Why I'm Glad I'm a Liberal

Big Brother:

The other evening, Barney Frank spoke to the lesbian and gay network at the investment bank where I work. One of the things he said that has stuck with me is that when the courts make decisions regarding social policy, those decisions will never stick if they do not work. He was using the example of gay marriage in Massachusetts. Gay weddings have been held there for seven weeks now and really nothing has happened. Life in the Commonwealth goes on much as it has these many years.

This got me to thinking as I lay awake last night.

Conservatives are always predicting dire results that rarely, if ever, come to pass. Did women voting destroy our government? Did integration destroy the South? Did welfare lead to communism, or even make the rich or the middle class poorer? Did interracial weddings destroy the institution of marriage? Did Clinton's stupid affair destroy the dignity of the presidency? Did the abolition of sodomy laws a year ago have any adverse effect on anything? Help me out here. I'm honestly trying to think of something conservatives have been right about. Ah! Here's one: legalized divorce has led to high divorce rates. But even this is a mixed bag, as some marriages need to end for the wellbeing of one or both spouses. Well, okay, and legalized abortion has led to women having legal abortions. But in the bad old days of unsafe, illegal abortions, women had abortions anyway and many women died from them (and, no, they did not deserve it.) That's a pretty slim and flimsy list by my reckoning.

But, on the other hand, liberals have been so right in their dire warnings so much of the time. Even though it was Kennedy who got us into Vietnam and Johnson who accelerated the war, liberals warned that the war was turning into disaster. Turns out it was a disaster. Liberals said that Nixon was committing crimes that violated his oath to preserve and protect the constitution. Turns out he was. Liberals warned that Reagan's decimation of funding for federal housing would lead to homelessness. Sure enough, homelessness became an epidemic during his presidency. And his arming and financing of "anticommunists" in Latin America actually did, as liberals feared, result in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians. And his war on drugs has led to the highest level of imprisonment of citizens in the industrialized world. And his utter disregard of AIDS for seven years resulted in over 100,000 untimely deaths in this country. Bush's tax cuts have led to record deficits and a marked shift of the tax burden to the middle class. His invasion of Iraq has created chaos in that country, increased terrorism in the world, given extremists a recruiting tool that cannot be rivaled, stretched our armed forces to dangerously thin levels, left our country vulnerable to attack, strained our traditional alliances and wrecked our nation's standing in the world. I don't need any help here. I just have to stop, as I can't see an end to this list.

I remember when I was a young, conservative (let's make that reactionary) Republican, I used to think how appropriate it was that we were "the right" because we WERE right. Boy, was I wrong. Just as conservatives have been wrong, again and again and again. While liberals have right. Again. And again. And again. Why on God's good earth would I want to be a conservative, only to be proven wrong again and again? I'm glad to be a liberal. My heart says it is right. My reason says it is right. And history says it is right.