Wordless Wednesday
Tuesday Tolerance: Why I’m a Liberal (And You’re Not)
I may be the last real liberal.
CBS Sunday Morning looked at the line in the sand between liberals and conservatives by asking Nancy Giles and Ben Stein to do essays on why they come down on one side or the other.
Ms. Giles quoted what she called the Oxford English Dictionary definition:
liberal adj. Willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one’s own.
“I’m a liberal,” she said. “I love the mix of voices and the larger perspective.”
I’m down with that.
In fact, I couldn’t agree more that we need a mix of voices. Mine is right, of course, but others do add color and flavor and nuance and, yes, more data to what I say.
Hey! I must be a liberal.
The bad news is two-fold. One is the simple fact that none of the other liberals I know are actually willing to listen to other voices or see the larger perspective. The most recent example is that of picketers trying to shut down the voice of Lenore Broughton the driving force behind the Vermonters First super PAC.
Oh. I must be the only liberal.
And then there is the case of Islam. Many believe Islam is a religion of terror and war and destruction of women but, according to American liberals, there are only a “few warlike Muslims so we can’t damn the whole religion.” And yet. And yet, my liberal friends damn everyone to the Right of them for a few right wing nutcases at abortion clinics.
“I could only listen until that woman read that definition of Liberal and claimed that was what she was,” Rufus said. “Libruls are the least liberal people I know.”
Rufus leads us to the second bit of bad news. See, I own an O.E.D. “Willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one’s own” ain’t in it. On the other hand, Merriam-Webster does call liberal, “not literal or strict : loose <as in a liberal translation>.”
Looks like I am indeed a liberal in the first sense but Ms. Giles and the other self-proclaimed “liberals” I know hew to the second. They are as incorrect or inaccurate with the facts as possible. Or perhaps it was just an inexact translation.
Let’s go back to Ms. Giles’ dictionary.
liberal adj. Of or pertaining to representational forms of government rather than aristocracies and monarchies.
That’s interesting but it’s not in my printed copy of the O.E.D. Here’s her next definition.
liberal adj. believing the government should be active in supporting social and political change.
Oh, boy. That’s out of Wikipedia or the Socialist’s Bible but it has everything to do with politics and nothing to do with the dictionary.
liberal adj. Tending to give freely; generous.
Ooo. I’m down with that, too. Of course most people know that the leader of the American liberal party, Barack Obama, grudgingly started giving more than a pittance to charity about the day after he decided to run for president. In other words, once people would actually notice. The leader of the other guys (that would be Mitt Romney) has given away a big percentage of his, quietly, every year he’s had income. On a more personal level, all the liberals I know want to control my income while my efforts go into an arts council and Anne’s into the Special Olympics. Our choice.
Money and politics. Ms. Giles wants control of both and that’s not very liberal.
In fact, my actual O.E.D. includes definition #5 as
liberal adj. Favourable to or respectful of individual rights and freedoms; spec (in politics) favouring free trade and gradual political and social reform that tends towards individual freedom or democracy.
I may not respect but I do accept your incredible naivete, behavior, and opinions that differ from mine. I give of myself without asking you to do the same. I believe in local control, free trade and social reform that moves us toward individual freedoms and democracy.
Yup. I’m a liberal. And you’re not.
BAM
Naps are grand but I don’t like the idea of second sleep. I prefer to slam down into unconsciousness and have absolutely no interaction with the outside world for 855 contiguous minutes. I don’t want to wake for the (imaginary) dog barking or the ringing phone or to feed the wood stove. I don’t even want to have to get up to pee.
In the far reaches of history, before the advent of the electric light orchestra or Dick Tracy’s two-way wrist TV, most people slept in two separate phases, divided by an hour or more of wakefulness. Writers have long liked the uninterrupted time to write and crooks to steal. Field workers could awaken to have sex. Priests might use the time to pray.
Hmmm. Four hours of sleep. Hot weasel sex. Four more hours of sleep.
Yeah, that has a good ring to it.
I was particularly awake at 6 this morning, enough that I considered getting up after just 5-1/2 hours sleep. Shotgun fire woke me again at ten-to-seven and kept doing so for more than an hour. The 2012 Vermont Migratory Bird Hunting season for Ducks, Coots and Mergansers restarted at 6:50 this ayem. Somewhere in there I dreamed that I was feeding the (imaginary) dog who was romping across a chopped corn field.
Did you know that coots are medium-sized water birds with mostly black feathers except for their white forehead which gives rise to the expression “bald as a …” And the common merganser is a really big duck while the brant is a really small goose.
As far as I can tell, duck hunting is like fishing from a boat except colder. You go out, motor across the lake burning a lot of gas, then sit around all day in a 4×6 room. You end up spending $500 per pound for something I don’t want to eat anyway.
Now deer hunting, on the other hand, means you get to take a tramp in the woods, shoot off as many as a few $1 cartridges, and stock your freezer for pennies a pound. Mmmm. Bambi steaks. Bamburgers. Bambighetti sauce. I understand deer hunting.
Tom Ripley’s father-in-law is a deer hunter. He keeps inviting me to deer camp.
“At the end of the season he shoots our Christmas tree,” Tom said. “BAM BAM. BAM BAM BAM. Then he calls everyone out to ‘see what I got.’ Of course that means everyone (else) gets to drag the tree back to camp.”
Duck hunting just got a lot more attractive.
Wordless Wednesday
Trash to Riches
My garbage man has to buy a new truck.
Vermont has very little municipal trash collection, even in our small municipalities. Many Vermonters contract private haulers to collect and dump our trash; others, like my daughter, load up their dogs and plastic bags for the Saturday morning outing to the transfer station.
Tom Ripley owns my garbage route. I like Tom. He’s friendly, always on time, and comes right up on the porch to pick up the trash cans. He even (usually) latches the storm door when he puts the cans back. He owns a couple of used garbage trucks that he bought at the state auction and usually has a couple-three pickups that he runs around his route every Sunday before church. Sadly, he’s leaving the business because Vermont says he has to buy a new truck.
Gov. Peter Shumlin (D-VT) moved us “towards universal recycling [to] advance Vermont into the next generation of solid waste management and keep more waste out of our landfills” with a new law he signed this year.
The mandate requires waste haulers to collect everything from yard waste to commercial food waste, and prohibits dumping any recyclable or compostable materials in landfills.
Did you know there is a U.S. Composting Council? Its executive director says that “Enacting the law over time will ensure its success on a number of levels.”
The timeline begins in 2014 when all mandated recyclables must be removed from the solid waste stream. In 2015 yard waste goes. Two years after that, in 2017 food waste must be gone.
The prohibition mandates that every hauler have compartmented trucks. And everyone is soooooo very pleased about how the law will be phased in to give haulers enough time to build the infrastructure.
Tom has to buy a new truck.
Of course by law, Tom won’t be allowed to charge extra for handling the recycled materials.
But wait! There’s more!
“If a facility collects mandated recyclables from a commercial hauler, the facility may charge a fee for the collection of those mandated recyclables.” — Act 148
Tom has to buy a new truck.
But wait! There’s more!
Food residuals can’t go in the waste stream any more. In fact, “uncontaminated material that is derived from processing or discarding of food and that is recyclable, in a manner consistent with section 6605k of this title” (i.e. preconsumer and postconsumer food scraps) must be source separated. — Act 148
I have to pick out the wilted lettuce. Tom has to buy a new truck.
“Mr. Ripley could use his old truck and just drive the route twice,” one regulator told me. Or four times if our regulatory friend could count.
That makes perfect Green sense.
It used to be that when government usurped private property by annexing your land or legislated you out of business, it was called a taking. Times change. I guess the Far Green figures that a mandated purchase like Tom’s new truck is just another tax.
Follow the money. Somebody’s getting rich on this but it sure ain’t Tom Ripley.
For the record, Act 148 does allow new “taxes on all nonrecyclable, nonbiodegradable products or packaging.”