Liberal principles, independent thinking and respect for dissent

Those who read my columns here in WinCity Voices, or did so dur­ing the years that I was a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to the Winchester Sun, under­stand that I am a lib­er­al. I have nev­er attempt­ed to con­ceal that fact and am, in fact, quite sat­is­fied with the label. 

I do not believe that con­ser­v­a­tives should be less sat­is­fied with their choice of being con­ser­v­a­tive. But being either a lib­er­al or a con­ser­v­a­tive should not irrev­o­ca­bly attach an indi­vid­ual to every pol­i­cy of a polit­i­cal par­ty, whether it be Democrat or Republican. 

(A rev­e­la­to­ry point may be in order here. I assid­u­ous­ly avoid refer­ring to the Democrat Party as the Democratic Party because I believe demo­c­ra­t­ic is an adjec­tive, not a noun, and there is lit­tle to sug­gest that either par­ty oper­ates on strict­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples.)

Of late, I have voiced strong oppo­si­tion to the poli­cies of our Republican pres­i­dent and the Republican-con­trolled Congress as well as many state and — more rarely — local Republicans. I do so because they are the ones in pow­er and set­ting pol­i­cy. If I dis­agree with a pol­i­cy, I am not usu­al­ly reluc­tant to crit­i­cize it. 

My crit­i­cisms are not aimed at the indi­vid­u­als but at the poli­cies which they espouse or rep­re­sent. Oftentimes indi­vid­ual politi­cians do not pub­licly express their views on par­tic­u­lar issues, but their lack of com­ment is usu­al­ly suf­fi­cient to betray their posi­tion. I am remind­ed of this when a can­di­date is asked a spe­cif­ic ques­tion in a debate and imme­di­ate­ly dances off onto a response total­ly unre­lat­ed to the orig­i­nal question. 

As anoth­er exam­ple, many recent con­gres­sion­al hear­ings have posed the ques­tion of the legit­i­ma­cy of President Biden’s elec­tion, to wit: “Do you believe that President Biden was legit­i­mate­ly elect­ed in 2020?” 

Every sin­gle indi­vid­ual who was asked this ques­tion — all of them appointees or poten­tial appointees of President Trump — answered with the vague response that he was “con­firmed fol­low­ing the elec­tion,” ensur­ing their response would not place them in dis­fa­vor with the pres­i­dent who has con­sis­tent­ly — and false­ly — stat­ed his opin­ion that the 2020 elec­tion was “stolen.” 

When read­ers choose to com­ment on opin­ions expressed by me in these columns, I am — most­ly — elat­ed, sim­ply because know­ing that the columns are being read is sat­is­fy­ing. Of course, oppo­si­tion opin­ions are some­times more dif­fi­cult to accept, espe­cial­ly when they are aimed at demean­ing me rather than address­ing the issues raised in the columns. 

But a rea­soned, ratio­nal response is always wel­come, and I have occa­sion­al­ly been cor­rect­ed on some point of infor­ma­tion. I wel­come cor­rec­tion because I believe that accu­ra­cy is para­mount and will always strength­en an argu­ment or opinion. 

I was a reg­is­tered Democrat for many years but even­tu­al­ly changed my reg­is­tra­tion to inde­pen­dent (actu­al­ly “oth­er” accord­ing to the vot­er reg­is­tra­tion form) because I saw no rea­son to link myself to a plat­form that did not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent my view­points accu­rate­ly. More specif­i­cal­ly, in 2016 I was out­raged when the DNC maneu­vered to make Hillary Clinton the can­di­date when all polls at the time showed that Bernie Sanders stood a bet­ter chance of defeat­ing Trump. 

As most peo­ple know, being an inde­pen­dent in Kentucky removes one from being allowed to vote in pri­maries, so a rit­u­al becomes nec­es­sary, that of bounc­ing onto and off a par­ty affil­i­a­tion in order to cast a vote in a pri­ma­ry elec­tion but to then revert to inde­pen­dent in name and attitude. 

But being inde­pen­dent does not divorce me from being lib­er­al, and so I find myself con­sis­tent­ly at odds with those who claim con­ser­vatism, most­ly because my study of his­to­ry has shown me that vir­tu­al­ly every­thing that has advanced the role of mankind and man­dat­ed the great­est achieve­ments has been accom­plished through liberalism. 

There can be lit­tle doubt that the ter­mi­na­tion of slav­ery in this coun­try was accom­plished through a lib­er­al pol­i­cy, despite the fact that Lincoln was a Republican, at a time when Republicanism had a dis­tinct­ly dif­fer­ent fla­vor than now. 

Today, lib­er­als are past­ed with titles such as com­mu­nists, ter­ror­ists, social­ists and many oth­ers. Conservatives are often labeled with equal­ly atro­cious — and inac­cu­rate — epithets. 

Neither should be the case. 

Certainly, a study of the tenets of both com­mu­nism and lib­er­al­ism will show that the two are at the oppo­site ends of the polit­i­cal spec­trum so label­ing a lib­er­al as a com­mu­nist is a non sequitur. 

Such titles flung at the oppo­si­tion are for noth­ing more than to inflame pub­lic opin­ion; they do noth­ing to clar­i­fy positions. 

So, I shall con­tin­ue to exco­ri­ate politi­cians who oppose lib­er­al principles. 

But, as a lib­er­al, I promise that, if Democrats ever achieve the pow­er now held in the hands of Republicans and attempt to usurp pow­er from the peo­ple for their own aggran­dize­ment, (such as redis­trict­ing the state strict­ly in order to secure advan­tage for the par­ty) I shall speak out against them as vigorously. 

And for those who dis­agree with my opin­ions, please take advan­tage of the right guar­an­teed you by our Constitution to make your voice heard, and respond. 

Even if we dis­agree on prin­ci­ple, we can main­tain respect for an oppos­ing viewpoint.