While I am increasingly against “conservative” and “liberal” as terms because I think that they are increasingly meaningless, I was particularly struck by this post from PatientWitness. I don’t agree with every item and I don’t think it is fair to say that liberals deserve all the credit for things mentioned below. That being said, I don’t think they were written as Gospel truth but rather to prove a point about “liberal” accomplishments – though with hyperbole. Regardless, a great post:

If your workplace is safe and you are paid a living wage, including overtime; if you enjoy a 40-hour week and you are allowed to join a union to protect your rights without being fired, beaten or lynched, thank a liberal.
If you have not died from tainted meat, or been prescribed something useless or poisonous by a quack doctor, have not given your children cough syrup which turned out to have heroin as its secret ingredient, thank a liberal.
If you ever drank a beer or a glass of wine without being thrown in jail, thank a liberal.
If you are not a land-owning white male, but have voted, thank a liberal.
If you or your parents or grandparents have ever used Medicare, thank a liberal.
If you’ve ever driven on an interstate highway, thank a liberal.
If you have ever breathed clean air or drank clean water, thank a liberal.
If you grew up in a family of less than 12 kids, like the idea of being able to choose if you have 12 kids or not, if you don’t live in an overpopulated third world slum, or just think birth control is a good idea, thank a liberal.
If your family benefited from the GI Bill of Rights, FHA or VA mortgages, thank a liberal.
If your children go to school instead of working in the fields, a factory or the coal mines, thank a liberal.
If you’re part-Irish, Catholic, or Jewish and are allowed to live in America, and are not harassed and attacked for failing to be born white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, thank a liberal.
If you’re not a slave or “indentured servant” (white slave), don’t think protection of slavery belongs in the constitution, if you’ve never been chained to a boat where half the passengers die, been whipped, had your family split up, been forced to “breed” with another slave you’ve never met, been raped by your boss, or killed for not being profitable, thank a liberal.
If you have never been lynched, or had your children firebombed in a church, thank a liberal.
If you have ever done anything that is a religious or superstitious taboo (think oral sex, shaving your beard, backtalk your parents, wearing clothes made from 2 types of fabric, etc.) without being stoned to death or cast out as a heretic, thank a liberal.
If you have never been raped, and then had the rapist escape punishment on the grounds that he marry you, thank a liberal.
If you are glad that the Nazis don’t control half the world (conservatives opposed joining World War 2 until it was forced on them – look it up!), thank a liberal.
If you don’t have to walk through ankle-deep sewage in the streets (because sewers are big government), thank a liberal.
If you have ever eaten food (agricultural subsidies), flicked on a light switch (rural electrification) or benefited from programs such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, thank a liberal.
If you do not have skin cancer, and have ever stood outside without having a peeling sunburn within moments, thank the ozone layer, thank the ban on CFC’s, and thank a liberal.
If you have not died in a heat wave, drought, hurricane, flood, wildfire, or other climate change disaster, and like the idea of your children and grandchildren not living in desert wastelands, thank a liberal.
If you are glad we don’t live in a right-wing dictatorship along the lines of what conservatives overtly and covertly created in Iran, Guatemala, Nicaragua, the Domican Republic, the Congo, Venezuela, Chile, Brazil, El Salvadore, the Phillipines, Indonesia and others, thank a liberal.
If you have ever visited or bought anything from Europe, and are glad the Marshall Plan kept it from remaining a bombed-out shell or falling to communism or neo-fascism, thank a liberal.
If you’ve ever seen a national park, and it hadn’t been strip mined and clearcut into a desert wasteland, thank a liberal.
If you kind of like freedom of speech, and don’t want the government to be able to censor you – (you think the 1st and 14th amendments are good ideas) – thank a liberal.