my handy dandy dictionary defines liberal as: not bound
by traditional beliefs or ways…
and synonyms for liberal: progressive, unconventional,
tolerant, impartial, unbiased, broadminded, lenient,
generous, abundant, overflowing…
Liberalism: a political belief stressing progress,
the essential goodness of humankind, and individual
freedom…
and the anti-liberal faction believes in the exact opposite
of what the dictionary calls Liberal/liberalism…
which is hard to know because they rarely ever,
and I mean rarely ever, actually defend what they believe in,
spending their time attacking liberalism and not defending
whatever the hell it is they do believe in… and I am not
surprised… it is far, far, FAR easier to attack someone,
especially if one does what the anti-liberal does, which is
flat out lies about liberals and liberalism…
But I find their inability to define their own ideals and agenda,
to defend their conservative goals and agenda…
as again, not very surprizing… it takes something
the right doesn’t have to defend their own value/belief
system… and that is honesty… and courage…
values lacking from the anti-liberal…
But today, today I came not here to bury conservativism…
but to praise liberalism…and the liberal…
The modern world, in all its glory, is a liberal world…
from science to politics to religion to philosophy,
all of it, comes from a liberal basis… science, modern
science comes from attacking classical science, overcoming
Aristotle for example… Aristotle was wrong, about a great
many things, and he would still be considered to be the
‘‘sole’’ arbiter of the world if it weren’t modern science
learning to overcome his ‘‘science’’… from Copernicus to
Galileo to Newton, all of their science was an attempt
to overcome Aristotle… which was ‘‘traditional’’ science,
and the way the world was, for over two thousand years…
this overcoming extended from science to the changing nature
of political theory… which was the result of the Enlightenment
era… in which people took a new look at the way the
world was and they saw that other examples, such as
the Roman and Greeks, and their ‘‘democratic’’ experience,
colored the way people saw the old fashion political
beliefs… the ‘‘Liberal’’ ideas that came into effect
flowed from science to religion and then onto the political…
If one takes a look at the history of the 15th and 16th century,
we see that along with the scientific revolution going on,
there was also a religious revolution going on…
Mind you, that when Luther wrote his 95 Theses,
in 1517, Copernicus was 44 years old…
You cannot separate out or ignore the connection between
the two aspects of the European society, the religious
and the scientific… today, we see them as totally separate,
but in those years, they were often one and the same…
Aristotle was often brought into religious conversations
as much as scientific conversations… to attack Aristotle
was also attacking the Catholic Church… many large
scale religious wars were fought for over two hundred
years… including the battle of White Mountain in 1620…
in which Descartes was present…
For over two hundred years, it was very hard to separate
out religious and political concerns in Europe…they
were considered to be one and the same…
The final, for our concerns, was the political revolution,
which slowly began by 1700 and culminated in both
the American and the French Revolution… part of the
reason that our American forefathers treated religion
the way they did, was the endless religious wars of
Europe the prior two centuries… to separate out
religion and the state, to prevent those wars which
plague Europe for over 2 centuries…
(and today, creating a great deal of strive
with the ‘‘new’’ mixing of religion and politics)
Both the American Declaration and the constitution,
were responses to European history and at the time,
still ongoing Enlightenment, which of course is a
liberal philosophy… for that is part of being liberal,
not bounded by traditional values and beliefs…
which the Enlightenment was a reevaluation of values…
in religion, politics, science, history, economics, to name
a few values that the Enlightenment reconsidered…
The modern era is a Liberal era… in which the old
values and beliefs were examined in light of the
new experiences and sciences of the day…
In light of Modern Quantum physics, we can no longer
hold onto old forms of existence… conservativism
no longer holds because it is tied down by values
and beliefs that are no longer valid given what we
know about the world and how it works…
and that is the strength of liberalism… we are able
to rethink our values and beliefs in light of new
experiences that come at us every single day…
conservatives are unable to adapt and change,
because they are tied into the ‘‘traditional’’ way
of doing things… which in light of our experiences,
no longer fits…
In many ways, the old paradigms no longer fit,
and we must change and adapt to the new world,
to the new experiences… for example, the old
paradigm of ‘‘be fruitful and multiply’’ of the bible,
no longer fits into a world where billions of people
are either flat out starving or very close to it…
We have millions of Americans border line
starvation, and that includes children…
to be liberal is to be concerned with that suffering,
and attempt solutions/solutions to overcome
this society wide deficet… that is what being
liberal is about… to be concerned about the state and welfare
of others… a conservative tends to be concerned about
their own welfare and about how one gets to be ‘‘saved’’..
what does it take to be saved, that is a conservative
approach, not a liberal approach…
as for me, I would gladly give up going to heaven, if
it saves other people from going to hell…
that is what it means to be liberal… to be liberal
is to find my own meaning and purpose in the
wellbeing of others… for me, it doesn’t matter if I
am saved if others are not saved…
My scope isn’t about what is best for Kropotkin,
but what is best for all involved… to the extent
that I can influence events for others…
that is what it means to be liberal…
Kropotkin
