|
Edited on Sun Mar-12-06 06:01 PM by Mythsaje
These are THREE full essays I wrote specifically to be shared around the net. Perhaps as a way of combating some of the ludicrous ones the RWers send around on occasion.
I think these three essays SHOULD be shared, even if I am not specifically credited with writing them. In the interest of honesty, I would admittedly prefer to be credited, if only because it would increase traffic to my website and perhaps sell more books (hence, giving me more time to write), but the Cause comes first.
PLEASE feel free to distribute as you wish.
******
Dear Average Republican,
There is NO "liberal agenda" but the shared interest of liberals who want to see things get better for everyone. You, your parents, and the guy who bags groceries down at the corner market. Liberals want to see you with enough money to buy groceries, pay off your house, and put at least one fuel-efficient vehicle in your garage.
It's not an agenda. It's people hoping for the best for other people.
It's about hoping that your Uncle John, who's been farming the same plot of land for the last 40 years, doesn't lose his farm because he falls off his tractor and breaks his leg and can't pay his doctor bill. It's about hoping that you have some options when your town's biggest employer goes belly-up because it can't compete with that textile factory in China.
It's about making sure you get paid enough that you don't have to take two or three jobs just to make ends meet. So you can spend more time with your family...so you can play catch with your kids, or take them fishing on weekends, or take them to the local swimming hole or municipal pool to teach them how to swim.
It's not an agenda to want the best for people. It's just humanity. It's about being a good neighbor, even if that neighbor lives half a country away.
Ask a liberal what empathy is...it's about understanding where someone else is coming from. And most of us try very hard, even if we don't agree.
Being a liberal isn't about making fun of God, or your beliefs about him. Most liberals take the Sermon on the Mount to heart. They try to live the teachings of Jesus, even if some aren't sure he's really the Son of God. Thomas Jefferson called him the World's Greatest Moral Philosopher. You'll find very few liberals who'd disagree with that.
It's because of liberals that your ten year olds get to go to school rather than being forced to work in factories for spare change. It's because of liberals that you can trust your workplace to be safe and free of unexpected dangers. It is because of liberals that, should you be injured at work, you can expect fair medical treatment and compensation for your lost work, and have money coming in if you’re laid off. It’s also because of liberals that you have reasonably clean water to drink and bathe in, and that the local swimming hole isn’t completely polluted.
That's what we do. We try to look out for everybody. Even the people who hate us. We don't have an agenda. We don't take marching orders from anyone. We do what we do because we believe in people. We believe in you.
All we ask is that you begin to believe in us.
******
Everybody Matters
From the tiny child laying in its crib, burbling in happiness, or wailing with hunger, to the arthritic fellow making his way to his mailbox to look for a letter from his grandchildren--from the young woman on the bus taking her from her childhood home to a dream of greatness in the city to the old woman sitting on her porch, cat in her lap, calling cheerfully to the neighbors tending their garden. From the homeless child sleeping on the school steps to the woman walking down the university steps, diploma in her hand.
From the guy standing in the unemployment line, trying to find another job after his was eliminated or outsourced, to the CEO who gave the order. From the long haired, bearded busker playing guitar at the market, voice raised in a song of hope or despair, to the slick haired concert promoter hob-knobbing with the stars.
Everybody matters.
We are all participants in what was once considered a grand experiment, a society in which we, the people, were all considered equal before the law, that insisted that each of our voices could be heard by those we elected to represent us.
It wasn't always true, of course, but it was a work in progress. One by one, the barriers were torn down and each segment of society became yet another to join their voices in the song of freedom. We believed that by working hard we could make a better world and a better life for our children.
When we stood and opposed the robber barons, fighting for the right to workplace safety, and the right to see our children to go to school rather than being forced to work alongside us, we did it for everyone. We did it for our children, and the children of our neighbors, and the children that would be born to them as well.
When we went off to fight the tyrant who tried to consume Europe, we did it for those who were dying, and those who were not yet born, because the hope of the future deserved it.
When we stood up against the war in southeast Asia, it wasn't just for ourselves, but for the children of all Americans, and the people there who also deserved to live in peace, to try to determine their own fate. We didn't do it because we don't believe in America, and what it's supposed to represent, but because we do.
When we protested the dumping of toxic wastes into the earth, the rivers, and the sea, it wasn't just to protect ourselves, or our own children, but to protect ALL of us, and all our children. When we fought for clean air, it wasn't to ensure our own breaths, but to ensure that all of us could continue to breathe air that didn't make us sick. When we stood up against the decimation of forest land, it was so all our children could enjoy the wonders of nature as we had. As our ancestors had.
America is more than a land mass, more than a nation of people. America is an idea. The idea that everybody matters, from the lowest to the highest, that everyone has a right to a decent life, and has a right to watch their children grow up in a world better yet than the one that they themselves remember.
Isn't that what everyone wants? That their children inherit a world in which more things are possible, in which they have every chance to succeed no matter where they were born and into which walk of life?
That's the one thing we liberals have been trying to say all along. That the farmer's daughter in Ohio, or Kentucky, is just as deserving of a chance to succeed in life as the CEO's son in New York or Chicago or Los Angeles. That's why we stand and fight against those practices and policies that make it that much harder for them. Because if we didn't, who would?
We believe everybody matters.
Don't you?
**********
I Aim to Misbehave
The America I grew up believing in is supposed to include everyone. Yes, I realize that the America I grew up believing in never really existed, that it was an ideal that we never quite managed to achieve. But in many ways the America That Never Was became a shining beacon of hope for the whole world. Behind the commercialism of Coca-Cola, Levi's jeans, and so many other American products that people across the world clamored for and fought to get, lies a belief in the dream that America used to represent.
America was the world's big sister, represented in iconic fashion by the lonely statue standing in New York Harbor, arm upraised. The big sister that didn't spy on its neighbors, but held the torch that lit the way to freedom and equality for all of mankind.
We've lost sight of that thanks to this administration and its flunkies. We turned a cynical eye on the rest of the world, the world that grew up looking at America and saying "we want to be like THEM when we grow up," and collectively spat in the faces of those who said out loud "that's not what America is supposed to be about."
On 9/11 we were struck a devastating blow and, as we reeled in shock, the rest of the world stood up and said "hey, you can't do that to our America!" People all over the world, even in those countries labeled by this administration as part of the "Axis of Evil," marched in protest at what was done to us.
When we went into Afghanistan after Osama Bin Laden, the will of the world went with us. "Catch that murdering bastard," they said. "Put him on trial and let us all show evil what we think of those who would do such a thing to our big sister."
They were our allies, our friends, and our little brothers and sisters.
But when we turned our attention from Bin Laden and went after Saddam and Iraq, the rest of the world paused a moment and looked at us, wondering what we were thinking. They knew that Saddam, though hateful himself, had not attacked us, was not the person who they wanted caught and punished.
In our arrogance, we turned our fury on our allies and friends, and said "if you're not with us, you're against us."
Though that was never true.
We slapped them down and turned our ponderous might against a tiny nation that never had the power to resist us.
Now the same meme echoes within the United States, pressed with ever increasing volume and force upon those who would question this administration and its policies. We are told that we are traitors, and that only by supporting everything that they're doing can we hope to win the "War on Terror."
I disagree. You cannot fight against an idea, against a concept, with the power of military might. You can only fight an idea with another idea. The idea of the America That Never Was, the idea that was abandoned by this administration, is the best weapon we could have leveled against the threat we faced. That America believes in Truth, and Justice, and Hope for the world.
I stand by this assertion, and if people think it's wrong, if they think that by somehow not supporting this administration's wrong-headed policies of death, destruction, secrecy, and cynicism means that I do not support the soldiers that have been callously thrown in harm's way, I cannot change their minds.
But if you ask me to support this fiasco, this abandoning of America's ideals in the name of fear, hatred, and rage, I can only say with a resounding voice "NO!"
I will not turn against the America I believe in. I will not accept an America in which only the powerful have a voice, and in an America that thinks that might makes right. I will not abandon America in its hour of need just because they think I must.
If they think that being a good American means going meekly along with the plan, I have news for them.
I aim to misbehave.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
