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“The ‘L’ Word”

Leonard’s defense of American Liberalism. He starts with the criticism of liberals as too idealistic and as “…not sufficiently red in tooth or claw.” Of course he really means this as an argument for liberalism. He goes on, with a note of sarcasm:

Believing as we do that people are basically decent and social justice is a good idea and democratic institutions can do something about the discrepancies about what is and ought to be…

He writes, “A liberal sometimes feels ashamed…This is different from self-hatred. I don’t hate myself but I imagined someone better” and coins the t-shirt quality saying “We are the children of qualm.” Could have been written by Aaron Sorkin.

He takes the opportunity to knock down the enemies of liberalism, “I pledge no allegiance to the Bush, nor the pips for whom he squeaks, and they have nothing to tell me about my country that would make me love it more.”

Great closing:

Shall I tell you what liberalism is all about? It’s about the First Amendment to the Constitution, and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, and Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience, and Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”- and, of course, the Sermon on the Mount.” Sounds exactly like Linus in “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

Last paragraph of Lincoln's Second Inaugural:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

New word: Ogham =  medieval Old Irish alphabet.

New learning: Leonard (who I should mention died of lung cancer in 2008), originally attended Harvard where he worked on The Crimson. He dropped out after his sophomore year and enrolled at Berkeley…I guess Harvard wasn’t liberal enough.