I’m thinking of the last time I was in a truly spirited and contentious debate about politics. It was a late summer night after a wedding shower and the other party concerned was soon to be family. We were about six hours into the beer and the Wild Turkey. Eventually we reached an impasse.

“It is okay to bomb the hell out of anyone who opposes our interests,” is basically what he was down to.

“No, it’s not,” is what I was down to.

Cue the waving of arms and rising of voices, the talking over one another. There was ten feet of folding table between us, holding the night’s refuse of bottles, cans, ashtrays, food, plates. He threw the whole thing aside with an ease and fury that was a wonder to behold. Now I was faced with a large, whisky-drunk Texan-- a man already punk rock and bad@ss back when Reagan was still President-- who slowly stomped and advanced while shouting about us “F#cking liberals” and how we won’t let people talk, how we want too much and won’t listen to reason. The word rang out—liberals, liberals—over and over like a dirty accusation.

It’s often used the same way by politicians and pundits: liberal as dirty word, a dismissal, the scoff inherent. Why?

Some definitions of “liberal” from my dictionary: 1. favorable to progress or reform… 4. favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, esp. as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties. 7. free from prejudice or bigotry; tolerant. 8. open-minded or tolerant, esp. free of or not bound by traditional or conventional ideas, values, etc.

Imagine your neighborhood filled with people who fit these descriptions. Now imagine it filled with people who are the opposite of the traits described above.

Remember those people who fought and suffered and died for Civil Rights and racial equality? Liberals. Those people who dared to say we were lost in Vietnam? Liberals. Those who said we need laws to protect workingmen and to allow women to vote? Liberals. And remember those guys way back in the 1700s who said the colonies of the new world should be allowed their own democratic government, free from the rule of a British king an ocean away? Yeah, they were pretty liberal for their time.

Would you rather be aligned with thinkers who may sometimes be a bit dreamy-eyed and reach too far but have a touch of freedom and decency in their hearts or with people like Bill O’Reilly and Anne Coulter (sic?), the modern ideological equivalents of your Old South gram-maw and paw-paw, sitting comfy on their veranda and wondering what all the fuss is about with these darn long-hairs and Negroes.

Hell, all of what the Conservatives are supposed to be about isn’t bad. Fiscal responsibility and small government? Give it to me. The Neo-Cons in charge are saying the dog ate their homework when it comes to these things.

So, do I want to be called a Liberal? No. Liberal and Conservative are just two sides of the same coin. Every election year we toss it in the air and spend six months calling it. It lands in the greasy palm of some fat businessman and whatever side is up, he smiles. We need something different and better, something beyond, something forged by greater minds than mine, which means greater minds than George’s. Oh, do I think I’m smarter than The President Of The United States Of America? Yeah, I do. Color me egotistical but I know a mouth breather when I see one.

Between the two, I’ll take Liberal, but I’d rather go beyond it. I’d rather go Radical. But for now I guess I’m too lazy for that, or maybe I just don’t have the b@lls. Maybe I’ve run out of words.

So what did I do when I was about to get hog-stomped after the wedding shower? What could I do? I stood a halo’s chance in hell of winning a fair fight. My only hope would be to hit first and play it dirty and mean, but this man was about to be family. Call it liquid courage or stupid pride, but I wasn’t about to run either. I stood there and watched him come. I waited. When he reached me, he stopped and fumed like an idling Sherman tank and then others were there to separate us. We can laugh about it now and we’ve talked more reasonably since then.

Some people—some families, some countries-- don’t have that luxury.

-joe sample - mrnonentity@yahoo.com

Copyright 2006 Tucker Productions Inc.