November 13, 2016
I don’t know when
the word ‘liberal’ (and even more so, the shortened ‘libs’) became an insult,
but somehow it has. Rather than owning a
liberal stance, many of our public officials have shied away from proclaiming
themselves liberals for fear of alienating more conservative constituents, and
the general populace has followed suit.
When someone asks me if I am a liberal, my first instinct is to temper
my response because the conservative base has turned that term into something
dirty, or at the very least, uneducated.
In reality, the very definition of the word, according to Merriam-Webster,
is one who “believes that government should be active in supporting social and
political change” and one who is “not opposed to new ideas or ways of
behaving”. Why have we backed away from
owning this term? We are an evolving and
changing society; being open to new ideas and social change is something I am
proud of. It is vital to be
forward-thinking in our world. We need
to take back the definition of the word and not let someone else define what it
means within the scope of our society. I
don’t claim to speak for anyone but myself here, but I am a Christian and a
liberal, and I’m taking my own labels back.
I am educated, I am smart, I am independent, and my opinions are formed
by reading, listening, thinking, challenging, and processing. I believe in love and support of all people,
and I believe that there’s a greater spiritual being than humans out there in
the universe. And that’s what a
Christian liberal woman looks like in me.
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That's powerful... taking the label back. And at the same time disabusing the idea that all liberals are chicken sacrificing, pentagram worshiping heathens. But somehow, at the same time, atheists. Still trying to figure that one out...
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