teacherken is one of my favorite diarists on DK for a number of reasons. First of all, he (like my wife) is actively involved in the education of our youth, a task which is the mainstay of our democracy and secondly, he seems to have his finger on the pulse of American society. He shows a good balance of indignation when necessary and an ability to brainstorm to solve problems.
His diary today I am a liberal because is a wonderful look into the basic tenets that define liberalism. However, I think he left out a few things that always come up in me when I try to define my own personal political slant. I began to respond in his diary but found myself long-winded enough to rate a diary of its own.
Ken, your list is very comprehensive and it defines my values as well but here's my caveat. I am a liberal only so far as the other liberals around me do not use that philosophy for personal gain and power at the expense of all others.
There are opportunists in all political groups and I will eternally be on the lookout for distortions and abuse of the basic concepts.
I fully support the right of workers to organize collaboratively. I am a proud member of the National Education Association. I know that without unions we would not have gotten paid vacations, 8 hour days, safety standards at work, and a lot of benefits now disappearing like paid medical insurance and paid retirement. Liberals support unions.
Unions have been a tremendous asset to this nation and the world but I have personally witnessed union leadership go far beyond the welfare of the workers it was meant to represent, a situation where the company they went up against was a responsible and caring organization and the union thugs realized they were not necessary if there was no conflict. They created that conflict out of nothing and used it to empower only the very high seniority workers who just so happened to be the leaders. Obviously that's not the purpose of a union but abuses happen and we must all be cognizant of it and fight the bullies within the unions as fervently as we fight the corporatists.
I believe the natural world belongs to no one person and to all of us as a common heritage, and we must act to ensure we can pass it on to future generations. Liberals have taken the lead in laws protecting the environment.
I am a major proponent for environmental issues and conservation of our natural resources but I have been repulsed by radical environmentalism in the name of liberalism when it has ignored simple logic. A series of telescopes was to be placed atop Mt. Graham in Arizona and this huge uproar went up because it was a habitat for red squirrels. Well, the university that wanted to put the scopes there ended up fighting and winning at considerable cost and, after the installation was complete, the population of the squirrels actually increased. To anyone with half a brain, they'd know that astronomers are peaceful and quiet people that are more than likely animal lovers. You'd think they were trying to put a steel mill there.
I believe in public schools. I believe it is the responsibility of society to provide a quality education to all, even if it means paying taxes for something from which my benefit is indirect. I do not have to have children in public schools to benefit from the learning of those children who attend. It has been liberals that have fought to provide quality public education in communities that need assistance.
Public schools must be supported and at a much greater extent than they are now. Teachers like Ken and my wife are grossly underpayed for the certifications and experience they bring to our precious children and they must be empowered with the day to day decisions that only they should be making. However, I've seen horrible abuses of power and excess at the administrative levels of some public school systems. Liberals must constantly question and be involved in their schools and not be afraid to point the spotlight on the bad cookies even if it that exposure can be used against the notion of public education. Credibility brings power ultimately.
I believe all should have a guarantee of quality healthcare. Absent this one has no security of life, because a single illness in one's family can plunge one permanently into the economic underclass. Liberals have fought to expand access to healthcare.
As a former computer programmer for United Health Care, I got to see first hand the incredible insanity of a system rife with waste and decades of bad design. I also saw corporate greed in its vilest form coming from the powerful at the top. We need single-payer universal health care as soon as we can manage it. However, I also saw the faces of the thousands of people working in the industry and few of them were like the bad guys at the top and almost all cared deeply for how their work helped the patients in the end. If we make this jump too quickly and paint the entire industry with an evil wide brush, we will be hurting many that do not deserve it. A true liberal cares as much for the workers stuck in the middle of the fight as the sick and injured the industry leaves behind.
I do not accept racial discrimination. I first saw legal segregation in Miami in 1956 when I was 10 and it sickened me. Liberals led the fight against racial discrimination and I was proud to be whatever small part I was beginning with my own efforts after graduating from high school in 1963.
He also went on to not accept other forms of discrimination such as gender and sexual orientation. I could not agree more. However, I am proudly guilty of a form of discrimination that I don't believe is counter to liberal tenets. I am a cultural bigot, not in the sense that I despise all other cultures besides the one I grew up in but only in so far as cultural standards that seem to fail human decency. I reject cultures that require that women are subservient to the men and that condone violence and sexual oppression. I abhor cultures (and often the accompanying religious hierarchy) that promote unlimited procreation when it's clear the Earth is bulging at the seams with people and resources are growing scarce. I am bigoted against cultures where nationalism and militarism is allowed to run rampant over basic human ethics. This bigotry puts me at odds with some Latinos, some Middle Easterners, some American Bible Belt residents, some gay folks, some women, some men and yet what separates cultural bigotry from the vile form of bigotry that Ken targeted is that it still deals with humans on an individual basis and targets only their selected behavior. Liberals must be able to have and explore bigotry on that scale.
Now Ken did not address this last concern but I've seen this dynamic playing out daily on here.
I see within the liberal community this internal fight for political correctness, this need to never utter or do anything that could ever cause anguish in anyone. While we as a species have an obligation to the Golden Rule, there are limits to the speed of the evolution required to ensure absolute harmony with everyone's quirks and sensitivities. It may not even be attainable or if we do attain it we may find a world without any conflict at all to be hopelessly boring and humorless. I'm not sure it even fits within the definition of liberalism to insist on a PC world. In many ways, having these strict boundaries to human behavior seems more conservative than open-minded. I'm not advocating everyone suddenly going back to walking around muttering racially and sexually abhorrent phrases all the time but we cannot be the party that jumps in outrage at the slightest derivation from whatever some focus group determines to be the slur of the week.
In the end it's all about balance. Liberalism doesn't require rigidity. Unlike the Republicans, we're allowed to question everything, even the basic items that Ken so expertly laid out as his own personal platform. When we stop doing that, the bad guys have won.