What exactly is a “liberal”? Last week the Voice hurriedly edited an article [“Something about optimism,” volume 37.12] I wrote to say, “We, as liberals,” in a piece that discussed my disagreement with the reelection of George W. Bush. However, in the piece I had departed from a typical liberal dissent and made a politically radical argument. It was both revealing and irritating. Radicalism claims only a marginal hold on most political consciousnesses in a country that systematically excludes it from public discourse and writes it off as “liberal.” I encounter liberals and am perceived to be one on a daily basis, but I think the rest of the world still needs clarification.
I came close to bodily harm this summer on behalf of a Nevada pickup truck driver who mistakenly took me for a liberal. The risk was on my own accord; I was hitchhiking and had forgotten precaution somewhere en route. My friend and I were headed for Berkley, California, which tipped our driver as to our possible political leanings. It’s liberal country out there. We withstood an hour-long barrage of racist, sexist and violently pro-war, anti-liberal rhetoric without so much as a few responsive sentences jabbed between his rants. We were utterly unable to escape his rocketing white pickup. At the end of the miserable ride, he propositioned, “Y’all liberals are into lov’n, aren’t you?” We ran. We held each other in a restaurant, shivering, until the bastard left.
I’m anti-war, and I’m not conservative, but I’m not a liberal.
This experience begins as an extreme example to my point. Disregarding the many obvious problems surrounding our ride, its paradigm rests in a harmfully socialized way of thought. We exist in a world of false dichotomies. We wander confidently through a black and white film constantly choosing between A and B. We have been taught and continue to teach everyone around us to consider the world as starkly polarized. I am either a liberal or a conservative. Bush or Kerry. Pro-choice or pro-life, gay or straight, free market or anti-globalization, with us or against us. If I don’t fall into one of those categories, I am politely reminded that the system doesn’t have a place for me. The word “liberal” inspires me to respond: “incrementalist,” “normalizing,” “privileged” or “bureaucratic”.
Georgetown doesn’t exactly break this mold. I’m familiar with academic nods towards “complexities,” or “gray areas,” but can anyone structurally address our mistakenly hard-wired thought processes? When do we move further than considering possible nuances to actually changing a harmful system that feeds on a simply divided populace? When will more people get fed up enough and be radicalized by a system that unfailingly succeeds in disenfranchising the poor, working and dissident?
Experiences radicalize people. My experiences like interacting with people working at the World Bank who can change nothing, being illegally arrested by violent police at a peaceful demonstration and my friendships with struggling Thai villagers, have radicalized my personal politics. If more self-identifying liberals would engage those with a critical consciousness and willingness to depart from everything we’ve been taught, then maybe they too could take a risk and, god forbid, protest, strike, refuse and build a movement of many movements? We all need to question the place of government and corporations in our lives and communities.
Is it so revolutionary to engage our immense power to overturn a system and government that has lost all legitimacy and, in my opinion, does more harm than good? Our textbooks have conveniently forgotten the radical politics of traditional icons like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Thomas Jefferson. But, as students, we can at least draw on that and build our own challenges to an often overwhelming government and the system.
