Some where a long the line, liberal has become a dirty word. That's because the Republicans have done a great job of spreading propaganda about liberals. Every time they get a chance they bash all of the ills of society as by products of liberals.
Well I say it's time to turn the tables. We need to make the word Conservative a dirty word. It shouldn't be that hard -- especially if you are able to read history. It was the Conservatives who prolonged slavery, denied women the right to vote, created sweat shops, promoted Jim Crow laws, fought against Social Security, and so on, and so on. The list is endless. Conservatives care about money and nothing else. Bottom line, they're a bunch of haters. When I am King, I'll put people first.
I think this wiki page says it all...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Thank_a_liberal
Great list of liberal accomplishments - thanks julylamoon.
ReplyDeleteIt is a good list, to bad the parenthetical explanations are needed for so many of them.
ReplyDeleteI think reclaiming Liberal is the most important step. For several years, I've advocated the simple retort: "Liberal means freedom, look it up". http://www.google.com/dictionary?langpair=en|en&q=liberal&hl=en&aq=f
ReplyDeletePersonally tired of liberals shunning the label that expresses the best of them.
Mike, I don't think that liberals consider it a dirty word, and Ive heard them use 'conservative' as a slander for many years.
ReplyDeleteI grew up out of a libertarian background, eating up Ayn Rand's 'philosophy'. I've since grown, and have learned the value of government.
I personally would like to see us grow beyond these two silly labels. Very few topics can easily be sliced into two separate, opposite pieces.
I call myself a Rationalist now. I take every issue, and try to think of the best way to solve it. Health care is a perfect example. If we as a society want cheap health care, then capitalism is the best tool for the job. That means stripping regulation, allowing hospitals to turn people away, removing the tax deduction, canceling medicare or any other government health program, and letting charity deal with those who can't afford it. That would reduce the cost of health care, and create a tiered system. Cheap health care would be poor quality, expensive would be good. That's capitalism in a nutshell.
Public healthcare creates the need for the government to ration care. There will be waiting lines for basic services, and you will have to deal with bureaucracy when you go to hospital.
I prefer public health care, but I could live with capitalistic health care. That's what it means to be a rationalist, to accept the faults as well as the benefits of different choices in governance. It's not an 'us vs them', but a debate about the direction we want to move as a nation.
Because we're so polarized in this country, we end up with a bastard half socialist half capitalist healthcare system that has the worst of both and the benefits of neither.
Absolutely. It's one of the things most folks I know here in Britain, and even the few I know elsewhere in Europe, really don't understand... when did liberal become a bad thing? There's some fearsome propaganda machine your conservatives have had for some time, I'm sure... the evils of whatever-drug-someone-cares-to-name (not purely a liberal issue, but hey), the evils of socialised medicine... it's, frankly, insane.
ReplyDeleteIf I took your post, switched "conservative" and "liberal", changing FDR to Reagan or something of the sort, I'd get exactly what the conservatives say about how they're treated.
ReplyDeleteIf your teacher were alive where my kids just finished high school, yes they can teach this material. In fact, my daughter's US history teacher was blatantly pro-Obama in class during the presidential campaign.
I know being a "hater" is not good for the soul, buuut, I'm feeling it. I am a LIBERAL and proud. I am working ever day at being a better person who does not think about lining people against a wall to make the world a better place, I know that doesn't work, it's definitely been tried. I just shouldn't listen to people in congress, think about plants, love, kids, not hate.
ReplyDeleteIf I took your post, switched "conservative" and "liberal", changing FDR to Reagan or something of the sort, I'd get exactly what the conservatives say about how they're treated.
ReplyDeleteIf your teacher were alive where my kids just finished high school, yes they can teach this material. In fact, my daughter's US history teacher was blatantly pro-Obama in class during the presidential campaign.
I think reclaiming Liberal is the most important step. For several years, I've advocated the simple retort: "Liberal means freedom, look it up". http://www.google.com/dictionary?langpair=en|en&q=liberal&hl=en&aq=f
ReplyDeletePersonally tired of liberals shunning the label that expresses the best of them.
I think this wiki page says it all...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Thank_a_liberal