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I have no choice: I am a liberal
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Jul 8, 2018 14:57:05   #
rumitoid
 
I’ve always said no political philosophy has a monopoly on good ideas. So I was never willing to call myself liberal. Or conservative. I liked the idea of weighing the facts and thinking a thing through for myself. I was naive.

“I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.”— Ronald Reagan

Now I know how the Gipper felt.

Once upon a time, you see, I thought I was a little bit conservative. Mind you, I could never side with the right on social-justice matters like the treatment of L***Q Americans, African Americans and women, where they have always been irredeemably wrong. But I did agree with them on the importance of fathers and on the need for self-reliance, a strong military and foreign-policy realism. While I support government regulation of business, consumer standards and the environment, I was even willing to listen to conservative complaints about excessive red tape.
Most Read Opinion Stories

Down and Out in San Francisco on $117,000 | Timothy Egan / Syndicated columnist
Postpartum depression is real, painful and treatable | My Take
Using the separation of families at border to bait Democrats | Froma Harrop / Syndicated columnist
Scott Pruitt: The fall of the king of the grifters | Frank Bruni / Syndicated columnist
Let’s encourage safe play until we fully understand sports-related head injury | Op-Ed

Thing is, I still hold more or less the same views, but I’m nobody’s idea of a conservative. I didn’t change, but the definition of conservative did. And that forces a realization:

With apologies to John F. Kennedy, Ich bin ein liberal.

That will, I know, bring howls of derision from conservatives. They’ll see it as a portentous announcement of a self-evident t***h — like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar announcing that he is tall.

I get the joke, but the joke makes my point.

We live in a starkly bipolar political world. One is red or one is blue, one is right or one is left. But I’ve always resisted the idea that I had to choose a team and line up behind its talking points. I’ve always said no political philosophy has a monopoly on good ideas.

So I was never willing to call myself liberal. Or conservative. I liked the idea of weighing the facts and thinking a thing through for myself.

I was naive, though. While I was holding out on a lonely island of principle, the middle space between the extremes shrank to nothing. Political identity became actual identity, and one was required to choose sides, like a kid in the slums forced to choose between rival street gangs, with conscientious objection not an option.

And the choice isn’t really a choice at all, because what used to be conservatism no longer is. When’s the last time you heard the right talk about the kinds of things — fatherhood, clear-eyed foreign policy — that once helped define it?

No, these days, being “conservative” means being angry and fearful at the loss of white prerogative. It means to embrace — or at the very least, tolerate, which is functionally the same thing — a new and brazen strain of w***e s*******y. It means to be dismissive and destructive of the norms of democratic governance. It means to willingly accept nonstop lies, intellectual vacuity and naked incompetence and pretend they are signs of stable genius. It means to be wholly in thrall to the Cult of Trump.

Small wonder GOP heavyweights like columnists George F. Will and Max Boot and campaign strategist Steve Schmidt have disavowed their party out of devotion to what conservatism used to be. Their moral courage makes neon obvious most Republicans’ lack thereof.

That said, one wonders if it will not turn out that these worthies are simply holding out on their own lonely island of principle, if conservatism’s headlong march toward f*****m will not make them the ones who seem naive 20 years down the line. But that’s their problem.

This column is about my problem, which I guess I’ve solved, though not without some regret for the days when I felt free to walk between political extremes and not declare myself. But in 2018, that’s an unaffordable luxury. In 2018, one of those extremes represents a danger as clear and present as any foreign adversary.

So yes, I am a liberal. Because I have, literally, no alternative.
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/i-have-no-choice-i-am-a-liberal/

Reply
Jul 8, 2018 15:16:53   #
no propaganda please Loc: moon orbiting the third rock from the sun
 
rumitoid wrote:
I’ve always said no political philosophy has a monopoly on good ideas. So I was never willing to call myself liberal. Or conservative. I liked the idea of weighing the facts and thinking a thing through for myself. I was naive.

“I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.”— Ronald Reagan

Now I know how the Gipper felt.

Once upon a time, you see, I thought I was a little bit conservative. Mind you, I could never side with the right on social-justice matters like the treatment of L***Q Americans, African Americans and women, where they have always been irredeemably wrong. But I did agree with them on the importance of fathers and on the need for self-reliance, a strong military and foreign-policy realism. While I support government regulation of business, consumer standards and the environment, I was even willing to listen to conservative complaints about excessive red tape.
Most Read Opinion Stories

Down and Out in San Francisco on $117,000 | Timothy Egan / Syndicated columnist
Postpartum depression is real, painful and treatable | My Take
Using the separation of families at border to bait Democrats | Froma Harrop / Syndicated columnist
Scott Pruitt: The fall of the king of the grifters | Frank Bruni / Syndicated columnist
Let’s encourage safe play until we fully understand sports-related head injury | Op-Ed

Thing is, I still hold more or less the same views, but I’m nobody’s idea of a conservative. I didn’t change, but the definition of conservative did. And that forces a realization:

With apologies to John F. Kennedy, Ich bin ein liberal.

That will, I know, bring howls of derision from conservatives. They’ll see it as a portentous announcement of a self-evident t***h — like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar announcing that he is tall.

I get the joke, but the joke makes my point.

We live in a starkly bipolar political world. One is red or one is blue, one is right or one is left. But I’ve always resisted the idea that I had to choose a team and line up behind its talking points. I’ve always said no political philosophy has a monopoly on good ideas.

So I was never willing to call myself liberal. Or conservative. I liked the idea of weighing the facts and thinking a thing through for myself.

I was naive, though. While I was holding out on a lonely island of principle, the middle space between the extremes shrank to nothing. Political identity became actual identity, and one was required to choose sides, like a kid in the slums forced to choose between rival street gangs, with conscientious objection not an option.

And the choice isn’t really a choice at all, because what used to be conservatism no longer is. When’s the last time you heard the right talk about the kinds of things — fatherhood, clear-eyed foreign policy — that once helped define it?

No, these days, being “conservative” means being angry and fearful at the loss of white prerogative. It means to embrace — or at the very least, tolerate, which is functionally the same thing — a new and brazen strain of w***e s*******y. It means to be dismissive and destructive of the norms of democratic governance. It means to willingly accept nonstop lies, intellectual vacuity and naked incompetence and pretend they are signs of stable genius. It means to be wholly in thrall to the Cult of Trump.

Small wonder GOP heavyweights like columnists George F. Will and Max Boot and campaign strategist Steve Schmidt have disavowed their party out of devotion to what conservatism used to be. Their moral courage makes neon obvious most Republicans’ lack thereof.

That said, one wonders if it will not turn out that these worthies are simply holding out on their own lonely island of principle, if conservatism’s headlong march toward f*****m will not make them the ones who seem naive 20 years down the line. But that’s their problem.

This column is about my problem, which I guess I’ve solved, though not without some regret for the days when I felt free to walk between political extremes and not declare myself. But in 2018, that’s an unaffordable luxury. In 2018, one of those extremes represents a danger as clear and present as any foreign adversary.

So yes, I am a liberal. Because I have, literally, no alternative.
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/i-have-no-choice-i-am-a-liberal/
I’ve always said no political philosophy has a mon... (show quote)


To be a true "progressive" is going way past the old fashioned liberal, such as the founders of AMERICA were. To be a modern liberal you must seperate people into groups and not care about individuals. You must have disdain for Christians and believe that there is no God, that each human (except Christians and white men) is a god unto himself and what ever he thinks is right and moral for him is the only law he needs to be concerned about. That allows him to r**t and destroy private property and hurt people if it suits his cause. To be a liberal today means you must not believe that others have the right to live their own lives, support themselves and say "NO" to financing you and your lifestyle while you sit back and b***h. To be a liberal you must follow the Stalinist concept that man and woman married to each other and raising a family should be banned, as the STATE has the right and is the only competent source of family raising. In other words , you must follow the goals of socialism, Stalin style

Reply
Jul 8, 2018 15:27:43   #
Noraa Loc: Kansas
 
rumitoid wrote:
I’ve always said no political philosophy has a monopoly on good ideas. So I was never willing to call myself liberal. Or conservative. I liked the idea of weighing the facts and thinking a thing through for myself. I was naive.

“I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.”— Ronald Reagan

Now I know how the Gipper felt.

Once upon a time, you see, I thought I was a little bit conservative. Mind you, I could never side with the right on social-justice matters like the treatment of L***Q Americans, African Americans and women, where they have always been irredeemably wrong. But I did agree with them on the importance of fathers and on the need for self-reliance, a strong military and foreign-policy realism. While I support government regulation of business, consumer standards and the environment, I was even willing to listen to conservative complaints about excessive red tape.
Most Read Opinion Stories

Down and Out in San Francisco on $117,000 | Timothy Egan / Syndicated columnist
Postpartum depression is real, painful and treatable | My Take
Using the separation of families at border to bait Democrats | Froma Harrop / Syndicated columnist
Scott Pruitt: The fall of the king of the grifters | Frank Bruni / Syndicated columnist
Let’s encourage safe play until we fully understand sports-related head injury | Op-Ed

Thing is, I still hold more or less the same views, but I’m nobody’s idea of a conservative. I didn’t change, but the definition of conservative did. And that forces a realization:

With apologies to John F. Kennedy, Ich bin ein liberal.

That will, I know, bring howls of derision from conservatives. They’ll see it as a portentous announcement of a self-evident t***h — like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar announcing that he is tall.

I get the joke, but the joke makes my point.

We live in a starkly bipolar political world. One is red or one is blue, one is right or one is left. But I’ve always resisted the idea that I had to choose a team and line up behind its talking points. I’ve always said no political philosophy has a monopoly on good ideas.

So I was never willing to call myself liberal. Or conservative. I liked the idea of weighing the facts and thinking a thing through for myself.

I was naive, though. While I was holding out on a lonely island of principle, the middle space between the extremes shrank to nothing. Political identity became actual identity, and one was required to choose sides, like a kid in the slums forced to choose between rival street gangs, with conscientious objection not an option.

And the choice isn’t really a choice at all, because what used to be conservatism no longer is. When’s the last time you heard the right talk about the kinds of things — fatherhood, clear-eyed foreign policy — that once helped define it?

No, these days, being “conservative” means being angry and fearful at the loss of white prerogative. It means to embrace — or at the very least, tolerate, which is functionally the same thing — a new and brazen strain of w***e s*******y. It means to be dismissive and destructive of the norms of democratic governance. It means to willingly accept nonstop lies, intellectual vacuity and naked incompetence and pretend they are signs of stable genius. It means to be wholly in thrall to the Cult of Trump.

Small wonder GOP heavyweights like columnists George F. Will and Max Boot and campaign strategist Steve Schmidt have disavowed their party out of devotion to what conservatism used to be. Their moral courage makes neon obvious most Republicans’ lack thereof.

That said, one wonders if it will not turn out that these worthies are simply holding out on their own lonely island of principle, if conservatism’s headlong march toward f*****m will not make them the ones who seem naive 20 years down the line. But that’s their problem.

This column is about my problem, which I guess I’ve solved, though not without some regret for the days when I felt free to walk between political extremes and not declare myself. But in 2018, that’s an unaffordable luxury. In 2018, one of those extremes represents a danger as clear and present as any foreign adversary.

So yes, I am a liberal. Because I have, literally, no alternative.
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/i-have-no-choice-i-am-a-liberal/
I’ve always said no political philosophy has a mon... (show quote)


I use to be liberal until I grew up and had to work and pay taxes. I turned conservative because I believed in the Constitution and one earning one's way. Now I am an Independent because both sides have become radical and do nothing. I am disgusted with all of Congress. I wish they had term limits, didn't make so much, had to draw Social Security upon age 65 and pay for their own insurance or had to have Medicare.

Reply
 
 
Jul 8, 2018 15:39:15   #
rumitoid
 
no propaganda please wrote:
To be a true "progressive" is going way past the old fashioned liberal, such as the founders of AMERICA were. To be a modern liberal you must seperate people into groups and not care about individuals. You must have disdain for Christians and believe that there is no God, that each human (except Christians and white men) is a god unto himself and what ever he thinks is right and moral for him is the only law he needs to be concerned about. That allows him to r**t and destroy private property and hurt people if it suits his cause. To be a liberal today means you must not believe that others have the right to live their own lives, support themselves and say "NO" to financing you and your lifestyle while you sit back and b***h. To be a liberal you must follow the Stalinist concept that man and woman married to each other and raising a family should be banned, as the STATE has the right and is the only competent source of family raising. In other words , you must follow the goals of socialism, Stalin style
To be a true "progressive" is going way ... (show quote)


Your POV of us, not the reality. You demonize us generally. There is a spectrum of Liberals, like Conservatives. Yes, you have defined a fringe group of Liberals, as much as seeing Conservatives as White Nationalists and Neo-N**is. Open your eyes!

Reply
Jul 8, 2018 15:58:46   #
bmac32 Loc: West Florida
 
Up until the end of Carter I was democratic, not liberal but democratic and I didn't switch parties the democratic party left me now they have really left me. Today MS13 are the good guys, really, it's now OK to hassle someone how might be going out to eat or attend a movie. Common sense has left the party completely. They've always wanted more citizens but legal and not with more rights than people already here.



Noraa wrote:
I use to be liberal until I grew up and had to work and pay taxes. I turned conservative because I believed in the Constitution and one earning one's way. Now I am an Independent because both sides have become radical and do nothing. I am disgusted with all of Congress. I wish they had term limits, didn't make so much, had to draw Social Security upon age 65 and pay for their own insurance or had to have Medicare.

Reply
Jul 8, 2018 16:56:37   #
vernon
 
no propaganda please wrote:
To be a true "progressive" is going way past the old fashioned liberal, such as the founders of AMERICA were. To be a modern liberal you must seperate people into groups and not care about individuals. You must have disdain for Christians and believe that there is no God, that each human (except Christians and white men) is a god unto himself and what ever he thinks is right and moral for him is the only law he needs to be concerned about. That allows him to r**t and destroy private property and hurt people if it suits his cause. To be a liberal today means you must not believe that others have the right to live their own lives, support themselves and say "NO" to financing you and your lifestyle while you sit back and b***h. To be a liberal you must follow the Stalinist concept that man and woman married to each other and raising a family should be banned, as the STATE has the right and is the only competent source of family raising. In other words , you must follow the goals of socialism, Stalin style
To be a true "progressive" is going way ... (show quote)



Very well said and I agree with every word.
I don't know where he comes up with this f*****m stuff after all its the lefties that are trying do away with the first and the second amendments as we speak.They are also trying to steal the p**********l e******n from a duly elected president.

Reply
Jul 8, 2018 17:19:28   #
rumitoid
 
bmac32 wrote:
Up until the end of Carter I was democratic, not liberal but democratic and I didn't switch parties the democratic party left me now they have really left me. Today MS13 are the good guys, really, it's now OK to hassle someone how might be going out to eat or attend a movie. Common sense has left the party completely. They've always wanted more citizens but legal and not with more rights than people already here.


That is totally absurd, "MS13 are the good guys" to Liberals. Where did you get that craziness, Infowars?

Reply
 
 
Jul 8, 2018 17:59:12   #
archie bunker Loc: Texas
 
rumitoid wrote:
I’ve always said no political philosophy has a monopoly on good ideas. So I was never willing to call myself liberal. Or conservative. I liked the idea of weighing the facts and thinking a thing through for myself. I was naive.

“I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.”— Ronald Reagan

Now I know how the Gipper felt.

Once upon a time, you see, I thought I was a little bit conservative. Mind you, I could never side with the right on social-justice matters like the treatment of L***Q Americans, African Americans and women, where they have always been irredeemably wrong. But I did agree with them on the importance of fathers and on the need for self-reliance, a strong military and foreign-policy realism. While I support government regulation of business, consumer standards and the environment, I was even willing to listen to conservative complaints about excessive red tape.
Most Read Opinion Stories

Down and Out in San Francisco on $117,000 | Timothy Egan / Syndicated columnist
Postpartum depression is real, painful and treatable | My Take
Using the separation of families at border to bait Democrats | Froma Harrop / Syndicated columnist
Scott Pruitt: The fall of the king of the grifters | Frank Bruni / Syndicated columnist
Let’s encourage safe play until we fully understand sports-related head injury | Op-Ed

Thing is, I still hold more or less the same views, but I’m nobody’s idea of a conservative. I didn’t change, but the definition of conservative did. And that forces a realization:

With apologies to John F. Kennedy, Ich bin ein liberal.

That will, I know, bring howls of derision from conservatives. They’ll see it as a portentous announcement of a self-evident t***h — like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar announcing that he is tall.

I get the joke, but the joke makes my point.

We live in a starkly bipolar political world. One is red or one is blue, one is right or one is left. But I’ve always resisted the idea that I had to choose a team and line up behind its talking points. I’ve always said no political philosophy has a monopoly on good ideas.

So I was never willing to call myself liberal. Or conservative. I liked the idea of weighing the facts and thinking a thing through for myself.

I was naive, though. While I was holding out on a lonely island of principle, the middle space between the extremes shrank to nothing. Political identity became actual identity, and one was required to choose sides, like a kid in the slums forced to choose between rival street gangs, with conscientious objection not an option.

And the choice isn’t really a choice at all, because what used to be conservatism no longer is. When’s the last time you heard the right talk about the kinds of things — fatherhood, clear-eyed foreign policy — that once helped define it?

No, these days, being “conservative” means being angry and fearful at the loss of white prerogative. It means to embrace — or at the very least, tolerate, which is functionally the same thing — a new and brazen strain of w***e s*******y. It means to be dismissive and destructive of the norms of democratic governance. It means to willingly accept nonstop lies, intellectual vacuity and naked incompetence and pretend they are signs of stable genius. It means to be wholly in thrall to the Cult of Trump.

Small wonder GOP heavyweights like columnists George F. Will and Max Boot and campaign strategist Steve Schmidt have disavowed their party out of devotion to what conservatism used to be. Their moral courage makes neon obvious most Republicans’ lack thereof.

That said, one wonders if it will not turn out that these worthies are simply holding out on their own lonely island of principle, if conservatism’s headlong march toward f*****m will not make them the ones who seem naive 20 years down the line. But that’s their problem.

This column is about my problem, which I guess I’ve solved, though not without some regret for the days when I felt free to walk between political extremes and not declare myself. But in 2018, that’s an unaffordable luxury. In 2018, one of those extremes represents a danger as clear and present as any foreign adversary.

So yes, I am a liberal. Because I have, literally, no alternative.
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/i-have-no-choice-i-am-a-liberal/
I’ve always said no political philosophy has a mon... (show quote)


You're not a liberal. You're a whining, b***hing, menopausal woman.

Reply
Jul 8, 2018 18:14:58   #
rumitoid
 
archie bunker wrote:
You're not a liberal. You're a whining, b***hing, menopausal woman.


Not a drunk? Okay. Is this progress? Maybe. But I am male. Have been for seventy plus years. Married for twenty years...to a female. Two grandkids. Can I still be a Liberal?

Reply
Jul 8, 2018 18:32:32   #
archie bunker Loc: Texas
 
rumitoid wrote:
Not a drunk? Okay. Is this progress? Maybe. But I am male. Have been for seventy plus years. Married for twenty years...to a female. Two grandkids. Can I still be a Liberal?


This is America, and 2018. You can be anything you want.

Reply
Jul 8, 2018 19:10:44   #
rumitoid
 
archie bunker wrote:
This is America, and 2018. You can be anything you want.


Lol.

Reply
 
 
Jul 8, 2018 19:49:57   #
no propaganda please Loc: moon orbiting the third rock from the sun
 
vernon wrote:
Very well said and I agree with every word.
I don't know where he comes up with this f*****m stuff after all its the lefties that are trying do away with the first and the second amendments as we speak.They are also trying to steal the p**********l e******n from a duly elected president.


Back when Democrat meant liberal in the old fashioned way, I was a Democrat. When the Democrat party became the Democrat Socialist party and the 60's terrorist were teaching in Universities I realized that the country had gone over the deep end. When Saul Alinsky and the students he taught like Hillary Clinton came into power, and the r****rs were the good guys, I knew it had to be stopped. Unfortunately I am now in my mid 70's and not in good health But I refuse to sit in my wheel chair and let the Marxist Socialists have their one world order.

Reply
Jul 8, 2018 19:56:20   #
rumitoid
 
no propaganda please wrote:
Back when Democrat meant liberal in the old fashioned way, I was a Democrat. When the Democrat party became the Democrat Socialist party and the 60's terrorist were teaching in Universities I realized that the country had gone over the deep end. When Saul Alinsky and the students he taught like Hillary Clinton came into power, and the r****rs were the good guys, I knew it had to be stopped. Unfortunately I am now in my mid 70's and not in good health But I refuse to sit in my wheel chair and let the Marxist Socialists have their one world order.
Back when Democrat meant liberal in the old fashio... (show quote)


You are being brain-washed by the alt-Right.

Reply
Jul 8, 2018 20:40:36   #
saltwind 78 Loc: Murrells Inlet, South Carolina
 
no prop, You are correct. There is a broad spectrum of ideas in the Republican party. The problem is that many American n**is and people of their ilk have been drawn to Trump. Ever since Trump declared that there are good people on both sides, he has had their full support. I have heard criticism coming from the n**is that are angry that Trump gave his daughter to a Jew, as if he had a choice in the matter. The t***h is that Trump has done everything he could attract the right wing crazies to his base, and he has.
rumitoid wrote:
Your POV of us, not the reality. You demonize us generally. There is a spectrum of Liberals, like Conservatives. Yes, you have defined a fringe group of Liberals, as much as seeing Conservatives as White Nationalists and Neo-N**is. Open your eyes!

Reply
Jul 9, 2018 06:45:06   #
Peewee Loc: San Antonio, TX
 
rumitoid wrote:
You are being brain-washed by the alt-Right.


As you are by the Alt-Left. You lost me at the LBGQT comment. I'm with the man in the green shirt. https://youtu.be/37obTFmp6NE

Reply
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