In Which I Reveal Why I Became a Liberal

In a Facebook discussion, I saw this:

we're not complaining about the U.S. of America, we're complaining about the current administration who seems to be on a mission to destroy us! We Love OUR country. Many current leaders would love to push us into a communistic country. We're fighting tooth and nail to keep America FREE!!

Here is my response:

"We're fighting tooth and nail to keep America FREE!!"

I want so hard to believe you.

But after the people who cheered on Bush the Lesser suddenly started pretending to have a conscience about 'liberty' and budgets; after Arizona; after the election of the first black president prompted thousands of white people to start screaming 'states' rights!', 'take our country back!' and 'down with the fourteenth amendment!'; after they started calling the healthcare plan first proposed by the Heritage Foundation communist; after the 'up and downers' in the Bush administration blocked everything in the senate just two years later; after Jim Demint, after Sarah Palin, after O'Donnell, Bachman, Beck, and Gingrich; after all the people screaming about government spending while on medicare; after the theocons and the mosque; after crowds of white people screaming OURS! at Mexicans, blacks, Muslims, and all who dared to disagree them; after hearing nazism! socialism! communism! from people who think those words are synonyms; after the birthers, the Tea Parties; after Rush and after Fox ...

I just don't.

And I won't.  Ever.  I was raised a conservative evangelical--really believing in the things they told me that conservatives really believed in.  Civil liberties, an informed citizenry, honesty, responsibility, measured foreign policy--all still things that I love in my vision of America.  Over the ten years of my adult life, I have watched the Right systematically desecrate them.

The realization was exquisitely painful, but there was no escaping it.  The vision of America that they themselves had taught me to admire was diametrically opposed to their every policy, word, and deed. 

I love my vision of what America can and should be--of what the high principles of its creed ordained it to be--and it is precisely that love which necessitates my fervent opposition towards those who betrayed both it and me.