13 1/2 Reasons Why Not to Be a Liberal: And How to Enlighten Others

THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO WINNING AN ARGUMENT WITH A LIBERAL.

"Antifa leftists may still burn this book, but more than a few center-left individuals will read 13 1/2 Reasons Why NOT to Be a Liberal and develop a new respectful understanding of conservatism." -- Dinesh D'Souza

Although conservatives outnumber liberals in 44 out of 50 states, it's a situation conservatives know very well in today's contentious political environment: Conservatives often find themselves in discussions with liberals who relentlessly hammer conservatives with insults, accusations, and unfounded assumptions about conservatism.

The question is: What is a proud and informed conservative to do?!

The answer is: 13 1/2 Reasons Why NOT to be a Liberal: And How To Enlighten Others, the conservative playbook to persuasive facts and arguments that detail the policies, accomplishments, and often-ignored compassionate nature of the conservative philosophy.

Presented in an easy-to-access format, Judd Dunning's ideological treatise will empower readers not only to hold their own in an argument with a liberal, but also to change hearts and minds, or at worst, preserve a few more mutually respectful relationships with more ease, clarity, and dignity.

Both a current and timeless conservative philosophical and argumentative manifesto made for conservative, right-leaning, independent, libertarian or "on the fence" Americans who are both passionate about politics and love being Americans.

If you can't achieve a win-win civil discussion with a liberal, at least you can use 13 1/2 Reasons Why NOT to be a Liberal to land some clear, intelligent blows. You will no longer serve as a liberal's doormat. You can maintain your pride and then move on to someone who really wants to both talk and listen. A "Freethinker"... probably a conservative!

ISBN-13: 9781630061739

Media Type: Hardcover

Publisher: Humanix Books

Publication Date: 11-10-2020

Pages: 317

Product Dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

Judd Dunning is an author, host, producer, and President of Conservatively Unplugged Media Group. Over his three decade-long political journey from liberal to conservative activist, Dunning has created and hosted the weekly television show Conservatively Unplugged! with Judd Dunning, his prior podcast Judd Dunning Unplugged! and his new show BulletPoints! With Michael Loftus and Judd Dunning. CU Media Group continues to bring together weekly some of the biggest names in politics and entertainment offering its own unique, unconventional, and highly entertaining brand of political discourse. A four-year reoccurring Politicon talent, Dunning hosted and produced Politicon's popular celebrity panel “Right-Wing Comedy In These Trumptastic Times.” His 21-minute television pilot was CU! News Goes to Politicon. Dunning created and moderated a celebrity panel based upon his book 13 1/2 REASONS WHY NOT TO BE A LIBERAL. Dunning also works as a conservative political TV correspondent, appearing on Andy Cohen's show Then and Now and often appears on stage speaking and performing stand-up. Prior, Dunning graduated pre-law minoring in political science and economics at Colorado State University. He later attended the American Conservatory Theater and worked as an actor, filmmaker, writer, and comedian for 17 years. He went on to write, produce and direct over ten projects while also performing in a myriad of film, television and stage projects, and comedically touring North America. Later, Dunning excelled in real estate, becoming a top five Institutional Capital Markets Managing Director and then a real estate investment syndicator. Before launching CU! Media Group, Judd successfully sold millions of square feet of institutional real estate and raised over $100 million dollars in private equity. Dunning is an avid surfer and lives in West Los Angeles. His wife and two daughters are his life, making any other hobbies unnecessary and impossible. He wouldn’t have it any other way.http://www.dwg-re.com/index.htm https://www.conservativelyunplugged.cohttps://www.facebook.com/BulletPointsUhttps://twitter.com/bulletpointsusahttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXKYFY4N7puYeFlDFLhH_RAhttps://www.instagram.com/bulletpointsusa/?hl=en Eric Golub is a nationally known comedian and author who has spoken in all 50 states. He has been a radio guest of Hannity, Dennis Miller, and Hugh Hewitt; he is known as one of the country's preeminent politically conservative comedians. Golub has written five books under his The Tygrrrr Express brand. His four politically conservative comedy books are: Ideological Bigotry, Ideological Violence, Ideological Idiocy and Ideological Lunacy. His religious comedy book is Jewish Lunacy. Eric can be found over 300 days a year performing any place that will have him, whether tea party rallies, Republican women's groups, churches and synagogues, Kiwanis and Rotary Clubs, or yes, even the White House itself. He lives and works in the Los Angeles metro area.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1 to 13 1/2 Reasons Why NOT to Be A Liberal: And How to Enlighten Others by Judd Dunning with Eric Golub

Big government fails at (almost) everything: The Republican Party small government pro-growth platform

Dennis Prager wisely stated, “The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.”⁽¹⁾

With everything at your fingertips thanks to Amazon, Uber, Facebook and others, it is easy for Americans to get complacent. As the private sector creates new technologies that vastly improve our lives, the public sector has regressed. Big government expansion remains a dangerous problem to our American individual liberty and the health of our nation’s future. The government destroys wealth faster than the private sector can create it. This is unsustainable. Even worse, a large segment of our society has been conditioned to see an overarching government leviathan as a positive. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The more people come to rely on the state to take care of them, the more they begin to develop a sense of entitlement. Feeling entitled creates two other negative character traits: ingratitude and resentment. The more people expect to be given, the less grateful they will be for what they receive. They become resentful when any entitlements are taken away.

Most people who go into government are good people with noble intentions and a commitment to public service. Yet as economist Milton Friedman brilliantly stated, “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”⁽²⁾ After all, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Intentions are emotional. Results and facts are rational. The facts are that far too many government programs result in unintended consequences that deliver crushing blows to the very people most in need of help.

Small government was the clear original vision of the people who founded the United States of America. It is the major reason America fought the Revolutionary War to escape the British. It has given more people more freedom and more opportunity to live a better life than any other country ever has.

Avoid the liberal straw man that creates a false dichotomy between big government and anarchy. Government is absolutely needed, but in limited form.

Liberal argument: Government economic intervention is best for our country to level the playing field and protect all Americans.

The facts: Most government programs fail. There have been countless catastrophic interventionist government mistakes that have destroyed lives and spread misery.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal failed to lift America out of the Great Depression. The Supreme Court struck down a significant chunk of his programs as unconstitutional. He then tried to retaliate by packing the court and was thwarted there as well. World War II ended the depression and created the jobs that FDR failed to create in his first nine years.

Later, President Lyndon Baines Johnson declared a war on poverty, and then poverty won out as well. His social programs of the 1960s destroyed lives, primarily minority lives. 72% illegitimacy rates among blacks have decimated black neighborhoods.⁽³⁾ When House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress dragged President Bill Clinton kicking and screaming into a strong welfare reform law, welfare rolls plummeted. When President Barack Obama gutted the work requirements, welfare rolls and the number of people on food stamps ballooned. When President Donald Trump reinstituted the work requirements, welfare rolls dropped again.⁽⁴⁾

The 2008 housing crisis was largely created by prior government policies. Liberal politicians led by Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank and Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd played racial politics with the banks. The banks under threat of closure were bullied into giving mortgages to poor minorities who could not afford them. When large numbers of those borrowers stopped making their payments, the market crashed. The nation got hurt by unnecessary government meddling. Blacks were hurt the most.⁽⁵⁾

Unlike FDR, Obama only failed to create jobs for eight years. His initial stimulus package failed. Attending a business panel, he joked, “Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.”⁽⁶⁾

Obama’s attempt at a government takeover of the American healthcare system was a spectacular failure. The Affordable Care Act was a giant ideological redistribution scheme. Premiums were raised on people more likely to vote Republican so his base of poor Democrats could have free healthcare. Cynical politics led to an even worse policy. Millions of people had their policies canceled and their premiums skyrocket. Those hurt by the law dwarfed the comparably few people who benefitted. “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”⁽⁷⁾ Those words by Obama became Politifact’s 2013 “Lie of the Year.”⁽⁸⁾

Obama tried to create a green energy revolution through brute government coercion. He forced Americans to buy new-fangled light bulbs because the standard light bulbs Americans had been using for over 200 years were no longer good enough. His light bulbs were worse. Yet the light bulb in his head never turned on. He tried to bribe Americans into buying solar panels. The people rejected them. He wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on Solyndra ⁽⁹⁾ and other failures. With no budget constraints, he piled up more debt than the first 43 presidents combined out of a desperate zeal for “fundamentally transforming”⁽¹⁰⁾ a nation that got plenty right before he was born.

Government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers. President George W. Bush got some pretty big things right, but even he was pushed into playing favorites on Wall Street. Throughout his presidency, Bush had refused to bail out failing companies. Democrats tried to tie him to Enron (not surprisingly a green energy and climate alarmism company), but when Enron begged for a bailout, he told them no. Six months before the financial crisis, he refused to bail out Bear Stearns. Then came the reckoning on Wall Street. In September of 2008, Lehman Brothers burned. Bush let them. Then Goldman Sachs was teetering. Bush was persuaded under extreme pressure to abandon his free market principles.

Goldman was deemed too big to fail. Could it be that Goldman had powerful government friends and Lehman did not? Former Goldman CEO Robert Rubin was Clinton’s treasury secretary. Former Goldman CEO Hank Paulson held the same position under George W. Bush. Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made a compelling argument. Credit had seized up. Without government liquidity in the form of bailouts, the global financial system could break down. The argument is powerful, but still begs an important question. Why save Goldman but not Lehman? Where was the ethics in that? That was crony capitalism at its worst. It opened the floodgates for the Obama administration to follow Bush and spend into the stratosphere under the attitude of “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.”⁽¹¹⁾

In America, people have the freedom to fail. Businesses also have that freedom. Every generation sees a few entrepreneurs create the next big thing that everybody must have. Turning from rags to riches is far more common than elites would have the rest of us believe. Michael Lindell was a drug addict whose addiction cost him his marriage and his savings. Today he is a multi-millionaire.⁽¹²⁾ The My Pillow CEO built a better mousetrap. It seems silly that something as simple as a pillow needed to be redone, but Lindell did it. People loved his pillows, told their friends, and gave him millions of dollars in sales.

This is America. We have bankruptcy laws that protect debtors from going to jail or worse. Entrepreneurs who fail in business move in with their family or friends and start again. Big business owners have friends and families with couches to sleep on as well. That is how it should be.

Creative destruction works. Trying to prevent it inevitably leads to stagnation (little or no economic growth). Japan and most of Europe have battled stagnation for decades.

When businesses fail, they do so with their own money (unless they are crony capitalists relying on government subsidies and bailouts). When government programs fail, they are wasting taxpayer dollars. In business, CEOs who fail frequently get fired. In government, it is often difficult to fire people. When there is no reward for success or punishment for failure, the result is usually indifference followed by more failure.

There are not enough pages to discuss the thousands of government programs that fail in every big-government presidency. A better challenge is to flip the question on its head. Ask every liberal to name one significant big-government program that has ever succeeded. They will cite Social Security and Medicare, but this is not true. These programs are constantly flirting with insolvency and eating up the largest portion of our federal budget. At their current pace, they may not exist in 30 years.

Name one big-government social program government has ever gotten right. Take your time.

Liberal argument: We must raise taxes and make the rich pay their fair share to best take care of the middle class and poor.

The facts: “The power to tax is the power to destroy.”⁽¹³⁾ Of all the ways government can damage an economy, raising taxes is the easiest and most destructive. Liberals would happily raise taxes on everyone because their vision of government requires it. However, massive tax increases on everybody is not politically feasible. Liberals insist that they are only raising taxes on the rich. They never specify what qualifies a person or family as rich. Most people do not see themselves as rich. They are fine sticking it to the wealthy until they figure out that the government is talking about them.

Slogans are useless. What matters is evidence in the form of results. The two conflicting schools of economic thought are between demand-side Keynesian economics and supply-side economics. Keynesians support active government intervention including tax hikes to stimulate economic growth. Supply-siders support tax cuts to stimulate economic growth. The results are crystal clear.

In his significantly effective book The New Conservative Paradigm, supply-sider Tom Del Beccaro provides a simple recap of tax policy attempts and their results. Supply-side tax cuts were enacted by President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1961. He considered them essential to stimulating economic growth. Republican President Richard Nixon was against them, dismissing them as a gimmick. President Ronald Reagan enacted supply-side tax cuts again in 1981 with a significant push from Delaware Senator William Roth and Buffalo Congressman Jack Kemp. President George W. Bush enacted supply-side tax cuts in 2001, 2002 and 2003.⁽¹⁴⁾

Under the tutelage of economists Arthur Laffer, Larry Kudlow and Steve Moore, Trump became America’s newest supply-side president. His December 2017 tax cuts ended a decade of stagnation. 2019 growth was up by a respectable 3% from the fourth quarter of 2017.⁽¹⁵⁾ During the more Keynesian President Obama’s 31 quarters — from the start of the expansion in the third quarter of 2009 through the first quarter of 2017 — growth was just 2.2%. History has shown that supply-side benefits take time and often show up predominantly in a supply-side president’s second term. The 2019 trend already appeared to align with prior proven historical patterns.⁽¹⁶⁾

In 2020 the American economy cratered, but this was due to a global pandemic. The COVID-19 Corona virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China and killed over two million people worldwide, including over 100,000 Americans. Medical experts convinced Trump to shut down much of the entire American economy to slow the spread of this new disease. The resulting severe economic contraction of 2020 was directly caused by economic closure. There was zero correlation between the Trump tax cuts and the unprecedented 2020 Corona crash. The strong correlation came between the tax cuts and the pre-pandemic 2019 economic boom.

Four presidents tried this supply-side approach, one Democrat and three Republicans. All four times the result was exactly as intended. Supply-side tax cuts spurred spectacular economic growth and unleashed prosperity.

In contrast, demand-side tax hikes were tried five times. In the 1930s, FDR attempted the Keynesian approach to combat the Great Depression. In the 1970s, President Jimmy Carter attempted it to combat malaise. In the 1990s, Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush and Bill Clinton both raised marginal rates. Four attempts under four different presidents, three Democrats and one Republican, produced the same result: failure. FDR worsened the Depression, Carter worsened the stagflation, and Bush worsened the recession. Clinton got lucky. He inherited an economy that was growing at nearly 5% in the fourth quarter of 1992^.(17) His tax hikes slowed growth, but he was bailed out by the stunning Internet revolution that began in 1995. Unparalleled wealth creation that most people had never seen before made up for the tax hikes.

Obama apparently never read Del Beccaro’s book, because the fifth president to try demand-side economics failed just like the first four. Growth was stagnant for Obama’s entire eight years, nearly tipping America back into recession. Obama made it easy for Trump, who just had to do the opposite of Obama. By reversing the Obama-Keynes policies, economic growth exploded under Trump^.(18) Trump is no dummy, but it helps to have Laffer, Kudlow, Moore, Del Beccaro, and the Wall Street Journal editorial pages shouting on a daily basis that supply-side tax cuts work.

In addition to supply-side income tax cuts in marginal rates, another key rate is the capital gains rate on sales of stocks. Clinton and his successor Bush, one Democrat and one Republican, both cut capital gains taxes. Clinton lowered the rate from 28% to 20%. Bush lowered it further to 15%. In both cases, millions of dollars poured into the financial markets.⁽¹⁹⁾ The rate should ideally be 0%, since the capital gains tax is inherently unethical as double taxation. Unfortunately, try making that case to a politically cowardly congress unable to articulate why good policy should supersede optics. Liberals deride trickle-down economics without having any idea how or why supply-side tax cuts work and have already worked repeatedly.

One more tax that needs be entirely repealed, even if only temporarily, is the tax on repatriated assets. Approximately two to four trillion dollars are being held overseas to avoid confiscatory U.S. taxes.⁽²⁰⁾ If that rate was lowered, overseas capital would flood the financial markets and probably double the U.S. stock market.

Ardent tax-cutting New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani summed it up best. “Money is fungible. When you tax rich people, they leave.”⁽²¹⁾ Rich people have tax shelters and expensive tax attorneys and accountants. The rich can always find ways to legally evade confiscatory taxes and transfer the burdens onto those less fortunate. When business owners receive tax breaks, they do not stuff the money under their mattresses or in Swiss bank accounts. They invest it. When liberals push investment, they really mean spending. Far too often, this spending is wasteful and creates nothing. Business owners engage in real investment. They purchase machinery and raw materials. They hire more employees to handle increased customer needs. Lower business taxes benefit everyone in the business from the owner to the receptionist. While the owner may receive a much larger raise, the secretary has far less risk. The secretary can find a new secretarial job. For many business owners, their business is their life. If their business fails, they have nothing. Lower taxes and regulatory burdens allow businesses to thrive. Raising taxes and increasing regulations are the best way to crush businesses and wreck an economy (outside of mandating businesses close altogether, as was done during the 2020 pandemic).

Raising taxes harms growth. Cutting taxes helps growth. It really is that cut and dry.

Liberal argument: Our country was created to spread equality. Big government is the only way to do this.

The facts: Nature is nature. People are different. We as human beings in the modern age intrinsically know that we are fully equal in regard to our natural rights. Nevertheless, each of us is inherently different from one another in our potential, talents and merit. We cultivate these distinguishing traits in our society around us. Our Constitution states that “All men are created equal,”⁽²²⁾ but it does not anywhere say that the government’s job is to force equality. The people are entitled to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”⁽²³⁾ The key word is liberty. Equality and liberty are incompatible. The Constitution chose to emphasize liberty. Equality is a noble aspirational goal, but not at the expense of liberty. Those who prefer equality at all costs have to shred the Constitution to enforce such equality. That is liberalism in a nutshell. Control government, and use the levers of government to reward those who have less and punish those who have more. External factors such as work ethic and lifestyle choices are ignored. Communist nations emphasize equality over liberty and use brute force to carry out their goal of equality. These nations have failed everywhere this approach has been tried with great cost and far too much human suffering.

Liberal argument: Europe has democratic socialism, and as a result is more caring. Big government in Europe provides the social safety net.

The facts: For some bizarre reason, many liberals worship Europe. They particularly idolize France. France is perfection, and perfection is France. Maybe they find sophistication in awful accents and a common bond in contempt for everyday Americans.

Enough speculation. The evidence is clear. While Europe may not be completely finished, it is in very deep trouble. The American economy is much larger than the entire European Union combined. Several European nations have gone bankrupt. Even in holy sacred France, unemployment has been mired in double digits for decades.⁽²⁴⁾ Bureaucratic rules make it almost impossible to fire workers. This in turn makes it impossible to hire them. Stagnation is the norm. Despite shared stagnation, there is rampant political instability. Governments are frequently toppled. Britain voted for Brexit⁽²⁵⁾ because the people realized Brussels was taking away their democracy. British voters concluded that they could do better on their own rather than be a part of failing Europe. Europe has no military, relying on the United States to defend it. France in particular has proven totally incapable and helpless to prevent its people from rampant crime and radical Islamic terrorism. Some Islamist parts of France are no-go zones where police fear to tread. The social safety net has not completely collapsed, but it is far from the romanticized dream of young college backpackers. I know. I was one. After one year in failed Old Europe, I returned home and found real paradise in the form of the American dream.

Liberal argument: Rent control, wage control, affirmative action, national healthcare, progressive taxation and large unions are necessary. The Environmental Protection Agency and a myriad of other agencies, policies and governmental intervention are also vital. Otherwise, the rich would run over the country, the environment and the middle class and poor.

The facts: Combining a ton of nonsense into one argument sometimes saves time by allowing the debunking of everything all at once.

Nixon experimented briefly with wage and price controls. The result was a complete economic failure and he quickly reversed course.⁽²⁶⁾

Nixon created the EPA as well. The environment was being legislatively protected before the EPA existed. Try pointing to one significant positive EPA accomplishment that required the EPA’s existence. If something truly is important enough, the legislature will act. That is what they are supposed to do.

Other nations have national healthcare. Their care is vastly inferior in quality to American healthcare. Europe has rationing. Old people barely rank higher than dogs, since the government can declare them too old to have expensive life-saving procedures. Waiting lines are long. It can take months to get approval for a procedure that would take mere days in the United States.

Plenty of people work in industries without a union presence. These people can be fired at any moment, but they can also voluntarily quit for a better job at their own convenience. For conservatives, unions can also be a political nightmare. Liberals love unions because unions collect involuntary dues and then spend that money on liberal political activities. Unions then spend more dues money on expensive marketing campaigns denying their political expenditures.

Union membership plummets when membership is voluntary. There was a time when unions were vitally necessary to prevent business abuses. Now there are labor laws in place. Despite the best union scare tactics, children are not being sent back to work in the coal mines and sweatshops. The most extreme Gilded Age labor abuses are in our past. Free markets and solely voluntary unionization remain most ideal in the present day. Conservatives fully respect the right of workers to voluntarily unionize, but great problems continue to arise with compulsory union membership. Mandatory union membership is still required by law in most states. As a result, large amounts of union dues are often spent on one-sided political agenda projects that run counter to the free individual political views of many mandated unions members and remain subject to abuses of power and graft.

Rent control makes it far more difficult for landlords to make upgrades to their units. The free market allows renters and seekers to find each other. Potential tenants and landlords both end up with many more options. Nobody is entitled to live in any particular neighborhood, city or country. Americans are free to reject rent increases by voting with their feet and moving to more affordable areas. Living on the Upper Westside of Manhattan or the beach in Santa Monica is not a constitutional right.

Forget progressive taxation. Until the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1913, the United States had no federal income tax.⁽²⁷⁾ America also had zero debt. Although taxes are now an inherent part of our functional modern government (especially military defense of the nation and our borders), overall higher progressive taxation and penalizing our wealthier job creators has not strengthened America.

Affirmative action was supposed to help those who have been marginalized in society. Unfortunately, it frequently fails to get to the recipients who need it most.⁽²⁸⁾ Affirmative action should be based on income, not race. Surely most reasonable people would agree that poor whites have a greater need for financial help than wealthy blacks.

Affirmative action is one of the few government programs that can claim some success. At least it has not been a complete failure. However, the unintended consequences are now rapidly outweighing the benefits. The stigma of being perceived as a token hire can last a lifetime. More importantly, careers that rely on merit tend to provide real diversity. Professional sports owners focus on trying to hire the best players. Sales jobs boil down to which people are the best salespeople. The United States Armed Forces want people who can kill bad guys and protect America. These professions are as race-neutral as any, and they function quite well. Industries with quota hires (Despite the denials, the next step is inevitably token quota hires) such as public education and government are messes.

The notion that rich people are the problem is just nuts. There are always rich people who inherit money and sit around leading lazy lives. Most people have no idea what the many living members of the Kennedy family actually do. Inherited wealth often leads to an unfulfilling unproductive life. However, most people become rich the old Smith Barney way. To quote the late John Houseman, “They earn it.”⁽²⁹⁾

Rich people provide jobs to other people. These new hires are not envious. They are grateful to be employed and willing to work hard in the hopes of one day becoming rich themselves. The government did not hire them. Private individuals did. In this country, busboys can own restaurants. Paperboys can own newsstands. Construction workers can start their own construction company. The main thing that could mess this up is government getting in the way. When government forces companies with 50 employees working 30 hours per week to provide free healthcare, employers cut back to 49 employees working 29 hours per week.⁽³⁰⁾

The best example of trying to soak the rich came in 1990. Congressional Democrats convinced Bush Senior to violate his “Read my lips: no new taxes” pledge.⁽³¹⁾ Not only did he raise income tax rates, but he also enacted a luxury tax on yachts and expensive watches. The unintended consequences were catastrophic. The rich tightened their belts and delayed buying yachts and watches. The yacht builders and watchmakers saw their industries get devastated. Many of them went out of business. In 1993, the same Bill Clinton who would raise income tax rates quietly repealed the luxury tax.⁽³²⁾

Liberals blame the rich. Conservatives want to become rich. Ask yourself which approach leads to a happier, better life.

Liberals want more government. Conservatives want less government. The evidence is overwhelming that with government, bigger is not better.

What should government do? Government