Recent Email Correspondence with a Liberal Democrat

Thank you for being honest about being "a true liberal", and the difficulty you refer to, related to compromise and agreement. This is a matter of authenticity, and which is slightly complex.

Yes, compromise and agreement for progress, is very important, and sometimes we have to deny our principles and true nature - up to a point - in order to achieve this. However, compromise doesn't have to involve blatant denial, personal and mutual deciet, and inauthenticity - as an extreme, totalistic approach and end result - and all too often bad and harmful compromise and agreement, is done by liberals and others, out of habit, or an excuse or false belief in the over-deterministic notion of the inevitable, and because people don't have the knowledge, wisdom, insight, courage, imagination, desire, political, interpersonal, and social skills, in order to achieve compromise, agreement, and progress in other ways.

You refer to extremism, but some people, do see liberals as extremists, and the problem is one of extreme and/or very one-sided libertarianism, and appeasing the outright evil, violence, and human rights abuses of extremism, and this is what a lot of people don't like about liberals, and which needs to be changed and corrected, through compromise, and agreement for progress.

It's one thing to compromise with extremists, in order to come to some agreement and make progress. It's another thing to merge with those people, to the point where it leads to loss of individual and social reality and identity, and to the point where other forms of compromise, agreement, differentness, and progress, are left out of this activity and process.

Liberals have very sadly, blindly, and coldly accepted and adopted various types of extreme so-called libertarianism, such as agreeing with the violent and abusive views of people like the Marquis De Sade, without having any concern for the most beautiful, loving, passionate, and socially imaginative and courageous nature of so-called masochism.

You talk about moderate agreement and compromise, but will you please tell me, why the local liberal democrats, are the only main local political party, who have blocked my articles, and won't reply or respond to them? Will you have the decency, authenticity, and courage, to email them, and tell them to remove the block, and will you comment on the vital and important issues I raise here?

Peter

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Dear Peter,

Thank you for taking the trouble to pass your thoughts to me, thoughts which largely I go along with. You write interestingly on the word "liberal" but I doubt if you are correct in attributing it to the fascists or, for that matter the socialists.

The trouble is that "liberal" is a word with many meanings and uses, some of them abuses. I will not bore you with the vast list in the Oxford Dictionary, but you will see what I mean. For me the first three definitions are the ones that matter: "1. given freely, ample, abundant 2. generous, not sparing 3. open minded, not prejudiced." None of these fit the facists and extremists in politics. To be a true liberal in politics is difficult because of the inevitable need to compromise in order to come to agreement and make progress.

With best wishes,
Dick Perry