From outside the box

What is a true liberal? What is a true conservative? These are great questions and they need to be asked from time to time because of their constant state of flux. My Dad was a conservative man who had his own ideas and opinions on everything, and he was not afraid to express (preach) them to anybody who would listen and often, even if you didn't want to listen. My father, like so many from his generation, was a direct descendent of European immigrants. Many of these folks came here in the 19th century because they wanted more out of life than what the old country could offer, and they weren't afraid to work for it. My parents generation came along in the early 20th century. They grew up working from the time they were old enough to walk and talk, many of them being forced to drop out of school early to help make ends meet. They lived thru two world wars and the great depression, often with copious amounts of off spring to provide for. The conservative values they lived by did not come from somebody preaching to them on the radio, they were a result of their own blood, sweat, and tears, as well as having experienced hunger and poverty, not to mention the fear of what would happen had they lost the second world war.

So I understood their love of country, their respect for the flag and what it meant to them, their need for traditional family values (because those values meant survival of the family), and their devotion to religion as well as their fear of God. And I'd bet that most of the liberal baby boomers came from similar roots. And I'd also bet that most liberals of my generation still hold many of these conservative values near and dear to their hearts, I know I do.

The point I'm making here is that many of us liberals get it, we understand the conservative mind set, it's where we came from, it's a part of who we are. I understand the anger conservatives feel when they connect liberals to many of the social blunders that have taken place over the decades. I'm talking about things like illegal immigrants getting welfare and health care, over taxing working class people, political correctness getting carried away to the point that you can no longer call something what it is, too many social programs, placating terrorists and their fundamental beliefs so as not to offend anybodies religion, and expecting the government to solve all of our problems. If I thought for one second that liberals were propagating these blunders, I would drop my political party in a heartbeat!

A little history, thru my perspective....

Back in the sixties when most baby boomers were coming of age and beginning to look at the pros and cons of the conservative values we were raised with, there was a war going on, much like the war going on in Iraq today. And my generation was taking a very close look at this war because we were not only being asked to go to Vietnam and maybe die for the cause, many of us were being forced to. The problem was, nobody could give a clear reason about why we were in Vietnam. The best we could get was that we were there to stop the spread of communism. Now we were all raised being told communism was a very evil form of government. But we dared to question the motives of our government because by the middle sixties, we were also finding out that much of what we had been told up to that point in our lives by our parents, churches, government, the whole establishment, was a lie. All those wonderful values we were raised on were rideled with lies! They said the Beatles were satanic, rock and roll was evil, smoke pot and you will go insane, nuclear explosion?....no problem....just duck and cover, sit too close to the TV and you'll go blind, breast feeding was considered immoral (really!), pregnant women were given diet pills (speed) by their doctors to keep their weight down, they couldn't show toilets on family television shows (I don't know, you tell me), don't go swimming right after you eat or you'll get cramps and drown, commit a sin and go straight to hell, masturbation will make you cross eyed (now that one might have been true...I knew this kid who....never mind, doesn't matter), the point here is, if they lied about everything else, maybe they were lying about the war too.

It's no wonder that my generation took our traditional values we were raised with and threw them out the window! We experimented, we tried to create our own values.....we were right about the war, we were wrong about drugs. We were not as smart as we thought we were at the time, we screwed a lot of things up, but for the better or worse, we changed things. Some of us burned out, some went full circle and in the end found Jesus, some just got lost, but many of us, anchored by the basic moralities of right and wrong that we were raised with, went on to become the foundation of the progressive movement that has helped to shape the democratic party into what it is today. I believe the sixties was the birth of modern day liberalism.

Liberals have always stood for social justice, compassion for the poor, and middle class working families. And this has gotten us into a lot of trouble. When you take an issue like welfare (or any government give-away program), which was never meant to be a way of life or a give out to the able bodied (or illegal aliens) among us, and allow a whole beauracracy to build around the giving away of something, these agencies tend to expand and promote their own agendas, in part to justify as well as enhance their own existence, and possibly, in part, to avoid law suits. Soon they become out of control spending monsters and because they were created based on a liberal idea, the liberals end up taking the blame for the practices of these dysfunctional agencies.

Democrats see taxes as a necessary contribution we must all make in order to have highways, education, military, etc. The government is a tax and spend institution. That's what you do with taxes, you spend them. Liberals like to see our tax dollars spent back on us, the people. We create institutions within the government to do just that. That does not make liberals anymore socialist than a republican who sends his kids to public schools or calls the police in an emergency. Half of this country runs on social programs, it's how we set things up a long time ago.

The modern day liberal does not condone big government, higher taxes (on the poor and middle class), enabling dysfunctional and able bodied individuals, open borders, free social services to illegal aliens, or a weak military. We also do not respond well to being motivated by fear. We do not like being forced to live according to conservative morals. We tend to listen to science over religious dogma. We are patriotic and love our country. We think war should be a last resort. We believe in the power of negotiating. We want our government to be fiscal and operate within it's means. We think elections should be run fair. We believe that government should be criticized, analyzed, and held accountable. We believe large industry should be regulated because when left to their own devices, they will place the almighty dollar over the welfare of people every time. And we believe the environment is worth protecting at any cost.

The baby boomer liberal was raised with conservative values. Some aspects of those values were just stupid, but most of them were based on common sense, love of God and country, and survival of the family. We need to incorporate those values, the real values of honesty, integrity, and self empowerment, into the new democratic party. We need to acknowledge our mistakes and learn from them. The republican party once stood for many of those values but choose to abandon them. They allowed government to get too big, they bloated the national debt, they sided with big money, and because of the patriot act, they have ventured too far into people's personal lives. Many of the values that used to define the GOP seem to be up for grabs. If the republicans ever reconnect to those values, the real ones that have defined America and made it the greatest country on earth, and the democratic party refuses to stand up for them, I'll change my party.

Maybe I'm out of touch, maybe my philosophy of what a true liberal is, is just my own fantasy. But I hear it in Obama and I hear it in Hillary. We shall see....

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