by El Zorro Viejo (aka; Jim)

A yesterday I posted about Mona Charen's book excoriating liberals. That was yesterday morning. Yesterday afternoon at work I was shelving new books when I came across Michelle Kennedy's book Without a Net. This book is about how a young woman from a solidly middle class Vermont family one day found herself and her three children on the street and homeless. She had a car and she had a job (actually two). Now, according to the book jacket (I only had time to sneak reading the first chapter, in which her lovely middle class marriage and home falls completely apart,) in the end she triumphs, but what she had to go through to get to solid ground sounds like the stuff our nightmares are frought with. And the thing we should understand is that she is one of the lucky ones. For every Michelle and her kids, there are unknown others who do not get out whole.

The point is that Mona and her ilk basically don't give a damn about the Michelles of our country. If you are weak, if you have made some bad choices or had some just plain bad luck, the Charen's of this world would leave you to sink or swim on your own. The thing about Michelle Kennedy is that because she was doing all the right things--two jobs for beginners--she didn't qualify for any assistance at any level. More to the point, her kids were left out to go through whatever their mother had to go through. This is wrong. While parents have primary responsibility for the care and well being of their offspring, when fate, in whatever form, reduces the parents ability to provide adequate food, shelter, clothing and education, it becomes society's duty to provide what assistance is necessary. No parent should ever have to live on the streets with child(ren) in tow.

This is what being a liberal means. It means putting people ahead of "things". It means that money is less important that the fulfillment of a person's potential. It means caring more about the health of this planet's ecosphere than about the profits accruing to corporations and, indirectly, to their stockholders. (Stockholders should have other sources of income unless they have retired: and then their stock holdings should only be part of what supports them in their senior years.) Being a social liberal does not mean that we condone the human predators who prey on society. Being liberal does not mean that we condone profligate waste of any resources: be they monetary, physical or human. So, when the Charen's, Savage's, Coulter's or O'Reilly's of this world begin to put the well being of our fellow citizens (and, thereby, the wellbeing of our society as a whole) ahead of their personal wealth, privilege and comfort, then I'll start conceding some of the moral high ground to them. However, until that time, I will continue to have only contempt for them and their fellow travelers.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. ©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005