The Liberal Ideal

When I was a freshman in college in 1968, Robert Reich was the President of the student body. He was a thoughtful leader then and he still is today. I recommend this interview in BuzzFlash. Here is a taste.

"The liberal ideal is that everyone should have fair access and fair opportunity. This is not equality of result. It’s equality of opportunity. There’s a fundamental difference. So condemning the working class and the poor to lousy schools and to a health care system that is increasingly skewed toward the privileged violates these basic tenets of liberalism, as does a tax break that is overwhelmingly benefiting those who are already very rich at a time in our nation’s history when the gap between the rich and everyone else is wider than it’s been in over a hundred years. And finally, liberals believe in a foreign policy that is multi-national and collaborative, working through the United Nations, NATO and our major allies, seeking to prevent violence and war through spreading middle-class prosperity rather than through the simple assertion of our military might. Our moral authority is as important, if not more important, than our troop strength or our high-tech weapons. We are rapidly losing that moral authority, not only in the Arab world but all over the world."