Son, you’ve chosen to become liberal.  Liberalism isn’t easy to live up to.  You need to understand it in all its facets, and know the attitudes you must take.

Liberalism, or progressivism, is primarily a push for power.  Your side wants to destroy conservatism and eliminate all conservative tendencies in the world.  Your push, carried to complete success, will ultimately result in a communist society, where everyone is equal, (except for members of the government, all of whom are top party leaders.)

The objective of progressivism is ever greater control of the people by the government, and the first milestone for them is achieving control and administration of all major businesses and the economy.  This is accomplished through laws and regulations.

The next milestone is socialism: (Merriam-Webster: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods).  In other words, government takes over the businesses.

Progressives are never satisfied, however, and after achieving socialism will try to push on to communism.  (No one has a very concise definition of communism, but in short, it’s a socialist state in which the government owns all property and controls all assignment of labor.  It is totalitarian by nature.)

The progressive/liberal (Let’s call it P/L) push for power is an intellectual scam which succeeds because most people are either: incapable of reasoning, or refuse to do so because they have already formed their belief system.  Your side uses words as weapons.  Words can mean different things to different people, and your side takes advantage of that.

P/L’s use the same tactics over and over again.  In any society other than the perfected communist state, there are rich and poor, and likely a group of people who are more than poor but not wealthy enough to be called rich: the so-called “middle class.”  There are never more than a few “rich” people, and thus in a republic or democracy where people have one vote per person, they can successfully attack the rich, and claim to aid the poor, which simultaneously scamming the middle class into thinking they will be helped as well.

P/L’s always want to tax the rich, and finance benefits for the poor.  They also heavily tax the middle class, for the same reason.  As long as the poor are receiving benefits, they will tend to vote for the P/L’s, thus enhancing P/L power.

In essence, P/L’s tax the rich and the middle class, and subsidize the poor.  This formula never varies.

Whatever you subsidize, you get more of, especially when the poor don’t have to do anything.  They don’t have to work for a living.  Thus, the numbers of poor voters who give power to P/L’s increases.

Whatever you tax, you get less of.  P/L controlled governments overtax the rich and the middle class, which holds their numbers down.

P/L’s run a constant propaganda machine to confuse people and persuade them to support the P/L’s.  The use emotion-grabbing words such as “fairness, equality, and a living wage for everyone, regardless of race, creed, or color, (except for conservatives or Christians)”.  Of course, there is no precise definition for any of these words and they mean whatever P/L’s want them to mean.

Another P/L tactic that never varies is to divide all people into categories, each of which might be considered a group of victims, then gain their support by claiming to be advocates for their benefit.  P/L’s claim to be the champions of blacks, Hispanics, women, gays, union employees, the handicapped, the old, and so on ad infinitum.  However, they never actually do much to help a group out of the “victim” category, because then the former victims might feel free to vote for someone else.

P/L’s need big, powerful government to make lots of rules and spend lots of money enforcing “fairness”, “equality”, and “living wage”.

P/L’s believe their own words, and they consider themselves on a higher moral plane than conservatives.  They are always right, conservatives always wrong.  For some reason, most of them see no evil in following the recommendation of Saul Alinsky, who taught that lying, cheating, and stealing, or any other non-violent behavior, is perfectly OK to advance the P/L cause.  The only difference between Alinsky and Marx was that Marx preferred violent revolution to achieve the communist state.

What’s wrong with the above?  If you’re a normal person, incapable of thinking logically, the above must have sounded pretty good.

There is a flip side.  There is a reason why conservatism is better.

First, the objective of conservatism is to achieve a smooth-running, capitalist, democratic society where the government is small, efficient, non-corrupt, and lawful, and all the people are responsible, law-abiding, and willing to earn a living.  They want to be free to choose what they do.  They want the opportunity to build a better life for themselves if they work hard or take risks to earn it, without being unfairly taxed.  Socially, they want structure, stability, and morality.  They want reasonable laws and regulations, and they want the laws based on a sound constitution.  They want a strong, happy economy.

Communist societies deny freedom to the individual.  They flatten prosperity, because wealth is shared.  It doesn’t matter that you work harder than others, you get only whatever food, housing, and transportation the government gives you.  Everything is rationed.  The economy is planned, and since the government must control every aspect of life, there is no private ownership of land or business.  The government owns everything.

For most of America’s history, our nation has followed the conservative model.  We had an expanding, strong economy and built the best lifestyle (for many) and the best overall standard of living in the world.  Our poorest rank with the middle class of some countries, (where there may be no running water, electricity, television, and little food.)

Existing communist countries (China, North Korea, Cuba) have subjugated their populations, keeping them in institutionalized poverty.  No rational person would want to live in any of them.  Russia, having encouraged some capitalist influences into their economy, has somewhat bettered the standard of living, which is comparable to capitalist or socialist countries on their borders (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland.)

Some comparisons:

GDP per capita: U.S. 19^th, $54,800; Russia, 69^th, $24,800; China, 112^th, $12,900; Cuba, 131^st, $10,200; North Korea, 208^th, $1,800.

Numbers are 2014 estimates from CIA World Factbook.