Note: This is part of an ongoing effort to define what it is we want, what we are fighting for as liberal/Progressive /Democrats. As we take power after the next election I believe we should define who we are and what we stand for. Both so people know what they are voting for, and so that we do not lose our principles to the glamor of power, as the Conservatives have.
We are born into this world as a blank slate.
Sure there are existing influences, the parents we are born to, their situation, their finances, the solidity of their commitment to each other, their religion, their political affiliation and beliefs are huge influences on who we become. Some even say that Karma from past lives influences who we are.
But each and every one of us has to ultimately make a series of choices who define who WE are in this life. This lifetime is ours and ours alone, no matter how much our human nature wants to blame someone else for all this crap! Overcoming the crap, overcoming the obstacles that we all face is part of the process of learning and growing, part of the process of choosing who we are. I am ME. I am responsible for who i am, no matter what circumstances or obstacles have been put in my way or what tragedies I have overcome, or what other people have tried to make me into. All of those conditions are valid on some levels as to what defined ME. But when I stand before St Peter, or kneel before the great Karmic judge (whatever the fuck that is, lol) I do NOT get to blame anyone else for what I made of my life. Whatever horrific circumstances I may have been born into, I have always had a choice as to how to respond. In my opinion, and this essay is pure opinion….The goal of life is not to see how much money you can accumulate, or how high you can rise in whatever hierarchy is handy, or how often you can get laid. It is to become the best person you can become, despite and informed by the circumstances. The goal is to take the clay that you have been given and to mold the best life out of it you can, become the best YOU you can be.
To that end, I am, politically speaking, a liberal.
I am a liberal because I think that to be the best person I can be I need to help others. Conservatism says you should pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, but what if you don’t have bootstraps to pull? Who do you turn to? Government, to me, is a construction of society, a gathering together for the benefit of all. When we ‘give’ an education to someone, it does not just benefit that person, it benefits all of us. WE can give bootstraps to people. Conservatives believe in conserving power and opportunity for those who already have it.
I am a liberal because I believe that ALL of us should have a choice as to what to make of our lives, as to how to be the best person we can be, since that is different for everyone, with as little impediment as possible, whether the impediment be from government, religion, or society in general. Conservatives believe, whether it is stated or not, that you must conform before gaining the benefits of government. And they believe that they should be the ones who define what you need to conform too.
I am a liberal because I certainly and vehemently believe that we have the right to do with our own bodies what we will. That that is the most basic choice we have, even if it is the choice to ‘destroy ourselves. Conservatives believe that one of the functions of government is to decide for you what you can or cannot do with your own body! From abortion to drugs, Conservatives want government to dictate what you can and cannot do.
I am a Liberal because I believe that the earth does not belong to human beings, that we do not have the right to destroy the planet for our own profit. That we do not have the right to poison the air or the water for everyone else for our own profit.
I am a Liberal because I believe that if you work forty hours a week you should be able to earn enough money to live a decent lifestyle. I am a Liberal because I believe that if you have enough money to own 8 houses you should pay enough in taxes to help people to have on house to live in, unlike the millions of homelss and poor, some of them veterans, who do not. I am a Liberal because I believe children should not go to bed hungry at night. I am a Liberal because I think that America is a rich enough country to make sure that AT LEAST children should be able to have the medical care that they need.
I am a Liberal because I do NOT believe that one of the functions of government is to wage war, to kill my fellow humans, without a real, demonstrable existential threat.
I am a Liberal because I believe in competence.
And I am not alone.
From Meteor Blades
Americans are pro-choice (67 percent)Americans support the Geneva Conventions with regards to torture (57 percent)
Americans don’t want the government snooping in their bank and internet records (67 percent)
Americans support protecting the environment at the expense of economic growth (55 percent)
Americans believe that global warming is happening (86 percent)
Americans believe that it’s the government’s responsibility to provide health care (69 percent)
Americans support the decriminalization of marijuana (55 percent) and support the legalization of medical marijuana (78 percent)
Americans are opposed to attacking Iran (68 percent, according to a CNN Poll)
Americans support labor unions (60 percent)
Americans want government funding of embryonic stem cell research (56 percent)
Americans believe rich people and corporations aren’t paying enough taxes (66 and 71 percent respectively)
Liberal enough for ya?
Those are SOME of the reasons I am a Liberal. I will keep working to define them. But mainly, I am a Liberal because I believe that love is better than fear
58 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
I will keep working on it. Please help!
Oh and, I am a Liberal ……..Because someone needs to oppose people like this.
im all pissed off at sarah palin today (i just sent an angry email to andrea mitchell, demanding she stop gushing about what a wonderful advocate the goodwife would be for me and my child)..and feeling LESS than charitable and sisterly toward the shiny-spectacled mommy-in-chief of the alaska national guard…
…and here you go being all sweet and rational…
i was kinda hoping you’d kick her ass for me 😉 (please…im kidding…she’s packing heat!!!!)
i need to go breathe or something…
even though and to a great extent BECAUSE I subscribe to no organized religion and in fact think they are simply political power plays, that one of the best ways to go after right wing “conservatives” (sic) and shine a glaring light on their hypocrisy while at the same time defining what it means to be a liberal, is to continually repeat the golden rule “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you”. To me that is one of the foundations of what liberalism means.
They seem to want “liberalism” to mean freedom from the second half of the golden rule.
…(post title outright stolen from Joe Posnanski).
I do think you are doing a better job of trying to express this, buhdy. But I think you are trying to do too much still. And I think that it would help if you went back to the beginning, and to first principles.
What does it mean to you to be governed? To be part of a nation? Outside of a political dichotomy, what does being a liberal mean to you? Take the conservatives out of the equation – if they did not exist, would you still be a liberal? If you didn’t have to fight for your values, would you hold them?
Put it this way: we are born into the world a blank slate, free to make of ourselves what we will. But we are not born into a world which is a blank slate; the world is filled with the fossilized remains of more injustice and oppression than any one person could impose in any one lifetime, yet which is imposed by history on all of us. The notion of progressivism is tied into that notion, that we are free but the world is not. Do you not believe that the world deserves the sort of freedom individuals have?
Step outside of yourself, and outside of the present. What is true? What ought to be true?
this one is to almost everything else for me:
Its the difference between “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” vs “a rising tide lifts all boats.”
Its the difference between rugged individualism vs communal responsibility.
It about one of my favorite sayings “If everybody does a little, no one has to do alot.”
I think we learn alot about this kind of interdependence (a fact of life whether we choose to accept it or not) when we look at the natural world. In every way I can see, we are one organism. When we hurt others – we ultimately hurt ourselves. And when we support others – we support ourselves.
…that you aren’t really a blank slate, perhaps not enough politically, at birth. Scary thought that.
… my response comes from a book of fiction, Leon Uris’ Mila 18 which I’ve quoted from before, about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
Rabbi Solomon, a very illustrious rabbi, whose word could heavily influence the Jewish resistance in Warsaw, was driving the partisans crazy because he wouldn’t give his blessing to violent resistance. He used every trick in the Talmud to back up his reasoning.
It wasn’t that he stopped the resistance from forming, it had gone too far for that, folks were dropping like flies and more and more realized they were going to be killed. But it wasn’t great for morale either.
Finally, during Passover, shortly before the first battle of the Jewish fighters against the Nazis, Rabbi Solomon is officiating over the ceremony of the Seder and everyone is so miserable and hungry and people are crying in the hidden bunker, etc., etc.
Rabbi Solomon starts rambling at one point, asking why all these horrible things are happening and then all of a sudden he tells the folks there he was wrong to tell them not to fight, he recalls the history of Jewish fighters (so long ago, after years in the diaspora, years of not fighting back against anti-Semitism, of retrenching, negotiating, compromising), that “to obey God is to fight the tyrant.” It is a dramatic moment in the book.
Well I don’t know what this has to do with why I am a liberal, but it came to mind while reading this essay and the comments.
and I called myself “hippie”, because those are the words I thought made the most sense to call myself by, the words I thought most people would understand, when I wouldn’t fit into or try to wear the mental straitjackets my ultra “conservative” parents wanted me to wear.
People like George Bush and John McCain and James Dobson and Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh and the pope understand perfectly (they are not stupid)… and it scares the hell out of them. They live in fear, which is why they roll out the continual propaganda.
No one ever attacks things they are not afraid of.
Poor saps. I feel sorry for them. They will not learn. They wouldn’t know what to do without their fears.
I am intrigued to find out how many of my colleagues suddenly “identify” with Palin. I managed to listen to about five minutes of Hannity today before getting ill and worrying I wouldn’t be able to eat as I whipped up a shrimp curry, and he claimed she was a far better “statesman” than Biden and Obama and has more executive experience than either of them!!!
Does the right believe their lies and assertions?
Fear wears you out, and I am lazy by nature so I avoid anything that will wear me out. Maybe that is why I am a damn Liberal.
what does it take for an individual to attain or maintain balance?
What I require varies from day to day, season-to-season. And certainly won’t add up to the same elements as what you or you or you require/want/need from day to day.
My balance is not your balance.
Why then is my rice bowl your rice bowl?
For me, it is because physical reactions are (nearly) universal, as are emotions.
If I don’t deny me mine, I don’t want to deny you yours.
Forms.
Fixed forms provide many (I would call conservatives) a relatively safe framework.
Balance isn’t too difficult.
Bounce from one wall to another. Maybe just a stumble. Whatever, everyone around knows where the walls are located. The walls are solid. The walls are absolute.
The form is absolute.
Balance isn’t too difficult with solid forms.
(And, I have no problem understanding that choice. If I could convince myself that the walls really were solid and real, hell, I might accept the form too. Had I not been through a chaotic experience in my teens, I might never have known the seduction of becoming untethered. Had I not the genes I carry, I might not have sought the highs I sought.)
Ceremony can create burdens of ritual.
Ceremony can create spontanious reverence.
“If I can be calm and orderly in my life, I can be wild and original in my work.”
I read that somewhere and mentioned it in conversation with someone. Their response:
“If you can be wild and original in your life, you can be calm and orderly in your work.”
So, six of one, half-dozen of the other.
Chaos or Order? For all my inborn (and I swear it is genetic) need for order, I thrive on chaos.
So, I chose little to no form.
Disregard ritual.
Revere irreverence.
Actively work to put down the burdens I choose to pick up.
And nod to your means to balance, while nodding to mine at the same time (or near-abouts.)
That’s how I communicate with conservatives.
They are my ‘other.’
I am their ‘other.’
I hate what they stand for… they hate what I stand for.
Once in awhile we laugh til our sides ache and snot runs out our noses.
You are what you do, not what you say you are. It’s your choice whether to live in love or in fear.
That’s what freedom of choice is about. Maybe America is as America does. We are both liberal and conservative, more ‘e pluribus unum’ than ‘us vs them.’