What's wrong with being a 'liberal'?

You hear about them on the news all the time. You hear the term used in the movies, about those “damn liberals!” who are running around trying to change things…rallying against the ‘establishment’. You hear the reference used in political discussions to describe areas of the country that vote ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’. It’s seen by some as a bad thing to be – liberalism will lead to marijuana smoking, hemp loving hippies who will lead the world in fornication and other impure acts.

So what exactly is a liberal? According to the Princeton Online Dictionary a liberal is a person who has:

• broad: showing or characterized by broad-mindedness; "a broad political stance"; "generous and broad sympathies"; "a liberal newspaper"; "tolerant ...

• having political or social views favoring reform and progress

• tolerant of change; not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or tradition

• a person who favors a political philosophy of progress and reform and the protection of civil liberties

• a person who favors an economic theory of laissez-faire and self-regulating markets

And what is wrong with that? I’d rather live a life of progress that embraces change – or evolve. I think by doing this we will enable mankind to be more…human.

As a society or species we HAVE to evolve in order to ensure the survival of our species. Without change we would NOT have progressed as far as we did; we left the Dark Ages due to liberal enlightenment that lead to the Renaissance. The Dark Ages – we learned – was a period where liberal thought languished after the fall of the Roman Empire – a free spirited and progressive society. The Dark Ages was a result of not only the Huns and Barbarian Rule, but also due to the strict conservative principles of the Holy Roman Empire of the time that discouraged education and learning because it was a way to keep control of the unwashed masses (literally). Without liberals such as Michelangelo, Leonardo de Vinci and Cristobal Columbus life today would have been dismal.

In the last century forward thinkers such as Steve Jobs of Apple, Bill Gates of Microsoft, Gene Roddenberry of Star Trek fame, and those pioneering scientists who invented the internet in the 1960s, we would not have the vision or ability to communicate the way we do today; our life would have been a lot more complicated.

(Okay, who here can honestly remember how we got things done without fax machines, email or a computer? How on EARTH did we manage without cell phones?!)

To me, being a progressive liberal is a good thing and not something to be ashamed of.

Now, what does it mean to be a conservative?

• resistant to change

• having social or political views favoring conservatism

• cautious: avoiding excess; "a conservative estimate"

• a person who is reluctant to accept changes and new ideas

• button-down: unimaginatively conventional; "the dull-grey world of business"- Newsweek

• bourgeois: conforming to the standards and conventions of the middle class; "a bourgeois mentality"

Ugh.

How predictable and boring. We just as well might have stopped after we switched from black & white to color television, and kept white gloves in fashion. Left to conservatives we’d still be using fountain pens and the Guttenberg Press to get things done.

I AM A PROGRESSIVE LIBERAL. And proud of it.

What are you?