this is the truth

On so many forums, I am guarded.

I have a wide range of acquaintances and friends. There are some who are liberal, and some who are conservative. Some who are REALLY liberal and some who are UBER conservative.

On shallow social media, I don't have the time and the band width to fight it all out. To tell what I think, and why, with all the nuance and sometime shadows.

I have also felt, over the years, that as I have been thrown in the conservative arena, that maybe there is a reason.

When I don't alienate, when I go slow, perhaps I may *slowly* give people reason to stop and think.

Still:

Truth #1: At least at the moment, very few people read this blog. So there is less risk of a fire storm when I tell you:

I am a liberal. Most of the time.

About most things.

There is an old saw that if you are conservative before 30 you have no heart, and if you are liberal after 30 you have no brain.

Well, I am still liberal well past 30.

In fact, in some ways I am getting more liberal as I get older.

I said to my daughter a few years ago: You know, it seems like the older I get the more socialist I get.

Oh, my daughter said, how Jewish of you!

In the past when I have posted something relatively mild such as:

No one should go without health care because they can't afford it

on the Book of Face, I have had dozens of comments fighting it out for and against affordable health care- without my entering the conversation! People who don't know one another slugging it out on the page of the one person they have in common: me.

I'm a bit bolder now. I'm reflecting on this because of the Susan G. Komen controversy. Not only did I post (along with, I don't know, a gazillion other people) in protest of the organization's original decision to withdraw funding from Planned Parenthood, and in celebration of the reversal of that decision, but I have also been posting about gay marriage, the budget crisis, health care and more.

Posting a clever graphic isn't enough. But it is a start.

Truth #2: I am a liberal because I have a sense of justice and fairness.

It is ironic that I owe this sense of justice and fairness in large part to my Dad, who is hugely conservative these days.

I know (Truth #3) that I am smarter than most people. I was born with lots of advantages: intelligence, relatively good health, white skin, two parents - at least one of whom was continuously employed with a job that provided health care for the family.

Every one of those advantages is HUGE. I cannot help but think of those born without one of those advantages- and what if someone is born without ANY?

(Knee-jerk liberal apologia #1: it isn't that I think white skin is BETTER: it's just an undeniable advantage in this society).

It is not a person's fault if s/he is born into poverty, or with a skin color that is discriminated against, or with limited cognitive ability.

It is important that society helps those who need it. I mean, isn't that why we have government?

"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."