literal liberal

When Lulu kindly invited me and the other liberals over for dinner the weekend after the election, I began to feel better already. The lighten-up/act-up party seemed like the perfect antidote to that bitter pill. Yet something in me reacted to the 'liberal' label. You are known by your deeds, I told myself, so I guess that's probably what I am, myself answered. Anyway I genuinely looked forward to hanging out with birds of a feather, whatever species name they're called.

The weekend got complicated, and I ended up not going to the party, for reasons having nothing to do with being - or not being - a liberal. But the epithet still stuck in my craw. I used to know what 'liberal' meant (favoring change, the opposite of 'conservative', blah blah blah), but it has become such an attack word - not unlike 'communist' was back in the days when commies were the enemy of choice - that all meaning had been drained from it by overuse and misuse. Liberal education, liberal capitalism, liberal religion, etc., used to have meanings apart from ravings about the liberal media and other liberal conspiracies. In short, I decided to take Lulu's off-hand remark way too seriously.

The plot thickened when a really cool book by Peter Coyote showed up on my desk, again thanks to Lulu, and grabbed me by the throat with provocative political, artistic, and social criticism. At one point in his personal narrative, Coyote describes liberalism as "the generosity toward others that is predicated on first sustaining one's own privilege." Ouch - a touch, a palpable touch. The more radical view suffusing his account of his adventures in street theater, experimental community-building, and serious partying cut through the usual rhetoric about liberal this and liberal that and accurately nailed liberalISM.

This felt like a challenge, so I put it before my weekly group of spiritual fellow-travelers to help me define what 'liberal' means. No surprises there. With the utmost sincerity and conviction, they countered Coyote's challenge with reasoned, open-minded, sometimes scholarly, always self-deprecating and honestly curious responses to my question. Reassured by my liberal support group that it was once again okay to be liberal, I returned to my house in the suburbs, walked the dog, and relaxed with a dark beer and a nice piece of literary fiction.

But the irritation didn't go away, and the best I could do was to resolve not to use 'liberal' as a noun. There is no such thing as A LIBERAL (editors note: except in the upper-case sense, a member of the Liberal Party), although there are lots of liberal actions, policies, approaches, sentiments, strategies, interpretations, you get the drift. Now, in all fairness (which would be the liberal way), shouldn't I apply the same principle to adjectives like 'conservative' and 'radical' and 'reactionary'? Maybe I'll just stop using nouns altogether. Wouldn't that be liberating.