What does it mean to be a liberal? There's something about
generosity, I think, in the word itself. "Liberal with her praise."
"Sprinkle olive oil on liberally." "A liberal application of
money." Something about giving more than is strictly required and doing it
gladly. That seems to me, when I ask myself, to be what I think of when I call
myself a 'liberal'. I believe in being open, not closed. In looking, therefore,
forward not back, because a generous attitude is also one which thinks that
things certainly could be better in the future, that we will not find the best
things only by conserving our meagre stock of ideas and achievements, but by
passing them around in the expectation that others will do the same.
And there's something too about being liberal with one's
definition of humanity. I have believed for a long time in the expanding
"circle of us". When Gladstone was born, his father made money from
the slave-trade, and the circle of "real human beings" extended no
further than adult Christian white men with property. Slowly we've moved that
circle outward, expanding it liberally. Not just men with property, but all
men. Not just white men but black men. Not just men but women. Not just
Christians but also all faiths and none. Not just able-bodied, but also those
who are disabled. Not just straight but also gay. Not just cis-gendered but
also transgendered. That is what it means to be liberal. To open up the doors
of power and influence. To make sure that we invite people in, because we know
that our humanity is damaged when we start seeing other people as
less-than-people.
It makes us weaker than the forces on the other side, of
course. If you are a fundamentalist, if you're prepared to threaten people with
exclusion from the circle if they don't toe the line, you'll get more loyal
troops. But we're still right, and they're still wrong. I hope that the
expansion of that circle is irreversible. Once you see someone as a person,
maybe you can't go back to seeing them as half-a-person.
A friend of mine suggested to me recently that in 200 years
time the "adult" part of the circle will be expanded. That children
will have the same rights of property, self-determination and voting as adults.
"Impossible," I thought, "absurd. How would they... they
couldn't even..." But the thought is delicious; that we have further yet
to go, that we will find greater and broader definitions of "full
people" than seems imaginable to us today. That is what being a liberal is
too: being willing to change your mind. Being delighted by the idea that you
might be proved wrong.
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