Saturday, October 18, 2008
Liberal Thinking
In the last week, I've had two opportunities to reflect on the term "liberal." One was when someone used it like it was an insult and the other was when someone who is politically aligned with me suggested I should use progressive rather than liberal to describe "our" beliefs. Huh. So, I went to my most efficient source of information, Wikipedia, to refresh what I probably never learned during my education in South Dakota. According to the definitions, progressives are social liberals, though I prefer the social democrat description a bit more. Dewey is listed under both terms. That's good enough for me. (I had a Freudian moment when I initially typed "That's god enough for me.") Do you use the term liberal to describe yourself?
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3 comments:
Since the neocons coopted the term "liberal" and made it an epithet, I've taken to using the word "progressive." I prefer it, because liberal, for me, has always had connotations of "permissive" or "too much." Progressive--aside from containing "progress"--has the connotation of a forward-thinking orientation, rather than a status quo way of thinking.
When my students said the social justice conference they went to was really liberal, like it was a bad thing, I wanted to say, "Well, isn't that what you're studying?" (Liberal studies -- ha) I did ask them what they meant by that term and they said all the speaker (Antonia Darder) did was bash Sarah Palin but support Obama, and she didn't say why Obama was better. But, they did say it was a terrific conference and they learned a lot, so that's good.
I say progressive sometimes because I like to think of it as more to the left than liberal. Truth be told, I'm really a radical and guess that is the term to which I most identify.
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