That’s the question our friend Michael Medved answers in his latest article from Townhall.com entitled “The Essence of Liberalism: Embracing Life’s Losers”
Enlightened” lefties long to embrace and exalt all those who claim to have suffered from hard luck or oppression: the homeless, single mothers, “people of color,” homosexuals, AIDS patients, feminists, convicted criminals, Native Americans, atheists, immigrants and many more. Recent Democratic Conventions have resembled festivals of fine whines, with countless testimonials from one victim group or another expressing hopelessness and helplessness unless the Donkey Party returned to power.
The leftist impulse to side with the underdog has become so powerful that liberals never bother to inquire whether a given “oppressed” group counts as deserving or not.
This explains the odd liberal sympathy for Islamo-Nazi terrorists, whose radically reactionary (indeed, medieval) ideology should make them anathema to enlightened opinion in the West. How can militant feminists applaud the anti-American rhetoric of Islamist crazies who want to keep all women in burkas as the property of their husbands, and how can gay activists identify with jihadi killers who endorse the execution of homosexuals? The widespread activism on behalf of the fanatical internees at Guantanamo remains one of the most spectacular displays of lefty lunacy in recent years. Aside from the common distaste for free-market economics and the shared desire for a reduced American role in the world, liberal ideologues see themselves as persecuted victims with natural fellow-feeling for exotic and angry third-worlders who blame all their problems on the USA.
entire article here