Liberal Rhetoric 101: Overgeneralization

"Jihadists are right wing, as is the Tea Party!"

"The Ku Klux Klan is right wing, so is the Tea Party!"


 "Jesus taught to help the poor, ergo massive government welfare is Biblical!"

I'm guessing you've heard these claims, yes? It's all part of the liberal practice of taking a subject, looking at it from a great distance and boiling them down to a single common denominator while ignoring the dozens of other significant differences between the two. 

Lets consider the above three examples, shall we?

"Jihadists are right wing, as is the Tea Party!" and "The Ku Klux Klan is right wing, so is the Tea Party!" belong in the same explanation, so we'll treat them together.

The argument is based on the overgeneralized fact that "Radical Islam, the Ku Klux Klan and the Tea Party are on the political right.  While this is true, there is a matter of scale that is ignored by this comparison (please excuse the crudity of this model, it IS NOT to scale):

Note that while the Tea Party, the Ku Klux Klan and Radical Islam (as well as Monarchy, added in for comparison) are on the right wing of the spectrum. But no one who actually UNDERSTANDS the Tea Party (rather than the Drive-By Media's meme of the Tea Party) could consider it the same as the KKK or Radical Islam.

The Tea Party stands for equality and freedom FOR ALL, irregardless of race, in stark contrast to the KKK. It stands for a Constitutional Representative Republic, not a monarch, in stark contrast to monarchy. Finally, the Tea Party stands for the First Amendment's protection of Freedom of Religion, in stark contrast to Radical Islam.

The same would be true if a conservative were to attempt to claim that American Liberalism was the equivalent of Nazism (yes, the NAZI party was the NATIONAL SOCIALIST PARTY aka Left Wing, not right) or Communism. While these two factions do fall on the Left of the political spectrum, they are starkly farther to the Left than American Liberalism. (Comparing American Liberalism to European Socialism is a close comparison, however.)

Now for my third example:

"Jesus taught to help the poor, ergo massive government welfare is Biblical!"

While Christianity teaches us to help and provide for the poor, and liberals (at least claim) to try to help the poor using government welfare, there is a major difference in the way Jesus taught us to help the poor and how liberals try to help the poor. as I've pointed out over and over, there is no place in the Bible where Jesus said "Give your money to the government, and let the government help the poor." There's nowhere ANYWHERE in the Bible where God commands the government to care for the poor.

Even though liberals love to give the false impression that conservatives don't care about the poor, it's just not true. It's just that our plan to help the poor doesn't involve government. We believe in the Biblical model of individuals helping the poor either directly or through private charities.

All three of these examples show the liberal mentality of looking at things from only one angle, without looking at the nuances and specifics of the situations which make these supposed equivalencies not actual equivalencies.  To respond to these arguments is simple. Just take the time to break down the sheer ridiculousness of these comparisons by discussing the very nuances and specifics that make the equivalencies not equivalent.

*yes I AM quoting Back to the Future intentionally