LION AND THE LAMB: What is a liberal anyway?

Columns

February 3, 2009

By Emerson Abts / Chronicle contributor The Crossville Chronicle Tue Feb 03, 2009, 08:08 PM CST

For several years now I have been writing occasional pieces for this column. The first one I submitted was on my understanding of the term "liberal."

I have always called myself a liberal, even since Ronald Reagan began trashing the term. Liberal, I tried to explain, was something other than a philosophy of big government and high taxes. And it was quite distinct from tough individualism and unfettered capitalism. To be liberal meant to be generous, thoughtful and caring.

I was pleased, after the item was published, to see that it had brought forth a response, both angry and frivolous, from at least one reader. Some people, at least, read the "Lion and the Lamb"!

Now with the election of a president, described during the campaign as the most liberal of the senators (the critics completely overlooked the most liberal senator, representing Vermont, one Bernie Sanders. Sanders is a card-carrying socialist), we hear from all right wing sources complaints about big government liberalism.

Writing in the Op-Ed section of the New York Times, Timothy Ash undertakes to explore various definitions of liberal or liberalism. "Liberalism has become a pejorative term denoting — to put the matter a tad frivolously — some unholy marriage of big government and fornication....

"The weird usage leads, at the extreme, to book titles like Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism."

Ash writes that the term "liberal" is vigorously attacked in France and much of eastern Europe. And there it means unregulated free-market capitalism, beloved by libertarians and fiscal conservatives. And sometimes the term neo-liberalism is used. (It does make a difference how one defines the term.)

In calling myself liberal, I was open to the charge of being a "tax and spend" Democrat. I was thought to be unaware of the real world, where it's everybody for themselves. YOYO — You're On Your Own is the true philosophy for real Americans.

Many years ago in Ohio I heard the late Senator Robert Taft describe himself as a "real liberal" because he believed that government ought not to take our money in excessive taxation. Liberals such as Taft, in those days of Roosevelt's New Deal, claimed that the only good government was less government; that it was unfair to tax the rich at a higher rate than to tax the middle class or the poor; that it was a waste of good resources to offer "relief" to the poor.

For the last thirty years at least, Taft's arguments have largely been followed. Even centrist Bill Clinton, Democrat, proclaimed, "The era of big government is over."

In China, "Liberalism means everything the government does not like" ...the term is used to attack those who advocate further market-oriented economic reform. In India a "liberal" father is one who allows his children to choose whom they wish to marry.

One response in this country to the attack on "liberalism" has been to change terms. Abandon the "liberal" and adopt "progressive." I have no quarrel with using the newer term; it too has a noble history, dating back to the early 20th century and "Fighting Bob" LaFollette, founder of the Progressive Party and movement. I still read The Progressive, a monthly published in progressive Madison, Wisconsin.

When asked, during the campaign, whether she was a liberal, Hillary Clinton replied, "I prefer the term progressive, which has a real American meaning." (Liberal, therefore, must be unreal, or un-American, or both?)

To me, a Christian, "liberal" springs from Jesus' second great commandment. He commands me to love my neighbor as I love myself. My neighbor is everyone. He may be my friend or my enemy. I must love him. I must try to find a job for him; I must vote for better school funding for his children; I must love him and wish him well, even though I may not like him.

This, I believe, makes me a liberal. And I am happy to have a president who, though he may not use the term, is indeed a liberal. Timothy Ash concludes, "Then, perhaps in his second term, he might dare to rescue the word."

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