Memorial Page For Greg McMullan, With PayPal Donation Buttons To Help Maya and Faeryn

Liberal

hughcasey informs us that Mitt Romney and John McCain have gone so low as to call each other "liberal".

Those dirty bastards.

How dare they? I mean, that poor word has been through enough.

"Liberal" has been thoroughly sullied by the political right, certainly in their own minds at least. But, if you look it up in the dictionary, it still means "giving freely; generous... tolerant of views differing from one's own; broad-minded; specif., not orthodox... of democratic or republican forms of government, as distinguished from monarchies, aristocracies, etc.... favoring reform or progress, as in religion, education, etc.; specif., favoring political reforms tending toward democracy and personal freedom for the individual; progressive...." Other words involved include "reasonable", "enlightened", "magnanimous", "flexible", "fair", "lenient", and "idealistic".

Havin' trouble with those being bad.

I wear my liberalism proudly. I believe in helping those who need and want help; not merely tolerating but accepting others' views, so long as they are not hurtful (don't even try the hairsplitting thing with me today, you know what I mean -- I don't like racism, sexism, etc., etc.); you all know exactly how unorthodox I can be, on numerous levels; I'm very much in favor of government Of/By/For The People, as opposed to power invested in a strongman or hereditary structure; and so on.

And yet these guys use it to insult each other. And their party, their entire side, has been doing so for decades now.

Hey. If you jerkface old men want to be known as griping, scrimping, intolerant, closed-minded protectors of an artificial aristocracy that wants to keep squashing personal freedoms, then I thank you kindly for telling us out loud. Better than the Chimp-In-Chief did.

To what degree do you think of yourself as "liberal"? Go for the dictionary definition here, rather than the Conventional Whizdumb™. You might surprise yourself.

ETA: To clarify: Go to that dictionary listing above (it's the Webster's New World College Dictionary). It's got a broad selection of terms which have been attached to "liberal", some of which have been attached to it for various political philosophies which don't necessarily apply to American liberalism today, e.g., you'll see some things tying it to the laissez-faire theory of economics, when modern American liberalism tends to be sharply in favor of fair trade rather than free trade. Anyway, look at those terms and see which ones apply to you. For extra credit, look up "conservative".

Further Update on Maya and Faeryn

Here. Thanks to filkerdave.