I’ve never made my party affiliation a secret on this blog, yet it sometimes causes friction with some of my readers when the issue comes up.
And these are readers who normally agree with me on the issues I write about.
In these instances, we end up debating among party lines, not necessarily about the issues, but about subjective things such as whose president is worse and which party blundered most in recent history.
It reminds me of the arguments I use to have when I would spend a lot of time in sports bars and we would debate about whose teams are better and why. In these cases, it was almost as if we became members of the team by saying things like “we beat you guys back in (fill in the date)” as if we actually took the field that day.
So I figured I would explain my reasons for being a liberal and hope you would do the same about your own party affiliation.
I call myself a liberal rather than a democrat because a liberal is a principle and a democrat is some jackass in office whose principles may mirror mine but usually mirror his own self-indulgent desires.
I call myself a liberal because I believe in freedom. The word is actually derived from the French word freedom. It is related to the word liberty. I believe in liberty and justice for all.
Including those people who might be too poor to afford their own health insurance.
This is probably the main reason why I am a liberal and not a libertarian. I believe a country as rich as ours should provide health care to its citizens. I believe we are only as rich as our poorest citizen.
I also believe in social liberties. I believe marijuana should be legalized. I believed prostitution should be legalized. I believe the drug war has been a complete failure.
Imagine using all the money that has gone into the drug war for a national healthcare system.
I also believe in the Second Amendment, which is where I differ from most democrats. I am a gun owner and god forbid anybody tries to take these guns away from me.
But I am also rational about this and don’t believe that Obama is going to take away my guns. If you have any evidence that this is going to happen, please provide it.
What I do see is a constant erosion of our First Amendment rights, regardless of who is in office, although it really took a drastic turn during the Bush Administration.
I believe in gay marriage because even though I am not gay, I don’t see why I should have a problem with two gay adults getting married. I don’t like people sticking their nose in my personal business so why should I do the same?
I don’t believe in the trickle down theory so I am against giving tax breaks to the rich in the hopes that the money will trickle down. It never does. All this does is give the rich more money to invest, which makes them richer.
And in turn, all this does is create a larger gap between the rich and the poor, which eventually forces the middle class into the lower class, forcing more of us into dept and into corporate slavery.
So those are my beliefs in a nutshell.
What are yours?
