"Bleeding Heart Liberal"

Ok, let's just go ahead and throw those words out there.  You start talking about the government having some moral responsibility to do something about the poorest members of our society (see yesterday's post,) and somebody is going to start using the "L" word.  I've heard it from some members of my largely conservative family my whole life.  If you didn't think my post qualified, you may certainly have thought about using the liberal label on Melinda Henneberger whose Newsweek article I referenced.  Folks who lean a little more to the Right of the political spectrum love to use the "bleeding heart liberal" (or tree huggers or socialists) label for the folks on the Left side of the issues.  And, of course, the folks on the Left certainly return the favor with labels of their own for those "Right Wing" nuts.  "Clearly, those nasty Right Wing folks just don't care; they have no compassion for their fellow man.  They are probably bigots as well." 

But what exactly do those labels accomplish?  My experience has been that once you decide you have enough information to give a person one of those labels (and often that isn't much information at all; perhaps only a D or an R after their name) then you give yourself permission to quit listening.  Clearly, you can dismiss anything else they have to say because that person is a Bleeding Heart Liberal/Right Wing fanatic.  The problem is that when we quit listening to people with whom we don't see eye to eye on every issue, we quit learning anything new.  Most people are much more complicated and interesting than those one-dimensional labels allow them to be.  When we make no attempt to appreciate the other side's viewpoint, and we dismiss people with whom we disagree by giving them derogatory labels, we have lost all hope of coming up with solutions to our common problems.  I think we can do better than that. As a matter of fact, I challenge us all to do better than that.

Comments

[Michelle]

Kelly- I find myself listening to "right wing" nuts' talk radio shows just to hear their views....and, as you know, I definitely stand on the left! It's just that I already agree with (mostly) and understand the "bleeding heart liberals" point of view, but don't always understand where the right wingers are coming from which is why I listen to their talk shows (however, I must admit I sometimes turn off the radio because my skin starts to crawl off my body....was that judgemental???)