I'm supposed to be finishing up a paper for a class I'm taking, but in response to a post on another forum -- I won't tell which one -- put this together to explain why using "liberal" as an epithet is sloppy thinking. It's still kind of rough, but the meat's here.
The diary's title is one of the basic rules of argumentation: Define your terms. Definitions are everything.
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My father helped support his mother, brother and sisters during the Great Depression. His first job was at age six when he swept out a drugstore for a box of groceries a week. We didn't go to church, but my parents were careful in teaching that certain things were wrong not because the Bible said they were, but because they hurt other people.
He was career military, having joined the Navy at 16 at the start of WWII. He ended up on a destroyer in the Pacific. After the war, he said he just moved on with his life, and rarely talked about what he'd seen. Guns were forbidden in our house, even toy guns, because he said he'd seen enough of that to last a lifetime.
For a while we were next door neighbors with a shipmate of his. Our families spent a lot of time together, whether it was kids playing together, moms having everyone over for dinner, or dads out fishing. My friends' mom was Japanese, and had spent the end of WWII hiding out in the mountains, near starvation. Another neighbor had a number tattooed on her arm; she'd spent the war in a concentration camp.
I grew up on military bases that were far more racially/ethnically/religiously diverse than the surrounding towns, and for a few years we lived in a trailer park where I met people whose lives were interesting and complex. In both places neighbors pulled together when times were hard. On base, when payday couldn't come soon enough, they'd trade leftovers so everyone could at least have something different to eat.
We knew everyone needs help once in a while.
My parents were live-and-let-live liberals who thought making one's own choices was tough enough, much less trying to tell other people what to do.
They also knew what poverty can do to the spirit, because they'd both grown up poor.
They married on their third date -- by a JP -- and stayed together until my mother died at home, from Alzheimers. My father took care of her until the very end because he'd promised himself she wouldn't go to a nursing home. The year she died would have been their fiftieth anniversary.
My mother was able to remain at home throughout her illness because of subsidized hospice care.
My father's in an HMO that's served him well, because their state requires all HMOs to be non-profit, and forbids rescission unless fraud is proven. In the past couple of years he's had a knee replaced and a pacemaker; he's in his eighties. They took good medical care of my mother from diagnosis until her death twelve years later.
We didn't have much when I was growing up, but I didn't feel deprived. I was able to go to public schools that were so committed to education I learned two foreign languages by the time I'd graduated, public libraries where my parents told the librarians to let me check out anything I wanted, and public parks where I learned to play tennis.
I have it much easier than they did. I worked my way through a public college, then scored a free, merit-based ride to grad school. I save almost a quarter of what I make.
But like them, I chose a line of work that doesn't pay much, but can help others make their lives better: I teach. My students run the gamut of political affiliation, but in my twenty years and hundreds of students, only once has there been a conflict over politics (it turned out he had a hard time getting along with anyone). I teach them to argue about ideas, rather than impugning people's integrity and motives, or giving a pass to those they agree with.
My partner and I bought less house than we were approved for, making sure we could weather one of us losing our job. We now have enough in the bank to make two years of house payments if we had to. We're not in a trendy neighborhood; instead, we have a measure of financial security.
I believe in the democratic process. I don't really care if my neighbors are liberal or conservative. It seems those words don't really mean much anymore, because our political discourse has become so poisoned.
I do care if they treat others badly.
People who would do that come in all political flavors.
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Thanks for letting me get that out. Maybe I'm feeling this way because Mother's Day is on Sunday, and I still miss her.