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• Monday, November 24, 2008 05:29 AM

  Look, I'm a liberal even by Canadian standards

  and I don't yet see what the issue is.

  What, exactly, does the progressive wing want?

  For my entire life (I'm 37) far-out liberal ideas included

  -stop aggressively destroying the planet's ability to support human life;

  -regulate industry to keep it from doing the above and to keep it from running itself into the ground

  -make sure there are opportunities to get an education that will lead to meaningful work and won't punish your ambition by turning you into a lifelong debt serf;

  -make sure that where there are opportunities to get rich, that these opportunities are more or less tied to doing something that is useful or at least not actively destructive;

  -stop being a willing hostage to Middle Eastern dictatorships in exchange for the privilege of driving overpowered four-wheel-drive cockmobiles;

  -extend full citizenship rights to all citizens, yes, even the queer ones;

  -make sure that health care is available, yes, even to people who aren't rich.

  Anyone who has taken these ideas seriously in the past thirty years has been labelled a liberal, a socialist or worse. It's only because the "center" has moved to such a ridiculous right-wing extreme that this could happen. Once upon a time, things like the New Deal were considered the center.

  If these are centrist policies, then who needs liberals? Honestly--what more do you want?

  —Chernobyl Kid Read Chernobyl Kid's other letters
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