I get a lot of flak for being a “liberal”.  Often, the people giving me flak will say “You liberals think x, y, and z, and that means you hate God, America and Family Values.”

     For one thing, while I DO have a lot of views in common with my liberal friends, and while I do think of my self as a liberal, I am generally not accepted as such by others who call themselves liberal.

     They will say stuff like “You support policy that will have effects x, y, and z…therefore you hate The Environment, The Poor and Cute Puppies.”

     Kind of like being a Christian.  No matter what you may think, if you don’t buy the entire dogma, you don’t qualify.

     I’m not sure what I am…but I will say that I believe in the civil society.  I believe that there are things that are just simply, the province of All Of Us Together.

     Maintenance of the overall environment, for instance.  Care of the elderly, the infirm, minor children whose parents cannot support them and the incompetent…and yes, even just the down-on-their-luck.  Education of the next generation of our society.  Management of the natural resources.  Our infrastructure (roads, bridges, power grid, electoral process, economic environment)…just to name a few.

     These are areas where, if the people at large are in charge, everyone benefits.  If a few people gain control, and exploit it for their own selfish gains, we all suffer.

     This puts people like me in a strange position…because it pits us at once against abuses by large, corporate interests and welfare fraud…without making us categorically anti-profit or anti-civil-safety-net.

     Which means that both sides can simply look at each other with a shrug, say “Huh.  Flip-flopper”…and ignore us while they go back to their Crossfire.

     Of course the profit incentive is one of the most universal and powerful incentives we have.  We all want to get ahead, feel secure, feel like a “winner”, feel like the only things holding anyone back in our society are the limits of their talent and drive.  We want to believe that if we get educated, work hard, do what’s right, we can get rich and fat and happy and have nobody but ourselves and God and the promise of this great country to thank for it.  That is a truly American value.

     At the same time, we want to believe that people who cannot care for themselves are cared for.  We like to think that there is a safety net that can catch us if we fall.  We like to believe that we are a compassionate people who will not punish a child for the circumstances of their birth.  We’d like to think that there are, at the very least, scraps enough for everyone.  This is also truly an American value.  The idea that nobody is beyond redemption.  The idea that nobody is inherently valueless…and the idea that talent and drive can overcome any obstacle in our society…even inherited class and educational disadvantages.

     So when did these values become mutually exclusive?  When did saying we should invest public dollars in the educations of talented children who cannot afford it become liberal bleeding-heart whining?  And when did saying that the profit motive can be constructive become neo-fascist corporate brain-slavery?

     I’ll tell you when this happened.  It happened when we let the ideologues write the definitions, and dominate public discourse.

     The education of talented and hard-working people is of benefit to everyone.  The restraint of avaricious and predatory pricing, predatory lending, pillaging of our economy, natural resources, and infrastructure by unbelievably powerful mega-corporations is for the benefit of everyone.  The pursuit of reasonable, sustainable, and healthy profit by small and mid-sized businessmen and women is for the benefit of everyone.

      Somehow, the liberal and conservative lunatic fringes have hijacked the public discourse.

      For an example on the right, here is a link to the Orwellianly named Center For Consumer Freedom, which advocates, in the name of freedom and personal responsibility, the demise of required food labeling, and also advocates legislation that would make it easier for food manufacturers to sue people who make negative health claims about the food.  For instance,  if a study showed that, say, consumption of tons of sugary beverages was linked to higher incidence of type two diabetes, Coca Cola could sue the researchers, and anyone who published the research.

     Hey, everyone’s in favor of personal responsibility and freedom…and we love people who champion our right to make our own choices…even bad ones…but this group uses the language of independence and self-reliance to actually suppress the tools we need to exercise those values intelligently in the face of corporate interest and influence.  With corporate funding and support, and a notable industry lobbyist at the helm, they equate all demands for corporate responsibility to opportunistic legal suits and socialism.

     For an example on the left, there are ALF and ELF (can’t seem to find a web-site for ELF…probably for obvious reasons…although a Google search for Earth Liberation Front will turn up a lot of web-sites related to them.)

     Most people are against torturing and abusing animals.  Most people want clean air, and clean water, and a stable environment.  And yet, these groups, and groups like them appropriate the language of animal welfare and environmental responsibility and apply it to animal rights and anti-corporatism…something many moderates feel is a serious stretch.  Try having a sane discussion about animal welfare, and you will see that it has become quite difficult.  Moderates will back away from you and try not to engage in the discussion.  Radical conservatives will brand you a fascist eco-terrorist, and radical liberals will mock your lack of ideological purity.

     So, you can’t be for food labels and agricultural standards AND personal responsibility.

     You can’t be against wanton suffering of animals AND a sportsman and pet owner.

     If moderates seem voiceless it is because the language and rationality of the moderate positions have been subverted.

     The civil discourse has been radicalized, and civil discourse is the vehicle through which we the people decide how we are going to act on the various questions that come before us.

     It is the supreme tactic of the ideologue.  You either buy the whole package, or you are the enemy.  You are either with us or against us.  If you try to be with us on some things and against us on others, you’re a flip-flopper, and that is something even more demonic than a dyed-in-the-wool member of the opposing team.

     So the middle is either silent, unable to have a dialogue when the rhetoric is so polluted, or they choose the side that has the stuff they least disagree with, and lend their voice and strength to the ideological fringe who claim them as their own as long as they keep quiet and go along.

     So what do we do about it?  Well, in my dream world, people who aren’t true believers would stop being afraid to say so.  Stop letting people put words in their mouths.  Stop letting others mischaracterize what they believe, or misrepresent what they stand for.

     Also in my dream world, we’d all get together and rip the middle out of both the big parties.  Form a centrist party…or two if necessary.  Maybe one slightly left and one slightly right…but still with more in common with each other than the rest.  People can still be slightly liberal, and slightly conservative…they just have to prove that they are capable of working with the other side and coming up with good results.  Hey, the radicals WANT to rid themselves of the RINO’s and DINO’s…so let’s oblige them.

     And as long as I’m making my kooky little shopping list…why not have better education about the scientific method and how studies are structured.  Let’s have a little media responsibility to talk about the methodology of studies, who funded them, a little history on the researchers and what else they’ve worked on…rather than just grabbing headlines with the results…sort of a consumer labeling of science so informed consumers can avoid the ideologically fueled junk and stick to the good stuff.  The ideologues are quite successful at hijacking science too.

     Well, my dream world will most likely never come to pass.  But it’s kind of nice to think about…but until then, I’ll just have to keep on tiredly explaining that no, I don’t torture animals, I don’t hate the poor, and Mom and Apple Pie are OK by me….but baseball is boring.  Oh yeah, and I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the communist party...just in case you were wondering.