There is no shame.

There is no shame in being a Liberal.

There is nothing un-American about being a Liberal. In fact, there is a certain stubborn patriotism in believing that the massive transfer of wealth the last twenty years in the United States is very bad for our country. The rich are getting richer while the poor struggle for any chance of achieving the American Dream.

Buried under the avalanche of establishment publicity are the hidden historical facts that the overwhelming number of social benefits that have trickled down to the people from their legislators all generated on the left side of the aisle. Social Security, voting rights, Medicare, support for the arts, aid to education, worker's compensation, environmental protection, access for the disabled, talking books, veterans' benefits AND the G.I. Bill, are examples of programs we take for granted today. Flawed and in need of fine-tuning though some of them may be, our lives would be unimaginably weaker and bleaker without them. They all started with shoves from Liberals.

Liberals understand that the richest cultures are made up of mixtures of ethnicity, religion, language, traditions, and the other many factors that determine a society. We realize only thirty per cent of the world is white. We know that civilization requires tolerance. We tend to throw our arms wide open to embrace both new ideas and change. We have noticed that Nature teems with alteration and development, and that if you are not open to adjustment, you get swept away.

Liberals like equal opportunity and a less-tilted playing field, and we don't think the door to betterment should be slammed shut on those who have yet to succeed. Too often in this country wealthy people try to manipulate the system so that they can keep their piles of money while preventing others from an equal chance at making theirs, and this manipulation disguises itself as thin political philosophy. Real wages--the measure of what you can actually buy with what you earn--have declined every year for almost thirty years, while our stock market demonstrates year after year of record growth. Liberals don't think it is fair to boost profits while cutting wages. We have noticed that the average family today requires TWO paychecks to live the way it did forty years ago with only one wage earner. We don't think it is fair to give generous dividends to stockholders while moving entire industries to countries with cheaper labor.

We believe that it is our obligation to hand to future generations a planet healthier than the one we inherited, and that enormous profit for a few is no reason to increase ecological decay. While cleaning up pollution in the U.S. is important, very important, it is equally critical to encourage other countries to cease the degradation of their own environments. We all breathe the same air and drink the same water. The world's supplies of both do not respect lines on a map.

Liberals believe---as all rational people must-- that our children deserve our best because they are the future. Rather than simply spouting pro-life slogans, however, we believe in and work for, and are willing to pay for, better neo-natal care, child care, school, day care, medical care, education, school nutrition, and job training. We think public colleges should be free.

We Liberals love our country, and want to keep it safe. We are not opposed to a military per se, nor are we opposed to rewarding the young women and men who are serving in our armed forces personnel for their noble service and sacrifice for their country. What we DO object to, however, is the use of our military might to shore up the interests of the wealthy, both foreign and domestic. Too many of our campaigns the last fifty years have been veiled attempts to do just that. We believe that vigorous debate, full access to information, and open dialogue are all important to a functioning democracy.

Of course this is just the opinion of one old fashioned, museum quality, tax and spend, bleeding heart liberal.