One of the problems with political discourse in recent years is that the right wing prefers to attack straw men they create as opposed to responding to actual liberal views. Generally when a right wing pundit attacks liberals, the views they are attacking have little resemblance to the views I hold. Here is one exception where National Review accurately lists some liberal beliefs (emphasis mine):
Congratulations to Captain Picard! [Mike Potemra]
Palace sources say Patrick Stewart is about to be knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. It turns out he is an avid supporter of Britain’s Labour party; his support must be especially welcome in this, one of Labour’s darker hours. Coincidentally, I have over the past couple of months been watching DVDs of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a show I missed completely in its run of 1987 to 1994; and I confess myself amazed that so many conservatives are fond of it. Its messages are unabashedly liberal ones of the early post-Cold War era – peace, tolerance, due process, progress (as opposed to skepticism about human perfectibility). I asked an NR colleague about it, and he speculated that the show’s appeal for conservatives lay largely in the toughness of the main character: Jean-Luc Picard was a moral hardass where the Captain Kirk of the earlier show was more of an easygoing, cheerful swashbuckler. I think there’s something to that: Patrick Stewart did indeed create, in that character, a believable and compelling portrait of ethical uprightness.
Potemra realizes that peace, tolerance, due process, and progress are liberal messages. Presumably this means that the opposites of these represent conservative messages. This also demonstrates that, contrary to conservative attempts to portray liberals as weak on national security, a leader can both be a liberal and be tough.
