I am registered as a Democrat in Texas. I will admit that I am not always as die-hard liberal as some of my fellow Tufts students. Some of my political beliefs are inherently conservative or libertarian, but I still consider myself liberal overall.
To me, the fundamental difference between conservatism and liberalism is the nature of the government and of the law. Laws and regulations by design take away freedoms. In a country that calls itself free, why enact laws at all, then? Because laws and regulations are for the hard-to-describe greater good. By writing a law that criminalizes homicide, I can no longer kill you, but you can also no longer kill me. We both survive, and this is for the greater good. In a way, we elect public officials to make our lives better by taking away our freedoms. (I use the broadest possible definition of freedom to also include immoral or illegal acts.)
In the comments section on the Tufts Daily Web site, regarding the Feb. 2 article by Michael Del Moro about Carl Sciortino (D-Mass.) introducing gender identity and expression to the Massachusetts antidiscrimination code, an anonymous commenter said that this was a useless measure that only takes away our freedoms. (Due to technical difficulties, this comment is no longer available on the Daily Web site.) Is antidiscrimination law inherently useless? Do people have a right to discriminate? If I decide to wear women's clothing, do you have the freedom to harm me? According to Tufts policy, no. But in some jurisdictions in the country, maybe you do have that freedom. Luckily for me, I'm not in one of those jurisdictions.
With the recent election of Scott Brown (R-Mass.), some liberals have been taking the pessimistic stance that health care reform is now dead. If you put the partisan hysteria aside, you'd find that Scott Brown is a moderate Republican. Some of his beliefs are mainstream Republican; others are not. Without taking a stance on the health care debate, I would just like to point out that Democrats still have a majority in both houses of Congress. I think Mr. Brown's election just points out that people on either side of the political spectrum need to choose their battles wisely, so to speak. Getting elected officials to agree on policies that are supposed to keep more than 300 million Americans safe and happy is an apparently impossible but necessary task.
No matter what a law states, somebody is going to say their rights and freedoms are being infringed upon. You know what, though? They're right. The real question is if the loss of these freedoms is for the greater good.
With any of the hot-button issues right now, take the time to think about not only which policies help you, but which policies help our society. It is entirely possible that your original beliefs helped you at the expense of everybody else, or vice versa. Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence wrote that all human beings have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately, some people will never be happy.
There is something that Tea Party protesters and the thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights supporters at the National Equality March both have in common: They want to defend the freedoms of this nation. Any government, big or small, has to define what freedoms the people do or do not have. The Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution as a protection against the government infringing upon what were then called natural rights. Is that enough? And what constitutes a natural right? I would argue for secular morality, morality free from religious bias. I know that some people think there is no such thing as secular morality — that somehow all of our morals are founded on a so-called Judeo-Christian value system. The Founding Fathers could not have foreseen the issues that are under debate today. But if they could, what would they say? What is the nature of the government and law supposed to be?
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Richard Boussarath Malone is a junior majoring in English.
