Kevin Collins: Many reasons to be a liberal

Roam the AM airwaves and you'll hear right-wing hosts calling them un-American enemies within. Read her books and you'll see Ann Coulter even labeling them traitors. Tune into the top-rated cable news network and you'll watch Fox talking heads somehow manage to claim that they use their control of the media to further their malicious ends.

They are liberals, and if you haven't guessed it from two semesters of columns, let me be plain: I am one of them. In an era in which conservative demagogues invoke the word "liberal" as if it were spelled with four letters, I and others wear the scarlet "L" with pride. But why, and what exactly are the differences between today's liberals and conservatives?

On one level, the differences between us are not so great. Individually, most people want the same things: decent jobs, quality health care when needed, good schools for their kids, dignity in old age, safe streets and a safe America, and the protection of their essential liberties. But there are, of course, distinctions.

Part of the difference between the right and left is a simple disagreement over which policies would best accomplish common goals. For example, conservatives believe widespread use of concealed handguns will best reduce violent crime, whereas liberals argue that the gun control laws that have drastically decreased violent crime in the rest of the developed world could do the same here.

While legitimate policy disagreements surely constitute a significant part of the differences between left and right, there's a far more profound distinction that accounts for much more of the divide in modern American politics: Liberals and conservatives may want the same things for themselves, but liberals want them for others as well.

This is why liberals (even wealthy ones like John Kerry) support job creation policies that are more than tax breaks for the rich; it's why liberals prefer funding public education rather than sending taxpayer dollars into private school coffers; it's why liberals believe first-rate health care should be a right, not a privilege, and it's why liberals believe that even Americans without ranches in Texas should be able to breathe clean air.

In the face of John Ashcroft's would-be theocracy, infringement of black, Latino and Arab civil rights in the name of wars on drugs and terror, attacks on women's reproductive freedom by the mostly male anti-abortion leadership and opposition to equality in marriage, it is we liberals who fight to ensure that all Americans -- regardless of religion, race, sex or gender -- receive equal protection under the law.

The same principle explains why liberals are dedicated to preserving our nation's natural treasures for future generations. It is furthermore why today's liberals work to maintain Social Security and Medicare for long after they will need it themselves and why the right has raided these trust funds to give tax breaks to those who need them least.

While I refuse to repeat the right's slander on the left and call conservatives "traitors," it is clear that conservatives advocate policies that primarily benefit themselves, forcing the left to defend those American principles of liberty and justice that the right forgot along the way. In short, the task of representing the interests of America as a whole is a task left to liberals.

The conservative neglect of American interests was made plain in Bob Woodward's new book. Woodward reveals that the administration misappropriated vital funds for the war in Afghanistan to begin planning for the invasion of Iraq, only to lie about it afterward. Woodward also discloses that Donald Rumsfeld showed the Saudis top secret war plans, after which they pledged to drop oil prices just in time for November elections.

And then there is Bush on his legacy. When asked about history's judgments of the Iraq War, the president shrugged and replied, "History, we don't know. We'll all be dead." Bush seems not to care how his policies are viewed any further off than November, but even if conservatives aren't interested in protecting it, that future is the reality in which our generation must live. We need leaders who will work for the benefit of all Americans, present and future, and not just for their own re-election.

I am a liberal, and no matter what Ann Coulter says, I stand proud to pledge allegiance to a republic that ensures liberty and justice for all. If you too seek to realize the full potential of these essential American principles, join me. Pin on your scarlet "L." Register, vote, volunteer and donate. One by one we will take our country back, and together we will save the American dreams of liberty and justice for not just our generation, but for all generations to come.

Kevin Collins is a sophomore political science major from Milwaukee, Wis. ...And Justice For All appears on Mondays.

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