Liberal Test

So what is a liberal?  Once in awhile a situation comes along that allows us to answer that question fairly definitively. Most recently it's the action taken by professional football player Colin Kaepernick, who remained seated during the pre-game playing of the national anthem to protest discrimination and violence against minorities in the US.

So, here's the test: Do you agree or disagree with his action? If you think the question is getting at, Yes, I  Agree = Liberal, or No, I Disagree = Conservative, it isn't that simple.  Here's the answer that defines what a liberal is: It doesn't matter.   As a liberal it doesn't matter if I agree with him or not. He has the right to engage in peaceful protest of a situation he sees as intolerable.  But going even further than recognizing his right to protest in this fashion, a liberal respects him for his action, and the words used to explain his action - respects him for putting his livelihood at risk. For in the macho, conservative world of pro football, his career has surely been jeopardized, regardless of his performance on the field.

I have my own feelings about what he did, and continues to do, but it doesn't matter, I support his right to do it. And that's the essence of being a liberal.  It's what  separates us from conservatives, whose value system is defined by what they believe is good and everything else is bad.  They cannot rise above themselves and their own beliefs in any debate about any issue. And the stronger their opinion, the more wrong is any other opinion. That's why the more they are in charge, the worse this country and the world becomes.

Many years ago I was attempting to have a rational conversation with a conservative coworker.  I knew the odds were against success, and I was right.  We were discussing the ACLU and he was expressing his disapproval by saying, "They do a lot of things I disagree  with." My response was that was the point.  If they weren't doing things we disagreed with, there would be no need for them.  He couldn't comprehend that.  I pointed out their defense of free speech by the Ku Klux Klan and American nazis as actions I disagreed with, but that free speech can't be only speech we agree with. To have a free society, we have to be willing to defend speech we don't agree with. I might as well have been speaking Klingon.

It's not easy being a liberal.  We have to defend not only our own liberty to think, speak, and act freely, but in order for us to be free, we have to defend the liberty of those who would gladly give our freedoms away: conservatives. They appear incapable of recognizing that the American flag means nothing if we aren't allowed to burn it. That the national anthem is just a song if we can't sit through it in protest. The concept of an underlying principal behind a symbol seems foreign to them.  The idea that the right of Muslims to practice their religion must be protected in order for Christians to enjoy the same right is nonsense to conservatives. So, as liberals we fight for ourselves, and for those who despise us and would happily jail us if they could.

That's what a liberal is.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.