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/

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 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

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 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 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 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 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/

Rumitoid, you unfortunately have been a sucker for the typical liberal line of bulls**t that the libs always throw out there for public review. Remember, it was a republican President that freed the s***es, it was a Democrat governor (George Wallace) that laid across the steps of a university as to not let b****s attend college in Alabama. The democrats have been race baiters as long as I can remember, learning from the extortionist Jessie Jackson and just gotten worse from there.
The conservatives have not done any harm to the so called L***Q community. They just don’t concern themselves with passing laws to give them more favor than non L***Q community members and don’t want the idealogy shoved down young school children’s throats, who are too young to even understand the concept. People on the right have the attitude, for the most part it’s ok to disagree with the liberals, however the liberals want to destroy anyone who disagrees with them, even a little bit.
Another thing you have suckered for is this Hillary invented republican “war on women”. Republicans have every bit as much respect for women as democrats do, and for anyone to say otherwise is just pure nonsense.
I’m disappointed that the liberals such as you, yourself, who claim to be so open minded, and accepting of others, are so closed minded and h**eful of people who don’t totally agree with you. It’s one thing to agree to disagree, but, the h**eful rhetoric from the left is borderline dangerous and getting worse everyday. Just watch Maxine Waters go bananas every day. We love you all, no matter what your views are, please quit hating us for having views of our own.