You Can't Spell Liberty or Liberal Without Liber...Does This Make Them Cousins

I was called a funny name the other day.  One of my friends called me a liberal, extremist, offensive dictator.  This made me laugh initially because our president has only been called a liberal, muslim socialist.  So I guess this makes me a little bit better than him.  Just kidding, but on the real how can one be a liberal and a dictator?  How can I be a dictator in general when I have no political post?  This is confusing to me in the instance that the root of liberal, liber, means "free one"...look it up.  Well, I guess in the case of dictators being the only one in a dictatorship that is free, that makes sense.  But if liber means "free one", I can't be liberal if I'm a dictator because liberal means favorable to, or in accord with, concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, especially as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties.  Last time I checked, that is not the definition of a dictator.

So I understand that politics makes people crazy.  But why is it so partisan nowadays.  Perhaps I just wasn't tuned in to the way politics worked back in the day.  But I think even the old people would agree that this has gotten way out of hand.  People called liberals are against liberty...how does this work.  Both have the same root word.  If liberty means freedom, and liberals are favorable toward maximum individual freedom, how can anyone with half a brain say otherwise?  Perhaps the people that are screaming this are uniformed...or perhaps they are just stupid.  I think that a lot of people are confusing liberty and choice.  There are certain things that we don't really have the freedom to do.  Like I don't have the freedom to yell fire in a crowded movie theater or kill someone.  Well I guess I do, however if I do choose to exercise my freedoms in this way,  then I have to face the consequences.  However, in the case of health care, hospitals don't have the liberty to refuse service to people without health insurance that have no ability to pay for the treatment they receive.  So this means that people who pay for their healthcare pick up the additional costs associated with it.  I am in agreement for people without health insurance having the liberty not to purchase health insurance if I can have the liberty of not covering their costs when they can't afford the treatment.  Does anyone without health insurance really have an extra $1700 laying around to fix a broken arm???

I realize that a lot of things changing scare people.  I'm sure people were scared when they started sailing the oceans because they thought the world was flat and they would fall off the edge of the earth. I'm sure that people were scared about the world being round because they believed so long it was flat. I'm sure that people still think that minorities are out to steal their stuff and that the real problem with our economy is that illegal immigrants are stealing jobs.  BTW---Who are the people hiring the illegal immigrants to work at these companies??? I'm pretty sure that their not coming into companies and holding CEO's and HR managers by machete point until they relent and hire them for a job that pays way too little.

As I've been saying in my recent Facebook posts, we need to educate ourselves and have an informed discussion about the real issues that effect us.  I believe this used to be called a debate when I was younger.  Right now we have a bunch of adults yelling at the top of their lungs about the one thing that the other has done wrong, knowing full well that they've done things wrong too.  So the moral of the story, don't do drugs...but if you do decide to continue your ignorance, don't come at me sideways with your liberal extremist, dictator garbage speak.  And if you don't like what I say in response...don't mind me, I'm just thinking out loud.