On my bike ride into work this morning, I was thinking about why I am not a liberal. I ought to be, given that I grew up in a low-middle (at times near poverty) class union home, am passionate about a reasonable approach to sustainable, organic living and stewardship and deliberately chose a mainline denomination church upon our move. I share Christy's passion for animal welfare and environmental sensitivity and when I do eat meat, I value knowing that the animal lived and died well. I oppose the death penalty in all circumstances and believe that corporate welfare and corporate tax breaks are evil. These are all liberal viewpoints.
This morning, I attended the PTO coffee hour at Peter's school, where the speaker made us aware of the Stable Foundation, which is seeking to eradicate homelessness in Athens. I share the values of this organization, and in fact have been a long time supporter of Habitat for Humanity whose mission is similar.
For the coffee hour, I parked next to an active PTO mom whose car was plastered with liberal bumper stickers and who was wearing an Obama t-shirt (bringing to mind this Onion satire piece, lol) and from conversations and a follow-up e-mail on the PTO list about the impact of the new administration on education in general, and the likely effects on our own school. The entire group had a real crunchy sense, discussing how to help feed hungry by collecting day-old baked goods that would otherwise be discarded, how the local caterer often donates left-over chafing dishes and even the parent-coordinated gardens that had planted around our newly-rebuilt school showed the sensitivity to sustainable and natural living that also helps lift others up.
I realized how much I had in common with this group, yet I felt like I was almost certainly the only Bob Barr voter in the group and most definitely the only one who was very nervous about an Obama administration. Why am I not a liberal anyway?
As I pedaled hard up the hill, I realized that it was wonderful that no one made me get my bike out this morning and that I had been free to choose whether to use my car and save about 30 minutes of commuting time today. And I could also choose whether to buy a fuel-efficient smaller car or a large gas-guzzling SUV. And the reason I am not a liberal is that I value that choice. I believe that if we eliminated farm subsidies and allowed the market to work, we would have far less high fructose corn syrup in our diets and childhood obesity levels would fall. If we eliminated corporate taxes and shifted the tax burden to investors (the double-and sometimes triple-taxation of dividends and capital gains is an issue for another day), corporations would have fewer incentives to avoid taxes through accounting shell-games.
Representative democracy does a few things very well -- protects individual freedom and regulates "natural" monopolies. Whenever government attempts to force redistribution of wealth, the incentives get all screwed up. And though I share much in common with the other parents in my school, I guess where I disagree is that I don't think government is the answer. Indeed, there is so much we could do if government could just get out of the way.
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1 comment:
Interesting post, Jim.
I would say the reason I'm not a liberal has as much to do with social markers as with specific policies.
There is an "air" of self-satisfaction and presummed intellectual superiority that makes the whole liberal ethos distasteful to me. Liberals strike me as people posing before a mirror.
I would also suggest that one of the reasons you are not a liberal is your lower-middle class childhood. I think much of the appeal of liberalism for liberals is in its social markers -- those things that distinguish rather than bind them to other people.
The power of liberalism is in its craftiness in keeping this out of view.
Chris Wiley
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