Trust the Ferret, the Ferret is Wise

I think this is the last of the foundation principles of liberalism. There might be more, but I think most things can fit under the four I've listed, including this one.

And this last one is the Future. Liberals look from the present toward the future, conservatives look from the present back to the past. Not exclusively for either side, but their dominant perspective is skewed that way.

There's a lot of ideas that come from this perspective, but I'll explore those later, and how the principles interact to try and figure out what the most important issues and ideas are to liberalism, at least my liberalism.

And if there's anything anybody thinks I missed, feel free to comment.

Okay, I totally missed one of the most important ones, which is liberals tend to be more about working together, while conservatives are more "You're on your own!" Though I think that might also come out of a combination of the other things, but with enough tortured logic you can justify anything as the "foundation". Still, that makes 5.

Because most of that whole liberal principles thing I'm doing is totally just ripping off FDR.

And his 11th State of the Union, at the height of WWII. And man, compare what he's talking about to Bush's "Go back to shopping!" rallying cry in the "War on Terror".

More anon.

I think this is really one of the fundamental starting points of liberalism (and most post-Enlightenment political thinking in the West). And again, it ties in together with a lot of the other things. It's got a nice short name, though.

Rule of Law.

The full phrase is "Rule of Law, not Men," but it's referred almost everywhere as Rule of Law. And what it means is simple, it means the laws apply to everyone. Even the people who write them. Even the people who enforce them. Everyone. There's no king who is the Law, or anything like that, the law applies to everyone. And yes, it's just messy human law, made through messy politics by politicians and regular people, but because of that, it can be changed when it needs to. When things change, or when enough people decide the law isn't needed any more, or when people decide the old law was a bad law.

And when this meets the other fundamental I already covered, equality, you get the idea that everyone is equal before the law, and entitled to the same protections, no matter who they are. Everyone's entitled to a fair trial, a competent lawyer, and so on. This is one of the traits that Republicans have tended to twist into "SOFT ON CRIME ARGLEBARGLE" lately, but honesty's not really one of the strong traits of the modern GOP.

This is one of the things about the Bush administration that's the most fundamentally dangerous to the way our country works. They don't think the rules should apply to them. They think they should be able to do whatever they want, because the're "good", and "fighting evil". So there's no need to explain their actions, or to mess around with things like hearings for detainees, innocent or guilty, etc. And that they're fundamentally wrong on.

No man is bigger than the law. And if the people in charge of creating and/or enforcing the law, what reason do any of the rest of us have to follow it? If the law's to mean anything, it has to apply to everyone. Even the President, even Congress. Everyone.

As before, comments and suggestions are encouraged, I'm gonna hit at least Security on the fundamental ideas, and probably Democracy, and maybe some others, or alter some of the ones I have with feedback, and then expand from how the fundamental ideas tie together and interact and use that to show where (at least my version of) liberalism ends up with actual policies, foreign and domestic.