neither lib nor con

in the interest of full disclosure, let me say i don't consider myself either liberal or conservative.

i'm not trying to do a john kerry denial here. i agree with some of the values of both positions: the cons' respect for tradition and experience and the libs' concern for social justice, but i'm generally further left than a lib yet consider my position essentially moderate.

i'm more likely to agree with libs than cons on most issues, but i was very disappointed when many liberals supported lbj during the first years of the vietnam war, perhaps because they thought they had to back him across the board to avoid undermining his pro-civil-rights agenda.

the recent american rightward trend bucks history: the world has been getting more liberal for centuries.

conservative americans embraced the first neo-puritan revival (the "great awakening") in reaction to the far more liberal 18th century enlightenment that generated the liberty/equality philosophy of the american revolution. the loyalist tories of 230 years ago were cons. the conservative party in the UK is still called tory.

in the 19th century, liberals opposed slavery. (to oversimplify a paraphrase of browning's poem why i am a liberal: because slavery is wrong.) conservatives—with a few exceptions—supported it and used scripture to justify it.

i think i've heard that before ww2 there were isolationists on both right and left: when hitler invaded russia, the leftists advocated coming to stalin's aid, but right-wing isolationists favored germany, so they held out at least till pearl harbor.

libs have backed free public education, child labor laws, organized labor, workplace safety, 5-day and 40-hour work weeks, civil rights, women's rights, equal rights for gays, social security, minimum wage, integration of schools and public accomodations, medicare, and healthy ecology—all opposed or ignored by cons on abstract grounds like religion, fear of "big government," and states' rights.