The "L" Word

Should be my last post for today. Got to get some work done!!

Anyway, I've been noticing the "L" word, liberal, being mentioned more often these days on television and radio. As an example, Chris Matthews had Congressman Robert Wexler from Florida on Hardball last night. Wexler has a new book called Firebreathing Liberal in the title. And "liberal" just seemed to be thrown about a lot during the discussion. It's been weird lately but also heartening to hear the word "liberal" dropped more often these days. Paul Krugman does have his Conscience of a Liberal book, but his columns all still use the word "progressive". I have the book but have yet to read it.

It has always bothered me how leading left-leaning people had forsaken "liberal" and adopted "progressive" as the term for their ideology. Policywise, I could never tell the difference, but I think "progressive" has been viewed as less radical in the political climate of the last twenty plus years. But to me, it just represented the meekness of left-leaning politicians whose liberal policies were for the most part the right policies. Granted, the application of liberal policies may have had their mistakes, but it wasn't worth throwing out the whole label, let alone the ideology, in order to be viewed more politically palatable.

It will be interesting to see whether we hear "liberal" mentioned more often in the future.