Why I'm a liberal

I am a liberal - not necessarily a liberal Democrat. (Party politics tends to be, frankly, less ideological and more purely partisan.) Broadly defined:

I want both church and state - an unambiguous bright red line between our secular government and and the First amendment protections for the free exercise of religion - whatever you perceive that to be. (That also means freedom from religion, if that's your proclivity.)

I want a vigorous market economy based on the accumulation and allocation of capital - with equally vigorous federally-imposed ground rules of commerce, specifically addressed to stifle abusive, monopolistic, and anti-consumer practices.

I want both freedom and security - not in a rhetorical sense - but based on the rule of law. I subscribe to the uniquely American tenet that the rights of the individual supersede the power and privilege of the majority. And that constitutional protections of individual freedoms need never be subordinated to the whim of political exigencies.

And, above all, I reject out-of-hand the uniquely partisan Republican article of faith that government is a negative institution that must be subjugated and thwarted at every turn in favor market-based for-profit privatization.

America is not good because of its people: for god's sake look at the motley crew that makes us up. America is not good because of its corporations: look at the deplorable track record of abuse and privation. America is good because of - not in spite of - its government which created our iconic policy-based middle class out of whole cloth - creating the greatest economic and standard-of-living juggernaut the world has ever known.

And oh - one more thing - the Constitution. Conservatives just love the Constitution, as long as - like the Bible - they get to pick-and-choose the parts they like, to hit you over the head with. For that, we have this troublesome little part called the Fourteenth Amendment - among its more salient points: 

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

That, my friends, is unambiguous: male, female, white, black, gay, straight, Christian, Jew, atheist, agnostic, ad infinitum. While we may have arrived on different ships, we are all in the same boat now. To insinuate that certain Americans are preferred Americans by virtue of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity – is – by point of fact - Anti-American from the get-go and politically intolerable. 

These are the premises on which I base my political and economic philosophies.

Liberal Bias?

It has been said that "reality has a liberal bias" ..... Ain't it fascinatin' that the term liberal has been reduced to an insult in today's conservative media ... as though the concept, in and of itself, harbors some sinister malevolent conspiracy against normal  Jesus-loving Americans. For that alone, I unrepentantly assume the mantle of liberalism in my social and political outlook. Wherever I veer off-course, please chalk that up to my background.

Shitepoke personified

Shitepoke is Southern vernacular for the American Green Heron (Butorides virescens) - a rather lackluster wading bird that frequents ponds and creek banks over much of the southeast. It preys on frogs, tadpoles, minnows, and any other small aquatic critter it can spear with its rapier swift beak. With exquisitely evolved protective coloration, it will stand motionless for an eternity until it spies its quarry; then, with lighting economy of motion, the deed is done, and its immobile stance is reset like a steel trap.

The transliteration shitepoke derives from the creature's signature behavior when flushed or poked (as it were): a vertical take-off - punctuated by a piercing skeeeee - accompanied by the peristaltic evacuation of the the contents of its bowels in a viscous stream, invariably nozzled in a colorful contrail for yards along the trajectory of its flight plan. (The masthead above captures the eponymous shitepoke's pre-flight elimination.)

Accordingly, the epithet shitepoke has come to describe someone who revels in the drama of needless commotion, accompanied by a lot of noise and fanfare, ultimately leaving someone else to clean up the mess. Or simplified: someone whose only contribution to the issue at hand is a load of shite.

For that, I dedicate this venture to the lowly and much maligned shitepoke.

Magnificent action-shot of shitepoke spearing quarry 

Shitepoke (Butorides virescens)