If You're Going to Insult Liberals at Least Get to Know Who We are.

We're not leftists, we're not Blue Dogs, we're not neoliberals. And we're sure as hell not wimps.

Photo by Edgar Serrano on Unsplash

This is long, I know, but I hope you’ll take the time to read it and pass it along. There are millions of us who call ourselves Liberals and are too often misused and misunderstood. We need to set the record straight, no matter how long it takes, no matter how many words.

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Those of you who know me know that whenever the talk gets around to our political affiliations and beliefs, I have no problem calling myself a Liberal. It’s what I am, what I’ve always been, and what I’ll always be. A Liberal.

It’s because my beliefs are decidedly liberal in politics, in philosophy, in emotions, in life. But because that word ‘liberal’, used with or without a capital L, is thrown out there so often by nearly everyone who isn’t or doesn’t know they’re liberal to mean anything but what it really means, I feel the need from time to time to defend Liberals and our need for liberalism.

Every time the Trump regime gets away with something they should never get away with (which is all the time), right after you blame the Republicans you blame the Liberals. You tell us we’re the wimpy centrists weakening the cause. You tell us we’re working against the hard left as they try and fight the hardest. Or, as I’ve heard recently, you tell us we’re sabotaging the Democratic Party by trying to make nice.

So here I am, a Living Breathing Unabashed Unrepentant Liberal, trying to explain once again what it is we Liberals are really trying to do. Most of it has nothing to do with what you think we’re trying to do. Our agenda is pretty simple. Nothing nefarious about it. Nothing naive about it, either.

I’ve written entire essays about what it means to be a Liberal (see examples below). I’ve inserted important differences between Liberals and everyone else countless times in countless forums and venues. It shouldn’t have been that hard to set in stone just exactly what it means to be ‘Liberal/liberal’.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had to stop everything and do this. It isn’t even the leventy-leventh time. Once again, I went looking for some examples of my own explanations and I ran into so many I’m dizzy from it. Clearly I’ve never stopped being That Liberal. And clearly I’ve never been able to explain it well enough.

So let me try again:

A snippet from Here’s a Thought: Let the Liberals Do It:

Liberals have a long history of getting things done. We pulled the entire country out of a great depression by hiring our citizens to do meaningful busy-work, by using our charitable might, by giving dignity and hope back to a country mired in poverty and hopelessness.

We built the unions and gave workers a voice. We put an end to child labor. We fought to give every adult citizen the right to vote, no matter their gender or color. We helped the poor and the elderly by creating Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. We passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Clean Air act, and the Clean Water Act. We ended a recession that nearly destroyed the middle class.

We did all that and more against the wishes — and the might — of fat cats and right wingers who sorely wanted what we’re heading for today: a country ruled by non-contributing despots whose only interests are power, greed, and self-preservation.

We are not that country and we never will be. The Trump phenomenon [is] an anomaly, destined as a vivid warning in our history books, a long chapter on how close we came to letting our democracy die.

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In another section of that same piece, I wrote:

In the 1980s, around about the time the actor Ronald Reagan, friendly Midwestern Liberal turned hard-hearted California conservative, was enshrined as The Teflon POTUS, the word went out that Liberals — those ridiculous “for the people” gadflies — were ruining the country by helping too many undeserving and impoverished leeches, by welcoming foreigners, by insisting that workers be represented by hard-nosed unions, by pushing the toxic notion that health care shouldn’t be for-profit, and by tightening, enforcing, or inventing regulations that were or would be anathema to the gold-plated entities they targeted.

It wasn’t hard to convince the many millions that health, wealth, and happiness could only come from a government without teeth, from the benevolence of ridiculously powerful corporations, and, if all else failed, from that venerable standby, Old Testament God.

All that stood in the way were those insufferable Liberals.

Liberals became such pariahs an entire bloc jumped ship and took on a new name: Progressives. (I would describe them for you here but I admit I don’t know the difference. So far they’ve been relatively, though cautiously, friendly. Don’t look to me to rock that boat.)

But what we Liberals are known for are hearts that gush blood whenever injustice rears its massive, ugly head. We see a bleeding heart as a badge of honor. The same with tears. We cry when things move us, and we don’t hide from our emotions. Our anger stems from compassion, our outrage roars at cruelty. We wear our hearts on our sleeves and it’s not meant as a fashion statement.

And in a long-ago piece called, “Hey, Democrats, You Want to Win? Try Being Democrats”, I wrote this:

We're humanitarians (definition: concerned with or seeking to promote human welfare), which means we're liberals, and we used to be proud of it. Not anymore. We've become pathetically careful about blowing our own horns lest someone think we're bragging. Or smug. Or condescending. Or--oh my God--elitist. We fall for that shit every time.

We're such suckers. No wonder so many people have lost respect for us. During the Reagan years the Republicans deliberately built the lie that it's bad to be good, and damned if we didn't fall for it. Even those of us who knew better. (One small example: Some of us dropped the word "Liberal" because people were making fun of us. A dark moment in our history, but one I won't forget.)

As if being a Liberal wasn’t enough, I’m also a life-long, never-say-die Democrat. It’s no secret that we Democrats have had a tendency to shoot ourselves in our collective feet.

Some in our party (not me) went after Hillary over that awful, terrible, wicked, foolish word ‘deplorables’, predicting she’d lose the presidency over it—never mind the truly awful, terrible, wicked, foolish words coming out of Donald Trump’s mouth at the exact same time. Then there was the matter of her emails. Turned out to be a big nothing, but even the left latched on. Then there was the absolute lie that she was tremendously unpopular and wouldn’t make a good president. (I’ll remind you, she was running against Donald Trump.) So in the end she didn’t ‘win’, though she beat Trump in the popular vote by many millions. Big mistake.

Some on our side (not me) did the same to Kamala Harris. Their claims that she was ineffective and unpopular didn’t hold water, yet those ideas floated out, there, blowing in the wind, fodder for the Republicans and the many millions who, astonishingly, had their doubts and in the end refused to vote for the only person in America who could have stopped Trump’s fascistic regime in its tracks.

And some on our side (not me) are sitting it out in Congress, where only a handful in our party are raising their voices against what literally amounts to a hostile takeover of the country they’re supposed to be protecting against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.

I can be proud to be a Democrat and still not be proud of all Democrats. At the same time, I can be proud to be a Liberal without reservation.

That’s not bragging, it’s a fact. Look it up.

Oh, right. You can’t. Because we liberals get thrown in with everyone from Progressives (nice enough, but they don’t like us, either), to neoliberals (Like saying a sweet potato is a potato because they both have the word ‘potato’ in them.), to leftists (who seem to outright HATE us), to everyone on the other side of the political spectrum. Nobody really knows what we know: that, as Liberals, we’re not like anyone else. We’d like everyone to stop throwing us into groups where we don’t belong.

Every single thing I’ve ever published, politically and maybe even otherwise, comes from a Liberal point of view. I can say without any hesitation that I know what a Liberal is.

This is who we are:

We are Matt Santos, the character Lawrence O’Donnell created for The West Wing and gave voice to:

“Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things...every one! So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, ‘Liberal,’ as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won’t work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor.” --
(See full transcript here)

We are JFK:

“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.”

We are George McGovern, that ‘staunch liberal’ who gained only 17 electoral votes in his bid for the presidency against Richard Nixon in 1972, making it the most lopsided election in American history. (I’ll save you the trouble of reminding me, while I remind you that George McGovern was a good man. A decent man. A man not afraid to call himself a liberal. And to live it.)

I always thought of myself as a moderate liberal, a fighter for peace and justice. I never thought of myself as being all that far out.

Also: I am a liberal and always have been - just not the wild-eyed character the Republicans made me out to be.

In a piece I wrote just days before the 2020 election, a piece called The Trump Regime’s Fatal Flaw: They Don’t Understand Americans, I tried to explain why, in the end, we, the true Americans, will win:

The war [WW II)] was a constant backdrop and my parents were among millions who took the war effort seriously. The propaganda of the day was heavily into duty and obligation — every American citizen was called into service. We couldn’t allow one man, one regime, to win his war against humanity.

It marked us, and we were never the same. Our country grew more and more precious as the war years went on. The more lives that were lost protecting us, the more we persevered — for them. And when the war was over and we grew strong again, our pride grew even stronger. We did it! We won!

Generations of us grew up believing we had an obligation to our country. When JFK said, in his 1961 Inaugural Address, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”, it wasn’t a demand, it was a reminder. This is what Americans do.

We’re in a different century now — 20 years into a different century — and if you cancel out the noise, you’ll find the majority of Americans still believe in some sort of obligatory service. Our obligation is to keep our country strong, not by strong-arming the government, but by strengthening its core principles. By voting as if voting is a serious matter. By entering into public service not as glory-seekers but as true public servants. By working to ease the lives of those who are vulnerable and less fortunate. By recognizing that threats like global warming and raging pandemics are our burdens, our responsibility. Our survival is in our hands.

We are a nation of laws, of regulations, of justice and reckoning. We reject greed and corruption and frown on nepotism. We demand equality, we celebrate diversity, we recognize our enemies, both foreign and home-grown.

Liberals are not Progressives, we’re not leftists, we’re not centrists, we’re not naive, and we’re not wimps. We’re fighters. We don’t always win, but we’re always fighters.

If we hadn’t been fighters we could never have accomplished the things we’ve accomplished as this country grew. It’s not that others weren’t there to help. There were times when even the Republicans went against their power-brokers and their sugar-daddies to do the right thing. But Liberals do the right thing consistently. We work for the people. That’s our hallmark. And if we fail—and we have, miserably—it’s not because we didn’t try to do the right thing. We did try. We do try.

There was a time when we were proud of doing the right thing. It wasn’t just accepted, it was expected, and we didn’t just call ourselves ‘liberals’, we called ourselves Americans.

This is the way a Liberal thinks—it’s the way every true American thinks. There are millions of us who have lived a lifetime of peace and turmoil, and peace and turmoil, and peace and turmoil again, yet have never seen anything like the Trump years. We’re not about to shut our eyes to it. We’ll never pretend it isn’t happening. We’ll never accept it’s the way Americans want to live. We’ll do what we can and what we must. In that sense we’re all Liberals.

Except those who aren’t. And we know who they are.

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(Adapted from an earlier piece, in case some of this looks familiar. I have no expectations that this piece will go viral. I put it out here as one more message that I personally will never stop trying. If you’re one of us, speak up. Share this. Write your own. Send the message. All in.)

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