What Makes a Liberal?
I know that a 'liberal' is the insult that is often tossed about as the topper of all insults. I'm no longer a Republican, but I still hold the conservative values that the Republican Party used to represent: small government, church led charities, strong army, low controls on business, and prolife. I am now being accused of being a 'liberal' becuase I have no support for the current President and his administration. I guess now I am liberal, I want change. I want change back to small government, strong army, government staying out of business, prolife.
I am now a LIBERAL.
posted by Janet
posted by Unknown at 2/16/2006 12:06:00 PM
5 Comments:
(I really should let my wife's comments stand on their own, but she often provokes my thinking, so I just have to respond).
The problem is that liberal vs. conservative is not a binary state, and too many people seem to view it that way.
Liberal to Conservative is a scale along which each person falls, often at different points for different issues.
Some people find they are consistently conservative (these people are generally CPAs and other "stick in the mud" types). Some find they are consistently liberal (these people are generally drug-addled hippies and "head in the clouds" idealists). The rest of us find ourselves somewhere in the middle.
Janet and I are just more honest about it, in that we're independents and refuse to use either label. Because society requires a label, I use "centrist", not because I'm always dead center between the two extremes on every issue, but because I recognize that the average of my positions across all issues on the spectrum falls somewhere in the center.
I'm in favor of social programs to correct societal ills, but I'm also in favor of personal responsibility. I'm in favor of fiscal responsibility, but I'm also in favor of taking proper care of the planet and the environment. I'm for a strong military, but I'm also for civil rights and not destroying the foundations of the country in the process of saving it.
The world is grayscale, not stark black and white. Our positions are similarly gradient. I think I'm just better at abandoning the label and accepting that a thinking person is going to be somewhere in the middle.
I've said it before, they are yin and yang, with conservative principles keeping us grounded and liberal principles keeping us striving to be better. Either side, un-tempered by the other, is doomed to crash and burn horribly.
Liam.
P.S. I slipped into humorist mode for a bit there. I am well aware that conservatives aren't all CPAs. Some are dictators. ;-)
Thursday, February 16, 2006 1:16:00 PM
Barely relevant ..
In the classic SF novel Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke, which I was rereading this week, we have this wonderful pair of sentences describing the enlightened, non-bigoted society of the middle 21st century:
The convenient word "nigger" was no longer tabu in polite society, but was used without embarrassment by everyone. It had no more emotional content than such labels as republican or methodist, conservative or liberal.
Oh well....
Thursday, February 16, 2006 4:39:00 PM
Unfortunate that we're going the other direction. It would be WONDERFUL to live in a world where racism were such a thing of the past that no one was offended by the quoted word (which I prefer not to use).
Instead, we've chosen to take previously innocuous words and demonize each other with them.
Not to say the term "liberal" and the aforementioned epithet are at all equivalent, only that, as you say, that quote points out just how far we're going in the divisive (instead of inclusive) direction.
Sigh.
Liam.
Thursday, February 16, 2006 4:46:00 PM
Sorry if I offended ... but the quote wouldn't have made sense without it. I don't use the word myself either, precisely because that quote is not in fact a true description of our society.
Anyhow .. one other fact: that book was written in 1953. I don't think Sir Clarke really believed it would come true, either. But we do have 50 years to go before the time of that story, so who knows?
Friday, February 17, 2006 9:46:00 AM
No, I don't mind you quoting the piece, I wasn't particularly offended.
I just find that, given the exceedingly racist history of the word, I just prefer to refer to it by other means, such as the somewhat childish "the N-word" and the like.
No worries, I'm not offended.
Liam.
Friday, February 17, 2006 9:55:00 AM
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