Soapbox

By definition

I heard on NPR this morning that “liberal” is expected to be the dirty word in politics for the next 8 months of nastiness; as in “John Kerry is too liberal for the American people”.
How can that be? Lets take a little stroll through our friendly Random House dictionary.

lib-er-al adj. favorable to progressive reform … of or pertaining to representational forms of government, rather than aristocracies and monarchies… favorable to or in accord with concepts of individual freedom, especially as guaranteed by law and secured by government protection of civil liberties….permitting freedom of action, especially with respect to matters of personal belief…free from prejudice or bigotry; tolerant…characterized by generosity.

And this is a bad thing?

A person may call themselves a liberal and subscribe to policies which others find counterproductive or poorly reasoned. A person could claim to be liberal and be just as ignorant, corrupt, greedy and even prejudiced as the opposition campaign which seeks to somehow defame them with the label. Their fault, however, would lie in their policies and not in being “liberal”.

There is plenty of room for disagreement on positions and issues on all sides of the political spectrum, and clearly, things will get very ugly very soon. As Dylan said, “A hard rain’s gonna fall” and anyone with a television is going to get wet. But please, let us not make a label and an epithet out of a concept with which, in and of itself, we surely all agree!

Neither “liberal” nor “conservative” is a bad word, and neither should be treated as such. If one wants to question an opponent’s record or current stance on issues, take issue with the actual opinion itself, not by labeling with a term that by definition is not even derogatory. That merely shows the speaker’s poor command of the English language.
If “liberal” is a sin, may we all be guilty.