I should have warned people I was going to use a dirty word. On the Internet, on cable news, and in the workplace all across the United States, "liberal" is a bad word.
People will say that it is un-American to be liberal, or that people who are liberal don't have very high standards. Despite the frequency of those ignorant comments, here is what liberal actually means:
-favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, esp. as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties.
-favoring or permitting freedom of action, esp. with respect to matters of personal belief or expression: a liberal policy toward dissident artists and writers.
-of or pertaining to representational forms of government rather than aristocracies and monarchies.
I hope that any person, not just in America, but in the world, thinks of themselves as a "liberal" in that way. I hope they would think of themselves as people who want the maximum freedom from oppression, dictatorship and discrimination that they could ever possibly achieve.
Yet this word remains taboo and is thrown about as a meaningless yet heavy label. In the case of this election, people attack Senator Barack Obama and dismiss him as someone who is too liberal. Judging by the recently shown definition, how would one fit that description too well? He wants freedom too much? He really doesn't want a dictatorship? I'm not saying that he is a perfect candidate, I'm merely saying if you're going to suggest that this is one of flaws, you're going to need to keep looking.
The next step people take is calling Senator Obama a socialist. Now that one really packs a punch. After all, it wasn't that long ago when we were at war with the socialists. The Soviet Union was socialist, right?
Socialism is defined as "a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole."
So what countries are socialist today? How about Sweden, The United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and finally the United States. There is no question about it, America is a socialist country already and you didn't even know it.
How much did you pay for the road in front of your house? The school down the street? The post office just around the corner? The fire department? You use all of these things virtually free of cost because of the socialism that is alive and well in the United States of America.
Social programs shouldn't scare us: we were raised on them. We went to a socialized school. We drive to work on a socialized street every day of our lives. We don't lose control of things when they become socialized; it literally gives power to the people.
So don't be tricked into being afraid of these "scary" words anymore. And when someone tells you that Senator Obama is too liberal, let them know that you're a liberal too. Unless you really do hate freedom and liberties and would like a dictatorship, of course.
