Classical Liberal Defined

The fact that Beagles considers that deer season has not been so bad, despite the fact that he has bagged no deer, indicates to me that it must be a pretty good activity, for Beagles anyway.  An activity that you enjoy even when it is fruitless is a pretty good activity.

I remember that book a little differently than Beagles.  Black people certainly didn't get all they wanted from MLK's efforts.  Daley and the alderman largely stonewalled them, and maybe this caused the Black power movement, I say maybe because maybe it would have arisen even without that disappointment.

Anymore in popular parlance liberal means leftist, and with a negative slant so that even leftists shun the label.  But classically liberal meant something more like a person who took other views into account and thought things through for themselves.  Anyway that is the definition I am using.  Most liberals tend to be lefty (because the truth is on our side) but  a liberal could also be a conservative.

When the civil rights movement began it was classically liberal.  Blacks and Whites marched together, they quoted the Constitution to show that they're cause was right.  The demonstrations were often called teach-ins, and they were meant to call attention to the cause, not to show force of numbers and as an outlet for the brick tossing crowd. 

Back in the day I admit that I liked the Black Power movement.  Good for them, they are in the right, they are standing up for their cause.  They are demanding their rights rather than begging the establishment for them like those effete, polite, marchers.

Nowadays I am on the side of the marchers.  If you want to get something done in a democracy you have to convince others, you are not going to do that tossing bricks or burning the flag.  Burning the flag is a right and it should be legal, but why would you want to do that?  Who's mind do you think you are changing by burning the flag?

I think we can say that the Black power movement didn't accomplish much.  But would the MLK method have worked better if it was continued?  I think so, the way Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball, but I can't be sure.  It's an article of faith I guess, the credo of the liberal.


The weekend is upon us, but I don't want to lose my momentum.  I feel like I am nailing my thesis to the wall, even though probably Martin Luther never did that, and I want to continue until I get the last nail in, so I am going to cover the speed bump of mysterious Tea Party (who were they, what's become of them?) and the crashing tidal wave of Trump.  The loss of the white blue collars whose cause the liberals had done so much to advance.  The failure of education, once enshrined, now kicked to the curb, and the subsequent End of the World.  Oh and economic inequality, I think that deserves a post of its own.

I apologize for the blather and I know I repeat myself often, but that is another thing wrong with liberals, we are long-winded.

As an urban fan of Bambi I can't root for Beagles to get one on the last day of hunting season, but I can wish him a magnificent story of the one that got away, and maybe a nice dream in the still of the blind. 

Let me say one more thing about the witch hunt.  If you are accused, the only way you can defend yourself is to call your accuser a liar and that means you are insulting a woman, and if you are the guy who does that, why then you are probably an abuser.  It is most illiberal, only one viewpoint is allowed.