Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThough a strong party man, he’s such a man of senseThat he feels convictions should not stand in the way of convenience;When he’s not a Liberal, he’s a Conservative —Tra-la-la-la-la!When he’s not a Conservative, he’s a Liberal —Tra-la-la-la-la!He always voted at his party’s call,And never thought of thinking for himself at all —Tra-la-la-la-la! – Gilbert and Sullivan

“Liberal or Conservative?” a new friend asked.

The question stuck.

Labels are libels, procrustean at best, shrinking facts to fit definitions. Why be either? Why not the party of ME, its principles and policies my own?

Politicians must pledge allegiance, so their partisans help them to power. The party of ME enters an election with few automatic votes. These days I vote straight D because the R’s idolize a fiend who will sink us all. I used to deplore single-party voters as simpletons but in a war one must choose one’s flag. Straddling the divide, dreaming of occupying a DMZ between, one gets shot by both.

So D it is – until the R’s are reborn. But does that mark me liberal or conservative in our traditional political face-off?

Well, both. Neither.

The liberal/conservative divide commenced in France in 1789, when in the National Assembly, pro-Revolutionists sat to the left of the presiding officer and pro-monarchists to his right. The leftists sought change, equality, reform, the rightists continuity, hierarchy, the good old days. Pro-people vs. pro-wealth; tear it down vs. not so fast.

I believe in change; I believe in caution. Drastic change leads inevitably to grotesque injustice (the guillotine, for example). Babies get flushed with the bathwater. (I loathe braggarts, blowhards, and autolatrists on either side.)

I registered D because my parents were R and I argh. I sighed for D girls and their permissive mores, if only they’d permit me! Yet I’d come to university not to screech, grunge, and slurp granola, but to absorb, in Matthew Arnold’s formula, “the best that has been thought and said in the world.” Education, after all, is about conserving – the genius of our predecessors – and I yearned, then as now, to know.

About America, I am a conservative first. Our Founders got it amazingly right. As did Lincoln – “of the people, by the people, for the people” – if you could make it work. I’m also a liberal – for loosening the chokehold of wealth, governing for the people and not just the right people (i.e., well-heeled). I’ve voted R often, sometimes blushing in hindsight, but not today, for today’s R’s are anarchists, plotting to replace a system that benefited the many with one that serves, honors, and protects the few. In today’s National Assembly I sit to the left of the presiding officer, dismayed by those on the right.

Liberal and Conservative have never been synonymous with D and R. I’m a Lincoln R and FDR D, but not a Hoover R or Buchanan D. Sometimes Reconstruction is imperative, at other times impossible. Today’s D’s are SOS D’s – Save Our State. I will hoist their flag and, as long as this war lasts, hush my demurrals (or, if I can’t, disguise my disgruntled grunts in polysyllables).

Liberal and Conservative are both honorable epithets – and vile when brandished by the vile. Party affiliation is not spiritual attestation but practical consideration, based on the politics of the moment. To know where your loyalties lie, recall the ideals to which you aspire. Mine are truth, decency, justice, courtesy, beauty, modesty, humility, equality, inclusion, circumspection, precision, “peace on earth and good will toward men.” If you’re like me, vote D; if not, I know you R.