Rebutting "20 Obvious Truths"

In an astounding little bit of ignorance, conservative blogger John Hawkins  posts "20 Obvious Truths that will Shock Liberals".  The title should have been "20 blatant lies that will make liberals snicker":

1) The Founding Fathers were generally religious, gun-toting small government fanatics who were so far to the Right that they'd make Ann Coulter look like Jimmy Carter. 
Not even close to true.  There were some religious people among them, but it should be observed that Thomas Paine repeatedly and explicitly denied the existence of God, and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington both overtly and conspicuously rejected conventional church observance.  When the Continental Congress decided that they needed to have an invocation while they were working on the Declaration, it was John Adams they selected to give it.  Adams was a deacon in what church?  He was a Unitarian.  Adams wasn't an atheist but many Unitarians today are.  After they were out of office, Adams and Jefferson had a long exchange of letters that have come down to us, in which they came to agree on an idea known as "Deism", which is the belief that if there is a God, He doesn't participate in the day to day activities of the universe in any way.   Jefferson was one of the few gun advocates among the founders.  Very few Americans owned firearms until the civil war.  getting enough guns was a big problem during the revolution.  Read about Eli Whitney and the Springfield Armory.  Remember that a gun was a huge, heavy, expensive object in the 1770s.  You had to be very rich to own one and it was totally unrealistic to carry one around much. 
 

2) The greatest evil this country has ever committed isn't slavery; it's killing more than 50 million innocent children via abortion.
That's just silly.  Slavery and its aftermath killed at least that many, and most of them were or had been children who actually were wanted. 

Did you know that aborting a viable child is still illegal even after Roe vs Wade, except in certain very rare circumstances?

Unhygienic abortion killed hundreds of thousands of innocent women and girls every year, and still kills more than 200 every day, mainly due to the work of idiots like you.  Women who had lives, and were wanted by their families.  Sometimes their pregnancy was their fault, but usually it was someone else's.  Unwanted children are a leading cause of poverty and crime.  You cannot stop abortion.  It is a necessary evil, like chemotherapy.  But you can make it safe, and you can minimize the causes of unwanted pregnancy.   But you're opposed to doing either.

3) Conservatives are much more compassionate than liberals and all you have to do to prove it is look at all the studies showing that conservatives give more of their money to charity than liberals do.

the link shows that Red states have a higher percentage of people that give to charity.  Blue states have a higher percentage of people living in poverty and can't afford to give, so this is a specious comparison.  you're going to have to find better evidence than that.   Remember also that giving to churches is considered charity in this country, even when the churches are blatantly profit making enterprises.

4) When the Founding Fathers were actually around, there were official state religions and the Bible was used as a textbook in schools. The so-called "wall of separation between church and state" has absolutely nothing to do with the Constitution and everything to do with liberal hostility to Christianity.

Yes, the founders were very aware of the damage religion had caused in the past and were determined to avoid it.  Article VI of the constitution says there shall never be a religious test for public office, and the first amendment bans state imposition of religion.  Yes, the constitution does impose a wall of separation.

5) The biggest problem with our economy today is Barack Obama. His demonization of successful people, his driving up gas prices, his regulatory overload and threats to increase taxes have terrified businesses into hunkering down, refusing to spend money, and declining to hire new people. Replacing him would do more than any government policy to spur economic growth.

Name one time that Obama has demonized success.  He has frequently spoken to just the opposite position.  He named Immelt and Geithner, both very pro-big business guys, to important cabinet level positions. He has cut taxes beyond even what Bush had done, his regulations are less than what existed during most of the Clinton administration and far less than during Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, when the economy was booming.  The biggest problem with the economy are people who think austerity is a solution to our problems, and those that think that financial regulations are unnecessary.

6) Not only are conservatives more patriotic than liberals, but most American liberals "love" America in about the same way that a wife-beater loves his wife.

I think you've got that one almost exactly backwards.  Progressives, conservationists, egalitarians and other actual patriots want to preserve what's good about America, while exploiters, retrogressives like you, and jingoistic symbol worshipers want to steal what they can, damn the consequences.   Many conservatives think they're somehow more patriotic than others, but they don't know enough history or science to understand that that's not true, nor do they understand the consequences of a lot that they do.  But I don't say they're anti-patriots in some way, just that they're mistaken about some of their practices and beliefs.  What you say is offensive and ignorant.

7) Out of every 100 cries of “Racism” you hear these days, 99 are motivated by nothing other than politics.

It's true.  about 90% of the racism I hear these days is people talking about some guy they think is a Kenyan socialist.  They've learned to not say anything about ordinary black people, but since this is politcal, they figure he's fair game.

8) Anyone paying income taxes is certainly paying his “fair share" -- and then some -- compared to the people who pay nothing.

Most of the people who pay nothing have almost no income.  A few have enough income they can afford to buy politicians.  

9) You don't have a "right" to anything that other people have to pay to provide for you.

Roads, police, military, schools? 

10) If we can ask people to present an ID to buy alcohol, drive a car, or get on an airplane, then asking them to present identification to vote is a no-brainer.

Except the identification you speak of is contrived to disenfranchise large groups of people, most of whom tend to vote for democrats. There is no evidence that the problem it purports to solve is significant (one study of the 2008 national election found 12 cases of voter fraud, of over 128 million voters.   at least a million votes were swung toward the republicans by election fraud, mostly perpetrated by elections officials.  At least 5,000 democrat voters were disenfranchised by election fraud in Florida in 2000 (caging), and possibly as many as 100,000.  Bush won this election by 500 votes)

11) There's absolutely nothing that the government does smarter, better, or more efficiently than the private market with roughly equivalent resources.

The police department?  roads?  public education?  financial regulation?  all of these are things have been tried privately.  a few have worked on a small scale but failed, in some cases spectacularly, when done privately.

12) The biggest problem with education in this country is liberals. They fight vouchers, oppose merit pay, refuse to get rid of terrible teachers, and bend over backwards to keep poor kids trapped in failing schools.

The biggest problem with education is underfunding it.  Yes, there have been problems with union abuse, but there's far more trouble caused by starving the beast.

13) Fascism, socialism, and communism are all left-wing movements that have considerably more in common with modern liberalism than modern conservatism.

Liberalism is a form of moderation.  look up the word in a dictionary.  Some fascists started out as socialists but became right wingers when that was obviously failing. Hitler and Mussolini, for example.  Both were tools of the big corporations, just like you.  Communism is a left wing movement.  Liberalism is a centrist movement.  Fascism is very much a right wing movement.

14) The Democratic Party was behind slavery, the KKK, and Jim Crow laws. It was also the party of Margaret Sanger, George Wallace, and Bull Connor. It has ALWAYS been a racist party. Even today, white liberals support Affirmative Action and racial set-asides because they still believe black Americans are too inferior to go up against whites on an even playing field.

The civil war was seen in the south as having been provoked by a Republican president, Lincoln, and for a century they held a grudge against all republicans.   So they supported democrats.  When the southern Democrats weren't racist enough for them, they founded a few parties of their own, such as the Dixiecrats, George Wallace's American Independent Party, and others.  Lyndon Johnson was widely regarded as a race traitor for supporting the civil rights act, so many of them switched sides in protest.

Ted Bundy was active in Republican politics.  By your reasoning, the republicans are behind sex murderers.  I'm not accusing you of that, but you're doing the identical thing to non-rightwingers.
 

15) A man with good morals who falls short and becomes a hypocrite is still a far better man than a liberal who can never be called a hypocrite because he has no morals at all.

Again, that's just stupid, ignorant and offensive.  A man with good morals is generous, considerate and thoughtful.  conservatives are none of these things.

16) The most dire threat to America's future and prosperity in the last 150 years hasn't been the Nazis, the Soviets, or Al-Qaeda;, it's the spending and overreach of our own government.

You're right that none of these things is a particularly big threat to America's future, and only the Nazis ever were.  Greed, austerity and narrowmindedness are big threats to America's future.

17) Greed isn't someone wanting to keep more of what he earns; it's people demanding a greater share of money that someone else earns.

Good point.  Tax financial profits higher than income gained through work.  right now they're taxed at about half the rate.

18) Most of the time in American politics, the liberal "victim" is really a bad guy who is absolutely delighted by the opportunity to pretend to be "offended."

I can't think of a single example of this.  Andrew Breitbart and James O'Keefe built their entire careers on it.

19) Jesus Christ was not a conservative, a liberal, or a politician. He was also not a capitalist or a socialist. Still, you can say this: Jesus drew sharp lines about what's right and wrong, he wasn't tolerant of what the Bible categorizes as sinful behavior, and there's absolutely no question that he would adamantly oppose abortion and gay marriage.

Not true.  Birth Control and after-birth "exposure" were common practices during Jesus's time and he spoke not a word on the subject.   There's one tiny passage in the old testament about homosexuality and it's surrounded by much more extensive and explicit passages promoting slavery and how bad it is to handle the flesh of a pig (think football).   If Jesus ever considered these things at all, it hasn't come down to us.  Even if you were right about these being sins, a big part of his mission was compassion for sinners.  Didn't you know?

20) When you demand that other people fund your sexual escapades by buying your contraception, your sex life becomes their business.

Huh? I think you're talking about health insurance paying for birth control.  virtually all doctors regard birth control as a necessity.   Many women take the hormones for health reasons--they may not be having sex at all.   Even if you have sex only occasionally, you still need to take it regularly for it to work at all.  Because some crackpot in Rome thinks it's abhorrent doesn't give them the right to override the doctor's orders.