自由派人士：保守派眼中的蠢驴

　　"Liberals" in America are roughly what Europeans call "social democrats": left-of-centre supporters of the welfare state who believe that government power should be used to protect ordinary citizens from the hard edges of capitalism. They favor maximum personal liberty while believing that business should be intelligently regulated.

　　Conservatives bewail their blindness to the distortions that arise from bureaucratic meddling in the free market. They also accuse liberals of assuming that society responds positively to government-sponsored "improvement". For conservatives, most improving of society is the prerogative of private citizens acting voluntarily, not of politicians -- much less of unelected bureaucrats who compel citizens to do what bureaucrats think is best for other people.

　　Liberals were usually the dominant actors in US politics from 1933 to 1980. With the election of Ronald Reagan a new era dawned: now conservatives have most of the bright political ideas and liberals are on the defensive. Today's cartoon by Chuck Asay echoes the conservative critique of today's liberals.

　　"Some liberals," Asay asserts, "love people of color...unless they happen to be conservative." The first frame shows two Democratic donkeys -- almost all liberals are Democrats -- joining blacks in singing a favorite song of the civil-rights movement. In the next frame, in contrast, we see liberal donkeys mocking black Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, a determined conservative, as an "Uncle Tom", meaning a black who cooperates with his own oppressors. President Bush's current national security advisor and future secretary of state Condoleezza Rice they call "Brown Sugar"①, a name suggesting that Rice is playing the (figurative) whore②to her boss.

　　In the next two frames, liberals are shown extending every indulgence to lecherous Democrat Bill Clinton while taking a hard line with three Republican sinners: Rush Limbaugh, loud-mouthed radio commentator beloved of conservative white men, former secretary of education William Bennet, author of many profitable books calling for greater public virtue, and House Republican whip③Tom DeLay of Texas. All have been involved in recent scandals of one sort or other, none sexual.

　　The implication of the next two frames is that secular liberals are blind to what religion means for politics -- that no truly religious person can put his convictions aside when he votes. And in the last two frames, Asay accuses liberals of cultural prejudice akin to racism: civil rights are "natural" for Americans, they seem to feel, but Iraqis are just not culturally up to democracy. Hence the war in Iraq is a hopeless undertaking.

　　All of which goes to show that, as far as Chuck Asay and other conservatives are concerned, the liberals of the Democratic Party are not only donkeys but asses as well.