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Greetings:<br><br>
This piece has been rambling around in my head for several years, and
here it is out in the open for the political season.<br><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>WE ARE ALL
LIBERALS--WELL, ALMOST ALL<br><br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Liberal
democracy is spreading throughout the world and these countries are
“liberalizing” their economies. Our conservative politicians praise
this development and even encourage it. Economists at the
University of Chicago who support free market capitalism prefer to be
called “classical liberals.” Conservatives support Christian liberal arts
colleges, and all of us want our children to have a good liberal arts
education.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>But what
are conservatives doing supporting liberal ideas? Isn’t liberalism
supposed to a bad thing? Not in the old days it wasn’t. The
Latin word liberalis means “pertaining to the free person,” that’s the
reason why a liberal arts education prepares students for making free and
responsible choices in their lives.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>In
medieval times there was a strict distinction between the liberi, the
free born nobles, and the servi, those who were born to serve and
obey. The American and French Revolutions were fought to eliminate
this distinction and to declare that all human being, regardless of their
class, had inalienable rights to pursue life, liberty, and
happiness. <br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>The divine
right of kings and the rule of top males constitute classical
conservatism, whereas the American and French Revolutions gave us
classical liberalism. I don’t know anyone who still wants an
absolute monarch, so all of us today, conservative and liberal, are
living in the political house of classical liberalism.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>The watch
words of the French Revolution were “equality, liberty, and fraternity.”
I would like redefine “fraternity” as “community” and point out what I
think went wrong in France. The French revolutionaries mistakenly
thought that their “new man” would be able to create new values from
scratch. Our American revolutionaries were much more
reasonable. Although they were critical of oppressive tradition and
religion, they still saw value in traditional community values.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Today’s
conservatives are classical liberals because they support equality and
liberty as well as community. Conservatives go wrong when they
support, or used to support, traditions that discriminated against people
because of their race or their gender. For classical liberalism to
work, as it has done where it now thrives in the world, the three values
must always achieve balance and harmony.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Classical
liberals who stress liberty and neglect equality and community are called
“libertarians.” Libertarians believe that adults should be able to
do anything they choose as long as they do not kill, assault, defraud, or
steal. They make, I believe, persuasive arguments with regard to
free speech, private sexuality, and taking drugs, but their
rejection of public services and education undermine the ideal of
equality of opportunity.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Classical
liberals who stress equality are those who have now been tagged as
“liberal” as a four-letter word. It was common for some people to argue
that no person is equal to another, so this is an impossible ideal.
Classical liberals were not talking about physical traits such as
strength or skin color; rather, they were talking about formal equality
before the law, the very cornerstone of liberal democracy
everywhere.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>The free
born noble Americans who found our country claimed that only they as male
property owners could have a full complement of rights. However,
African Americans and then women forced us to realize that the classical
liberal promise for America was a sham until they were included with full
and equal rights.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>Today
Americans who are attracted to people of their own sex, through no choice
of their own, are denied the equal rights guaranteed by the U.S.
Constitution. When judges, even those appointed by Republicans,
repeatedly rule in favor of gay and lesbians, they are simply upholding
the ideal of equality won for us by American and French
revolutionaries.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>When local
governments recognize the right of gays and lesbians to marry, it does
not undermine traditional values. On the contrary, the love that
these couples express to one another preserves the sanctity of marriage,
and it causes no harm to heterosexual wedding ceremonies performed
according to conservative religious traditions.<br>
<x-tab> </x-tab>It is
always surprising to me to find that there are some Americans who are not
liberals in this classical sense. There are some right here in
Idaho who believe that men should vote for their wives and that gays and
lesbians should be executed or at least banned from society.
Finally, there are some in the South who want to set up a New Confederacy
in which Calvinist males would rule in the name of God over women and
other lesser human beings. Classical conservatism will always find
a few fans.<br><br>
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