Moral Issues

A common complaint from the Left about the Right (especially the religious of the Right) is that the Right seeks to impose its moral values on everyone. I don't know about that, but I do know that the Left -- with help from the Center -- has been imposing its moral values on everyone since the 1930s. Among the moral values revealed by the Left's political successes and present agenda are these:

• Murder is wrong, except when it is committed against the unborn, the newborn, and other defenseless persons.

• It is better to allow innocent persons to be victimized than to execute dangerous criminals or put them away for good.

• Theft is wrong, except when it is committed by the state in the name of "compassion" (i.e., taking from the productive and giving to the unproductive) or for any "public purpose."

• Discrimination is wrong, except when it is committed against white males (soon to be white, heterosexual males).

• Two wrongs don't make a right, except when the aforementioned discrimination is committed in the name of rectifying "injustices" by discriminating against white (heterosexual) males who had no hand in the "injustices."

• People should be free to live their own lives, except that they shouldn't be able to smoke in "public" places (i.e., privately owned businesses), decide with whom they will do business, decide how to run their own businesses, send their children to schools of their own choosing (unless they pay extra for the privilege), and on and on, into the night.
  

• War is wrong -- even though it saved Europe from Hitler -- and large defense budgets are wasteful and provocative -- even though they brought an end to the Cold War.

• Free speech is a paramount value, except when it comes to politics, business, and non-Leftish opinions on campus.

• I've got mine, now we can impoverish those who don't have theirs, in the name of environmentalism.
  

The question for the floor is this: How on earth can the Left and its fellow travelers claim to be offended by the Right's putative insistence on imposing its morality on everyone else? The Left's moral obtuseness is of a kind with its refusal to admit "liberal bias" in the media.

Related posts (a very incomplete list):

Social Injustice (05/23/04)
The Cost of Affirmative Action (06/01/04)
School Vouchers and Teachers' Unions (07/15/04)
Why Class Warfare Is Bad for Everyone (09/21/04)
Does Capital Punishment Deter Homicide? (10/04/04)
PETA, NARAL, and Roe v. Wade (11/17/04)
Flooding the Moral Low Ground (11/19/04)
Race, Intelligence, and Affirmative Action (12/05/04)
The Destruction of Income and Wealth by the State (01/01/05)
A Century of Progress? (01/30/05)
Feminist Balderdash (02/19/05)
Unlimited Government? (02/23/05)
Taking Exception (03/01/05)
Protecting Your Civil Liberties (03/22/05)
It's Not Anti-Intellectualism, Stupid (03/25/05)
The Case Against Campus Speech Codes (03/29/05)
Redefining Altruism (04/05/05)
Libertarianism, Marriage, and the True Meaning of Family Values (04/06/05)
Affirmative Action, One More Time (04/26/05)
Illusory Progress (05/15/05)
A Contrarian View of Segregation (05/18/05)
Free Markets, Free People, and Utter Disgust with Government (06/24/05)
An Agenda for the Supreme Court (06/29/05)
Second-Guessing, Paternalism, and Parentalism (07/13/05)
Global Warming and Life (07/18/05)
The Principle of Actionable Harm (07/19/05)
Saving the Innocent? (07/23/05)
Speaking of Religion... (07/26/05)

Technorati tag: Morality