Liberal and Proud - liberal is not a bad word

[malaise]

“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, their civil liberties…Someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and the suspicion that grips us… If that is what they mean by a Liberal… Then I am proud to say I am a Liberal.”

http://www.alan.com/2009/08/26/ted-kennedy-proud-to-be-a-liberal/

Time to remind people that Liberal is good.

[graywarrior]

1. I often wonder what republicans think when their in a Liberal Arts course.

Oh, wait a second...they don't think.

[malaise]

2. I'd like to see the Liberal Arts curiculum at

say Regency :rofl:

[graywarrior]

3. Regent in VA and several other southern university do NOT mention Liberal in

any of their academic courses.

:rofl:

[malaise]

4. Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

I didn't know that. :rofl:

[bullwinkle428]

5. If we learn NOTHING else from the legacy of EMK, it should be this!

[malaise]

9. 100% correct

Liberal and proud should be on bumper stickers and Tee shirts everywhere

edit subject

[Bigmack]

6. Used to be that "Liberal" meant "Commie"...

to the rightwingnuts.

Now, "Liberal" means "Socialist".

Said with the same scorn and fear.

Morans!

[B3Nut]

8. When they likely couldn't even come close to defining *any* of those terms correctly

they just parrot talking points from their neo-brownshirt puppetmasters on the radio. "Craaaawk! Polly want a red armband! Craaaawk!"

Todd in Cheesecurdistan

[Hugabear]

12. I don't think that "socialist" or "communist" are bad words either

n/t

[malaise]

21. Same here n/t

[malaise]

13. That's because so called liberals allowed them to control

the discourse.
How even progressive church people didn't aggressively push the line that Jesus was a liberal is mind-blowing.

[Laelth]

22. Allowed them?

Sorry. This liberal is not going to take responsibility for the fact that the reich-wing controls the M$M.

:dem:

-Laelth

[malaise]

23. I accept that they control M$M but more than a few

so called liberals have allowed them to control the discourse.
I heard Tweety getting upset one day at being called a Liberal. Now he's gushing about Teddy Kennedy. He should be exposed.

[Laelth]

24. You are right to note that many Democrats have avoided the word "liberal" since Reagan.

I agree that the word needs to be reclaimed. How to do that, however, is another question. Democratic politicians avoid the word because they fear they can not get elected if they're branded in that way. Look at what happened to Michael Dukakis.

Perhaps the time is right for a liberal resurgence. I don't know. Obama would have to lead the way, I think. He is more than happy to call himself a centrist.

:dem:

-Laelth

Edit:Laelth--sloppy proofreading.

[patrice]

7. I love saying "I am a Liberal" in casual conversation with strangers here in Cupcake Land.

[liberal N proud]

10. Proud to be a liberal

[malaise]

14. LOL

:fistbump:

[Maru Kitteh]

11. I love being a liberal in a red state. I wear the badge of liberalism with pride.

[malaise]

16. Bravo

:yourock:

[msongs]

15. the democratic party Inc and its leadership run from liberal as fast as possible nt

[Captain Hilts]

17. Yes, they do, because they aren't liberals. nt

[malaise]

19. Expose them

Now is the time

[Tippy]

18. I am proud to be a LIBERAL...a true..YELLOW DOG n/t

[malaise]

20. Bravo Yellow Dog

:yourock:

[blossomstar]

25. It's a beautiful word, liberal!

To me, it is representative of everything good in this world. The word speaks volumes about character, a person who looks "forward", who has hope for a better world, who is happy in their own skin and does not judge others for being different. Yes, I am proud to call myself a liberal.

[Annces]

26. I think I had a little insight into conservatives today

It may even have to do with our ancestors sort of controlling things from heaven. The peoples that have already died, still have their same values and beliefs and customs. The people on earth are changing every day. We are attached to the ancestors but have to create something new. Even parents try to have their children continue with their legacies one way or another. Anyhow I had never thought of it this way before.

[Echo In Light]

27. Apt term. I use it, although prefer Leftist to counter the right-wing movements in this country

[OneBlueSky]

28. JFK on liberalism . . .

Acceptance of the New York Liberal Party Nomination
September 14, 1960

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/35_kennedy/psources/ps_nyliberal.html

(snip)

But first, I would like to say what I understand the word "Liberal" to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a "Liberal," and what it means in the presidential election of 1960.

In short, having set forth my view -- I hope for all time -- two nights ago in Houston, on the proper relationship between church and state, I want to take the opportunity to set forth my views on the proper relationship between the state and the citizen. This is my political credo:

I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.

I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind. I do not believe in a superstate. I see no magic in tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale federal bureaucracies in this administration as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and full responsibilities. Government is an art and a precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it. And this requires not only great ends but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.

Our responsibility is not discharged by announcement of virtuous ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for these reasons that liberalism is our best and only hope in the world today. For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies. And the only basic issue in the 1960 campaign is whether our government will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we will move ahead in the liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground, of doing in our generation what Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson did in their time of influence and responsibility.

Our liberalism has its roots in our diverse origins. Most of us are descended from that segment of the American population which was once called an immigrant minority. Today, along with our children and grandchildren, we do not feel minor. We feel proud of our origins and we are not second to any group in our sense of national purpose. For many years New York represented the new frontier to all those who came from the ends of the earth to find new opportunity and new freedom, generations of men and women who fled from the despotism of the czars, the horrors of the Nazis, the tyranny of hunger, who came here to the new frontier in the State of New York. These men and women, a living cross section of American history, indeed, a cross section of the entire world's history of pain and hope, made of this city not only a new world of opportunity, but a new world of the spirit as well.

- more . . .

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/35_kennedy/psources/ps_nyliberal.html