There’s really not much point being a liberal if you don’t acknowledge…

• that science trumps politics,
• that being an individual and striving to treat others as individuals trump group identity,
• that being a victim is a situation to get out of as soon as possible and to help others get out of,
• that cultivating self-awareness and owning your own crap trumps projection,
• that feeling righteous is far from being right,
• and that answering shitty behavior with shitty behavior is at best counterproductive.

If I were put in charge of the Great Liberal Manifesto, this would be in it — as a reminder to myself first and foremost.

I’ve been keeping politics to a minimum on this blog. I’m a liberal, lowercase, because I think that’s the correct name for a democratic, science-based, freedom-loving ethos. I am not a conservative, except in that I lean a bit toward conservative philosophy: Plato, Taoism, and that sort of thing. While existentialism is good, conserving the hard-won gains of civilization is only prudent, and one should always recheck Plutarch’s Lives to see if the newest fad in social engineering wasn’t actually tried a dozen times before the end of the first century A.D.

Liberalism is a state of mind, and it’s not for wimps.