76-07-B8
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Memo to a Liberal[edit]
Transcript[edit]Norman Lear, the creator of television's All in The Family and Mary Hartman, recently hired Ben Stein, a conservative former White House speechwriter, as a consultant for his new Washington, D.C. oriented program All's Fair. Lear, a liberal in good standing, received a memo from Stein about his view of liberals. The producer's reaction isn't known, but he must have gotten quite an eyeful, judging from excerpts published in Conservative Digest. Stein doesn't mince words. "What I don't like", he says, "is the way rich liberals, who have made their money through the operations of the capitalist system and who would be miserable bureaucratic cogs in a socialist system, are nevertheless socialists. " He adds, "I don't like the way liberals of any income group assume that they have a monopoly on morality and that the only conscionable position on issues is their position." There's more. Stein says, "I especially resent the claims of white liberals that they know best about how to solve the problems of the poor and the black. There is hardly any evidence that liberal programs to help the poor and the black have done much good. The ordinary operations of the capitalist system, however, have made enormous gains economically for the poor and the black. Liberals don't seem to understand that if they take a dollar from one person and give it to another, there is rarely any benefit. If the economic system produces new dollars for everyone, everyone benefits." Ben Stein isn't likely to be invited to many liberal cocktail parties in Washington with comments such as these. But don't go away. He didn't stop there. He tore into another favorite liberal argument when he said, "I resent the notion that everything that corporations do is wrong and everything that -- "people" -- do is right." "Liberals don't understand that corporations are people. They are the people who work for the corporation, buy its products and own its stock. There is no mechanical person who is benefitted if corporations make a good profit. Real people benefit, just as real people lose when corporations lose money." Mr. Stein's plain talk doesn't leave out national defense, either. He says, "I resent the liberals who look the other way whenever there is a threat to decency or peace from the Communist nations and refuse to take seriously threats to our security from countries and movements which openly plan to destroy us. It is the most pious and dangerous nonsense to think that the Soviets are deterred from dominating the entire world by anything but force. Moral suasion has never accomplished a thing against the Communists, yet that is all the liberals want us to have in our arsenal. They would have a disarmed and vulnerable America, trusting to the goodwill of people who have no goodwill." -- UNQUOTE. That's not all, but you get the point of Ben Stein's long memo to Norman Lear. I have a feeling we haven't heard the last from him. Neither have the people who believe that there's such a thing as a free lunch. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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