What the @%#^@! is a Liberal Pt. II

1976

My social studies class held a mock election. It was a week or so before the real election of 76 and, I guess, Mr. Aiello wanted to see where we all stood.
In retrospect, this is just a way of gauging what our parent’s thought, because, seriously, what 10 year old knows shit about politics? But it was 76. Watergate was just 2 years old. Nixon’s resignation, still an open sore.
There were 24 kids in that class. 22 of them voted for Ford. 2 voted for Carter.
I grew up in a very conservative town. I was mocked for voting for Carter. I was vindicated a few weeks later when he won, but I guess they got the last laugh.


So, when did it become such a bad thing to be “liberal”?
I just did a quick thesaurus search on my laptop as the pilot has announced that we are just over El Paso. (I’m STILL over Texas but my new riding companion makes more sense. He’s from Los Angeles and believes that the reason middle America voted for Bush wasn’t because they believe in him, but, rather, that they believe that they might, too, one day, be president. It’s an interesting theory. What was it Aaron Sorkin had Martin Sheen say in The West Wing? The problem with the American Dream is that everyone is preparing for the day they will one day be rich. Something like that.
Let’s get back to my favorite curse word. Here are the options that Microsoft Word has given me for “liberal”:

Open-minded (adj)
Open minded
Broadminded
Moderate
Noninterventionist
Free thinking
Tolerant
Laissez-faire
Narrow-minded—WHAT? Oh, wait, it reads:
Narrow-minded (Antonym) whew.

It goes on:

Generous (adj)
Generous
Copius
Abundant
Profuse
Substantial
Large.

And these are bad things to be?? How did this happen? When did this happen? Why did this happen? Why is it perfectly acceptable to attact the “liberal” media and say that things have a “liberal bias”??

By definition the media that gets attacked daily by the Hannitys, the O’Reillys and the Breadons (my in-laws in Ohio) should read like this:

Open minded media
Broadminded media
Moderate media
Noninterventionist media
Free thinking media
Tolerant media
Laissez-faire media

Once again. A very bad thing. Apparently.

Just for fun, let’s see what the thesaurus says about the word “conservative”. (I’m doing this for the first time, right now. I promise I will report EXACTLY what Word says and I am in now way biasing this. This is the great experiment. Here we go:

Conservative:
Traditional (adj)
Traditional
Conventional
Conformist
Unadventurous
Old-fashioned
traditionalist
Old School
Avant-Garde (antonym)

Moderate (adj)
Moderate
Careful
Cautious
Speculative (antonym)

Traditionalist (n.)
Traditionalist
Conformist
Activist (antonym)

There. We’re done.

Okay, it’s not like it’s an insult to call someone a Conservative and I really don’t think how you could spin it that way.
I like tradition, we celebrate Passover and Christmas every year. I wouldn’t want to be a conformist, they make good soldiers, I suppose but I can see how conforming could make someone feel like they are wearing a comfortable wool sweater. It feels good to fit in.
Unadventurous isn’t also something I (or anyone of the pioneers of the nation) would want to be called, but it’s not an insult.
I like Od fashioned Ice Cream.
Old School was a funny movie.
Careful is good. If you’re not careful you might cross the street against the light and then you would get hit by a car, like Batman and Robin said we would back in the day.
Cautious. I have Norton Antivirus.

So, these aren’t really insults, per se. But, seriously, how can the other things be bad? Why is calling me a liberal like calling a black man a Nigger, or tossing pennies at a Jew? (They used to throw pennies at me in the high school cafeteria, I never understood why it as insulting, I just laughed. Hey, if they wanna throw away money……)
And I can see how one wouldn’t want to be “open minded”, broadminded”, et al. But why do WE liberals allow them to insult us this way? I mean, it’s a word.
It’s a good word!
But we allowed it to be taken, twisted and turned into an insult.
Liberals kills babies, rape mothers, take your money, fuck young girls in the white house……okay, that one isn’t so bad, I mean, who knew Jewish girls gave head?
I have to know. I want to know.
What is a “liberal”?
What do we look like?
My sister in law plays a game with her kids……she thinks it’s harmless fun. I think Nazi-esque.
I’ll report, you decide.