Extremists

As is their custom, the Left is once again debasing the language, turning perfectly useful words into meaningless space-fillers and empty pejoratives. The latest example is their use of the word "extremist" as a means to smear their political opponents. Senator Charles Schumer was recently overheard telling his Democrat colleagues that he was instructed to use the word often when talking about the tea party, presumably in order to couple the words tea-party and extremist together in the public consciousness.

From the frequency with which Senator Harry Reid and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi employ the word it's likely that they all received the same memo.

But what does it mean, exactly? What is an extremist in the liberal lexicon? Here are a baker's dozen criteria by which you can discern whether someone, yourself even, is an extremist. You know you're an extremist in the minds of liberal Democrats if you believe any of the following:

• The American people should be governed by what the Constitution says and not what we wish it said.
• Government should not spend more money than what it has.
• Paying a third or more of your income in taxes is quite enough.
• Regulations and taxes on business depresses the number of people businesses can hire.
• The best way to become energy independent in the short to medium term is to exploit the energy resources we have within our borders.
• People who come to this country should do so legally.
• Marriage should be between one man and one woman.
• The military is not a laboratory in which to conduct social experiments like inserting women into combat units or using affirmative action in promoting officers.
• Killing unborn children is not an acceptable means of birth control.
• Able-bodied people should work for their living and not be permitted to live off the labor of others.
• The United States was founded on principles that trace their genesis to the Christian tradition and that freedom of religion does not entail freedom from religion.
• We oppress the poor by denying them the right to choose the schools to which they will send their children.
• The most racially just society is one which is blind and indifferent to color. A society which makes color a criterion for special treatment is fundamentally unjust.

These are the beliefs held by the people it pleases Senator Schumer to disparage for their "extremism".

Here's an interesting thought experiment. Try to imagine what the views of the Left in this country must be if Mr. Schumer and his ideological soul-mates consider these views to be "extreme" by comparison.