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There is nothing the Daily Mail likes better than a bit of 'left' bashing. It is a strange world when the word 'liberal' is seen as a terrible insult - how did such a positive word come to have so many negative connatations?
Anyway, not getting in that debate, let us focus on some comments from the Mail website on an article entitled: 'Why do the Left hate the family? Liberals will ignore new findings that children growing up with a mother and father fare best'.
Nice of the Mail to get both swearwords (Left and Liberals) into the title and good to see the commentators get stuck in:
The reason why Labour left hate the traditional family is three fold in my opinion. 1. Hardline femenism. 2. Promotion of same sex marriage 3. Anything loosely connected to Christianity ie Marriage.
Every tax & benefit policy rolled out by Gordon Brown over the last 12 years has been pro. alternative family or lifestyle and anti traditional two parent family or Marriage.
While each of the above groups have a right to stand up for their way of life the government has no right to penalise Marriage and traditional families by policies which not only promote alternative lifestyles but has dramatically increased benefit fraud on a mass scale. Tax credit fraud is out of control and well known that up to 70% of single parent claims are dishonest.
The government went out of it's way to legalise same sex marriage (fair enough) however the very opposite has been done for traditional marriage. Labour blame Mrs Thatcher for smashing ordinary families IT IS THEY WHO ARE FINISING THE JOB
- N James, Edinburgh, 2/2/2009 23:56
As usual the Mail interpretes diversity as positive discrimination, as something negative, rather than simply a greater acceptance of different lifestyles. So, rather than diversity being about acceptance and understanding; Mail readers instead interpret it as an attack on 'normal' values or 'traditional' families. Mail readers do not seem to understand that families break up for numerous reasons, not because New Labour or the 'left' are waging some kind of war against families.
It also includes the well-known Mail technique or simply making up statistics and making massive assumptions. So has EVERY tax and benefit policy rolled out by Gordon Brown over the last 12 years really been pro-alternative family or lifestlye? I seemed to have missed this. Again, notice how the commentator equates equality with being pro-alternative and subsequently anti-traditional families or marriage. Again, this seems to be implying that the Left or Labour is somehow discouraging people from starting families or marrying the opposite sex.
This is a post hoc ergo propter hoc (latin: 'after this, therefore because of this') argument, the Mail is implying that the increase (or assumed increase) in diverse families, single mothers or civil partnerships is caused by an active promotion of such lifestyles by the Left. However, single parents and gay couples are not a modern phenomenon created by New Labour pro-alternative policies; whereas in reality at that such policies have done is increased equality in the way that existing lifestyles are created. The Mail seems to beleive that if equality as an idea (or ideal) was scrapped, then suddenly everyone would revert to a mythical idea of 1950s Britain where gays and single mums did not exist and everyone was a nuclear family.
How sad that 'the powers that be' do not have the courage, intelligence or good grace to acknowledge the sense in articles such as this.
- martin, Bideford, 3/2/2009 0:33
How glad I am that you have no power Martin you tool. Still, he has the support of at least 35 Mail readers.
The irony is that most parents that I talk to already know that what these new research shows are true. Many, if not most, are sick and tired of the liberal experiments that have run rough shod over our societies core institution - the family.
It's simply undeniable that traditional values - lovingly applied - create a better and more stable society.
My personal favourite is the liberal confusion between child abuse and child discipline. Criminalising loving parents who would give a naughty child a hiding - how sad is that? My parents gave me a few hidings when I grew up. I now remember them with a smile knowing that they did what was right and loving eventhough my backside disagreed at the time!
Compare this with the failed ASBO's scheme trying to tame feral youths who's parents have abandoned their responsibility of disciplining their children - but how can they when they're too scared? And the law don't back them up?
It's time for the silent majority to speak up!
- Neil Best, London, UK, 3/2/2009
So, single parents and gay couples are the result of 'liberal experiments'? This is a typical Mail argument, gays and single families are 'created', therefore not natural, and so they are unnatural and evil. Also, this comment is conclusive proof that childhood 'hidings' turns your child into a delusional Mai-reading moron in adult life. Classic Mail line about being the silent majority, poor ignored Mail readers, only having the Mail, Express, Telegraph, Sun etc parroting their views, apart from that they are silent.
The Left hate the family because the family is an obstacle to the State, State power and social engineering. They always have hated it and always will.
- Dave Peters, Perth, Australia, 3/2/2009 3:26
Mail readers commenting on 'social engineering' without ever questioning the role of the media in generating society's views. The Mail must have engineered the world which Dave inhabits, they must have done, he lives in Australia so he couldn't possibly base his opinion on anything else.
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