Liberal Media Bias

I have always stayed away from politics here, and I’m not sure why… it’s not because I’m scared of stirring up controversy or driving readers away. I don’t really care, and I’ve always spoken my mind about everything else here. Maybe it’s just the fact that politics really annoy the fuck out of me. They are exciting at times, I suppose, but only if you get to the root of the matter, not the smoke that the media and politicians are trying to blow up everybody’s ass. It’s really hard for me to care about a candidate when I don’t ever feel like I know their real views, just what they think will get them elected. I guess I can’t even blame them; honestly, it’s simply the political culture that America has fostered. But before this turns into a rant about a different subject, I’m not going to move away from “politics, and just ramble on about “political science”.

What no one seems to get is that “liberalism” isn’t just a political buzz word. I’m not even sure how it gained the negative connotations, but every time I hear it used as such, a little part of me dies. Liberalism is an idea, an ideal, a philosophy… it is what The United States was founded upon, everything that it stands for and one of the greatest achievements in human history. It is “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”, “We the People” and “Give me liberty or give me death”. It is the topic of every great speech in American history, and everything that is great about America. Most of all, it is all those freedoms, those “inalienable rights”, and the progress towards something better.

When my grandfather mentioned how one of my cousins was, “too liberal” the other day, I asked him what exactly he meant. His response was pretty amazing, and honestly hurt me. “She’s just against everything that I am for.” He went on to complain how colleges warp people’s minds and he wouldn’t want his children learning that sort of stuff. I never really even found out what he meant, but when we actually discussed it thoroughly, I found that his beliefs weren’t really very far off my own. I’m not even sure who to blame for this insanity… The media? The Republicans for villainizing one the founding principle of the nation? The Democrats for not doing anything about it? The average citizen for being an idiot? It’s probably too late to even recover from it, but it’s just a shame.

Liberalism really is everything that makes America great. It is simply the belief in progress, individualism, the goodness of humanity and civil liberties. Do you really want to argue with me about whether that is right, because I will fight for it to my death bed. Because that is what I think of when I see the American flag, not all the dumb shit that the U.S. has done over the years. It is the principles that make this country great, it is freedom and progress and the little guy standing up for what he believes in because that is all he has and overcoming everything to achieve what he knows is right. It is Locke and Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Henry and so many more. It’s Madison’s federalism, the Anti-Federalists, and Athenian democracy. I’m not sure if the public perception of liberalism will ever change, but I’ll yell from my soapbox, try to be patient and listen to the great Thomas Paine.

He wrote at the beginning of Common Sense that “a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”