Liberals, that is, don't trust the members of society to care. But they do trust the government to make everyone care.

Conservatives like Buchanan and Kemp (and even President Bush, who is hardly a conservative) aren't against "community feeling," They just think that "community feeling" is better expressed by community members rather than government bureaucrats (Who, after all, are in it for the money and power more than anything else.)

Conservatives believe that the Reagan and Bush administrations haven't done enough to reform the federal government. or to return responsibility and power to the communities and states which have (and understand) local social problems.

Under liberal direction, the U.S. government has created, in the name of equality, newer, more dangerous ghettos and an underclass dependent upon government funds. Conservatives say it's time to think about changing our welfare system, because it doesn't work.

Because he recognizes the rottenness of the welfare system, Buchanan appeals to lots of resentful people angry about "welfare cheats." And he has waged a somewhat negative campaign, based on resentment of the Bush administration and arrogant government in general.

But it's just a little too convenient for liberals to brand him a racist and an anti-Semite and leave it at that. I won't defend the infamous "Israeli defense ministry and its amen corner" assertion of Buchanan's anti-gulf War days.

What I will say is that by tarring Buchanan and his ideas with the "racist, sexist, homophobe" brush, liberals easily escape having to debate him on his policy suggestions--which show no traces of racism, sexism or homophobia.

By demanding that conservatives prove they aren't bigots before debating them, liberals can avoid proving their own positions. Affirmative action is a case in point.

This type of discrimination will conservatives note, only increase the resentment of those whites who think they might be passed up for a job by a less-qualified member of a minority group. In fact, because affirmative action increases white resentment of minorities, the brunt of its negative effects fall upon...minorities.

But because some liberals have already decided that affirmative action is just, they won't admit its ineffectiveness. Anyone voicing dissent about the means by which we should encourage minority participation in professions must, liberals say, be a bigot. The liberal message: If you disagree with our means, then you must not agree with our ends.

Liberals, in other words, jettison the old maxim of moral philosophy, "the ends do not justify the means." For liberals, "the ends justify any means whatsoever, even if they're proven wrong." And if you disagree with the means, then you are a fascist.

WHEN DAVID DUKE began sounding like a conservative rather than a fascist, conservatives should have worried more than liberals. Liberals squawked about him (and, thankfully, did a lot to help defeat his various bids for higher office). But they proceeded to equate his unprincipled adherence to certain conservative ideas to a proof that those ideas can only be held by bigots. David Duke, in other words, was a windfall for liberals.

Now that Duke is all but gone from the national scene, however, liberals want to keep his memory alive, Because some of Duke's ideas sound conservative liberals think they can defeat conservatives by equating conservatism with Dukeism. Or Nazism.

If they succeed, they will have proved only that they are masters of deceit. And they will still have failed to prove that their policies, embodied without success in American government for the past six decades, can do anything to help America.

Perhaps it is because they recognize the bankruptcy of their ideas that liberals would rather call names than discuss issues.