Being a liberal

I decided to focus this week on a few of my favorite things, as a way to stay positive and to concentrate on what I feel good about rather than devolve into complaining.

[Among the list of things I'm trying to avoid complaining or more accurately sounding whiny about is the start of the semester, which has been a rocky re-entry for me at Southern U. after 15 months out of the classroom--I'll write more about that later, but suffice it to say, I'm out of step and out of rhythm with a teaching schedule, although I must also confess that I really do love teaching--I really am a true believer in that respect.]

Anyway, after I read this Op-Ed piece by Bob Herbert in The New York Times I realized that one of my favorite things is being liberal. Although is it a thing, an ideology, or people who are liberal that I love? Not sure. But I will say that, for me, here are a few reasons I am a liberal and believe in liberal ideology and appreciate a liberal perspective in and about the world:

*To be liberal is to be open minded. Quite literally if you look in any dictionary or just do a google word definition search, you will see that the phrases associated with the world "liberal" are broad, big, free, and tolerant of change.

*As Bob Herbert noted in his piece, politically speaking, politicians who were and are liberal made huge civil rights gains for people living in the U.S. Civil rights laws, voting rights laws, environmental protection clauses (protecting both people in their environments as well as protecting the natural environment from people), gender equity and recently in terms of the states of MA and CA, gay marriage, all of these political accomplishments are a result of politicians of all types espousing a liberal ideology.

*Liberal means protecting freedom and democracy. We bandy these words about, especially during presidential elections, but one only needs to read The Economist or listen to BBC or read about the rest of the world to understand that U.S. citizens enjoy a fair amount of freedom and democracy, for all. Not just for those who can afford it, not just for those who can trace ancestry back a few generations (we are all settlers and/or colonizers, even those of us who were forced here through slavery or indentured servitude--only those who can claim indigenous status can really "claim" American sovreignty), not just for people of the right phenotype or correct sexuality or gender. Freedom isn't a finite quantity that will disappear with the first 100 users. Democracy isn't something you buy or sell. Both are available to everyone (or should be) and to believe in liberal ideology is to believe that freedom and democracy are values that should be available to all.

*To be liberal is to want people to have choices--choice of where to send your kids to school, to afford to go to college or choose not to go to college and get a job that is interesting as well as rewarding. I think too often we feel ourselves constrained to make certain choices, and perhaps when I say words like freedom and choice this should not be confused with hedonistically doing whatever it is we want to do--to live soley by a pleasure principle. What I'm trying to get at is that I consider myself a liberal in the sense that I want everyone to have the same access to opportunities--not to treat everyone as if they are the same and therefore equal, but to believe that despite our many differences in character, region, personality, life circumstances, etc...that we all should have equal opportunities and should not want to curtail those for others. This means people get to marry the consenting adult of his/her choice, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, religion, or a host of other factors. This means everyone has the opportunity to vote who qualifies (18 years old, citizen of the U.S., and in progressive states, this means that if you committed a felony but have served your time you have your full rights restored). And for me this definitely means that I can have a full range of choices available to me in terms of my reproductive cycle.

*But perhaps most of all, what I love about being liberal is that in being so open to possibility and broad-minded, I have the capacity to expand my understanding--to have my mind changed and to be able to changes the minds of others. To understand that one of the greatest challenges of being human is in the complexity that surrounds us. And that this complexity deserves as much liberal thought we can give it. Humans are messy and complicated creatures. We deserve to have big and broad and free thinking, liberal thinking, helping us to move forward in the world.