The below is an excerpt from a "What I've Learned" essay George Clooney did a few years ago for Esquire. (See the link below for the full thing.)
It's one of my fave pieces of recent political writing....
For some reason, we've gotten to this place where liberal is a bad word again, which is truly insane.
Look at American history. Start with the Salem witch hunt. The conservative view was, "Well, they're all witches and they should be burned at the stake." But the liberal view was, "Maybe there aren't any such things as witches." Liberals thought that women should be allowed to vote. We thought it'd be okay for blacks to sit at any lunch counter they wanted and wherever they liked on a public bus. We thought that'd be all right. We've always been on the right side of history eventually. So I don't understand how you lose the moral argument.
We don't have to put the word compassionate in front of liberal the way conservatives do to prove that we give a shit about people.
I think we should change what we call ourselves. I think we should be ruthless liberals. We need to show that we're tough, that we really give a shit about people.
I remember when I was a kid, going out to eat with my family and other families. Going out to dinner was a very big thing in Kentucky back then. We weren't wealthy at all, and shrimp cocktail was something you really looked forward to. And just as the waiter put the shrimp cocktail in front of you, the man from the other family would say something like, "What's the problem with those people?" And my mom would immediately be telling us, "Eat fast! Eat fast!" Because we all knew "those people" meant "black people," and my father was going to make a scene, and we'd all have to leave the restaurant.
At the time, I was thinking, Can't you just shut up and let it go so we can all eat our shrimp cocktails? But he never did let it go. And I'm really proud of that. But now, years later, I had to watch him say, "I'm fiscally somewhat liberal and morally somewhat liberal, but no, I'm not a liberal."
Are you kidding? We should be embracing the word!
And let's not forget gay marriage. Now, what's the big argument about? Who really thinks the sanctity of marriage works? What is there, a 50 percent divorce rate? So the argument about gay marriage becomes "What's next? Can you marry a goat?" And you come back with "Okay, let's make marrying a goat legal. Let's make it legal! If you're some backward jackass who wants to marry a goat, go right ahead!" It's illegal to jump off a building. Now, if you made it legal, there wouldn't be a rush of people wanting to jump off a building. But you get these people saying, "This is destroying our morals." What? Because two people love each other and want to express it?
The gay-marriage argument is ridiculous. Eventually it's going to happen, and everyone who stood against it is going to look like George Wallace on the steps of the schoolhouse trying to keep black kids from entering white schools, and we're going to have to explain why these people acted like dumbasses and how they were actually not such bad people after all.
If I were president? Well, I'd do a few things..
You realize that in order to be elected, I'd have to run on the "Yep, I did it" ticket. "Is it true that you did drugs?" Yep, I did it. "Did you sleep with...?" Yep, I did it.
And if I was somehow elected after all that, then I'd be shot because the first thing I'd try to do is take oil off the table. But let's say I tried to do it. Remember when Kennedy got the space program going in 1961, saying in ten years we'd put a guy on the moon? At that point, rockets were falling off launchpads and monkeys were getting killed and there were people who said, This guy is out of his mind. But we did land on the moon in 1969. And new technologies came out of that experience.
So if I'm president, I say, "We're at war? Really?" Because it doesn't seem like it. Usually when you're at war, people sacrifice. Let's face it, Rosie the Riveter ain't exactly out there. The only sacrifice I see is coming from the 150,000 kids who enlisted and had the war dropped in their laps.
It's one of my fave pieces of recent political writing....
For some reason, we've gotten to this place where liberal is a bad word again, which is truly insane.
Look at American history. Start with the Salem witch hunt. The conservative view was, "Well, they're all witches and they should be burned at the stake." But the liberal view was, "Maybe there aren't any such things as witches." Liberals thought that women should be allowed to vote. We thought it'd be okay for blacks to sit at any lunch counter they wanted and wherever they liked on a public bus. We thought that'd be all right. We've always been on the right side of history eventually. So I don't understand how you lose the moral argument.
We don't have to put the word compassionate in front of liberal the way conservatives do to prove that we give a shit about people.
I think we should change what we call ourselves. I think we should be ruthless liberals. We need to show that we're tough, that we really give a shit about people.
I remember when I was a kid, going out to eat with my family and other families. Going out to dinner was a very big thing in Kentucky back then. We weren't wealthy at all, and shrimp cocktail was something you really looked forward to. And just as the waiter put the shrimp cocktail in front of you, the man from the other family would say something like, "What's the problem with those people?" And my mom would immediately be telling us, "Eat fast! Eat fast!" Because we all knew "those people" meant "black people," and my father was going to make a scene, and we'd all have to leave the restaurant.
At the time, I was thinking, Can't you just shut up and let it go so we can all eat our shrimp cocktails? But he never did let it go. And I'm really proud of that. But now, years later, I had to watch him say, "I'm fiscally somewhat liberal and morally somewhat liberal, but no, I'm not a liberal."
Are you kidding? We should be embracing the word!
And let's not forget gay marriage. Now, what's the big argument about? Who really thinks the sanctity of marriage works? What is there, a 50 percent divorce rate? So the argument about gay marriage becomes "What's next? Can you marry a goat?" And you come back with "Okay, let's make marrying a goat legal. Let's make it legal! If you're some backward jackass who wants to marry a goat, go right ahead!" It's illegal to jump off a building. Now, if you made it legal, there wouldn't be a rush of people wanting to jump off a building. But you get these people saying, "This is destroying our morals." What? Because two people love each other and want to express it?
The gay-marriage argument is ridiculous. Eventually it's going to happen, and everyone who stood against it is going to look like George Wallace on the steps of the schoolhouse trying to keep black kids from entering white schools, and we're going to have to explain why these people acted like dumbasses and how they were actually not such bad people after all.
If I were president? Well, I'd do a few things..
You realize that in order to be elected, I'd have to run on the "Yep, I did it" ticket. "Is it true that you did drugs?" Yep, I did it. "Did you sleep with...?" Yep, I did it.
And if I was somehow elected after all that, then I'd be shot because the first thing I'd try to do is take oil off the table. But let's say I tried to do it. Remember when Kennedy got the space program going in 1961, saying in ten years we'd put a guy on the moon? At that point, rockets were falling off launchpads and monkeys were getting killed and there were people who said, This guy is out of his mind. But we did land on the moon in 1969. And new technologies came out of that experience.
So if I'm president, I say, "We're at war? Really?" Because it doesn't seem like it. Usually when you're at war, people sacrifice. Let's face it, Rosie the Riveter ain't exactly out there. The only sacrifice I see is coming from the 150,000 kids who enlisted and had the war dropped in their laps.
