The “liberal” label has been on a long journey from its Victorian-era origins — the root is from the Latin for “free,” of course, and the original liberals were proponents of free trade (which means that today’s anti-globalism liberals have now come a full 180 degrees).
Jeff Jarvis has been posting recently about the meaning of the term “liberal” today. Jarvis’s ardent pro-war positions have placed him at odds with a lot of people who think of themselves as liberals, but he’s determined not to give up the label.
Good for him: Liberalism should be a big tent, and surely, just as there were “Cold War liberals” who shared some positions, but not all, with their dovish liberal coevals, there has to be room for “terror war liberals” today — even if their conversations with their antiwar brethren escalate into shouting matches.
This discussion prompted Jarvis to offer extensive quotes from a 1960 John F. Kennedy speech defining liberalism. What’s fascinating to me about Kennedy’s rhetoric is not to try to parse how it relates to today’s war debate (I don’t think it much does at all) but rather to notice the one gigantic thing it’s missing: It’s entirely secular. No mention of God. No dutiful punching of the religious-belief card. All the beliefs are specifically and proudly humanist:
I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. |
Human dignity — not divine dignity — as the source of national purpose. Faith in our fellow citizens — not faith in a deity or a scripture. For Kennedy, as a Catholic trying to become the first president of his faith, keeping God out of his politics made perfect political sense, but it also made moral sense. It still does.
Kennedy’s speech reminds us that one of the key freedoms liberals hold dear is freedom from state religion. By keeping government out of religion, we keep religion free for each individual. And one of the things that unites liberals today is a deep anger at our present administration’s deliberate efforts to mix up religion with government. There’s a constituency for that, to be sure. But don’t underestimate the liberal constituency. I’ve still got some “faith in my fellow citizens as individuals.”
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