My friends who voted for President Bush tell me that it was a moral decision. They like his values. These same friends tell me that liberals have no moral values. Since these Bush conservatives don't seem to be speaking with liberals here in Utah because there are so few of them, I'd like to offer an unsolicited description of liberal moral values.

Most liberals I know oppose killing people. This includes war, capital punishment and abortion. They even go further and suggest that we should return good for evil, and do good to those who despitefully use us, and in general, turn the other cheek.

I think my liberal friends would support a war of self-defense, but no thinking person can justify our pre-emptive war in Iraq based on self-defense. Before the war Saddam Hussein could not fly aircraft over three-fourths of his country, had his potential to produce weapons of mass destruction under U.N. seal, was refused access to large stockpiles of plastic explosives and was more isolated from the world with borders that seemed to exclude the foreign terrorists responsible for 9/11.

All has changed. Iraq is a terrorist magnet with 400,000 tons of unguarded explosives for the taking. According to Johns Hopkins University, 100,000 people have died there as a result of this war. We have sacrificed over a thousand of our soldiers and killed outright 10,000 to 30,000 Iraqi people. And whatever justification we now find, we didn't do it in self-defense.

Most liberals I know oppose the death penalty because it is motivated by revenge, not justice. Since 1973, 117 duly convicted death row inmates have been exonerated. Prison gets criminals off the street more efficiently and as effectively as hanging.

The liberals I know oppose abortion. They think it is wrong. Where they seem to part company with conservatives is that they believe that the agonizing decision to abort is between a woman, her physician and God and is a decision made for life-threatening reasons. In this argument, God will exact the punishment for a wrong decision, not the state.

Most liberals I know are quite willing to let churches define marriage any way they wish. No government can or should tell the church what marriage means. Government's responsibility is to define legal relationships of all kinds, business contracts, property arrangements and the exchange of resources. Most liberals I know are happy to let religion define marriage and let government define public and private transactions that may include two people living in the same house.

My liberal friends seem concerned with the stewardship of our Earth. It is a place of limited resources that can be squandered in the name of economic development. A decision to mine or drill or pollute is not reversible. It seems to my liberal friends that irreversible decisions should be carefully made with one eye on future generations and little view to economic interests.