I post a lot about politics and current events, so I think it might be time to post about my own beliefs. Specifically, what do I mean when I say I'm a liberal?
Fundamentally, to me, this represents a declaration of values rather than a specific set of policies. When I say I am a liberal, what I mean is that I believe that our society needs to be changed to make it better for everyone. I compare this to conservatives, who believe that society as it is, or at least significant parts of it, need to be preserved, revolutionaries, who believe that society needs to be drastically overthrown in order to make a new society that is better for everyone, and reactionaries, who believe that society needs to be drastically overthrown and returned to some, often imagined, perfect state.
So what do I mean by "society"? And, just as importantly, what do I mean by "better"?
Let's start with society. To me, society is a combination of institutions and individuals. Institutions are also combinations of individuals, but a more limited group of individuals than society as a whole. Institutions are things like governments, corporations, unions, and religious institutions; basically anything where groups of individuals organize to achieve common goals. Even things like fan clubs and neighborhood watches are institutions that are part of society in my framework.
When understanding that definition of society, I think you can see that laws are necessary in some cases, but so is engagement and education. You can't legislate what's in someone's head and, over time, the collective actions of discriminatory people in positions of power can have a huge effect, even if no one does anything that could reasonably be constrained by law.
With that in mind, what do I mean by "better"? To me, the ultimate goal of any civilized society is that every person's needs to be met and every person's potential be able to be fulfilled. I think it's fair to say that our society has not met this standard yet, nor has any other society that I can think of, so my view is that we need to keep experimenting, researching, and making changes to get closer and closer to that goal.
As I said, though, unlike a revolutionary or a reactionary, I don't believe that "better" includes the overthrow of our existing society. As imperfect as it is, our current society is better in just about every measure of well-being that you could attempt to measure than any other society in history. In education, health-care, purchasing power, life expectancy, general welfare, and dozens of other metrics, our society is better now than any other place or period you could wish to measure. This is especially true if you expand your view to the global scale.
Overthrowing this system would undo its serious accomplishments and advantages with no guarantee that the system replacing it would be better. At least, none that we've seen so far.
I also want to point out, since this seems to be an issue of late, that when I say that my liberalism means I want to make society better for everyone, I genuinely mean EVERYONE. I'm not in the "eat the rich" or "kill the cops" camp, I believe that my better society will be a better society for them too. Perhaps not in the way they would like to make it themselves or even what they would expect, but I genuinely believe that absolutely everyone will be better off in a society where privation and poverty are things of the past and each person is able to achieve their own best.
All of my policy preferences flow from that understanding. I'm a data guy, a scientist and an engineer, so my policy preferences generally go in the direction of policies that have shown that they are likely to improve the lives of people. I should point out that, in general, I tend to place a higher value on improvements in the life of those at the bottom more than I do on costs to those who are better off. This is generally because most of those costs still keep those who are better off at quite a comfortable level while the impact to those at the bottom can be genuinely life-altering. That said, this has limits, and I wouldn't support policies that impose large costs on those who are better off for only meager improvements for those at the bottom.
As for why I'm writing this up, I think it's important to be clear on what we believe in a specific sense from time to time rather than relying on labels to do that work for us all of the time. Just calling myself a liberal can sometimes lump me in with some people that I do not agree with who may also call themselves liberal. I hope you found this interesting and also informative.
I'd also love to hear from others about their own beliefs. What do you mean when you describe yourself?


















