Being a liberal

This one is for Mr Wilson and my friend John. 

Please no rant about the Teapublicans, but rather address the issue of the Liberals of today versus the real Liberals of the past. 

Please read the following speech at the bottom. If you can’t figure out who is speaking, I will tell you. 

Reading this over and over, I can’t find much to disagree with. I can also find no parallel in our time. Do we hear much that is uplifting? Do we hear a willingness to be open to ideas outside an ideology or to recognize personal responsibility? Do we see executive vigor at home and abroad?

Do we see a willingness to limit government or taxes or to seek the most efficient course to achieve real results that go beyond rhetoric? 

Rather we hear about inequality, toppling the wealthy, war on women, various forms of class warfare, always blaming others or institutions. We hear nothing about individual responsibility, but instead government assistance first to prevent life and then from birth through death, all through massive and inefficient bureaucracies. We hear endless rhetoric and the promises to go with it, but no measurement aligned with the promised goals or the programs that are implemented. 

Today we get rhetoric designed not to solve any problem, but to inflame and encourage envy. I ask you, what has a hedge fund manager to do with a kindergarten teacher or working hard or getting ahead? We can certainly raise the income of teachers. That’s easy, just ask voters how much more they want to pay in property taxes. Clinton’s remarks achieve nothing but to add fuel to the fire of misinformation. 

“You see the top 25 hedge fund managers making more than all of America’s kindergarten teachers combined, and often paying a lower tax rate,” Clinton said. “So, you have to wonder: ‘When does my hard work pay off? When does my family get ahead?'” Hillary Clinton 6-13-15

The cost of today’s Liberal promises is not validated, but masked with the illusion of “free,” a cruel hoax on future generations. There are many ways to care about people, “their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties.”  Caring is not limited to making them forever dependent on one government subsidy or another in the hope of tying them to one political party. 

Today’s Liberal does not see the strength in the individual, but holds him in disdain; an entity in need, always in need and only to be helped by government. Only my way or no way. Give them a fish, but no fishing pole. 

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label “Liberal?” If by “Liberal” they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer’s dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of “Liberal.” But if by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal.”

But first, I would like to say what I understand the word “Liberal” to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a “Liberal.”

In short, having set forth my view — I hope for all time — two nights ago in Houston, on the proper relationship between church and state, I want to take the opportunity to set forth my views on the proper relationship between the state and the citizen. This is my political credo:

I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man’s ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.

I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind. I do not believe in a superstate. I see no magic in tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale federal bureaucracies in this administration as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and full responsibilities. Government is an art and a precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it. And this requires not only great ends but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.


Our responsibility is not discharged by announcement of virtuous ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for these reasons that liberalism is our best and only hope in the world today. For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies. And the only basic issue in the campaign is whether our government will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we will move ahead in the liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground, of doing in our generation what Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson did in their time of influence and responsibility.