Originally Posted by kane

I was watching Fox News last night and they had on people that support each of the final three candidates for president. So the McCain guy says that McCain would not try to convince the people that Obama is something he is not, but that he would call him a liberal.

When they asked the Obama supporter if he would run as a liberal he wouldn't answer. When asked if he was a liberal he wouldn't answer. It suddenly seems like being a liberal is a horrible thing.

I consider myself an independent. I am more conservative on economic ideas (old school conservative where you spend wisely and balance the budget, not modern conservative where you spend everything then go into debt and spend some more), but I am pretty liberal socially. I think gay people should be allowed to get married, pot should be legal (even though I wouldn't smoke it more than maybe once a year) and the government should have no control over what people watch, listen to or read.

I understand that some people seem to think being liberal means you will raise taxes and give it all away to people on welfare, but that is not the case, some of the largest welfare reform came while we had a democrat in the white house.

So I wonder when did the word liberal become a dirty word? I would think if a person said, "I am a liberal and this is what I stand for." And laid out their agenda, people would see it is not, traditionally, that different from old school conservatism in many aspects.