Joan: It sounds like you feel that there are things that bind us. Do you think there’s an important value to you, whatever you do politically or in your life?
Answer: I think just the idea that people should get a fair shake, and that’s been sort of distorted to sound like what we’re talking about is not having to take responsibility for ourselves. I think what we’re saying is that nobody gets there on their own, and we want people to have the support that they need to get where they need to be. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t take responsibility to do it.
If you have a system in place that doesn’t give them the resources that others have, those are the things that we’re concerned about.
Joan: So that would be your number one personal value, and it’s not a progressive value? Do you have any label? How do you like the term ‘liberal’?
Answer: I like the term ‘liberal’. I think liberals have down some pretty amazing things in the last century. I have no problem with the term liberal. But again, it’s a term that has a range of meanings, so if you tell me you’re a liberal, I don’t necessarily know what you mean by that either. And maybe that’s a function of labels – that they don’t really capture an entire viewpoint as well as we think they do. That they pretend to do.
Joan: Does conservative conjure up a vision? Of values?
Answer: I think conservative is another one – there are social conservatives and economic conservatives. It seems to me they come from completely different worlds. George Bush and Pat Robertson are people with completely different ideas about the world, I think, and they both get labeled conservative.
Edwin: If you had to ask a question about the term progressive values, what would you ask to find out what it means?
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