15th Mar 2003
What Does It Mean to Be a Liberal Anymore, and Do I Still Qualify?
Dork Z. suggested the other day I should be blogging about more serious things than pretty girls and their boogers, namely the impending Iraqi war. I’ve been quite reluctant to do so till now. Partly, that’s because I don’t feel that I’m such shrewd a political observer, or anyway that I have anything better to contribute than many other bloggers and commentators out there, so mine would be just one more asshole’s opinion. And partly because I’ve been so busy in recent months I’ve hardly been blogging at all of late, and such political questions, notably that of the Iraqi war, are so complicated I’d be at it for hours if I let myself get started (believe me, I’ve been running the arguments through my head endlessly). But more than anything, I suppose it’s that I’ve been chicken to actually come out and say what I believe.
Or rather, for the last year and a half or so (you do the math for the precise date), I’m not really sure what I believe anymore. Certainly, the old labels of “liberal” and “conservatives” seem to have lost a lot of their meaning, considering that, in the case of Iraq for example, it’s the so-called liberals who are urging we all stick with the status quo, while the so-called conservatives are pushing for radical change. Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way around in the good old days?
See what I mean about my brilliance as a political observer? *Yawn* (Granted, I’m watching TV as I blog this, which itself is some measure of my commitment to this whole political blogging thing. It’s also a measure of how addicted I am to my new wi-fi set up.) So, let me just leave it at this for now: this NYT piece pretty much sums it up for me: “Intellectual Left’s Doves Take on Role of Hawks”. This piece in the Guardian comes pretty close, too: “Why we should go to war”
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