Off the subject of Rove now, let me ask what are liberal values?

[icymist]

Now-a-days, the whole USA wants to votes for the candidate with 'values'. Here's a copy of my unfinished paper:
Just what are liberal values?
I believe that certain human rights are self evident; the rights to food, shelter, healthcare, and clothing. Anything less is a failure to recognize the dignity of human beings. To say that the unfortunate among us receiving assistance in the above are ‘playing the system’ or are somehow lazy and irresponsible reduces humanity to the degree of dumb animals, where only the ‘strong’ survive. The rights to food, shelter, healthcare, and clothing are liberal values.
By not paying a living wage to working people, corporatist Republicans allow illegal immigrants the opportunity to work the jobs “Americans won’t work”. This practice is undermining the very integrity of our country by eliminating the middle class and creating a society of those few who have and the many who are their servants. This is dangerous for these conditions allow the rise of a dictator and fascism as seen in our present situation. Paying a living wage to working people creates a strong middle class which prevents the rise to a dictatorship, both of these are liberal values.
When religion is introduced into government practice, arguing that a particular god intends for humans to only live in the precise manner as defined by the men claiming authority in speaking for that god, does this not insult all human intelligence with hypocrisy by belittling the great potential for the human race? Claiming that abstinence to be the only approved method for birth control and treating sexually transmitted diseases is not only ignorant to other methods for these, but also reduces the common person to the role of a domesticated animal, at the mercy of their so-called compassionate conservative masters. Eliminating the huge influence of an organized religion in governmental policy and laws are liberal values.

Can you add your own liberal values to these?

[Syrinx]

1. "Know Your Rights" By The Clash

This is a public service announcement
With guitar
Know your rights all three of them

Number 1
You have the right not to be killed
Murder is a CRIME!
Unless it was done by a
Policeman or aristocrat
Know your rights

And Number 2
You have the right to food money
Providing of course you
Don't mind a little
Investigation, humiliation
And if you cross your fingers
Rehabilitation

Know your rights
These are your rights
Wang

Know these rights

Number 3
You have the right to free
Speech as long as you're not
Dumb enough to actually try it.

Know your rights
These are your rights
All three of 'em
It has been suggested
In some quarters that this is not enough!
Well..............................

Get off the streets
Get off the streets
Run
You don't have a home to go to
Smush

Finally then I will read you your rights

You have the right to remain silent
You are warned that anything you say
Can and will be taken down
And used as evidence against you

Listen to this
Run

[icymist]

3. So what are you trying to say here....

give up and run away? I say let's define Liberal values and make that a point. I also say to reclaim the word Liberal from the 'pukes' that stole it from us. You go ahead and run if you want to, I won't.

[Syrinx]

15. uh, I think you misunderstand me

The Clash never advocated running, and neither do I. Try reading it again. Or better yet, listen to the record. Running away is the last thing I would suggest. Sheesh.

[mortlefaucheur]

2. Liberal Values?

Oppose the United States at every turn possible.
Remember, the Fuehrer's Third Reich once polled much higher in world opinion than the fat, rich, and stupid MurKKKans will, if ever.
All The World Despises MurKKKans! It's the First Step...

[bowens43]

5. Bullshit.

Liberals do NOT oppose the US, the oppose the current administration. An administration who has nearly destroyed everything this country once stood for.

Now why don't you take your sill ass back to where it belongs.

[bowens43]

7. ..

[mortlefaucheur]

10. It's a BIG-TENT, and there's room-

for opposition to the murderous military-industrial that enslaves all.
Google popularity+ Hitler vs. popularity + USA
As deserved, the USA will be found wanting yet again.
Lots of Americans are cool individually, but that doesn't mean that they and their government shouldn't be singled-out for severe economic sanctions...

[icymist]

11. We're not disagreeing here with you, although some may question you.

curiously, how do you see liberal values as presented here?

stupid?! spell check changed my word!

[mortlefaucheur]

14. Liberal Values, defined?>

Diplomatic and bureaucratic set-backs for the United States at the UN.
World-wide condemnation of Israel, administered through their lackey, the "United" States...
Is there a regime more hated in the annals of human history than the United States?
These are political objectives...
Ask yourselves, what good have Americans ever done?

[icymist]

6. Excuse me?! Oppose the United States at every turn?

Are you trying to equate liberals with anti-American sentiment? I, myself, am an American. That's something I say proudly. I come from a navel family and do not take sentiments against those who fought so proudly against Tojo without ire. In as much as I agree with you that some Americans (note the spelling difference to proclaim my patriotism) will follow their leaders blindly, not asking questions, depending entire lives upon a few, very rich men, I can say there is no comparison to Germany's Third Rich. Ours is much worse. Here, we are dividing up the population into servants, dissidents, and the few rich. God help those few dissidents.

[mortlefaucheur]

12. Oppose the United States, yes...

...oppose icymist, no.
No, I'm just typing out a liberal exegesis.
The default position should be to heap blame upon AmurKKKa's lackeys...

[icymist]

13. Not all America is KKK.

Do you really want to help the liberal cause? Just say that you're proud to be a liberal today in America when being a liberal wasn't cool. That says more to me than anything.

I am proud to be a liberal American. My family and most others have fought for this. I will always be proud to be a liberal. Liberalism is not a disease, but a life consciousness towards compassion with others.

[Rabrrrrrr]

4. Here's mine:

This:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

And this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

[bowens43]

8. JFK sais it best:

" What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."

But first, I would like to say what I understand the word "Liberal" to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a "Liberal," and what it means in the presidential election of 1960.

In short, having set forth my view -- I hope for all time -- two nights ago in Houston, on the proper relationship between church and state, I want to take the opportunity to set forth my views on the proper relationship between the state and the citizen. This is my political credo:

I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.

I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind. I do not believe in a superstate. I see no magic in tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale federal bureaucracies in this administration as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and full responsibilities. Government is an art and a precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it. And this requires not only great ends but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.

Our responsibility is not discharged by announcement of virtuous ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for these reasons that liberalism is our best and only hope in the world today. For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies. And the only basic issue in the 1960 campaign is whether our government will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we will move ahead in the liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground, of doing in our generation what Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson did in their time of influence and responsibility.

Our liberalism has its roots in our diverse origins. Most of us are descended from that segment of the American population which was once called an immigrant minority. Today, along with our children and grandchildren, we do not feel minor. We feel proud of our origins and we are not second to any group in our sense of national purpose. For many years New York represented the new frontier to all those who came from the ends of the earth to find new opportunity and new freedom, generations of men and women who fled from the despotism of the czars, the horrors of the Nazis, the tyranny of hunger, who came here to the new frontier in the State of New York. These men and women, a living cross section of American history, indeed, a cross section of the entire world's history of pain and hope, made of this city not only a new world of opportunity, but a new world of the spirit as well."

[icymist]

9. Thank you for posting this. I'm a liberal and proud of it.

As President Kennedy said: "liberalism is our best and only hope in the world" and I will never give up. I will always be trying and someday, we will win the hearts of the American people, not by force, but by sheer will in being who we are; by being true. This, the neo-cons cannot do.