What is a liberal?
Do you know?
To Fox News, their employees, and many conservatives, a liberal is someone who doesn't agree with them. I am a member of a few bipartisan political threads on Facebook, for instance, and it doesn't take much for me to be called a socialist or a 'typical' liberal. Strangely enough, it's not usually because I forwarded a liberal idea or solution, but rather because I questioned a conservative stance or talking point and provided evidence that the conservative position was either inaccurate or incomplete.
This idea was reinforced when I went to the book store this weekend for my birthday and took a look at the literal swarm of conservative books lining the Barnes & Noble's political book section. Flipping through everything from Ann Coulter's 'Demonic' to Pinheads and Patriots by Bill O'Reilly or Broke by Glenn Beck, what struck me was two separate observations. First, that the books were mostly incoherent. It was like listening to Sarah Palin speak. The gymnastics used to move from talking point to talking point rarely could pass for even psuedo-logic, much less real analysis, and to make things even more confusing, they didn't seem to have any idea what liberals were thinking.
So I thought I'd take a moment to quickly clarify what makes a liberal a liberal.
American Liberals are Social Constructionists
This means liberals believe that society is something we must build together. Good society is not a byproduct of individuals efforts to get ahead, nor is it accidental. Government is a local or national community's way to get together and discuss how to create the ground rules by which we all do what we want to do. This is what the founders knew to be true and was the purpose of the Constitution – to create a government that served a critical role in building a better society.
Contrary to some conservative fairy tales, this does not mean liberals believe that government is 'the solution' and neither do they want government everywhere. They do, however, believe that American life is now too interconnected not to have ground rules and a referee to maintain and enforce them. This is government's role – not to PLAY the game, but to OVERSEE the game and make sure the rules are followed and the greater public good is never ignored for individual or corporate gain. Liberals understand that government can get bogged down or overextended or become inefficient but we understand these things to be true of ANY human organization whether it is a government, a church, a corporation or a club. It is the responsibility of good governors and representatives to constantly work to shape government into that guy in white and black on the field blowing the whistle without ever letting that it become one of the players or it's own team.
American Liberals Value Capitalism
Capitalism and the free market are like fire. They are fuel, energy, power, the heat that keeps us warm and the core of what makes America dynamic and great. Liberals generally believe this and while we have Socialists and Communists among our number just as Conservatives must contend with racial nationalists and religious extremists in theirs, we are no more defined by those economic goals as conservatives are by their outlying fringe.
Liberals do, however, understand that just like fire, uncontrolled capitalism will destroy everything it touches. Capitalism rewards no moral act that does not further the financial gains of the participant. That means when capitalist forces collide, the force with the most strength of any kind and willing to do whatever it takes to cut costs and advance profits is the winner. This opens many doors and provides many tools for capitalism that run directly counter to the public good. To the liberal, Government must define the rules of the game and keep the playing field level so the tools used are always progressive and not exploitative. It is from this platform that the creativity, ingenuity, and determination of business can launch and either succeed or fail. Just like a sports game, the rules have to be followed by all teams or it's not a game, it's a brawl, and the damage starts to outweigh the benefits.
To repeat, most liberals are as capitalist as any other American. They have faith that individual initiative and private ownership can provide a world of good so long as the fire is contained in the core of the engine and not allowed to run rampant and consume the passengers.
American Liberals are Socially Progressive
To the American Liberal, the diversity of our population is the source of our strength. In order to continue to benefit from our people, American Liberals take a live and let live approach to social issues. They don't want conservative Christians to have to stop being conservative or have to marry homosexuals in their churches, but neither do they want homosexuals to have to abide by conservative Christian values that they don't subscribe to.
For the American Liberal, morality is individual. Groups of individuals form moral communities which have every right to practice what they believe and attempt to encourage others to follow their lead. However when those moral communities try to skip that last step – the part about convincing others of their ideas – and just enforce their morality on the general population, American Liberals push back. Whether it is for homosexual marriage rights or Abortion, the Liberal perspective is not to require people to abide by another morality, but rather to keep morality within the bounds of those who agree with each moral creed.
To put it another way, to the American Liberal, government has overstepped its bounds when it forces a moral behavior on a population that has not agreed to that morality. It is not the role of government to intervene in the personal lives of it's citizens unless the public good is infringed, and then it's interference should be minimized so the population has the greatest latitude to make individual decisions about what is right and wrong. Legislating morality is the worst kind of big government interference in society and runs counter to everything most Americans see as good governance.
These three points articulate in broad brush strokes what an American Liberal generally believes. They aren't socialists or communists, they're not pro government lunatics trying to shove programs down everyone's throat. They're not tax and spend economists or subversive mobs. While liberals generally disagree with conservatives, there is a great deal of common ground between them, and it is completely untrue to say that liberal is everything that isn't conservative. My hope is that perhaps if people understand a little more about what makes me, and others like me, liberal, we'll see a little less hostility in the discourse between our core ideologies which are both very important to what makes America the country it is.
Do you know?
To Fox News, their employees, and many conservatives, a liberal is someone who doesn't agree with them. I am a member of a few bipartisan political threads on Facebook, for instance, and it doesn't take much for me to be called a socialist or a 'typical' liberal. Strangely enough, it's not usually because I forwarded a liberal idea or solution, but rather because I questioned a conservative stance or talking point and provided evidence that the conservative position was either inaccurate or incomplete.
This idea was reinforced when I went to the book store this weekend for my birthday and took a look at the literal swarm of conservative books lining the Barnes & Noble's political book section. Flipping through everything from Ann Coulter's 'Demonic' to Pinheads and Patriots by Bill O'Reilly or Broke by Glenn Beck, what struck me was two separate observations. First, that the books were mostly incoherent. It was like listening to Sarah Palin speak. The gymnastics used to move from talking point to talking point rarely could pass for even psuedo-logic, much less real analysis, and to make things even more confusing, they didn't seem to have any idea what liberals were thinking.
So I thought I'd take a moment to quickly clarify what makes a liberal a liberal.
American Liberals are Social Constructionists
This means liberals believe that society is something we must build together. Good society is not a byproduct of individuals efforts to get ahead, nor is it accidental. Government is a local or national community's way to get together and discuss how to create the ground rules by which we all do what we want to do. This is what the founders knew to be true and was the purpose of the Constitution – to create a government that served a critical role in building a better society.
Contrary to some conservative fairy tales, this does not mean liberals believe that government is 'the solution' and neither do they want government everywhere. They do, however, believe that American life is now too interconnected not to have ground rules and a referee to maintain and enforce them. This is government's role – not to PLAY the game, but to OVERSEE the game and make sure the rules are followed and the greater public good is never ignored for individual or corporate gain. Liberals understand that government can get bogged down or overextended or become inefficient but we understand these things to be true of ANY human organization whether it is a government, a church, a corporation or a club. It is the responsibility of good governors and representatives to constantly work to shape government into that guy in white and black on the field blowing the whistle without ever letting that it become one of the players or it's own team.
American Liberals Value Capitalism
Capitalism and the free market are like fire. They are fuel, energy, power, the heat that keeps us warm and the core of what makes America dynamic and great. Liberals generally believe this and while we have Socialists and Communists among our number just as Conservatives must contend with racial nationalists and religious extremists in theirs, we are no more defined by those economic goals as conservatives are by their outlying fringe.
Liberals do, however, understand that just like fire, uncontrolled capitalism will destroy everything it touches. Capitalism rewards no moral act that does not further the financial gains of the participant. That means when capitalist forces collide, the force with the most strength of any kind and willing to do whatever it takes to cut costs and advance profits is the winner. This opens many doors and provides many tools for capitalism that run directly counter to the public good. To the liberal, Government must define the rules of the game and keep the playing field level so the tools used are always progressive and not exploitative. It is from this platform that the creativity, ingenuity, and determination of business can launch and either succeed or fail. Just like a sports game, the rules have to be followed by all teams or it's not a game, it's a brawl, and the damage starts to outweigh the benefits.
To repeat, most liberals are as capitalist as any other American. They have faith that individual initiative and private ownership can provide a world of good so long as the fire is contained in the core of the engine and not allowed to run rampant and consume the passengers.
American Liberals are Socially Progressive
To the American Liberal, the diversity of our population is the source of our strength. In order to continue to benefit from our people, American Liberals take a live and let live approach to social issues. They don't want conservative Christians to have to stop being conservative or have to marry homosexuals in their churches, but neither do they want homosexuals to have to abide by conservative Christian values that they don't subscribe to.
For the American Liberal, morality is individual. Groups of individuals form moral communities which have every right to practice what they believe and attempt to encourage others to follow their lead. However when those moral communities try to skip that last step – the part about convincing others of their ideas – and just enforce their morality on the general population, American Liberals push back. Whether it is for homosexual marriage rights or Abortion, the Liberal perspective is not to require people to abide by another morality, but rather to keep morality within the bounds of those who agree with each moral creed.
To put it another way, to the American Liberal, government has overstepped its bounds when it forces a moral behavior on a population that has not agreed to that morality. It is not the role of government to intervene in the personal lives of it's citizens unless the public good is infringed, and then it's interference should be minimized so the population has the greatest latitude to make individual decisions about what is right and wrong. Legislating morality is the worst kind of big government interference in society and runs counter to everything most Americans see as good governance.
These three points articulate in broad brush strokes what an American Liberal generally believes. They aren't socialists or communists, they're not pro government lunatics trying to shove programs down everyone's throat. They're not tax and spend economists or subversive mobs. While liberals generally disagree with conservatives, there is a great deal of common ground between them, and it is completely untrue to say that liberal is everything that isn't conservative. My hope is that perhaps if people understand a little more about what makes me, and others like me, liberal, we'll see a little less hostility in the discourse between our core ideologies which are both very important to what makes America the country it is.
A response to your blog has been posted at: http://politicalphoenix.com/2011/06/24/blog-to-blog/
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