Liberals and other leftists have by necessity gotten quite good at hiding their agenda.  When the people learn just what it is they want to do, it’s almost always soundly rejected.  Their solution to this is never to change their agenda, but to hide it.  Yet sometimes the truth just slips out despite their best efforts.  Here are a couple of recent examples:

Yes, we’re buying votes

The Washington Post collected commentary from economists, pollsters and other politicos regarding the President’s request to provide a one-time $250 check to Social Security recipients. The reason given by the President is that seniors need help because they won’t be getting a cost of living adjustment this year (because there was no inflation and thus no increase in the cost of living).

One democratic pollster strayed from this narrative, however, and let their true motivations slip out.  Acknowledging that the proposal should be adopted “for political reasons,” he suggested the $250 benefit “will go a  long way toward holding on to a voting bloc that will be critical in next year’s midterm election.”  This is what is known as vote-buying, a cynical practice of stealing from Peter to bribe Paul that big government liberals are especially, though not uniquely, prone to.

We need economic pain for environmental gain

Web editor for The Nation, Emily Douglas, let a big one slip at a recent panel discussion on the environment.  When asked how to “reverse our culture of consumerism here in the United States,” Douglas immediately fired back, “make the recession worse.”  Although she claimed later this was a flippant answer, she also confirmed in her closing what many of us have said about the environmental movement for some time: it seeks to sacrifice human well-being in the name of environmental protection.  Its primary target is capitalism, because it has done more than anything to elevate the living standards people throughout the world.

Giving her final thoughts, Douglas stated flatly that she thinks “things should be more expensive” for Americans.  In other words, she wants people to be able to afford less conveniences, and thus to have a lower standard of living.  Sadly, this seems to be the dominant view in the modern environmental movement.