I, Liberal

"Bruce Brooks" left a comment in a thread about Independence Day:

One other point - our founders were extremely progressive and liberal. It does them a great disservice to cast them as conservative since had they been so, we would still be shouting "Long live the King".

I'm not sure that I "cast them as conservative" - read the original post, you be the judge.

But yes, by the standards of their times, they were indeed "liberal".

And so am I.

It's been a galling thorn for years, seeing the term "liberal" - which once meant "supporter of representative government, the rule of law, partisan of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and the defense of private property", the people who wrote the Bill of Rights and the Federalist - conflated with the likes of Barbara Boxer, Mark Dayton and Ted Kennedy; statists, piddlers on merit, velvet-gloved zealots of the "state is my mother" set.

"Liberals" in the sense that Jefferson and Madison and Payne would have known them cross (to an extent) our current political boundaries. Would any have of them have called Hillary Clinton or Ted Kennedy or John Kerry "Liberal"? Would they have called Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater "conservatives" in the sense they understood it, or the sense that Bruce Brooks cites?

No.

Simple fact: a "liberal" is someone who believes in the ideal of liberty; in spreading it around to as many as possible, in institutionalizing it, in defending it and its adherents. And by "liberty", I mean it in the sense that the real liberals did; freedom to speak, worship, assemble, bear arms, burn flags, piddle on the cross, castigate the burners and piddlers, engage in the madding cacaphony of freedom without the benefit of "gatekeepers" (thanks for nothing, McCain and Feingold; repent, or endure ten years' limbo being spat upon by the souls of those who died for the liberty you put up for rent by the people with the best lawyers), not "freedom from want" and "freedom from offense" and any "freedom" which has to be dug out from under layers of obtuse penumbrae by people who should really concentrate more on golfing.

In summation:

Not Liberal: Ted Kennedy
Liberal: John F. Kennedy

Not Liberal: Trent Lott
Liberal: Barry Goldwater

Not Liberal: John McCain
Liberal: Nat Hentoff

Not Liberal: Michael "The Ba'athists are the real Minutemen" Moore
Liberal: Gen. Mattis.

Not Liberal: Wes "Lying Sack" Skoglund
Liberal: Your truly.

Not Liberal: Brent Scowcroft
Liberal: Paul Wolfowitz (in both his administration and new World Bank roles)

Not Liberal: The Minnesota Federation of Teachers
Liberal: Charter schoolers, home schoolers, and school choice advocates.

To paraphrase Bono: "Forty years of statists, condo-pinks, academic fascists and piddlers on merit from the alpaca and Volvo set stole the term 'liberal'. We're here to steal it back".

Posted by Mitch at July 5, 2005 06:50 PM | TrackBack