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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Until I become the name of my group, who am I?
No one, unknown, afraid of my self.
I'm a liberal. I’ve been for a long time and unless I somehow get obscenely rich and develop a mean, selfish streak I plan to be one for a long time.
Evangelical came to mean anti-intellectual narrow minded conservative reactionary. Liberal came to mean what Lind described as soft on crime, weak on defense, and all too willing to take from the worthy to give to the unworthy. I reject both descriptions and boldly claim to be a person whose faith motivates him to work for economic and social justice for all (gay and straight), advocate for sound environmental stewardship, and the seek resolution of differences through means other than violence.
Words are abandoned when they come to mean too much what they mean - everybody has internalized the dictum that defining the terms of the debate controls the outcome. It's too ingrained to stop now.
Witness the word "handicapped" which displaced "crippled" as a more genteel euphemism. But then "handicapped" came to mean "handicapped" and had to be abandoned in turn for something that didn't, which itself will come to mean the same thing.
We try to stay a step ahead of reality, but there is no finish line to the race.
I've always been a liberal.
It's honestly troubling to me that there needs to be a debate over what left-center people should be calling themselves based largely upon what neocons have done with the sound of a word. By pronouncing "liberal" with a sneer they have reduced the very-well-intended left-center worrying about what term will most effectively describe his or her orientation on the idealogical spectrum. This is sad, and no matter the outcome (just like "colored", "Negro", "Black", "African American", "Negro" ad nauseum), the remaining Greek chorus of neocons will latch onto it and flog you with it.
But consider for a moment what it is like to be an earnest conservative at this point in our history! Jesus, I can't even use the "C" word anymore! Someone earlier mentioned "communitarian", which works for me, but Erich Fromm's dissertation (contained in his landmark work "The Sane Society") describes a "communitarian socialist", and I find that falls neatly in the middle of liberal/progressive and earnest conservative. While I really liked William S. Burroughs' "Factualist party", it doesn't quite get the job done, but "communitarian socialist" should piss off everyone equally, which is my goal in life, I'm beginning to believe.
"Socialist" has such a grim stigma attached to it it's bound to cause seizures and possible death in neocons, which is OK with me. "Communitarian" has that tenuous connection with communism, another neocon swearword, so all of a sudden I think I've found my new place in the world. Nobody loves even an earnest conservative anymore, and all labels currently are backward-looking anyway, so, since virtually no one ever adopted Fromm's "communitarian socialist" label, that's what I'm gonna be from now on. No, better yet, an agrarian communitarian. There. That works.
Let the carpet bombing of the suburbs begin!
I've been using both for a while now. I'm a liberal progressive. Or a progressive liberal. Either can be the noun or the adjective, I don't discriminate.
They should be ashamed of "Conservative," with all the creepy Americans who have used that label.
We need new labels for everybody, because we are in a new era. Have any of you ever been to college? The word liberal has a more fundamental meaning. Our style of government is Liberal Democracy, according to the real definition, even when "conservatives" are in charge.
This is not a matter for Fox News wrangling. Everybody knows the difference between the USA's Democratic Party, and the concept of democracy. Do not stir up a silly internet word controversy.
Liberal is out of date. Think of a new term. Center-Left? "Somebody who wants to take a rational approach and does not want to invade and wants to have good free health care and good free education and so on.."???
We need a new word.
It is true that Progressive fringe groups of the early Twentieth Century championed such wrong-headed and evil causes as prohibition, eugenics and racism.
But the accomplishments of Mainstream Progressivism, including Good Government, Civil Service, Food and Drug Laws, Administrative Law, Professional Licensure, Collective Bargaining, Conservation of our Natural Wonders, Civic Projects, Libraries and Public Art serve as the high point of the realization of the American Dream.
Their downfall? War.
Within months of America's entrance into World War I, sedition laws, Governmental intervention in labor disputes, military seizure of private property and Patriotic Jingoism had toppled the movement.
But the progressive blood and lofty dreams of my dear ancestors runs in my veins and my thoughts. They were the Great Parents of the Greatest Generation, and I am a child of the Same.
Progressive Si! Liberal No!
and I have always been one.
Gilbert & Sullivan said it best: "Every girl and every boy who's born into the world alive is either a little Liberal or else a little con-ser-va-tive." A "progressive" is a Liberal whatever he/she calls him/herself. And being a Liberal is a proud thing, a great thing, an American thing! And being called a Liberal is a compliment.
Look, 20 million people crushed in an effort to remake society is nothing, if you succeed. His only failure was that he failed.
Though I have always considered myself liberal, I've generally preferred the term "progressive" to describe myself because of its more definitive connotation of left politics and activist stance. Progressivism describes a worldview seeking to address the needs of the whole, especially the poorest and most vulnerable: e.g., a progressive tax code is necessary to ease the burden on the working poor. This worldview is more hopeful than the Hobbesian cruel and brutish one, seeing over the course of history a general progression of human evolution toward the wiser, more humane, and more evolved.
Liberalism, on the other hand, has been associated as often with lax government regulation, spending without accountability, and laissez-faire capitalism as in promoting the common good. Depending on the context, it can mean the very opposite of ‘disciplined.’ “Liberty” (from the Latin ‘libertas’) means freedom; “liberal” (sort of ‘libertas’–ish) means open-minded, free-thinking, tolerant, noninterventionist, generous, laissez-faire. Whether good or bad, enlightened or not, depends on the context.
While libertarians can certainly identify with the term “liberal,” so could the robber barons of the late nineteenth century. They could freely help themselves to untold riches through corporate schemes without a pesky interventionist government standing in the way. The term liberal more accurately describes the de-regulators of the Reagan era than those on the left seeking social justice and genuine reform. And while the centrist DLC might have used the term “progressive,” it wasn’t to hide from liberalism, it was to reassure those on the left that their agenda could somehow satisfy true progressives while simultaneously appeasing a center-right coalition.
One of the reasons I’m more inclined to use progressive as a descriptor than liberal is that it is only the mildest, most moderate policies of liberalism that have been demonized by the right. The norm in the 60’s and 70’s was so far to the left of where it is now that “liberal” has lost all meaning. The term does not do justice to what I consider truly left-progressive. To me liberal sounds too wimpy when what is needed is real change.
As someone else pointed out, liberalism is not much of a philosophy and certainly not a movement. Progressivism speaks truth to power.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
