[Dean's World] Aziz P: I, Liberal

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Aziz P:
I, Liberal
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1162315944.shtml


   David Greenberg on [1]being a liberal, as opposed to being a
   conservative:

     I think there's another reason for this budding re-embrace of
     liberal: the fight against Islamist jihadism. Whatever our views of
     Bush's policies, liberals and conservatives agree that what divides
     the West from the terrorists is our commitment to liberal
     values--liberal in the broad sense of the term that denotes the
     Enlightenment traditions of freedom, equality, and human rights.
     Search for the term liberal on sites like that of the Progressive
     Policy Institute and you'll rarely find it used in distinction to
     Bush-style conservatism--but often invoked in distinction to
     al-Qaeda-style fundamentalism. Even the Bushies use "liberal
     values," if only rhetorically, to describe their project of
     democratizing the Middle East.

     In this context of international conflict, liberal suddenly drops
     its associations with Volvos and lattes and starts to evoke more
     noble images of education, voting, free speech, and freedom of
     religion. It's starting to sound like a label we don't have to run
     from at all.

   count me as a proud Liberal, too. In fact I would go further and say
   that those who eschew "liberal" for the term "progressive" - those who
   might rule out Harold Ford or Jim Webb as being insufficiently pure -
   are just as much my political opponents as the (regrettably)
   mainstream of the modern Republican party. If the Progressives want
   the color blue, and the Republicans want the color red, they can have
   them. Liberals and Conservatives, however: go Purple!

   (via [2]Blake)

References

   1. http://www.tnr.com/blog/openuniversity?pid=52821
   2. http://americanfootprints.com/drupal/node/2926#comment