Confessions of a Liberal

Posted by: Skeptic

The intelligent liberal black guy won. We voted in as president the big-city lawyer with the foreign-sounding name. Armageddon, or at the very least, socialism, atheism, gun confiscation, the Rapture and a national epidemic of erectile dysfunction must certainly be at hand.

Most of the off-the-tarmac right wing's favorite anti-liberal slanders are rooted in deeply held (and deeply wrong) assumptions about who liberals are and what we believe. Here are ten of them:


- 1. LIBERALS HATE AMERICA.

For the record: liberals love America. Love it. In fact, what makes us so liberal is that we have actually read, questioned, understood and believed those pretty words in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. We want to live in that country. We believe that our nation's founding documents express a uniquely powerful moral contract between a people and their government, and assume an audaciously positive vision of an educated people's ability to run their own affairs and shape their own future. When we get annoying and whiny it's usually because we believe so much in America's astonishing promise that we're disappointed when the country falls short. We know we can do better. And don't tell us to "love it or leave it," because we are committed for the long run to fix it and stay.

Conservatism, by contrast, tends to take a dim view of human nature, prefers enforced hierarchy to personal liberty and isn't completely comfortable with the notion that the American people can or should be trusted. This leads to a selective reading of the Constitution (and of the Bible), and, as we've seen during the Bush Reich, a far more hostile attitude toward personal freedoms. The proof however, is in the history and it's irrefutable. America's greatest moments of progress, generosity, and moral strength occurred when the country stuck most closely to its progressive ideals. Liberals love America so much that we freed the slaves, passed child labor laws, welcomed immigrants, built schools and colleges gave the vote to women, set aside national parks, took care of the elderly, enacted civil rights laws, rebuilt WW II Europe and put a man on the moon. All of these were progressive projects. And all of these were fought against tooth and nail by conservatives simply because they feared change. Conservatives will loudly obstruct social progress until it's forced on them. Then they'll insist they were 100 percent for it all along.


2. LIBERALS WANT TO LEAVE US DEFENSELESS IN THE FACE OF EVILDOERS AROUND THE WORLD.

The big disconnect on security issues begins with the fact that we have a far more expansive definition of "security" than conservatives do, and a broader sense of what the actual threats are and what can be done about them.

When conservatives discuss "security," they're usually thinking in terms of solving all our problems by sending in more guys and gals with guns and bombs. The flip side of this that they tend not to give much credence to real threats that can't be fixed by guys and gals with guns and bombs. As progressives, we know that the country's and the world’s financial crisis is a security issue. And in a world of superbugs and epidemics, universal health care is a security issue. And the energy crisis/global warming is a potential security issue (the Pentagon agrees on this). We also know that Shock and Awe, sending in the Marines, hiring more cops, building space lasers, and taking off our shoes at the airport won't address our most terrifying problems. Real-world security is far more complex and requires a much wider range of solutions than most conservatives are willing to consider. Real-world security requires equality and social justice.


3. LIBERALS HATE THE FREE MARKET.

The operative word here is "free." Liberals believe wholeheartedly in the amazing power of markets to deliver all kinds of important goods. But we've also noticed that some of the deepest human goods of all, a strong family, a caring community, a healthy environment, safe food, clean water and air and time to enjoy them, are assigned no economic value at all in unregulated markets. If we want to protect the value of things that money can't buy, then we need to put some restrictions on markets so they can't encroach into those areas. Besides, any 10-year-old who's played Monopoly (or any adult who's recently been within reach of a TV or newspaper) can tell you how unregulated free markets invariably end up. One person ends up owning the whole game board, and everybody else ends up broke. Game over. That's not an accident; it's just how capitalist systems work. Good regulation can go a long way toward preventing that.

Even conservatives don't really believe in totally free markets. Truly free markets can only work if there's also a free market in labor, which means open borders (it's fun to drop this suggestion with a wink to the border fence line dancers, the Minuet Men) and unfettered collective bargaining, neither of which are exactly pet conservative causes.


4. LIBERALS HATE OUR TROOPS.

Many of us liberals have actually been troops (unlike Bush's Chickenhawk hypocrites). We love our troops. We love them so much that we want them brought home safe and intact to their families as soon as possible. We want them alive because we love them. Tell me: Who was it blocked the new GI Bill because it might encourage troops not to re-up? Who refused to increase VA funding? Who is responsible for the torture chambers of Bagram and Abu Ghraib? Who oversaw the criminal negligence at Walter Reed? Who made combat soldiers buy their own body and vehicle armor? Who irradiated them with Depleted Uranium? Reality check: it wasn't the Liberals.


5. LIBERALS ARE ELITISTS WHO HATE DECENT WORKING CLASS AMERICANS.

...as opposed to those sainted, compassionate corporate men-of-the-people who fly around in private jets and pull down eight-figure salaries courtesy of corporate welfare while closing plants and cutting 12,000 jobs at a time. That must be the "real" populism, you betcha.

Liberals think that sending well-paid American jobs overseas is a crappy idea. We think the domestic minimum wage should be enough to cover the necessities with a little left over. We think it's insane that over half the personal bankruptcies in the USA are due to lack of adequate medical insurance. We think everybody who has the grades should have a shot at college. And we believe that a strong middle-class is absolutely essential for maintaining a healthy democracy because no democracy that has tolerated our current level of inequality has ever survived for long. We believe in paying our fair share of taxes, unlike Joe the Plumber.

You'd be surprised (or not) at how many conservatives making the “Liberal Elitist” accusation have never considered the role government has played in making their own life possible. Their dad or granddad got through college on the GI Bill. They financed their own education with Pell Grants and federally-guaranteed loans. They grew up in FHA or VA-funded houses, going to public schools, and collected fat mortgage interest deductions, which ensured their family's place in the middle class. They went to state universities and they're several thousand dollars richer every month because they're off the hook for Grandma's living expenses, thanks to Social Security and Medicare. They drink cleans water and eat pure foods because of government. They, or their parents, may have started businesses with help from the Small Business Administration, or relied on government advice and subsidies to keep the farm going. They work for businesses that depend on government contracts. But they'll sit there and unthinkingly insist that they made everything they had, hauled themselves up by the bootstraps, all by themselves, with no help from anybody, especially not the government.


6. LIBERALS ARE AGAINST "FAMILY VALUES."

This is one of the biggest disconnects conservatives make. Conservatives and liberals have very different ideas about what families look like, how they function and whose rules they should run under. Liberals are quite willing to recognize the conservative model as a legitimate and valid way to do family, even if we don't always agree with it. But when conservatives look at liberal families and see their patchwork of made-up and adopted arrangements, they see a chaotic free-for-all that doesn't follow any of their strictly mandated rules of family organization, and thus in their minds isn’t a "family" at all. We think the concept is flexible and therefore adaptable to a changing reality. They think it's unstable and scary and maybe dangerous.

So it comes as a considerable shock to conservatives when you point out that progressive areas of the country have significantly stronger families, by almost any measure you can imagine. They have lower rates of divorce, teen pregnancy, infidelity, drug abuse, domestic violence and juvenile delinquency than the more conservative Christian areas do. Massachusetts, the first state to offer gay marriage, also has the lowest divorce rate in the country. Massachusetts likes marriage so much it thinks everybody should have a shot at it. Looking at the statistics, it's possible to conclude that the conservative obsession with "family values" may reflect the fact that families in Red America really are beset by devastating problems that aren't nearly as common in Blue America. Maybe that's why they canonized Sarah Palin's dysfunctional brood. Rather than admit that maybe liberals know something that they don't, they'll usually try to fix the blame for their family chaos on liberals and our crazy anything-goes family arrangements. Liberals believe in family first. Our families are more successful and happy than theirs. This shouldn't be a matter of debate; but it will continue to be one as long they refuse to believe that our families are just as valid and sacred to us as theirs are to them. Maybe more so.


7. LIBERALS WANT TO RAISE YOUR TAXES.

If you are prosperous enough to be bringing in over $250K a year, there's no point in trying to finesse this. Your taxes probably are going up. Between Clinton-era tax cuts, the burst housing bubble and the hot stock market of the past 15 years, these folks probably made so much money that it's time to start giving some back to the nation that made their prosperity possible. (Refer back to #5: they almost certainly didn't make that pile without at least some government help.)

There's just no way to pay for a $600 billion (or $3 trillion, depending) war and a $700 billion (or $1 trillion) bailout. And that's just the current cost, because they're likely to soar in the future without somebody somewhere in this country paying more taxes. The bill for the war alone currently stands $5,000 per American household; the bailout may cost that much again, depending on how much of the money the government can recoup. The GOP went shopping on our credit card and now it's time to pay the bill.


8. LIBERALS ARE GODLESS AND THEREFORE AMORAL.

A lot of progressives are deeply spiritual and our politics are guided by our beliefs. Evangelical churches are finally getting involved with environmentalism, poverty, and human slave trafficking, all issues where liberals have been active for decades. It's great. It's good to have extra hands on board.

It's also true that a lot of progressives aren't dogmatically religious. Unfortunately, many conservatives equate "secular" with "having no moral code whatsoever," since they honestly believe that nobody can possibly behave themselves unless there's some outside authority keeping a hairy eyeball on them. (It's tempting to speculate about what people who believe this might try to get away with when they think nobody's watching; personally, I think it's an incriminating admission that they can't be trusted when God or his human agents aren't watching. Rejecting their God means you refuse to follow their rules which, according to their logic, can only mean that you don't recognize any rules at all. Call this out for what it is. Bullsh!t!

All non-religious progressives have things they hold deeply sacred: family commitments, community obligations, professional responsibilities, the Constitution, social and economic justice, the earth and its systems, the idea of democracy, the rule of law, fairness and the dream of a peaceful future. Those things form the basis of a natural moral code and it's not uncommon to find secular progressives who live more uncompromisingly moral lives than many overtly religious people do.


9. LIBERALS DON'T BELIEVE IN PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.

Again, there's a definitional disconnect at work here. Conservatives tend to use the rule of law to defend their version of morality and social status, which usually means light treatment for those at the top and harsher penalties for those at the bottom. Liberals tend to use the rule of law to maintain some semblance of fairness and equality, which means that those who have more should be given sanctions proportionate to their wealth and power.


10. LIBERALS ARE WIMPS.

You can believe this only if you don't know anything about the history or reality of American liberalism. The Constitution is itself a radically liberal document, the ultimate expression of Enlightenment principles, drafted by highly educated men who looked radical philosophers and France for inspiration. Some of the boldest Americans in history, Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Teddy Roosevelt, Cesar Chavez, and of course Dr. Martin Luther King, have proudly called themselves "liberal" or "progressive."

Liberalism couldn't have survived and thrived in America if we were half as weak and indecisive as conservatives like to think we are. Our progressive forebears were not timid people. Nor did any of them seem to be bedeviled by a lack of conviction. "Mushy" or "feckless" are about the last words history uses to describe any of them. ("stupid" and "traitor" aren't anywhere on the list, either.) When you sign up to become a liberal, this is the legacy you take on. From then on you attempt to live up to it. It's not God's job to make the world a better place. It's yours. You are the change you've been waiting for. No one may walk the path but you. Liberalism has never been for the faint of heart, mind, or spirit and in this era of conservatism gone wild and completely rotten, it still isn't. Join me. A lot of work needs to be done. We can always use more hands.