Not That Kind of Liberal...

[ihopehefails]

"What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal"? If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then ... we are not that kind of "Liberal".

But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal", then I'm proud to say that I'm a Liberal."

I found this quote on someone's blog called The Lincolnian Liberal and it states that Kennedy was trying to establish that he was a different kind of liberal. If this is true it establishes what I suspect what has happenned to liberalism that it has morphed into something that it is not and is the reason why we have libertarians and classical liberalism.