In Defense of Liberalism

Liberalism has become the political philosophy that dares not speak its name in Kern County. As seen in their campaign ads this tortuous campaign season, local conservative candidates use the word "liberal" in the same way Senator McCarthy used the word "communist" in the 1950s, as an indefensible accusation that challenges an opponent's patriotism and defines him as an enemy to the "small town family values" of this community. Today's Democrats embrace "small town values" and other abstract terms to distance themselves from the party's liberal wing. It's time to set the record straight on what exactly liberalism is and is not.

The lack of awareness of political history and understanding of the political process in this community makes it easy for self-serving political machines to garner votes by blaming liberals for everything from the breakdown of the traditional family to the ban on prayer in public schools. According to conservatives, liberals want government to take over our lives by dictating where and how we worship, by taking most of the money we earn from our labor and by placing rules on how we spend our money. Understanding the history of liberalism and its accomplishments, the intelligent reader will see liberalism is not a political approach that opposes freedom, responsibility and the ethics commonly ascribed to western European Judeo-Christianity. It is the source of America's greatest strengths and victories, founded on those very values that conservatives claim as their own.

Liberalism has three faces: a political tradition, a political philosophy, and a general philosophical theory. I'm concerned here with liberalism as a political tradition and philosophy. The concept of freedom forms the historical basis of liberal theory. Liberalism's ultimate goals are individual freedom and a government that serves all people equally.