Unapologia

Believing in fairness and opportunity does not make you naive. It doesn't mean you're weak when you insist that accused enemies be treated humanely and with due process. It doesn't mean you're a traitor when you believe that your countrymen who break the Geneva conventions should be tried as war criminals. And it doesn't make you unpatriotic to disagree with your government when you say these things.

I am an unapologetic liberal, because I believe these things. Because I believe in fairness and opportunity. Because I believe in compassion and justice. Because I believe our own government should be held to moral standards as high and higher than those we apply to others. And because I believe that dissent in defense of these values is a true act of patriotism.

These things make America strong. They are our bedrock.

• fairness and opportunity
• decency and justice
• moral clarity
• freedom to dissent

So I expect my government to act as if fairness mattered and as if opportunity was important rather than playing games with words and budgets. I expect my government to condemn torture in spirit and deed and to put in place mechanisms to make sure that it cannot happen rather than escape clauses to pardon it. And I expect my government not only to tolerate but to celebrate those who see things differently than they do.

It is a measure of our times, that these points should need making, but are they too much to ask?

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Update/Hat Tip: The original motivation for this entry is from a talk in Austin by Markos Moulitsas. (It was a book-signing for Crashing the Gate.) In his talk, he longed for progressives and Democrats to be willing to just stand up and say, I am a liberal because I believe in freedom and opportunity.... This entry was my extrapolation on that theme, but as you can see, Markos' thoughts are the kernel of it. I should have credited him when I originally wrote this. Thank you, Trudy for pointing that out.

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