an Atlanta federal judge will reverse the score. #NotMySuperBowlChamps

Ron Waltman (@avnsgm) February 6, 2017

VP Pence Takes Wounded Warriors to Super Bowl

President Trump Tweets Congratulations to Super Bowl Champion Patriots

O'Reilly Presses Trump on Travel Ban, Views on Putin in Super Bowl Interview

Read the original here:

Liberal Hashtag #NotMySuperBowlChamps Protests Patriots' Support of Trump - Fox News Insider

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The Huffington Post is looking to President Donald Trumps base for new readership, an odd reversal considering the tidal wave of anti-Trump coverage that plastered the site over the last 18 months.

The site ran front-page headlinescalling Trump a Racist, Sexist, Xenophobic Demagogue with the hashtag #wtfgop.

New editor in chief Lydia Polgreen, 41, is already taking steps to push the left-leaning outlet back toward the political center.

Founder Arianna Huffington announced she was leaving the outlet Aug. 11. She started it in 2005 as a liberal alternative to Matt Drudges The Drudge Report, according to CNNMoney.

When Arianna Huffington founded HuffPost in 2005, it was an answer to the Drudge Report and a bulwark against an ascendant Republican president beginning his second term, Polgreen told HuffPo staff in January. Today, we live in very different times. The old ideological dividing lines seem irrelevant and inimical to our journalistic mission. The question we must ask ourselves is this: Who are we for?

Polgreen is going to have a tough time getting Trump voters to look HuffPos way. The site which Polgreen said she wanted a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump to read consistently attacked him throughout the primaries, general election and after the inauguration.

When Trump was still fighting in the Republican presidential primary, Huffington published a piece explaining why her website was going to cover Trump in its entertainment section.

The site covered news of Trump supporters attacking people, but rarely reported on the times Trumps base was attacked. If HuffPo did report on it, it would be hedged bypointing the blame at the very Trump voters who were attacked.

It promoted liberal advocacy in its news articles by including petitions readers could sign. HuffPos Washington bureau chief, Ryan Grim, told The Daily Callers Alex Pfeiffer in December they are straightforward about what our values are.(RELATED:Huffington Post Defends Advocacy In News Stories)

A HuffPo contributor published a Trump conspiracy piece the site later deleted alleging former Secretary of State Colin Powell could become president.

Polgreen pushed her reporters to be more open and welcoming of potential new reads in her January staff message: We must listen with empathy and openness to our audience, and invite those who are not in our audience to engage with us, to guide our journalism. That is how we can build a deep relationship based on mutual trust and understanding. It is how we get beyond our filter bubbles and serve everyone.

HuffPos ad revenue dropped significantly in 2015, from 46 percent year-over-year growth down to 15 percent. Its mobile website and desktop traffic have both fallen. From May 2015 to April 2016, according to Business Insider, online traffic fell a massive 71 percent.

A Huffington Post spokeswoman disputed the drop in traffic as outdated and incorrect to The Daily Caller News Foundation, saying online traffic is up. Our traffic is actually up 2.4% YoY [year-over-year]. In November 2015, we had 190M global multi-platform UVs [unique visitors] according to comScore and in November 2016, we had 195M.

ComScore is a cross-platform measurement company that provides data analytics and other metric information. Business Insider received its data from SimilarWeb, a digital marketing company that provides website traffic and data analytics.

Follow Katie onTwitterandFacebook

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

The rest is here:

HuffPo's New Editor In Chief Is Already Undoing Arianna's Liberal Legacy - Daily Caller

Cory Bernardi says he did not support the decision to change prime minister from Tony Abbott to Malcolm Turnbull, and he does not agree with the idea of changing again. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Cory Bernardi has fired a parting shot at his former conservative colleagues, including Tony Abbott, declaring he was being used in a proxy war against Malcolm Turnbull in the build-up to his departure from the Liberal party.

In an interview with Guardian Australias Politics Live podcast, Bernardi said he did not want his split from the Liberal party to be any sort of trigger point for the destabilisation of Turnbulls prime ministership by his conservative opponents.

Bernardi said he had opposed moves to remove Abbott as prime minister in 2015, and despite his significant philosophical differences with Malcolm Turnbull, any move against him would be wrong too.

Acknowledging that some conservatives were intent on using his departure as fresh material to weaken Turnbull, Bernardi said categorically he did not want his defection to be used for political purposes.

Its the principle, Bernardi said on Tuesday night. You have an elected prime minister, and they are getting rolled because of the polls, or because of poor decisions. They are collective decisions of the cabinet. They are collective decisions of the party room, and they are hurt and they are terrible, but youve got to be prepared to fight.

It is the principle for me in that entire thing.

And where I resented some of the things you have suggested [about positioning by conservatives] is I was being used in a proxy war, and in my dealings with the [press] gallery over the last 12 months, I have made it abundantly clear, I am not involved in this I am not doing anyone elses bidding.

If I am the rebel Senator ... it is not because I am carrying a torch for anyone else. I dont want to see a change of leadership, its always been about the policy.

Abbotts office has been contacted for comment.

Bernardis comments about the Coalitions corrosive internals come after his statement to the Senate on Tuesday confirming his attention to resign from the Liberal party and start a new conservative political movement.

Former colleagues rounded on the South Australian over the course of Tuesday, arguing it was a complete betrayal of the voters of South Australia to stand for election as a Liberal Senator for a six year term, only to quit the party just over six months in.

Bernardi told Guardian Australia on Tuesday evening he had been inspired to launch his own insurgency after watching Donald Trumps successful grassroots campaign in the United States, but he said he had no interest in importing Trumps political tactics into the Australian landscape, such as decrying coverage he didnt approve of as fake news, or trying to muddy up facts.

He also suggested he could compete with One Nation successfully for the conservative vote, and many conservative leaning people looking for a political alternative would be reassured by his long history within the Liberal party.

In the interview, Bernardi shrugged off an apparent lack of interest from his close friend, the mining magnate Gina Rinehart, in bankrolling his new political movement.

Bernardi said he was looking to fund his organisation through many small donations from activists prepared to sign on to Australian Conservatives, which he was prepared to disclose in real time.

He said the sustainability of a political organisation is driven by memberships and the grass roots.

If I can get thousands upon thousands of people contributing modest amounts of money historically thats been the strength for my political fundraising, Bernardi said.

Ive tried to build relationships with people over a very long period of time. I have a weekly blog that goes out. Some of those people will be disappointed [about what Ive done] but there will be tens of thousands of people who will celebrate this decision and they are very supportive of me because Ive become their voice in the parliament.

I know who they are, Ive established a relationship. I can take the temperature of a great many conservatives in the nation very, very quickly.

He also signalled his donations above the disclosure threshold would be revealed publicly continuously, within 24 hours, rather than waiting 12 months for the legal requirement.

I dont know why people want to hide this.

Continue reading here:

Cory Bernardi says he resents being used in Liberal party 'proxy war' - The Guardian

Just last week, Breitbart News editor and public speaker Milo Yiannopoulos saw one of his speaking engagements canceled when a protest against him at UC Berkeley turned into a violent riot. Rioters broke windows and even took part in brutal beatings of Milos supporters.

I am not on the same side politically as Milo. I am a liberal because I believe in liberty. First and foremost, my most cherished liberty is freedom of speech. The entire idea of freedom of speech is predicated on the notion that one must protect not only speech which they agree with, but also speech they disagree with. That also extends to speech which *gasp* offends you.

The violent rioters at UC Berkeley are representative of a phenomenon I and other actual liberals call the regressive left. The regressive left doesnt truly stand for liberty. Instead, they stand for the idea that anyone that says anything which offends them or doesnt fit their narrative can and should be silenced.

This regressive mindset is not only wrong, it is incredibly dangerous. A healthy public debate of ideas never silences anyone who wishes to engage in an open and honest dialogue about important issues. Unlike many of his critics and the bulk of these rioters, I have actually listened to Milo speak.

When Milo is faced with a tantrum from a protester who disrupts his events, he mercilessly mocks them to no end. However, and this is crucial to my view of Yiannopoulos, when faced with a respectful challenge to his ideas, hes extremely polite and gives very well thought out answers to genuine questions from liberals.

This is what public discourse between people who disagree is supposed to look like. Its not supposed to look like the absolute temper tantrum that many regressive leftists throw at his events.

And when theyre not throwing tantrums, these regressives resort to the next most destructive thing, name-calling. Youve all heard it over the course of the past year. Conservatives are racist, sexist, islamophobic etc. Despite my progressive views and liberal credentials as a youth leader in the Democratic Party, Ive been called all of these things when I speak freely about political issues. The one thing I have not been called is the utterly hyperbolic neo-Nazi.

Milo has been called a neo-Nazi by many of his most fervent critics. He is also a half Jewish, openly gay man. I will refer to my ethnic heritage when I say that calling Milo a Nazi is incredibly insulting to the memory of my ancestors and the millions of others who suffered during the holocaust.

Milo is not an oppressor, hes a messenger. I dont agree with every aspect of his message. However, I must admit, I agree with some of it. And thats important. Its important for people from different sides of the isle to listen to one another. Thats how you find common ground and come to a consensus. Its how you change minds and strengthen your movement.

When you listen and engage in a respectful dialogue about your differences, thats called making an argument; something many liberals, the regressives, are forgetting how to do. Instead, they attempt to silence their foes by name-calling and throwing dramatic tantrums to distract from their weak debating skills.

If Milo comes to Towson, and I hope he does, dont be one of these regressive babies. Go to his event, listen, and if you disagree with something he says, ask about it during the Q&A. As a true, blue liberal Democrat who vehemently opposes President Trump, I want avid Trump supporter and right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos to know that people like me exist. I want him to know that true liberals are here to debate him, not silence him.

And lastly, I want all the regressives to know that their childish antics will not be tolerated. To each and every one of you that would even think to engage in the kind of behavior that took place at UC Berkeley, or who calls their political opponents neo-Nazis in a pathetic attempt to slander them with false, ad hominem attacks which harken back to the tactics of McCarthyism. You are the shame of the progressive movement and could not be more antithetical to true liberalism.

Learn to make actual arguments or get out of the debate hall. Right now, with this country in the state that its in, we adults dont have time for your tantrums.

Read this article:

I'm A Liberal, And I Want Milo Yiannopoulos On My Campus - Huffington Post

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott is the headline act at a Victorian Liberals fundraising dinner, which has been described as a "rallying point" for socially conservative party members in the state.

Mr Abbott will be the guest of honour at a $65 dollar-a-head Deakin 200 Club and Victorian Business Branch fundraiser next month.

A special pre-dinner drinks event for 22 people with Mr Abbott, costing $500 a ticket is nearly sold out.

There has been concern in the Victorian branch about a push to recruit socially conservative people to the party.

Some members fear alurch too far to the right in Victoria could damage Opposition Leader Matthew Guy's chance of seizing power from Labor at next year's poll.

The event is being promoted to the more conservative elements of the Victorian branch.

It is being organised by Marcus Bastiaan who has been leading the recruitment drive which has, among others, targeted socially conservative Christian groups.

The dinner, at city Chinese restaurant Secret Kitchen, will raise money for federal Victorian marginal seats including Deakin.

"He [Abbott] is a rallying point for conservative Liberals in Victoria who are very disappointed with [Prime Minister Malcolm]Turnbull's performance and the damage he hasdone to the party's brand," one senior Liberal source said.

"The worse things are getting under Turnbull the more conservative minded people see it necessary to get re-involved in Australian politics, through the Liberal Party."

Assistant Treasurer and Deakin MP Michael Sukkar, arising conservative figure in the federal party in Victoria,is also a guest speaker.

Mr Bastiaan said they were expecting 300 people, with the money raised to go to marginal seat campaigns.

"Tony Abbott is an extremely popular figure in the Victorian division of the Liberal Party," Mr Bastiaan said.

Mr Abbott's spokesman said it was his practice to "support his colleagues when asked."

Victoria was one of the worst states for Mr Abbottduring his time as leader and his performance has been blamed, in part, for the Napthine government losing office after just one term in 2014.

The former PM regularly appears at fundraisers including an event for Menzies MP Kevin Andrews ahead of last year's federal election.

Read the original post:

'Rallying point': Abbott to headline conservative Liberal fundraiser in Melbourne - The Age

Malcolm Turnbull, and furious Coalition ministers and MPs, including manyconservatives, have turned on Liberal rat Cory Bernardi, accusing him of betraying Liberal voters and demanding he quit the Senate altogether.

The dissident South Australian Liberal senator has informed MrTurnbull he will quit the Liberal Party at 12.30pm Canberra time, just seven months after being re-elected for a six-year term, to form his own conservative party.

MrTurnbull has told Tuesday's party room meeting that hetoo suggested Senator Bernardi quit the Senate.

"I asked him how he could justify remaining in the Senate having been electedas a Liberal only seven months ago. He could not answer that question," the Prime Minister said.

SenatorBernardireportedly told Mr Turnbull the 2015 leadership change wasacatalystfor his defection and he warned Mr Turnbullforceswerenowrangingagainsthim.

While his defection has emboldened some conservatives who believe Mr Turnbull should pay more heed to the right-wing of the party, confirmation of his defection has united his soon-to-be former colleagues against him.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, one of the most senior conservatives in the government, lashed out, saying Senator Bernardi's actions would only split the conservative vote and facilitate the election of a Labor government.

"I think people will be angry about any defection, angry about the betrayal of the Liberal Party values," he said.

He scoffed at suggestions other MPs would follow the renegade who has been unhappy in the party for several years, under Tony Abbott and Mr Turnbull.

Financial Services Minister Kelly O'Dwyer said Senator Bernardi was on an ego trip and should have been "upfront and honest" with voters before the last election.

"They want to know that parliamentarians who are sent to Canberra are focused on their interests and focused on the broader national interest," she said.

"I think that people would feel that their trust has been violated if somebody stood for a particular political party and then left that political party, particularly so soon after an election campaign."

Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne said Senator Bernardishould quit Parliament and recontest his seat, while Treasurer Scott Morrison accused him of betraying the Liberal Party and its voters.

Trade MinisterSteven Ciobosaid Senator Bernardi had spent his whole career causing internal trouble and "had never laid a glove on the Labor Party".

"He was elected off the back of the LiberalParty, it wasn't because he was Cory Bernardi," Mr Ciobosaid, echoing calls he should quit the Senate.

At the election, Senator Bernardi received 2043 first preference votes,or 0.025 per centof a quota. The SA Liberal Party received 345,767 votes.

Education Ministerand South Australian Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham said Senator Bernardi has betrayed Liberal voters and the party and should surrender the seat.

"There is effectively a contract that all of us undertake when we offer ourselves at election. We go to that election on the ballot paper, with not just our names, but also our party affiliation attached to that and that is an enormous guide," he said.

"I don't kid myself into thinking that there are hundreds of thousands of South Australians who know and like Simon Birmingham and choose to vote just for me."

SA Liberal MP Rohan Ramsey and Queensland LNP MP Michelle Landry said Senator Bernardi should quit the Senate and give his seat to a Liberal because it was the party's Senate spot, not his.

Another SA Liberal Sean Edwards, who lost his Senate seat at the last election, was scathing.

"It would be a gross departure as to - certainly six months into a six-year term - what people would have expected," he said.

"I would prefer to see Senator Bernardi stay within the Liberal Party and do the work that all the members that preselected him in preference to members like myself (expect)," he said.

Liberal Democrat Senator David Leyonhjelm said Senator Bernardi would regret his move because he would lose his seat.

Labor leader Bill Shorten cashed in on the crisis.

"A government which can't govern itself can't govern the nation. It is long overdue for the government to focus on the jobs of other Australians," he said.

"I promise Australians that we will focus on jobs, saving Medicare and of course making sure that housing is affordable for all Australians."

Go here to see the original:

Furious Liberal MPs turn on 'rat' Cory Bernardi - The Australian Financial Review

The chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee claimed yesterday he has new evidence showing that scientific research discrediting a purported pause in temperature increases was politically motivated.

John Bates, who recently retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center, told the Daily Mail newspaper in England that a 2015 federal study was intended to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and was rushed to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy.

Bates said his NOAA colleagues relied on unverified data to prove their hurried claims.

Opponents of climate action have frequently highlighted data that seemed to suggest global temperatures stopped rising from about 1998 to the early part of the 21st century. They say it shows the Earth is constantly in cycles of cooling and heating, and they dispute the notion that global temperatures are consistently rising as the result of human activity. It has become a frequent talking point for politicians who argue that there is no urgency to curb the use of fossil fuels.

Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who receives significant donations from the energy industry, accused federal scientists again yesterday of politically motivated fraud. He said Bates' comments were proof that the study was rigged.

The 2015 NOAA study used flawed data, was rushed to publication in an effort to support the president's climate change agenda, and ignored NOAA's own standards for scientific study, Smith said in a statement.

He also said Bates has exposed the previous administration's efforts to push their costly climate agenda at the expense of scientific integrity.

The so-called hiatus was disproved by a team of NOAA climate scientists in a 2015 study that found the data set supporting a pause was inaccurate because it relied on different methods of temperature collection. A second study published last month also found that a pause never happened. It, too, highlighted data problems.

Last month, federal researchers found that 2016 was the warmest year globally on record. It broke previous records set in 2015 and 2014.

Smith in 2015 launched a congressional investigation into the work of scientists who sought to rebut inaccurate claims about temperatures being static. He frequently refers to the vast body of research about climate change as politically correct science.

Tomorrow, Smith is scheduled to hold a hearing promoting Republican efforts to make EPA great again. Critics argue it's intended to weaken scientific research that's used to justify environmental regulations

Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E&E News. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at http://www.eenews.net.

More:

House Science Chairman Sees Liberal Cover-Up on Warming Pause - Scientific American

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President Trump was correct in excoriating liberal activist federal judge James Robart for his grossly legally defective temporary restraining order against President Trumps temporary travel ban. Beyond excoriation Robart needs to be impeached and removed from the bench for judicial incompetence.

Robart reached far beyond his judicial authority in even supposing that the State of Washington had standing to appeal President Trumps order in the first place. Robart hinges his entire ruling on a concept called parens patriae, a term meaning A doctrine that grants the inherent power and authority of the state to protect persons who are legally unable to act on their own behalf. Ordinarily used by states to protect children and those who are incapacitated, Robart here tries to invoke this state-level power against the Congress and the President.

In the case Massachusetts v. Mellon however, the Supreme Court ruled with absolute clarity that it is no part of [a States] duty or power to enforce [its citizens] rights in respect of their relations with the federal government. Its difficult to imagine a ruling that more clearly denounces and derogates both judge Robart and the State of Washington in this clearly extra-legal attempt to arrogate the power of controlling immigration to the State of Washington. If Robart didnt know about this case he was explicitly informed of it by the Department of Justice in its objection to the TRO, so he has no excuse for ignoring an on-point Supreme Court ruling.

The power over immigration is exclusively reserved to the Congress, and its power is plenary, which means total, complete and unreviewable. Congress delegated certain powers to restrict immigration to the President by enacting 8 U.S.C. 1182(f), which says that when the President (any president) finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he is authorized to suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

Having granted this authority to the President, only Congress can revoke it and no federal court, not even the Supreme Court has the power to interfere in that presidential authority short of challenging the constitutional power of Congress to delegate certain of its plenary powers over immigration to the President.

It is simply not within the power of any state to interfere with such a presidential decision, as immigration-control advocates found during Obamas tenure in office. Obama did exactly the opposite, he ordered our Border Patrol officers NOT to deny entry to any aliens who illegally entered the United States, and when Arizona and other states challenged this policy in court on exactly the same sort of grounds of detrimental impacts to the people of Arizona caused by rampant and uncontrolled illegal immigration, Obama simply invoked the plenary federal power over immigration policy and did nothing to secure our borders.

Now that President Trump has chosen to exercise his part of Congress plenary authority over immigration liberal Democrats want to prevent him from doing so, and they found a corrupt judge to do it for them by venue-shopping.

By going to Seattle and finding a sympathetic liberal-inclined pet judge they accomplished two things: they got their TRO and they put the case into the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the largest and most liberal (and most-reversed by the Supreme Court) federal court in the United States, which reacted to a well-formed and legally-sound appeal of the TRO with a one-page ruling rejecting the appeal without any analysis of the case or the law. This was not circumstantial, it was very deliberate tactic on the part of liberal progressive Democrats.

This makes the 9th Circuit Court as much of a co-conspirator in violating the separation of powers doctrine as Robart and the State of Washington are, which is a good reason for the plan to break up the 9th Circuit Court into several smaller courts to move forward. Impeachment of 9th Circuit judges should also begin immediately.

There is no doubt whatever that review of both the TRO and the order rejecting the governments appeal, along with every other case filed against the Presidents Executive Order, will be summarily dismissed by the Supreme Court because the law could not be more clear: the states have no standing to sue Congress or the president over immigration actions because Congress power over immigration law is plenary and not subject to judicial review according to Article 1, 8, clause 4 of the Constitution.

This is nothing more than another liberal Democrat attempt to impede and inhibit President Trumps administration, but this one is entirely unlawful and they know it and therefore Democrats are stepping outside of mere procedural obstructionism and are dabbling in the realm of insurrection and treason, particularly when it comes to giving aid and comfort to radical Islamist jihadi enemies whom President Trump is trying to keep out of the country.

Read more:

Liberal Judicial Activism Borders On Insurrection - Daily Caller

President Donald Trump slammed what he called "fake news" Monday. "Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election," he tweeted.

And that's not all: Reports that he signed an executive order without really reading it was "FAKE NEWS" as well (capital letters are the president's). Finally, the New York Times, a favorite punching bag for the president's prolific Twitter account, "writes total fiction,"Trump added.

Liberal-leaning "fake news" was, in fact, on the rise, although not from the journalistic shops the president was lambasting, according to a report from the Guardian.During the election, viral fake news spread like wildfire, with an in-depth BuzzFeedanalysis finding most of it was directed at hurting Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

The five most popular fake news stories on Facebookduring the election were about Pope Francis endorsing Trump, Clinton selling weapons to the Islamic State group, an email from Clinton to ISIS, a law that could prevent Clinton from being president and an FBI agent with Clinton connections supposedly being found dead, according to the Buzzfeed analysis.

Trump has since co-opted the term "fake news" as his own, using it to attack reports he doesn't appreciate.

The Guardian piece noted the balance of fake news was beginning to shift, with false articles gaining steam about everything from the Standing Rock protest toMelania Trump selling jewelry on the White House website to stories with fake Mike Pence quotes about abortion.

Brooke Binkowski, managing editor of the debunking website Snopes, was asked bythe Atlantic if she had seen an uptick in left-leaning fake news since Trump took office.

"Of course yes!" she said.

"There has been more coming from the left," Binkowski told the Atlantic."A lot of dubious news, a lot of wishful thinking-type stuff. It's not as filthy as the stuff I saw that was purportedly coming from the rightI dont think a lot of it was actually coming from the right, I think it was coming from outside sources,like Macedonian teenagers, for examplebut there has been more from the left."

The difference in the type of fake news was also noted byClaire Wardle, research director with First Draft News, in the Guardian article. In a time when many Democrats and others on the left were gravely concerned about Trump's presidency, articles with some good news, even if it's fake, have been spreading.

"It's unsurprising to me that we're seeing a growth of disinformation on the left People want information that makes them feel better,"Wardle said to the Guardian.

Related Articles

See the rest here:

Liberal Fake News Reportedly Growing - Yahoo News

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This article is about the modern Australian political party. For the Liberal party active in Australia from 1909 to 1916, see Commonwealth Liberal Party.

The Liberal Party of Australia (Lib or colloquially Libs) is a major political party in Australia. Founded in 1945 to replace the United Australia Party (UAP), the Liberal Party is one of the two major parties in Australian politics, along with the Australian Labor Party (ALP).

The Liberal Party is the largest and dominant party in the Coalition with the National Party of Australia, the Country Liberal Party of the Northern Territory and the Liberal National Party of Queensland. Except for a few short periods, the Liberal Party and its predecessors have operated in similar coalitions since the 1920s. Internationally, the Liberal Party is affiliated to the International Democrat Union.

The party's leader is Malcolm Turnbull and its deputy leader is Julie Bishop. The pair were elected to their positions at the September 2015 Liberal leadership ballot, Bishop was returned to the position of deputy leader and Turnbull as a replacement for Tony Abbott, whom he consequently succeeded as Prime Minister of Australia. Now the Turnbull Government, the party had been elected at the 2013 federal election as the Abbott Government which took office on 18 September 2013.[3] At state and territory level, the Liberal Party is in office in three states: Colin Barnett has been Premier of Western Australia since 2008, Will Hodgman Premier of Tasmania since 2014 and Gladys Berejiklian Premier of New South Wales since 2017. The party is in opposition in Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, the Australian Capital Territory, and the Northern Territory.

The party's ideology has been referred to as conservative,[4]liberal-conservative,[5] and conservative-liberal.[6] The Liberal Party tends to promote economic liberalism and social conservatism.[7] Two past leaders of the party, Sir Robert Menzies and John Howard, are Australia's two longest-serving Prime Ministers. The Liberal Party has spent more time in government than any other federal Australian political party.

The contemporary Liberal Party generally advocates economic liberalism (see New Right). Historically, the party has supported a higher degree of economic protectionism and interventionism than it has in recent decades. However, from its foundation the party has identified itself as anti-socialist. Strong opposition to socialism and communism in Australia and abroad was one of its founding principles. The party's founder and longest-serving leader Robert Menzies envisaged that Australia's middle class would form its main constituency.[8]

Towards the end of his term as Prime Minister of Australia, in a final address to the Liberal Party Federal Council in 1964, Menzies spoke of the "Liberal Creed" as follows:

As the etymology of our name 'Liberal' indicates, we have stood for freedom. We have realised that men and women are not just ciphers in a calculation, but are individual human beings whose individual welfare and development must be the main concern of government ... We have learned that the right answer is to set the individual free, to aim at equality of opportunity, to protect the individual against oppression, to create a society in which rights and duties are recognised and made effective.

Soon after the election of the Howard Government the new Prime Minister John Howard, who was to become the second-longest serving Liberal Prime Minister, spoke of his interpretation of the "Liberal Tradition" in a Robert Menzies Lecture in 1996:

Menzies knew the importance for Australian Liberalism to draw upon both the classical liberal as well as the conservative political traditions. ... He believed in a liberal political tradition that encompassed both Edmund Burke and John Stuart Mill a tradition which I have described in contemporary terms as the broad church of Australian Liberalism.

Throughout their history, the Liberals have been in electoral terms largely the party of the middle class (whom Menzies, in the era of the party's formation called "The forgotten people"), though such class-based voting patterns are no longer as clear as they once were. In the 1970s a left-wing middle class emerged that no longer voted Liberal.[citation needed] One effect of this was the success of a breakaway party, the Australian Democrats, founded in 1977 by former Liberal minister Don Chipp and members of minor liberal parties; other members of the left-leaning section of the middle-class became Labor supporters.[citation needed] On the other hand, the Liberals have done increasingly well in recent years among socially conservative working-class voters.[citation needed]However the Liberal Party's key support base remains the upper-middle classes; 16 of the 20 richest federal electorates are held by the Liberals, most of which are safe seats.[10] In country areas they either compete with or have a truce with the Nationals, depending on various factors.

Menzies was an ardent constitutional monarchist, who supported the Monarchy in Australia and links to the Commonwealth of Nations. Today the party is divided on the question of republicanism, with some (such as incumbent leader Malcolm Turnbull) being republicans, while others (such as his predecessor Tony Abbott) are monarchists. The Menzies Government formalised Australia's alliance with America in 1951, and the party has remained a strong supporter of the mutual defence treaty.

Domestically, Menzies presided over a fairly regulated economy in which utilities were publicly owned, and commercial activity was highly regulated through centralised wage-fixing and high tariff protection. Liberal leaders from Menzies to Malcolm Fraser generally maintained Australia's high tariff levels. At that time the Liberals' coalition partner, the Country Party, the older of the two in the coalition (now known as the "National Party"), had considerable influence over the government's economic policies. It was not until the late 1970s and through their period out of power federally in the 1980s that the party came to be influenced by what was known as the "New Right" a conservative liberal group who advocated market deregulation, privatisation of public utilities, reductions in the size of government programs and tax cuts.

Socially, while liberty and freedom of enterprise form the basis of its beliefs, elements of the party have wavered between what is termed "small-l liberalism" and social conservatism. Historically, Liberal Governments have been responsible for the carriage of a number of notable "socially liberal" reforms, including the opening of Australia to multiethnic immigration under Menzies and Harold Holt; Holt's 1967 Referendum on Aboriginal Rights;[11]Sir John Gorton's support for cinema and the arts;[12] selection of the first Aboriginal Senator, Neville Bonner, in 1971;[13] and Malcolm Fraser's Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976. A West Australian Liberal, Ken Wyatt, became the first Indigenous Australian elected to the House of Representatives in 2010.[14]

The party has mainly two unorganised factions, the conservative right and the moderate left. Historically, moderates have at times formed their own parties, most notably the Australian Democrats who gave voice to what is termed small-l liberalism in Australia.

The Liberal Party is a member of the International Democrat Union, the only party with the name Liberal to hold membership.

The Liberal Party's organisation is dominated by the six state divisions, reflecting the party's original commitment to a federalised system of government (a commitment which was strongly maintained by all Liberal governments until 1983, but was to a large extent abandoned by the Howard Government, which showed strong centralising tendencies). Menzies deliberately created a weak national party machine and strong state divisions. Party policy is made almost entirely by the parliamentary parties, not by the party's rank-and-file members, although Liberal party members do have a degree of influence over party policy.[15]

The Liberal Party's basic organisational unit is the branch, which consists of party members in a particular locality. For each electorate there is a conferencenotionally above the brancheswhich coordinates campaigning in the electorate and regularly communicates with the member (or candidate) for the electorate. As there are three levels of government in Australia, each branch elects delegates to a local, state, and federal conference.[15]

All the branches in an Australian state are grouped into a Division. The ruling body for the Division is a State Council. There is also one Federal Council which represents the entire organisational Liberal Party in Australia. Branch executives are delegates to the Councils ex-officio and additional delegates are elected by branches, depending on their size.[15]

Preselection of electoral candidates is performed by a special electoral college convened for the purpose. Membership of the electoral college consists of head office delegates, branch officers, and elected delegates from branches.[15]

The Liberals' immediate predecessor was the United Australia Party (UAP). More broadly, the Liberal Party's ideological ancestry stretched back to the anti-Labor groupings in the first Commonwealth parliaments. The Commonwealth Liberal Party was a fusion of the Free Trade Party and the Protectionist Party in 1909 by the second prime minister, Alfred Deakin, in response to Labor's growing electoral prominence. The Commonwealth Liberal Party merged with several Labor dissidents (including Billy Hughes) to form the Nationalist Party of Australia in 1917. That party, in turn, merged with Labor dissidents to form the UAP in 1931.

The UAP had been formed as a new conservative alliance in 1931, with Labor defector Joseph Lyons as its leader. The stance of Lyons and other Labor rebels against the more radical proposals of the Labor movement to deal the Great Depression had attracted the support of prominent Australian conservatives.[16] With Australia still suffering the effects of the Great Depression, the newly formed party won a landslide victory at the 1931 Election, and the Lyons Government went on to win three consecutive elections. It largely avoided Keynesian pump-priming and pursued a more conservative fiscal policy of debt reduction and balanced budgets as a means of stewarding Australia out of the Depression. Lyons' death in 1939 saw Robert Menzies assume the Prime Ministership on the eve of war. Menzies served as Prime Minister from 1939 to 1941 but resigned as leader of the minority World War II government amidst an unworkable parliamentary majority. The UAP, led by Billy Hughes, disintegrated after suffering a heavy defeat in the 1943 election.

Menzies called a conference of conservative parties and other groups opposed to the ruling Australian Labor Party, which met in Canberra on 13 October 1944 and again in Albury, New South Wales in December 1944.[17][18] From 1942 onward Menzies had maintained his public profile with his series of "The Forgotten People" radio talkssimilar to Franklin D. Roosevelt's "fireside chats" of the 1930sin which he spoke of the middle class as the "backbone of Australia" but as nevertheless having been "taken for granted" by political parties.[19][20]

Outlining his vision for a new political movement in 1944, Menzies said:

...[W]hat we must look for, and it is a matter of desperate importance to our society, is a true revival of liberal thought which will work for social justice and security, for national power and national progress, and for the full development of the individual citizen, though not through the dull and deadening process of socialism.

The formation of the party was formally announced at Sydney Town Hall on 31 August 1945.[18] It took the name "Liberal" in honour of the old Commonwealth Liberal Party. The new party was dominated by the remains of the old UAP; with few exceptions, the UAP party room became the Liberal party room. The Australian Women's National League, a powerful conservative women's organisation, also merged with the new party. A conservative youth group Menzies had set up, the Young Nationalists, was also merged into the new party. It became the nucleus of the Liberal Party's youth division, the Young Liberals. By September 1945 there were more than 90,000 members, many of whom had not previously been members of any political party.[18]

After an initial loss to Labor at the 1946 election, Menzies led the Liberals to victory at the 1949 election, and the party stayed in office for a record 23 yearsstill the longest unbroken run in government at the federal level. Australia experienced prolonged economic growth during the post-war boom period of the Menzies Government (19491966) and Menzies fulfilled his promises at the 1949 election to end rationing of butter, tea and petrol and provided a five-shilling endowment for first-born children, as well as for others.[22] While himself an unashamed anglophile, Menzies' government concluded a number of major defence and trade treaties that set Australia on its post-war trajectory out of Britain's orbit; opened Australia to multi-ethnic immigration; and instigated important legal reforms regarding Aboriginal Australians.

Menzies ran strongly against Labor's plans to nationalise the Australian banking system and, following victory in the 1949 election, secured a double dissolution election for April 1951, after the Labor-controlled Senate refused to pass his banking legislation. The Liberal-Country Coalition was returned with control of the Senate. The Government was returned again in the 1954 election; the formation of the anti-Communist Democratic Labor Party (DLP) and the consequent split in the Australian Labor Party early in 1955 helped the Liberals to another victory in December 1955. John McEwen replaced Arthur Fadden as leader of the Country Party in March 1958 and the Menzies-McEwen Coalition was returned again at elections in November 1958 their third victory against Labor's H. V. Evatt. The Coalition was narrowly returned against Labor's Arthur Calwell in the December 1961 election, in the midst of a credit squeeze. Menzies stood for office for the last time in the November 1963 election, again defeating Calwell, with the Coalition winning back its losses in the House of Representatives. Menzies went on to resign from parliament on 26 January 1966.[23]

Menzies came to power the year the Communist Party of Australia had led a coal strike to improve pit miners' working conditions. That same year Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb, and Mao Zedong led the Communist Party of China to power in China; a year later came the invasion of South Korea by Communist North Korea. Anti-communism was a key political issue of the 1950s and 1960s.[24] Menzies was firmly anti-Communist; he committed troops to the Korean War and attempted to ban the Communist Party of Australia in an unsuccessful referendum during the course of that war. The Labor Party split over concerns about the influence of the Communist Party over the Trade Union movement, leading to the foundation of the breakaway Democratic Labor Party whose preferences supported the Liberal and Country parties.[25]

In 1951, during the early stages of the Cold War, Menzies spoke of the possibility of a looming third world war. The Menzies Government entered Australia's first formal military alliance outside of the British Commonwealth with the signing of the ANZUS Treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the United States in San Francisco in 1951. External Affairs Minister Percy Spender had put forward the proposal to work along similar lines to the NATO Alliance. The Treaty declared that any attack on one of the three parties in the Pacific area would be viewed as a threat to each, and that the common danger would be met in accordance with each nation's constitutional processes. In 1954 the Menzies Government signed the South East Asia Collective Defence Treaty (SEATO) as a South East Asian counterpart to NATO. That same year, Soviet diplomat Vladimir Petrov and his wife defected from the Soviet embassy in Canberra, revealing evidence of Russian spying activities; Menzies called a Royal Commission to investigate.[26]

In 1956 a committee headed by Sir Keith Murray was established to inquire into the financial plight of Australia's universities, and Menzies pumped funds into the sector under conditions which preserved the autonomy of universities.

Menzies continued the expanded immigration program established under Chifley, and took important steps towards dismantling the White Australia Policy. In the early 1950s, external affairs minister Percy Spender helped to establish the Colombo Plan for providing economic aid to underdeveloped nations in Australia's region. Under that scheme many future Asian leaders studied in Australia.[27] In 1958 the government replaced the Immigration Act's arbitrarily applied European language dictation test with an entry permit system, that reflected economic and skills criteria.[28][29] In 1962, Menzies' Commonwealth Electoral Act provided that all Indigenous Australians should have the right to enrol and vote at federal elections (prior to this, indigenous people in Queensland, Western Australia and some in the Northern Territory had been excluded from voting unless they were ex-servicemen).[30] In 1949 the Liberals appointed Dame Enid Lyons as the first woman to serve in an Australian Cabinet. Menzies remained a staunch supporter of links to the monarchy and British Commonwealth but formalised an alliance with the United States and concluded the Agreement on Commerce between Australia and Japan which was signed in July 1957 and launched post-war trade with Japan, beginning a growth of Australian exports of coal, iron ore and mineral resources that would steadily climb until Japan became Australia's largest trading partner.

Menzies retired in 1966 as Australia's longest-serving Prime Minister.

Harold Holt replaced the retiring Robert Menzies in 1966 and the Holt Government went on to win 82 seats to Labor's 41 in the 1966 election.[31] Holt remained Prime Minister until 19 December 1967, when he was declared presumed dead two days after disappearing in rough surf in which he had gone for a swim.

Holt increased Australian commitment to the growing War in Vietnam, which met with some public opposition. His government oversaw conversion to decimal currency. Holt faced Britain's withdrawal from Asia by visiting and hosting many Asian leaders and by expanding ties to the United States, hosting the first visit to Australia by an American president, his friend Lyndon B. Johnson. Holt's government introduced the Migration Act 1966, which effectively dismantled the White Australia Policy and increased access to non-European migrants, including refugees fleeing the Vietnam War. Holt also called the 1967 Referendum which removed the discriminatory clause in the Australian Constitution which excluded Aboriginal Australians from being counted in the census the referendum was one of the few to be overwhelmingly endorsed by the Australian electorate (over 90% voted 'yes'). By the end of 1967, the Liberals' initially popular support for the war in Vietnam was causing increasing public protest.[32]

The Liberals chose John Gorton to replace Holt. Gorton, a former World War II Royal Australian Air Force pilot, with a battle scarred face, said he was "Australian to the bootheels" and had a personal style which often affronted some conservatives.

The Gorton Government increased funding for the arts, setting up the Australian Council for the Arts, the Australian Film Development Corporation and the National Film and Television Training School. The Gorton Government passed legislation establishing equal pay for men and women and increased pensions, allowances and education scholarships, as well as providing free health care to 250,000 of the nation's poor (but not universal health care). Gorton's government kept Australia in the Vietnam War but stopped replacing troops at the end of 1970.[33]

Gorton maintained good relations with the United States and Britain, but pursued closer ties with Asia. The Gorton government experienced a decline in voter support at the 1969 election. State Liberal leaders saw his policies as too Centralist, while other Liberals didn't like his personal behaviour. In 1971, Defence Minister Malcolm Fraser, resigned and said Gorton was "not fit to hold the great office of Prime Minister". In a vote on the leadership the Liberal Party split 50/50, and although this was insufficient to remove him as the leader, Gorton decided this was also insufficient support for him, and he resigned.[33]

Former treasurer, William McMahon, replaced Gorton as Prime Minister. Gorton remained a front bencher but relations with Fraser remained strained. The McMahon Government ended when Gough Whitlam led the Australian Labor Party out of its 23-year period in Opposition at the 1972 election.

The economy was weakening. McMahon maintained Australia's diminishing commitment to Vietnam and criticised Opposition leader, Gough Whitlam, for visiting Communist China in 1972only to have the US President Richard Nixon announce a planned visit soon after.[34]

During McMahon's period in office, Neville Bonner joined the Senate and became the first Indigenous Australian in the Australian Parliament.[35] Bonner was chosen by the Liberal Party to fill a Senate vacancy in 1971 and celebrated his maiden parliamentary speech with a boomerang throwing display on the lawns of Parliament. Bonner went on to win election at the 1972 election and served as a Liberal Senator for 12 years. He worked on Indigenous and social welfare issues and proved an independent minded Senator, often crossing the floor on Parliamentary votes.[36]

Following Whitlam's victory, John Gorton played a further role in reform by introducing a Parliamentary motion from Opposition supporting the legalisation of same-gender sexual relations. Billy Snedden led the party against Whitlam in the 1974 federal election, which saw a return of the Labor government. When Malcolm Fraser won the Liberal Party leadership from Snedden in 1975, Gorton walked out of the Party Room.[37]

Following the 197475 Loans Affair, the Malcolm Fraser led Liberal-Country Party Coalition argued that the Whitlam Government was incompetent and delayed passage of the Government's money bills in the Senate, until the government would promise a new election. Whitlam refused, Fraser insisted leading to the divisive 1975 Australian constitutional crisis. The deadlock came to an end when the Whitlam government was dismissed by the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr on 11 November 1975 and Fraser was installed as caretaker Prime Minister, pending an election. Fraser won in a landslide at the resulting 1975 election.

Fraser maintained some of the social reforms of the Whitlam era, while seeking increased fiscal restraint. His government included the first Aboriginal federal parliamentarian, Neville Bonner, and in 1976, Parliament passed the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976, which, while limited to the Northern Territory, affirmed "inalienable" freehold title to some traditional lands. Fraser established the multicultural broadcaster SBS, accepted Vietnamese refugees, opposed minority white rule in Apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia and opposed Soviet expansionism. A significant program of economic reform however was not pursued. By 1983, the Australian economy was suffering with the early 1980s recession and amidst the effects of a severe drought. Fraser had promoted "states' rights" and his government refused to use Commonwealth powers to stop the construction of the Franklin Dam in Tasmania in 1982.[38] Liberal minister, Don Chipp split off from the party to form a new social liberal party, the Australian Democrats in 1977. Fraser won further substantial majorities at the 1977 and 1980 elections, before losing to the Bob Hawke led Australian Labor Party in the 1983 election.[39]

A period of division for the Liberals followed, with former Treasurer John Howard competing with former Foreign Minister Andrew Peacock for supremacy. The Australian economy was facing the early 1990s recession. Unemployment reached 11.4% in 1992. Under Dr John Hewson, in November 1991, the opposition launched the 650-page Fightback! policy document a radical collection of "dry", economic liberal measures including the introduction of a Goods and Services Tax (GST), various changes to Medicare including the abolition of bulk billing for non-concession holders, the introduction of a nine-month limit on unemployment benefits, various changes to industrial relations including the abolition of awards, a $13 billion personal income tax cut directed at middle and upper income earners, $10 billion in government spending cuts, the abolition of state payroll taxes and the privatisation of a large number of government owned enterprises representing the start of a very different future direction to the keynesian economic conservatism practiced by previous Liberal/National Coalition governments. The 15 percent GST was the centerpiece of the policy document. Through 1992, Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating mounted a campaign against the Fightback package, and particularly against the GST, which he described as an attack on the working class in that it shifted the tax burden from direct taxation of the wealthy to indirect taxation as a broad-based consumption tax. Pressure group activity and public opinion was relentless, which led Hewson to exempt food from the proposed GST leading to questions surrounding the complexity of what food was and wasn't to be exempt from the GST. Hewson's difficulty in explaining this to the electorate was exemplified in the infamous birthday cake interview, considered by some as a turning point in the election campaign. Keating won a record fifth consecutive Labor term at the 1993 election. A number of the proposals were later adopted in to law in some form, to a small extent during the Keating Labor government, and to a larger extent during the Howard Liberal government (most famously the GST), while unemployment benefits and bulk billing were re-targeted for a time by the Abbott Liberal government.

At the state level, the Liberals have been dominant for long periods in all states except Queensland, where they have always held fewer seats than the National Party (not to be confused with the old Nationalist Party). The Liberals were in power in Victoria from 1955 to 1982. Jeff Kennett led the party back to office in that state in 1992, and remained Premier until 1999.

In South Australia, initially a Liberal and Country Party affiliated party, the Liberal and Country League (LCL), mostly led by Premier of South Australia Tom Playford, was in power from the 1933 election to the 1965 election, though with assistance from an electoral malapportionment, or gerrymander, known as the Playmander. The LCL's Steele Hall governed for one term from the 1968 election to the 1970 election and during this time began the process of dismantling the Playmander. David Tonkin, as leader of the South Australian Division of the Liberal Party of Australia, became Premier at the 1979 election for one term, losing office at the 1982 election. The Liberals returned to power at the 1993 election, led by Premiers Dean Brown, John Olsen and Rob Kerin through two terms, until their defeat at the 2002 election. They have since remained in opposition under a record five Opposition Leaders.

The dual aligned Country Liberal Party ruled the Northern Territory from 1978 to 2001.

The party has held office in Western Australia intermittently since 1947. Liberal Richard Court was Premier of the state for most of the 1990s.

In New South Wales, the Liberal Party has not been in office as much as its Labor rival, and just three leaders have led the party from opposition to government in that state: Sir Robert Askin, who was premier from 1965 to 1975, Nick Greiner, who came to office in 1988 and resigned in 1992, and Barry O'Farrell who would lead the party out of 16 years in opposition in 2011.

The Liberal Party does not officially contest most local government elections, although many members do run for office in local government as independents. An exception is the Brisbane City Council, where both Sallyanne Atkinson and Campbell Newman have been elected Lord Mayor of Brisbane.[40]

Labor's Paul Keating lost the 1996 Election to the Liberals' John Howard. The Liberals had been in Opposition for 13 years.[41] With John Howard as Prime Minister, Peter Costello as Treasurer and Alexander Downer as Foreign Minister, the Howard Government remained in power until their electoral defeat to Kevin Rudd in 2007.

Howard generally framed the Liberals as being conservative on social policy, debt reduction and matters like maintaining Commonwealth links and the American Alliance but his premiership saw booming trade with Asia and expanding multiethnic immigration. His government concluded the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement with the Bush Administration in 2004.[35]

Howard differed from his Labor predecessor Paul Keating in that he supported traditional Australian institutions like the Monarchy in Australia, the commemoration of ANZAC Day and the design of the Australian flag, but like Keating he pursued privatisation of public utilities and the introduction of a broad based consumption tax (although Keating had dropped support for a GST by the time of his 1993 election victory). Howard's premiership coincided with Al Qaeda's 11 September attacks on the United States. The Howard Government invoked the ANZUS treaty in response to the attacks and supported America's campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In the 2004 Federal elections the party strengthened its majority in the Lower House and, with its coalition partners, became the first federal government in twenty years to gain an absolute majority in the Senate. This control of both houses permitted their passing of legislation without the need to negotiate with independents or minor parties, exemplified by industrial relations legislation known as WorkChoices, a wide ranging effort to increase deregulation of industrial laws in Australia.

In 2005, Howard reflected on his government's cultural and foreign policy outlook in oft repeated terms:[42]

When I became Prime Minister nine years ago, I believed that this nation was defining its place in the world too narrowly. My Government has rebalanced Australia's foreign policy to better reflect the unique intersection of history, geography, culture and economic opportunity that our country represents. Time has only strengthened my conviction that we do not face a choice between our history and our geography.

John Howard

The 2007 federal election saw the defeat of the Howard federal government, and the Liberal Party was in opposition throughout Australia at the state and federal level; the highest Liberal office-holder at the time was Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman. This ended after the Western Australian state election, 2008, when Colin Barnett became Premier of that state.

Following the 2007 federal election, Dr Brendan Nelson was elected leader by the Parliamentary Liberal Party. On 16 September 2008, in a second contest following a spill motion, Nelson lost the leadership to Malcolm Turnbull.[43] On 1 December 2009, a subsequent leadership election saw Turnbull lose the leadership to Tony Abbott by 42 votes to 41 on the second ballot.[44] Abbott led the party to the 2010 federal election, which saw an increase in the Liberal Party vote and resulted in the first hung parliament since the 1940 election.[45]

Through 2010, the party improved its vote in the Tasmanian and South Australian state elections and achieved state government in Victoria. In March 2011, the New South Wales Liberal-National Coalition led by Barry O'Farrell won government with the largest election victory in post-war Australian history at the State Election.[46] In Queensland, the Liberal and National parties merged in 2008 to form the new Liberal National Party of Queensland (registered as the Queensland Division of the Liberal Party of Australia). In March 2012, the new party achieved Government in an historic landslide, led by former Brisbane Lord Mayor, Campbell Newman.[47]

The following is a complete list of Liberal Party leaders:

Key: Liberal Labor Country/National PM: Prime Minister LO: Leader of the Opposition : Died in office

1 Queensland is represented by the Liberal National Party of Queensland. This party is the result of a merger of the Queensland Division of the Liberal Party and the Queensland National Party to contest elections as a single party.

2 The Northern Territory is represented by the Country Liberal Party, which is endorsed as the Territory division of the Liberal Party.

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Liberal Party of Australia - Wikipedia

The most familiar and influential national party for liberals in the US is the Democratic party.

A few definitions from dictionary.com for the term liberal include:

You'll recall that conservatives favor tradition and generally suspect things that that fall outside traditional views of "normal." You could say, then, that a liberal view (also called a progressive view) is one that is open to re-defining "normal" as we become more worldly and aware of other cultures.

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Liberals favor government-funded programs that address inequalities that they view as having derived from historical discrimination. Liberals believe that prejudice and stereotyping in society can hamper the opportunities for some citizens.

Some people would see liberal bias in an article or book that seems sympathetic to and appears to lend support to government programs that assist poor and minority populations.

Terms such as "bleeding hearts" and "tax and spenders" refer to progressives support of public policies that are designed to address perceived unfair access to health care, housing, and jobs.

If you read an article that seems sympathetic to historic unfairness, there could be a liberal bias.

If you read an article that seems critical of the notion of historical unfairness, there could be a conservative bias.

How do you know if a media presentation or book has a liberal bias?

When critics claim that the press is too liberal, they are often basing the claim on the belief that the press is voicing a view that is too far outside outside traditional views (remember that conservatives value tradition) or they are supporting policy that is based on the idea of "fixing" an injustice.

Today some liberal thinkers prefer to call themselves progressives. Progressive movements are those that address injustice to a group that is in the minority. Liberals would say that the Civil Rights Movement was a progressive movement, for example. However, support for Civil Rights legislation was, in fact, mixed when it came to party affiliation.

As you may know, many people were not in favor of granting equal rights to African Americans during the Civil Rights demonstrations in the sixties, possibly because they feared that equal rights would bring about too much change. Resistance to that change wrought violence. During this tumultuous time of change, many pro-Civil Rights Republicans were criticized for being too "liberal" in their views and many Democrats (like John F. Kennedy) were accused of being too conservative when it came to accepting change.

Child labor laws provide another example. It may be hard to believe, but many people in industry resisted the laws and other restrictions that prevented them from putting young children to work in dangerous factories for long hours. Progressive thinkers changed those laws. In fact, the U.S. was undergoing a "Progressive Era" at this time of reform. This Progressive Era led to reforms in industry to make foods safer, to make factories safer, and to make many aspects of life more "fair."

The Progressive Era was one time when government played a large role in the U.S. by interfering with business on behalf of people. Today, some people think the government should play a large role as protector, while others believe that the government should refrain from taking a role. It is important to know that progressive thinking can come from either political party.

Conservatives lean toward the belief that the government should stay out of the business of individuals as much as possible, and that includes staying out of the individual's pocket book. This means they prefer to limit taxes.

Liberals stress that a well-functioning government has a responsibility to maintain law and order, and that doing this is costly. Liberals would lean toward the opinion that taxes are necessary for providing police and courts, ensuring safe transportation by building safe roads, promoting education by providing public schools, and protecting society in general by providing protections to those being exploited by industries.

Conservative thinkers might see bias in an article that expresses a favorable view to taxes or to increasing government spending for initiatives like those mentioned above.

For more information on liberal or progressive values, go to Liberal Politics.

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What Is a Liberal - What Is Liberal Bias