The Myth of the 'Bleeding
Heart Liberal' Never Dies
By Steve Rensberry
Commentary
RP News (OPINION) -- 7/19/2025 -- I read a comment yesterday from a conservative who shared a familiar trope. Liberals are soft; conservatives are hard. The gentleman said that when it comes to liberals he has always thought of them as people who have "big hearts but small minds." Conservatives, on the other hand, are intelligent and practical and not afraid to make the tough decisions, he said.
Ok, got it, the old "bleeding heart liberal" myth which I've heard repeated since about birth, is still alive. If only it wasn't such a malicious and mistaken characterization. Think about it. Conservatives show disdain for liberals because they care -- too much!! They should be meaner, crueler and more inhumane! But seriously, who decides exactly where that balance point is? The illiberal worries about people loving their neighbor too much, but the equally important question is: how insensitive is too insensitive? When is punishment just and when does it become cruel and unusual to the point of death?
On April 28, 2020, news organizations were conveying official reports of more than one million people who died from the covid infection in the U.S. Were those lives just collateral damage to keep capitalist society functioning? How fatalistic do we want to be? I'm not sure, but I'd prefer to be on the side of the people who care too much, rather than on the side of those who care too little.
On the same subject, I was also called a "libtard" yesterday, by a conservative -- the tired old and disgusting anti-liberal slur that never dies. It is, I suppose, an indication of the true state of existential being for conservatives, even here in 2025, making themselves feel strong and smart by thinking of those they despise as retarded or sub-par. Being a freethinker, skeptic and lover of truth apparently is a hill too steep to climb for those needing absolute metaphysical certainty, however dubious.
The 'libtard' comment came from a poor misguided soul on a social media page promoting the ultra rightwing and 'project 2025'-loving Hillsdale College, sadly located in my birth state of Michigan. "Warning, do not engage with a bored libtard who only has a keyboard for company," said 'Hati Mari,' urging another poster not to engage with me. Well of course, because unlike liberal institutions which teach students to learn and discover and think for themselves, this college does not teach people how to think independently or to engage independently, it teaches them to be obedient, in total thought, to a specific ideology. I really thought they were beyond using such a dumb word like 'libtard' that applies literally to no one, but Hillsdale's primary glue is an irrational, quasi-philosolphical, fundamentalist hatred for liberalism, secularism, and other religions beside the one they parrot, so I'm not surprised.
A brief summary from the rationalwiki site, a much more trustworthy info source in many respects than the college itself. "Hillsdale College is a far-right Christian college located in Hillsdale, Michigan. They are strongly against social justice, diversity, and multiculturalism. Hillsdale has a love-hate view when it comes to mass murderer and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. The college was in favor of the Euromaidan uprising in Ukraine, but they essentially support the Russian occupation of Crimea, as they claim that it was in opposition to NATO expansion. Hillsdale College also condemned the invasion of Ukraine, but they also see Putin as a conservative strong man."
