I’m not sorry for being a liberal and I refuse to accept the word liberal as a derogatory term. It’s simply the antonym of conservative. In fact, liberal and conservative mean different things in different countries. I lived in Turkey for three years where, contrary to American political orientation, strict secularism is actually a very conservative tenet.
The problem with American political culture of today is the false dichotomy of liberal and conservative as polar opposites. In Joseph Ellis’ biography of Thomas Jefferson American Sphinx , he writes that the innovation of Jefferson that affects us the most today is the vague way Americans have of labelling political principles and ideas.
Thus, when Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck rail on about liberals, they’re not talking about real people. They’re referring to imaginary Maoist-Beatniks who use drugs and want to live off other people’s money while legislating religion out of existence and giving everything away to foreigners. The Nazis had similar caricatures of Jew-Communists that they used on their propaganda posters.
I think few liberals fit this stereotype. I don’t. I’m actually a fiscal conservative while a social liberal. I also don’t believe that all conservatives can be lumped together. Some believe in making Christian doctrine into law while others simply don’t want to pay taxes and still others believe that the Federal Reserve and the IMF are conspiracies to control the world.
Every time, as a liberal, I picture fat white people holding flags, bibles and placards of aborted fetuses, I’m tricked into playing the same game. I don’t dislike the Tea Party for most of its principles. In fact I agree with quite a few. My main issue with the Tea Baggers is that in true Jeffersonian fashion they refer to themselves as “the people” when in fact they are not even the majority. Their implication being that if you don’t agree with them, you’re not a real American.
What, exactly, is a real American? The words “capitalist” and “Christian” show up nowhere in the Constitution. If there’s anything that angers me in politics it’s a demagogue who assumes the right to determine who is and isn’t a real American. The truth is that an American is simply someone who was born in America or born to American parents.
I’m a real American. My father’s family has been here for four generations; my mother’s have been here at least six or more. I’m also a liberal. Here’s a few things that, as a liberal, I believe.
1. Sometimes the government has to do what the free market economy either can’t or won’t. Roads can’t really be built for a profit. Protecting the environment isn’t profitable either. Insurance companies actually earn more money by not helping you when you need them. That’s why I believe in socialized medicine. It may be inefficient in Canada and call me a pinko all you want but I don’t think bottom line should have any consideration when choosing cancer treatments. From opponents of Obamacare I’ve heard much overheated rhetoric demonizing the bill as tantamount to reinstituting chattle slavery but what I haven’t heard is a constructive solution to the problem created by insurance companies that deny coverage whenever they can, a private sector that, when it isn’t outsourcing jobs to China and India, is cutting back medical benefits to its employees and medical costs that have been skyrocketing for decades while most Americans will only visit the doctor when they absolutely have to. The situation has become intolerable. You can complain about the health care law but it doesn’t change the fact that doing nothing is getting nothing accomplished.
2. Nobody likes taxes. I don’t believe in punishing success and if we had tons of oil like Saudi Arabia or Adu Dhabi that we could sell to fund the government, I’d be perfectly OK with getting rid of the income and sales taxes in this country. As a liberal, I don’t enjoy paying my taxes and I don’t think that rich people should subsidize my living. What I believe is simply that each person should shoulder their own share of the burden according to their means. The burden should be kept to a minimum but it’s a necessary evil and a fact of our lives.
3. I don’t like debt. Who remembers the Clinton administration, back when a Republican Congress and a Democratic President got together and balanced the budget because they were all scared of Ross Perot? I do. What happened to the budget surplus of the year 2000? Well, instead of paying down the principle of our debt like a responsible person does when they have excess income, our previous President passed a bunch of tax cuts that nobody needed at the time. He then started two wars in a period of seventeen months that he paid for by borrowing money from China .
This, by the way, is the other reason I can’t stand the Tea Party. Where were their town hall protests when Bush ordered the Iraq War without securing a single legitimate dime to pay for it? By the time Obama took office, the national debt was already sky high. The only way the President could institute any of his agenda was to create more debt now and attempt to deal with it later. In my opinion the President has done more of what he said he would than most. It was forceful and messy but then again, he inherited a horror house of problems and an opposition party that did nothing but obstruct his progress and scream “Liberal!” like a curse word at full volume while offering neither cooperation nor viable alternatives. I also think that the President has acknowledged that our debt is a problem and that he has taken some action to deal with it.
4. Liberal doesn’t mean communist. I read the Gulag Archipelago and I’m a rather huge fan of Ayn Rand–I get it; letting a handful of people plan out the details of an entire economy and society is a really bad idea. I don’t believe the government has any business taking over the airline industry or agriculture or steel mills or pharmaceutical companies or Starbucks. The forms of socialism that I believe in pretty much already exist: financial aid to students, basic medical care for the indigent, environmental protection, consumer protection, modest retirement pensions and enough regulation to keep people from getting blown up or poisoned to death. I happen to believe that capitalism and socialism can accomodate one another–they do the world over in Europe, China and the Middle East . Believing in Social Security or Socialized Medicine doesn’t make you a Marxist-Leninist. Slippery Slope arguments against any form of socialism don’t hold up the reality of a world that embraces a spectrum of economic systems.
5. I believe in Science. Scientific findings can be falsified and duplicated. Thus, while science makes many mistakes, it is open to change and can be contradicted. Say what you want about scientists, they wouldn’t start an inquisition if, as one biologist put it, you found a rabbit fossil in pre-Cambrian rock and thus disproved the theory of evolution. Because science is willing to accept contradictions, it implies that there is one right truth out there that can be reached if we are intuitive and determined enough to find it. Science doesn’t insist that our integrity or even the eternity of our souls is on the line if we believe this theory or that. In science if you are wrong, you’re not damned–you’re simply mistaken.
I don’t have a problem with people having faith or living by moral codes set out in religious doctrine. However, when it comes to making decisions involving the welfare of the country or the planet, facts should take precedence. A governor can pray for guidance in making a decision but in the end it’s his judgement of the facts of a situation that must make the decision and that is a mental, not a spiritual process. Bush could pray all he wanted in the build up to the Iraq War, it didn’t put the WMD’s on the ground or provide him with an exit strategy.
Scientists don’t want Global Warming to be true because it suits their theories. Science is not telling us that business or industry are evil. It simply tells us that every ecosystem has a carrying capacity that can be exceeded with disastrous results. Evidence in the oceans, forests and atmosphere seem to indicate that we may be exceeding what this world can handle in terms of resource exploitation. The laws of nature are indifferent to economic necessity and if science is right about the future of our world, we need to have a plan.
6. Changing your mind doesn’t make you a coward and sticking to your guns no matter what facts intervene doesn’t give you integrity.
7. Working with the opposition doesn’t mean you’ve cashed in your principles. We have 100 senators and over 400 congressmen for a reason. The size of our Congress reflects the size and diversity of this country. If each politician only pursues his or her agenda, then the country as a whole is not served. Opposition parties must work to accomodate each other to some degree or the government no longer functions. I believe that opposing politicians need to do more to acknowledge their similarities and their mutual respect. Vitriol breeds hatred in the people and leads lone nuts to commit acts of violence like the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords.
8. The Constitution isn’t toilet paper, but it isn’t a sacred text either. Jefferson wanted to tear it up every 19 years. The constitution has been ammended 27 times. It’s also so vague on some issues that the Supreme Court has had to sort out the founders’ intentions. Lawyers and judges still disagree on the wording of single pregnant sentences. I don’t believe that we should disregard our founding document and I believe we should live up to principles in the Declaration of Independence but I also believe that it’s incumbent on each generation to find a concensus as to what those principles mean.
9. Liberals need to stop euphemizing or apologizing for what they really believe. Criticizing doesn’t mean you hate America . Liberal dissatisfaction brought this country the 8-Hour-Work-Day, the end of slavery and the civil rights movement. Liberal Presidents brought this country through the Great Depression, won World War II and took us to the moon. Don’t be afraid to say that you don’t think that the free market economy can solve all of our social or economic problems. If you think smoking pot is harmless, stop hiding it. If you’re pro-choice, you should be willing to say that ‘I know that abortion ends a potential human life and I’m OK with that.’ Apologizing for what we, as liberals, believe because we’re afraid of what invectives that angry conservatives are going to hurl at us makes us cowards. Liberals should stand up for what they believe; conservatives certainly do.