Letters to the Editor
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I am the fringe
I am anything but a liberal, I'm the other L word (no, not lesbian) - libertarian. I feel that the best structure for our governments, especially the central government, is small and relatively weak. I feel that the role of government is to provide a level playing field for everyone with a dead minimum intrusion in the daily lives of our citizens (certainly a lot less than we have today). Etc Etc
On the other hand, I couldn't agree with Digby more than I do. I've been saying the same things for years. If that makes me a liberal in some people's eyes, well, I guess, so be it.
This does raise an issue that I've complained about for years as well, definitions. When I was growing up, liberal meant favoring big government and significant governmental involvement in social issues. Conservative meant the opposite - small government and little governmental involvement in social issues. Probably that worked because both sides held a core set of values (rule of law, innocent until proven guilty, certain behaviors absolutely forbidden to the government as inherently evil/dangerous, etc).
Until the advent of the evil Shrubbites. The Shrubbites have exposed the true multidimensional nature of politics and the governance of the body politic. The advent of people who do not believe in what Mr. Greenwald has described as the core beliefs that have defined America in the past will, I think, force a redefinition of what it means to be liberal. It may also force the use of additional categories to describe people's politics that have not heretofore been used. My vote for a category addition is the one I use for the Shrubbites: Fascist.