Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
...because to me it takes the meaning of forward motion, regardless of its right- or left-leanings.
Extremism on both the liberal and the conservative side results in an authoritarian viewpoint, and I have always set my authority in facts. Over the last decade, conservatives and right-wing ideas have abandoned facts, and I have shed myself of the title 'conservative' because of this.
'Progressive,' instead, I attach a meaning of common-sense, fact-facing and reality-based attitudes.
'Liberal,' while lately being wrongfully tarnished represents to me a set of ideas that may mean well, but just as with conservatism, can be subject to delusion. Over this same last decade, Liberal ideas have been demonstrated to be correct from a purely experiential basis. This makes them both liberal and progressive. However, it is possible to take them too far and stray into the same category that conservatism went - view Karl Marx's idealist 'communism.' He definitely took the liberal idea too far.
In short, I agree that the term 'liberal' has got the shaft lately - and that's entirely the fault of rabid and wrong conservatives. However, we shouldn't abandon the idea of 'progressive' in the rush to reclaim liberal.
Personally, I'd be proud to be called liberal - so long as I was factual as well. It'll be a few years before I can make the same claim about the term 'conservative,' but I'm sure eventually they'll clean the stain off that term.
T
Some anecdotal evidence that the word "liberal" has been successfully demonized: I have a number of print-on-demand shops at cafepress covering a variety of subjects including nature, peace, impeaching Bush, old-school skating, etc.
A couple of years ago I, too, thought it was time to reclaim the word "liberal" in its purest sense. Even though I have made sales in every other shop I opened, I have not yet sold a single item from my "Proudly Liberal" shop:
http://www.cafepress.com/proudlylib
People are still too afraid of the word - don't want their cars "keyed" - or something. Maybe this can change, I dunno...
Fairly simple:
I think, therefore I am a liberal!
And that thinking has also led to other things:
I think social justice is desirable, hence I am a socialist.
Well aware that the American Joe Blow think that socialism is the same as communism, but readily embracing any fascist or neo-nazi, for these are much more like himself.
And you wonder why Americans really are so often ridiculed, despised and disliked, - not as individuals, but as a nation?
It will take more than electing Obama to regain respect and affection, because as a nation, Americans are nothing more than a nation of war criminals that are not brought to justice!
The only reason "liberal" was permitted to become an epithet is because the Democratic Party abandoned liberalism in practice -- reclaiming the word (or "the brand") as Lind refers to it -- is meaningless in the absence of actual liberal policy and practice.
The Democrats abandoned liberalism after LBJ, so what was left but for the reactionaries (aka "conservatives") to turn it into a political swear word? The worst thing Democrats could do would be to brand themselves "liberal" without actually BEING liberal.
Democrats striving for the liberal label should at least be to the left of Richard Nixon. I know that's a lot to ask for, but I'm tired of liberalism being defined in Supreme Court terms -- that is, "relative" liberalism, owing to the dominance of the reactionaries in our political system. That is, politicians being termed liberal by how far they stand from, say, Karl Rove, in their politics, instead of being liberals in their own right.
It would be amazing progress if we even had a bunch of American politicians actually occupying the center-left, instead of the cluster of Democrats at the center-right calling themselves "liberals" simply because they're at the far left of that the Right considers acceptable and reasonable politics.
If you can't be at least as liberal or as politically bold as a classic New Dealer, you're not a liberal, no matter what you call yourself.
Now that Obamanation has trashed the progressive label, they can keep it.
Too bad we can't get them to stop calling themselves Democrats.
Once upon a time, it described humanists, people who engaged in critical inquiry.
Now libralz & pwogwessives demand conformity to a list of imperatives and an illusory notion that big gooberment can achieve wunnerful stuff, led of course by this new generation of libral-pwogwessives, which, of course will not make the same mistakes of the "Usefull Idiots" of the recent past.
Nebermind that, like always, this silliness ignores human nature and is based on some klueless rubbish about collective possibilities which only breed corruption, cynicism, shortages, unemployment, and horrible abuse and violence over and over, again and again.
You can have the conversation be about language--or not. This is about the language--or the latest fashion when it comes to the language. Do you think if the "liberals" had dominated the political scene for the last forty years the way "conservatives" have we'd be having this discussion?
Will folks wear their jeans this year worn with patches, or nicely stitched and pressed?
The other conversation is what really makes one conservative vs liberal for reasons where the language doesn't matter--but what is being talked about does. Did my cousin think Obama is a "traitor" because he didn't wear his flag button because he is a conservative--and looking for anything he can to dis the guy? How much does it really have to do with "policies" and how much a way of looking at the world that is fixed, excluding, and paranoid?
On the other side, so many "liberals" are so detached from the issues on the ground where they matter they won't take a stand, and sniff their noses at politics because they are above it all. Hence, the "conservatives" have been our rulers and thought makers and only a hero of extraordinary dimensions could get "liberals" off their high horse.
I'm more interested in the attitudes that go with the labels than the labels themselves, and that takes one into an entirely different analysis than Mr. Lind provides--albeit a more risky, less generally agreed upon analysis, but one everybody knows exists.
I don't have to wake up tomorrow and be on a talk show with any of these guys or dolls, so I get to tell you what I think. It's more fun this way.
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"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
