I have just returned from two months in Europe, where I followed the election news assiduously. I've been appalled at the passivity of the electorate, at the lack of the elementary principles of democratic thought and action, at the degeneration of our language, at the lulling, the brainwashing, the disinformation.

I found most Europeans equally appalled. I began to dream about this campaign obsessively. I would dream-up speeches every night and each morning I would jot down notes about them -- on subjects ranging from racism to the grand illusion of the peace-and-prosperity line put forth by the meretricious Bush campaign, to Boston Harbor, to the obsolete folly of war, to that newly naughty "L-word"-- liberal.

I want to re-define the word liberal, not run from it, nor cower defensively at its insulting abuse, but proudly to clarify it, even at the expense of being a bit didactic. The word derives from the Latin liber, meaning free (it also means a book, and also one's child, both of which are also good things to have around.)

From the word liberal, we derive the word "liberty," which is what the civilized world has been struggling for throughout its history -- whether through reform or revolution, including our own American Revolution. George Washington was revolutionary, as were Jefferson and Franklin. They and the other founders strove for liberty above all. All these forefathers were therefore liberals.

A liberal is a man or woman or child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright and infinite future. What can possibly be wrong with that? Only this: that the word has been debased, defamed and totally misused by powerful interests that have sought even greater authoritarian power.

Liberal is a word soiled by the greedy, reactionary, backward-looking impulse toward tyranny.

Here are just two out of, alas, dozens in our own America and in our own century: First, the hateful Red scare invented and perpetrated by William Randolph Hearst in the first decades of the century and magnified through his countless newspapers and magazines into a panic in which everyone with a beard was probably a Bolshevik with a bomb in his pocket -- aimed at you, and in which merely reading a Russian novel rendered you suspect and possibly treasonous.

The second example, even more hateful and infinitely more dangerous, was the rise of McCarthyism in the 50's -- a rise so steady and so strong that only a prolonged television hearing could expose the despicable junior senator from Wisconsin for the power-greedy psychopath he was. This is arguably the closest we have come to tyranny.

Tyranny? In our free, beautiful, democratic republic? Yes. It is possible and even probable, which is why we must constantly guard against it. Tyranny assumes many forms. To tax the factory worker and the outright poor so that the rich can get richer is tyranny.

To call for war at the drop of a pipeline (while secretly dealing for hostages); to teach jingoistic slogans about armaments and Star Wars; to prescribe the weapons industry for the health of our doped-up credit card economy; to spend a dizzying percentage of the budget on arms at the expense of schools, hospitals, cultural pursuits, caring for the infirm and homeless -- these are all forms of tyranny.

Who fought to free the slaves? Liberals. Who succeeded in abolishing the poll tax? Liberals. Who fought for civil rights, women's rights, free public education? Liberals. Who stood guard and still stands guard against sweatshops, child labor, racism, bigotry? Lovers of freedom and enemies of tyranny: Liberals.

I dreamed all this and wrote it down. And I dreamed I heard [the Democratic candidate] say: "I'm proud to be called a liberal. I am neither a Red nor an anarchist, nor do I have a bomb in my pocket.

"I love my country -- so much, in fact, that I am putting all my energies into seeing it to a better day, a more tranquil night, a shining and limitless future. And I abide by the words of that splendid liberal Thomas Jefferson that are inscribed on his monument in Washington: 'I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.'" I, too, am a liberal.

October 1988