This aggression will not stand; the Dude MINDS.

Something about Christianity lately has me fascinated, and no, it's not the light of Jesus. The signs in front of churches have always been amusing to me. It's not that they're funny or even the slightest bit clever; what's hilarious is the assumption that whoever posted them thinks they're funny and clever. Down the street from my house, the tacky church sign reads "Salvation is a gift, will you accept?" but my absolute favorite one - in all its crackpot glory - reads, "Give God what's right, not what's left." My first reaction was to rant but instead, and perhaps for the first time EVER, the church sign made me think. Not about subscribing to their doctrine of whatever, but why it was infuriating in the first place. There's little need to mention the implication of the statement (right = Christian = good and left = non-Christian = bad), but where I get hung up is all this focus of late on labeling, taking sides, and enforcing discord among groups of people in shockingly new ways.

What I want to know is: why is political "right" necessarily associated with Christians (and it appears to be fundamentalist types) and "left" necessarily associated with whatever is not the aforementioned. Furthermore, why is this such a bad thing?

After the week I've had talking to people about my colleague's public disgrace in the media for daring to ask students to question Sarah Palin (long story...), it has become abundantly clear to me that not only is being "liberal" considered by many to be not only a bad thing, but that it's worth trying to ruin a person's life over. While my initial reaction is fury, it is equally mixed with confusion. I found an array of commentary across the blogosphere accusing colleges in general and liberal arts professors of being liberal and that we enforce our liberal bias to our students, and this is apparently offensive.

I completely understand conservatism, by the way, and here's how I understand it:
(1) generally these folks subscribe to a philosophy that provides tax breaks to the wealthy in the hopes that the prosperity will trickle down to those in lower brackets;
(2) that the separation of church and state is only applicable when it comes to anyone who isn't Christian;
(3) offshore drilling and raping of America is a viable alternative to getting oil from the middle east (despite the fact that a great deal of those elite wealthy, including the Bush family, get the bulk of their wealth from - uh, middle east oil);
(4) people who have money should keep their money and anyone who is poor should simply work harder;
(5) gun control means using both hands;
(6) Manifest Destiny is God's plan, not an ill-conceived notion of genocide for indigenous people;
and finally,
(7) that most of America is white, middle- or upper-class, churchgoing "normal" folk.

Despite my sarcasm, I actually understand some of these tenets, and perhaps if I lived in middle America, or a small town, or even in a wealthy suburb of a major city, and followed the cues from my parents to go to church each Sunday, get married, have babies, get a minivan, and enjoy things like soccer and football, I might believe these things to be worthy of putting my vote into just such a camp.

But here's the big secret as to why so many college professors - and particularly those at Metro State - are "liberals" and hope to encourage (not "indoctrinate") others to follow:

Are you ready? This is a big revelation...

Because our worlds don't look like the one I just described for you. Mine in fact did look like that for most of my life, but it doesn't now. A large percentage of my students seem "typical," but most are not. I encounter people from all walks of life in these classrooms - men and women of all shades of skin tone and from different countries, traditions, belief systems, and educational backgrounds. I know students who are homeless (or were), who are in halfway houses, ex-cons, on the run from abusive spouses, or trying to get their children out of the foster system. Some of my students have in fact been foster kids. Some are the offspring of illegal immigrants. They have been in (or still are) in gangs. They don't comprehend their worlds in any meaningful way. Many struggle to make their lives better and never will. They grapple with learning disabilities, money problems, families, children, full-time jobs, and how to get it all done and stay in school. They worry about how to pay for school and that mountain of student loan debt - their futures already mortgaged. Some can't afford to buy books or come to class hungry because they had to pay to park instead of eating. Some are confused, depressed, and suicidal. I lost a student in one of the very first classes I taught to suicide and I've never been the same.

The point is, it rocked my world to realize that not only was I blessed to be born into middle-class white existence in terms of privilege and education (let's face it, I'm not in the category of people who will ever socially suffer), but that a large percentage of the world I would encounter from now on does not know what this is like. They don't have the options I had and won't ever have them. I couldn't ignore this fact and just go on every day going into classrooms believing what I once did about my world and my country. Teachers see the world in ways that most people don't, and that creates a definition of liberal that looks something like this:

(1) Trickle-down economics is a great idea, but most people who exist waiting for the trickle only feel the sting of injustice for too long, and that's a fact;
(2) Perhaps prayer in school isn't such a bad thing if it applies to everyone equally, and the claims "the right" have to indoctrination should be turned a bit inwardly first - few people who consider themselves liberal care to indoctrinate anyone and the last time I checked, the right-wing folk are touting their Christianity specifically;
(3) Perhaps we could create jobs in America by exploring viable alternatives to and incentives for eco-friendly avenues to transportation, power, and infrastructure;
(4) Stem-cell research and abortion are not pleasant, but perhaps necessary, and should be left to individuals to decide for themselves to either participate in or not;
and finally for this list,
(5) I (and perhaps we) believe the above not because we're not good people, or because we're un-American, or because we don't believe in God or even Christianity itself. I am a so-called liberal because I can't see the world through middle-class white eyes. I have to look out into my classroom every single day with empathy because few of the people I encounter there meet with my expectation of what I thought the world looked like outside my happy little burg. Being liberal to me means that I simply understand that too large a percentage of Americans (who, frankly, so few refuse to acknowledge because they don't fit the mold) don't benefit from the older, conservative way of doing things.

I'm sick of the labels, and the petty squabbling about things that don't matter. Who cares if one is "conservative" or "liberal"? I still believe we all fall closer to the center of this polarization than anyone cares to acknowledge, and the truth is, no matter which side "wins," we all lose unless people are willing to engage this debate with honesty and open-mindedness. I'm waiting for that conversation.