A Born Again Liberal

I am a born again liberal. At least it seems that way to me now that I have seen the light.

I know the difference between the good war monger and the bad war monger, that the difference is razor thin.

I experiment with my thinking and my thinking is my awareness. Awareness, as Krishnamurti put it in one of his Ojai talks, is “a process of discovery.”

I am aware that my neighbor’s lawn is growing up through the threads of the Astroturf, and that the giant mechanized streetcleaner that comes to clean our street once every two weeks is actually making the street dirtier.

Congruity, the new abnormal, is made from scratch out of old, previously worn jeans that are now sold to rich people with enormous gobs of money.

Nothing the liberal makes is very good anymore. I mean the product isn’t very interesting, it looks new but isn’t new, it looks like something I’ve seen before in Art Forum, a magazine devoted to the writing first and to experimental art second.

The reality of being a liberal is at the very least, sad. Sadness is the best it can do now, though it wasn’t necessarily sad at the time I was first became a liberal.

A certain amount of guilt is deemed healthy.  For instance, that the children of liberals aren’t taught civics in private schools anymore is a shame, while homeschooling among conservatives is now considered a constitutional right and the test scores prove it.

I have a constitutional right to my liberalism, and am proud of it. Though the political horizon is chaotic, full of turmoil and doubting Thomases, I have a feeling that liberals all over the world will soon re-congregate in the name of Jesus Christ and become a powerful political force

I do believe liberalism will make a comeback, not in my lifetime perhaps but in the lifetime of my children’s children, whether they’re born again or not.