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• Thursday, November 20, 2008 07:34 PM

  @chris49068

  Faulty logic. Running away from the word "liberal" doesn't make sense unless we agree that liberal is really a bad word. You can make "Progressive" bad, too. For example, you can say that "the situation became progressively worse". Any word can be turned into a negative, and by letting the right have "liberal", we've ceded power to them - the power to define us. We need to stop trying to change what we are and start convincing people that what we offer is good. The right is doing that with Abraham Lincoln. He was a Republican, and the right is very happy to acknowledge him a such even though his politics were pretty left wing during his time. We need to acknowledge Roosevelt and educate people about how much his "liberal" policies have helped us to this day. We need to stop running from what we are.

  We keep running from words because the right distorts them. Homosexual has become evil, since they are pushing "the homosexual agenda". I've actually been told that it's not acceptable to use that term. "Feminism" is another that has taken on a negative connotation. They seem to own "God" and "religion" (although we're taking that back a bit). We're running from them instead of taking them on. And "progressives" have been leading the charge away from the right. We won this election because things got so bad that even the right-wing couldn't convince people that their agenda was working, but things won't stay bad forever and we'd better have some positive ideas to offer them soon.

  —jebldmm Read jebldmm's other letters
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