On Liberalism, Generosity, and Freedom

At some point during my BA at BYU-Idaho, I realized that whatever position was taken by all the conservatives surrounding me--on immigration, the Iraq war, torture, health care, "Right-to-Work" laws, Unions, etc--I disagreed with.  Almost every single issue.  Granted, southeast Idaho is so harshly conservative that even moderate Republicans get kinda weirded out by them; nevertheless, in a perverse sort of way, there was something clarifying, even refreshing, about the starkness of their ideologues.  It felt less like I was being pushed farther left than that I learned where I'd stood all along. 


I still remember one English class where the prof, overhearing some female students badmouthing feminism, said, "Look, I hate to be the white dude who has to remind y'all of this, but you do know that the whole reason you ladies can vote, and, you know, go to college and have jobs and pick your own husband and stuff, is thanks to feminism...right?"

It was the Bush years.  It was a simpler time.  (Not better, mind you; just simpler).

What sealed the deal was then getting my MA at the comparatively more liberal University of Utah, where I felt much more at home.  Nevertheless, you can't be a Mormon in Utah and not interact with conservatives, where you of course quickly remember that (leaving Idaho aside) the majority of self-proclaimed conservatives are good, decent, friendly people of diverse backgrounds, who usually have their own good reasons for thinking the way they do.  They are no more homogeneous in their thinking or lifestyles than folks on the left, and are generous and kind, and really what unites us all as human beings is far more than what will ever separate us. 

What's more, the slippery-slope arguments of each group simply won't fly: self-identified liberals under Bush were fond of claiming that the PATRIOT ACT and Guantanamo Bay and Iraq invasion justifications were placing us on the inexorable march towards fascism, while simpletons like Glenn Beck loudly claimed that any attempt at "Social Justice" will inevitably result in Stalinist Russia. 

Now, there are plenty of valid reasons to dislike the policy decisions of Bush and/or Obama; but saying that upper-class tax breaks or a $20-co-pay is on par with the mass-extermination of millions of minorities is not only fallacious reasoning, but frankly disrespectful to the victims of the Holocaust and Holodomor.  Let's try to have a little class: if Stalin is the logical extreme of the Left and Hitler the logical end of the Right, then really there is no functional difference between either extreme (Poland sucked under both, for example).  Our politics are plotted on a circle, not a line.  You may declaim that the difference between Hitler and your least favorite politician is a difference only of degree, not kind, but that difference of degree still matters.

All of which of course gets one thinking: what does it really mean, then, to be liberal, if that is to be a meaningful distinction at all?  Why did I find myself leaning left in Rexburg?  What is it that "liberalism" is supposed to signify, if anything?

I'm in English, and here's where I want to get into the etymology of "liberal": its inital meaning is "to be free."  (The "Liberal Arts" in college, for example, are supposed to be the set of skills and knowledge that enables one to be free from superstition and control).  Now, there is to be free from, and there is also free to do, but there is also to be free with--that is, to be generous.  And I want to offer that these three definitions are not so different.

For I've learned through hard experience that if one is not generous--whether with money, or in gifts, or in service, or in just assuming the best of others--then one is not free, but isolated.  One may also voluntarily check one's self into solitary at a prison in order to get away from every one, but one could hardly call that person free!  Remember how Ebeneezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol held the purse strings, and thus controlled the fates of many (not least of all Bob Crachet), but as the ghost of Jacob Marley warned him, his illiberality (in every sense of the word) bound him in horrid chains.

To be truly free, one must be connected with others.  This has nothing to do with conformity, or collectives or communism or what have you (few things are more isolating than conformity); rather, a free person is one who is generous with others, both in possessions and in assumptions, as one is with one's self.  ("For with what measure ye judge shall ye also be judged," and "If ye will be perfect, sell all of thy possessions and give to the poor," said one important thinker on the subject).  To be liberal is not only to be free from, or even to be free to, but above all to be free with.  For this reason MLK said that "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"; for if we are all as free with each other as we should be with ourselves, then we are all free indeed.