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Friday, November 21, 2008 12:00 AM

Is it OK to be liberal again, instead of progressive?

Come out of the closet, liberals. Stop using the fashionable euphemism "progressive" and relaunch the old, tarnished L-word.

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  • Friday, November 21, 2008 02:33 PM

    what's in a name

    liberal. . . I have always been one and I am eighty years old.

    Even as a grade schooler proudly wearing a roosevelt button to school while my best friend wore her Landon button, I knew what I was.

    Lately though I have felt th need to qualify the word in two different ways because of the corruption of the term

    First, I am a yellow dog liberal which i undrstood before i knew better that it meant i would vote for a yellow dog before i would vote for a conservative or republican.

    now i know that the term originated in the south where democrats were really not liberal due to the civil war and would sooner vote for a yellow dog than a LIBERAL. OK i've got that one figured out. something else though is as follows.

    the other term was "OLD FASHIONED LIBERAL as in roosevelt and new deal type person. That still works for me.

    what doesn't work was the use of the term to indicate extreme liberal thinking which seemed to begin when ? in the sixties with free love etc. I really do't know. Only that it was supposed to mean something BAD.

    so now I am only a plain old "life time liberal" and so glad to be back. . .

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