The Unrepentant Liberal

If there's anything I've learned since I set up a Facebook page it's that there are a lot of people out there who seem to think the whole world agrees with them and they can say anything they want and not expect some fallout. Then there are people such as I who tend to be the fallout mentioned above and who have a certain facility for enraging the one's who blithely stated something I consider to be really dumb and in some cases downright offensive. Of course my responses often result in them thinking I'm downright offensive. How's that happen? I'm a pretty nice guy.

Been thinking about this and laid out a few basic facts about myself. Let's see, I'm reasonably well-educated. Got a Master's plus some. I teach school and care about kids. I try to be rational and well-informed about the issues of the day. I care about my country and its citizens. I think everybody should have access to the basic necessities of life. I believe all of humanity deserves some basic respect, regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, or sexual preference. Discrimination annoys me. I believe it was at this point in my enumeration of personal beliefs and traits that it hit me. Oh my God! I'm a liberal! What's more I have the unmitigated gall to profess this without an ounce of shame about it. Say it loud and say it proud! I'm a liberal! Didn't that feel good?

When I was younger someone, someone supposedly older and wiser, told me, "When you are 21, if you are not a liberal, you have no heart. When you are 45, if you are not a conservative, you have no mind." At the time I remember thinking, "Really?" Now I find myself thinking, in response, "Bite me buddy!" I passed that 45 year mark over a decade ago and I still care about humanity. I still favor progressive policies. Somehow in my heart of hearts and in my most rational mode, I find that liberal policies are the best for the nation as a whole and the future of America, if not the world. As Paul Simon once remarked, "Still crazy after all these years." That would be Paul Simon, the musician, not Paul Simon the late Senator from Illinois, although he too was a liberal.

Somewhere during the Reagan era, when I was busy being appalled that America elected this numbskull, not just once but twice, it became anathema to America to profess openly to be a liberal. It became "the L Word." No not lesbian. That's the new "L Word," created by the Showtime series of the same name, and I must admit that I don't shun lesbians, and in fact count a few as good friends. But I digress. I believe my response to Reagan era right-wing nonsense (Who could seriously vote for a guy who said ketchup was a vegetable and trees cause pollution?) was not to continue loudly saying "I'm a liberal," but to join the Democratic Socialists of America and proudly proclaim, "I'm a radical." Hey! Now I'm only a liberal. I've mellowed with age. (Okay, not much. Just got a little more realistic.) Man if you think the "L Word" scares middle America, try spreading around the "S Word" sometime. Scares the pants off them. Brings out the NRA in some of the most peaceful individuals. Interesting study in Psychology for Americans.

At any rate, I find myself in my late 50's, rapidly approaching 60 and I'm not changing my views a bit. I take the late Ted Kennedy as a guiding light in the direction I think I'm committed to. (Not as for male-female relations, but as to social policy.) My views are not so radically different from what they were when I was an undergraduate in the late 60's and early 70's. Furthermore, I seem to have reached a point where my attitude about it is "I don't care what you think about what I think. This is it. Take it or leave it." I can no longer mince words. This is what my life has been about and still is about.

Of course with the advent of Facebook, this has been broadcast to people I went to high school with, family members, and assorted people who have accompanied me along this path. I have managed to alienate a certain number who I never really was honest with before. I have to ask myself, though, "How can they reject me now, when my life was saying this all along? I just verbalized it now." Funny how people avoid talking about things that really matter. Funny how they can go on for decades ignoring their differences, afraid to voice them, to face them, to deal with them.

Then there is this blog. It takes what is inside my head and puts it out there for the world to see. It is an act of bravery, to see what the world thinks of what I think, or to see if they even care. Perhaps it is after all just ego, that I feel my ramblings would matter at all, but even if they don't I remain the same, an unrepentant liberal, ever ready to tilt at the windmills of society.