OpEdNews
Original Content at
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_carol_v__070909__22liberal_22_or__22progre.htm--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
September 9, 2007
During the Democrats’ 7/23 “You Tube” debate, a young male questioner from Orange County, CA, asked Hillary Clinton if she were a “liberal.” As he finished the question, he smirked, as if he were asking her to confess to some embarrassing predilection, like binge-drinking or compulsive internet shopping. She replied that she thought of herself as a “progressive,” dropping an allusion to Teddy Roosevelt.
This brief exchange raises a host of issues.
Although liberal icons like FDR and JFK endure untarnished, in the past two decades, the Right has successfully demonized the word “liberal,” causing politicians like Clinton and Kerry to shrink from the label. But unless you are an anti-capitalist or a royalist, “liberal” is a defensible term. The Latin root of the word is liber, which means “free.” The familiar expression “a liberal education” means one suitable for a free man and a gentleman, rather than a slave. The “liberal arts” are those that make demands on the imagination and intellect, as opposed to the supposedly mechanical training of artisans and workers. “Liberal” is also associated with economic theory, as in the expression “free trade.”
Classical (17th- and 18th -century) liberals advocated unregulated markets as well as individual and civil liberties. Indeed, they understood civilization, commerce, and liberty to be interrelated. Yet contemporary liberal and conservative politicians seem equally ignorant of the historical bond between liberalism and free-market capitalism.
Edmund Burke, the founder of modern conservative thought, used “liberal” as a term of praise. In Reflections on the Revolution in France, he refers to “wise and liberal speculations,” “a liberal and benevolent mind,” and “liberal virtues.” The word acquired a new referent when, in early 19th-century British politics, Liberal and Conservative replaced Whig and Tory as party appellations.
In the United States, liberals are associated with a “loose construction” of the Constitution, conservatives with a “strict construction.” Contrary to historical stereotypes, however, it was Thomas Jefferson who was the first strict constructionist, declaring, “To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.” In a longer and more rigorous response, Alexander Hamilton argued for a loose construction, stating that the language of the constitution was designed “to give a liberal latitude to the exercise of the specified powers.”
I'D HAVE SAID "NONE OF THE ABOVE"! ARTICLE CONTINUES AT LINK.....
Authors Bio: Carol Hamilton has a Ph.D. in English, with an emphasis on American literature. Her articles and poems have been published in Oxford German Studies (England), the Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, C-Theory.net (Canada), The Paris Review, The North American Review, and many other literary and scholarly journals. She has also written for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and a number of alternative papers. Her current interest is 18th-century political discourse.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
