Are You A Liberal?

[dsrtao]

It is the government's responsibility to protect the rights and freedoms of the individual, as enumerated in the Constitution, against the disproportionate power and influence of giant special interests. The government is accountable to the people, and the people are individually and collectively responsible for managing the government through votes, lobbying, and similar active efforts.

Discuss.

Comments

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

"The difference between theory and practice, in theory, is always less than the difference between practice and theory in practice".

Discuss. :-)

[feoh.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't it be fair to say, then given that definition, that the people have failed? They elected this nitwit not once but twice. Even accounting for election fraud that's still a sizable portion of the populace who gave in to fear and jettesoned reason.

[jducoeur]

Sorry, but I sincerely believe that those statements are orthogonal to the question. As far as I'm concerned, any *real* Conservative believes quite firmly in all of those statements -- indeed, I'd say that that's the heart of true Conservatism. It just happens to have nothing to do with the way that *any* modern politicians treat the people, whether they be nominally Conservative or Liberal.

I mean, come on: cast your mind back a few years, and remember the privacy invasions that the Clinton administration *tried* to implement. His saving grace was that he was willing to admit that he had goofed and back down, something the current idiot is completely incapable of.

Those statements evaluate how *libertarian* you are (vs. how statist). For better or worse, that's a separate axis from Conservative/Liberal...

[dsrtao]

No, I think that those phrases -- especially the second phrase of the first sentence -- defines "classic liberal". The Clinton administration was not. Carter might have been. Parts of the Kennedy administration tried to be. It's been rare in the last century...