What It Means To Be A Liberal

UNIVERSITY of Chicago law professor Geoffrey R. Stone laments that the word “liberal” has become a pejorative in the 38 years since Richard Nixon was elected president. And he thinks that is a shame. Proud of being a liberal, he has published “What it means to be a liberal” in the Chicago Tribune for all to read and reflect upon.

We all owe Professor Stone a vote of thanks for setting forth “10 propositions that seem to me to define ‘liberal’ today.” And we should honor his courage. When you nail your principles to the mast then you are inviting people to compare theory with practice, and you are asking people to cry “hypocrite.”

Well, everyone is a hypocrite, and nobody lives up to their principles. But still, liberals might like to know just where conservatives think they fall down.

1. Liberals believe individuals should doubt their own truths and consider fairly and open-mindedly the truths of others. This is at the very heart of liberalism.

Forgive me, Professor Stone, if I remark that I haven’t noticed too many liberals doubting their truths lately. To me they seem embattled and closed-minded in their devotion to their liberal shibboleths.

2. Liberals believe individuals should be tolerant and respectful of difference.

Forgive me, Professor Stone, if I remark that in my experience the hallmark of actual liberals is the striking lack of respect and tolerance they display towards people that disagree with them. Indeed, in my experience, they are ruthless in using institutional power to persecute those who disagree with them.

3. Liberals believe individuals have a right and a responsibility to participate in public debate.

Forgive me, Professor Stone, if I remark that in my experience liberals believe that only liberals and their clients have a right and a responsibility to participate in public debate. Other people better watch what they say, because liberals like to silence people that disagree with them by calling them “racists” and “bigots.”

4. Liberals believe "we the people" are the governors and not the subjects of government, and that government must treat each person with that in mind.

Forgive me, Professor Stone, if I remark that I find it hard to believe that any government that spends about 35 percent of national income, that is the income created by the work of the American people, is treating the people as anything other than “subjects.”

5. Liberals believe government must respect and affirmatively safeguard the liberty, equality and dignity of each individual.

Forgive me, Professor Stone, if I remark that the experience of a lifetime prompts me to say that in my experience liberals have absolutely no regard for the liberty, equality, and dignity of people like the white working class and “fundamentalist” religious believers. In fact there has been research done on this.

At the Democratic convention of 1992, Bolce and De Maio reported in The Public Interest, over half the delegates rated Christian fundamentalists on a “feeling thermometer” graduated from 0 to 100—at an ice cold zero.

Half of the active liberals assembled at the Democratic Convention couldn’t have imagined having a more negative opinion of Christian fundamentalists. They must, one assumes, rate them equal to rapists and axe murderers.

6. Liberals believe government has a fundamental responsibility to help those who are less fortunate. It is liberals who have supported and continue to support government programs to improve health care, education, social security, job training and welfare for the neediest members of society.

Forgive me, Professor Stone, if I remark that over the last twenty years it is liberals who have utterly refused to consider any attempts to improve the government programs you mention. Education? Liberals are standing in the schoolhouse door. Health care? Liberals refuse to reform it. Social Security? Liberals use it as a way to scare seniors into voting Democratic.

7. Liberals believe government should never act on the basis of sectarian faith.

Forgive me, Professor Stone, if I remark that liberals act on the basis of their sectarian faith all the time, call it what you will: liberalism, secular humanism, modernism. Let us tell truth and shame the devil. People bring their faith to the public square, even liberals, and they usually want the government to legislate their faith into law, especially liberals.

8. Liberals believe courts have a special responsibility to protect individual liberties. It is principally liberal judges and justices who have preserved and continue to preserve freedom of expression, individual privacy, freedom of religion and due process of law.

Forgive me, Professor Stone, if I remark that liberals only seem interested in the protection of their own liberties and the liberties of their clients. But if you study the history of law you discover that the great weight of legal precedent deals with the slow and painful development of developing rules to govern transactions between people, the broken fence, the damaged goods, the contract gone wrong. Liberals seem to have little understanding of the difficulty of securing justice in the common vicissitudes of life.

9. Liberals believe government must protect the safety and security of the people, for without such protection liberalism is impossible.

Forgive me, Professor Stone, if I remark that I have to try very hard to give liberals credit for concern about the safety and security of average American citizens from enemies foreign and domestic.

10. Liberals believe government must protect the safety and security of the people, without unnecessarily sacrificing constitutional values.

Forgive me, Professor Stone, if I remark that I have always been led to believe that liberals believed in a living constitution. So what constitutional value are we protecting this week?

Oh, I forgot. The constitutional right of Al-Qaeda telephone callers to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.