What's so bad about (liberals?) Letter to the WSJ

[question everything]

You write of liberals with a mixture of fear and loathing, but just consider what liberals have done for the country in the past hundred years, despite the vigorous opposition of conservatives.

Liberals have been responsible for gaining women equal rights, enacting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, passing occupational health and safety laws, desegregating schools, assuring equal employment opportunity, fighting the war on poverty, establishing the minimum wage, protecting the environment, advocating for the disabled, and maintaining religious freedom and the separation of church and state.

In fact, most mainstream rights we now take for granted were once liberal causes. The American Heritage Dictionary defines "liberal" this way: "favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded."

What's so bad about that?

Robert J. Inlow
Charlottesville, Va.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122481027844765159.html

[Trajan]

1. Yea verily ....

EXACTLY the point ...

I wonder why no Democratic party members haven't said the same thing ?

I have been repeating this to co-workers and others for decades ....

[baldguy]

2. Liberals spend all their time reminding people that life isn't fair.

Conservatives spend all their time making sure of it.

(thank you Lewis Black)

[justgamma]

3. JFK's speech.

President John F. Kennedy on being a liberal...

"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.

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But 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, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

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[Demeter]

5. If You Free the Oppressed, Then There Are NO Masters

and the WSJ and the GOP are predicated on the existence of 2 classes, immutable, non-interchangable:

master/slave
landowner/serf
employer/employee
rich/poor

Take that split away, and W, Greenspan, Donald Trump and the like would have to mix with the hoi polloi.

We the People wouldn't be able to stand that! We would have to put them out of our misery, as the French did in the 18th century.

[salguine]

6. What do you wanna bet Mr. Inlow will get an IRS audit or something now...a punishment

befitting a "bad American".

[LynnTheDem]

7. And Jesus Christ himself was

a liberal.

[fencesitter]

8. Well, to most of the readers of the WSJ,

That's exactly what's wrong with liberals.

[underpants]

9. See, them liberals gonna give them blacks all our stuff

It's a great thing when you can convince poor people that someone is going to take something they don't have...especially when you can also entice them with the possibility of endless wealth if they (novices) try to jump into your game (Wall Street/401Ks) at your table and then the people who run the game take all their money.

[pacalo]

10. Keeper! K&R.

:toast: