As someone who grew up in the 60’s, I’m still trying to figure out when it became a crime to be a liberal? The answer is never, it’s just that the folks in the Party of “No” don’t understand history, because they’re too busy trying to rewrite it to suit them.

Sarah Palin proved that recently when she tried to reinterpret the famous midnight ride of Paul Revere. When asked about it, she got mixed up and said Revere was riding his horse, ringing a bell and repeatedly firing and reloading his musket with only two hands. She also said Revere was warning the British that the Americans were coming, which is a complete reversal of the truth. But instead of admitting her mistake, she stuck to her “guns” and looked foolish. A few days later, some of her supporters were caught trying to edit the Paul Revere entry on Wikipedia so that it would match Palin’s fictional version. Perhaps their revisionist history mindset is why conservatives look at people like me and snarl, “Oh, you’re a liberal! Humph”, acting like we have something to be ashamed of, as if they have room to judge anyone.

For me, being a Liberal means being willing to challenge the “status quo” and being open to change. Meanwhile the Conservatives of the 60’s and the ultra Conservatives today seem to believe that everything was just fine the way it was before (like before we could vote).

Those who fought Liberals in the 60’s were mostly against the “I” word, which was “Integration”. Many of these “haters” were Democrats from the South (known then as Dixiecrats) who were clinging to segregation and the Jim Crow laws that kept Negroes in their place. But after the Kennedy assassination in 1963, Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas became the President. LBJ was determined to make a name for himself and used all of his political influence to get sweeping Civil Rights legislation passed. The new laws ensured the voting rights of Blacks and all minorities, outlawed segregation in the work place, and made it illegal to deny housing to minorities simply because of their race.

But once these changes became law, the Southern “Dixiecrats” felt betrayed by their own party. So when Republican Ronald Reagan ran for President in 1980, he reached out to the “Dixiecrats”, asking them to help him build a new a conservative coalition and they answered his call. Many of these new conservatives were aligned with the racists of the 60’s who fought all efforts to change America into a society that offered equal opportunities for all. The ultra conservatives today, who look at Ronald Regan as a hero, don’t understand the recent history of their own party. But many of them still hate the thought of the word “Diversity” and a multicultural American society.

These same radical conservatives today claim President Obama is in over his head because he was just a community organizer; ignoring that he was elected to the US Senate. They suggest that he is “ignorant”, while at the same time claiming he is “arrogant”, and an Ivy League “elitist”. Plus for the first time in history, they also demanded that a sitting President prove he’s an American citizen by showing his Birth Certificate. But if proving citizenship is so important, when will they also demand the birth certificates of all of the current 2012 Presidential candidates, as well as paperwork from 2008 candidate Senator John McCain, and all living former Presidents; Carter, Bush 1, Clinton and Bush 2? If they don’t demand this proof from everyone, they are giving ammunition to the growing chorus of Americans who think these attacks on the President are based on race.

Then we have the right wing talk shows like the one hosted by Sean Hannity who heaps daily criticism on President Obama. Back during the 2008 Presidential campaign, he boasted that his program was the place for the most comprehensive and complete election coverage in the country. But in the next breath he proclaimed his show to be the home of the “Stop the Liberal, Stop the Obama Express”. How could Hannity’s election coverage have been “comprehensive and complete”, if he’d already decided that one of the candidates must be stopped? Why should anyone with an ounce of objectivity, listen to anything he has to say now?

Yes I’m a liberal and proud of it, because I am open to change and new ideas when they are presented in a logical and rational way. Yet at the same time I know that we’ve got a lot of problems in this country that were created by politicians on both sides of the political spectrum. If you’re a conservative and want to work to improve the quality of life for all Americans, then we can work together!