Hello and welcome back to the Tiny Pod.
This week I want to talk about liberal.
The word liberal comes from the Latin word liba, meaning free.
It entered into politics in the 17th century in England with
free thinkers like John Locke, known as the father of
liberalism, advocating principles such as individual
liberty, self ownership of property, and a government based
on consent. His philosophy that the
government's purpose was to protect individual rights of
life, liberty, happiness, and estate ownership was fundamental
to the Revolution of 1688 that fought to limit inherited power
of the monarchy and redistribute power into a government based on
public consent. His philosophy became
fundamental to modern democracy and influence future revolutions
and constitutions, most notably in France and America in the
18th century. Thomas Jefferson credited Locke
as foundational to the American Declaration of Independence and
considered him one of the three greatest men that have ever
lived. Jefferson wrote Locke's
Principles of Life, Liberty, and Property into the Declaration,
proclaiming life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as
unalienable rights endowed to all, and that when any form of
government becomes destructive, it is the right of the people to
alter or abolish it. It is therefore particularly
ironic when American politicians use liberal to insult and
divide. The American Constitution and
Bill of Rights was founded on securing the blessings of
liberty and freedom for all. American conservatism benefits
from liberal freedoms while mocking the very word that
created them. It is historical amnesia mixed
with authoritarian nostalgia. Liberal entered into French
politics at a similar time in the 18th century during the
French Revolution. The word left originated in the
French National Assembly. People who sat on the left, the
innovators and the independents supported ending absolute power
in monarchy, equal rights for all people, while people who sat
on the right supported inherited power, monarchy, aristocracy and
church state power. Left meant power should not
belong to the elite and French democracy was founded on liberal
principles, Liberty, equality, fraternity.
Liberalism holds authority, accountable, advocates for
individual dignity, and is the reason you can openly oppose
government policy, worship freely, speak freely, leave
abusive structures, and not be owned by the strongest man in
the room. Calling it weak is only possible
because it works so well that people stopped noticing the cage
it removed. It is about protecting
individual rights, social reform, fraternity and progress.
Yet progressive is also feared as if to move forward is a
threat. Change and evolution are all
that is constant, and yet being forward thinking is framed as
dangerous even though to stand still in a frozen snapshot of
history is impossible. Jesus would have been called
left liberal, radical, progressive, dangerous, woke
Antifa because he fed people, healed and challenged religious
elites. He walked straight into the
temple, saw the commercial exploitation wrapped in
religion, and overturned the tables.
Jesus was liberal with conviction and clarity.
He didn't ask permission from power.
He didn't negotiate with corruption.
He was radically liberal with conviction, anti hypocrisy, and
hoarded power and devoted to freeing people internally and
externally. Liberal got poisoned because it
threatens power. Liberal means free.
Free conscience, free movement, free bodies.
And freedom is intolerable to any system that survives by
control, hierarchy, obedience, or fear.
So the word had to be sabotaged to protect power because a truly
free, educated, compassionate population is much harder to
control. Those in power know that
equality threatens hoarded wealth, workers rights threaten
profit, and dignity threatens domination.
It isn't about policy, it's about discouraging empathy.
If you poison a word, you poison the values behind it.
Justice becomes wokeness, compassion becomes weakness, and
fairness is reframed as danger. When liberal stops meaning
liberty and starts meaning chaotic, immoral people will
police themselves and submit to authority.
It is language doing what language always does for power,
laundering force into righteousness.
What poisons these words is fear.
Fear of accountability, fear of losing unearned dominance, fear
of a world where you actually have to justify yourself
ethically. Capitalism wants consumers, not
freethinkers. Authoritarianism wants subjects,
not sovereigns. All forms of absolutism kill,
but democracy in its true state exists for all people, not the
few in power. Every individual matters.
The human comes first. Politicians who lack moral
values frame liberal as naive, when in truth it's the hardest
stance to hold because responsibility comes with
freedom. It requires moral courage.
It requires faith in humans without needing to dominate
them. It requires letting people
choose. And it requires strength without
cruelty. And that is unimaginable and
terrifying for those hungry for power and control, untethered
from conscience. The loudest people mocking
liberals exercise liberal freedoms all day long to do it.
Speech, platforms, dissent, choice.
They despise the foundations they are standing on.
Woke is not moral performance. It is moral attentiveness.
Woke means to stay awake when power needs us asleep.
It is vigilance, discernment, spiritual and nervous system
awareness of harm, oppression and injustice.
It is knowing that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere. Woke got hijacked by
corporations realising that compassion and social justice
threaten obedience and profit. Liberty threatens people who
benefit from chains, so they pretend the chains are
tradition, order or God. Antifa has become an insult in
America. Anti fascist action that
originated in Nazi Germany in the 1930s against Hitler.
Donald Trump now labels them a domestic terrorist organisation,
writing they use illegal means to organise and execute a
campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide, which
reads as an accurate description of his enforcers ICE.
It lands as a personal confession from Trump himself.
When Vance says ICE will be going door to door much like the
Gestapo, it is clear to see why Trump has criminalised anyone
identifying as anti fascist and Lib Tard.
A made-up word that combines the Latin words liba free and TARDIS
slow. Free and slow is a compliment
the Bible writes. Everyone should be quick to
listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.
Slow is self-control, reflective, regulated, non
reactive, and time to think critically.
Free means unowned, unbought, unafraid, enslaved, and quick is
perfect for systems that need obedience, speed, and no
thought. People don't hate the left,
liberalism, or being awake. They hate what those words
imply, that no one is coming to think for them.
Anyone who uses libtard as an insult is terrified of freedom
because freedom requires responsibility.
True liberalism is accountability.
If you're free, you can't blame the government, God, immigrants,
women, or them. A lot of people don't actually
want freedom, they want someone to blame.
So they resent liberals because liberals reveal their own
limitations. Free people always look
dangerous to those who need control, so they try to mock it,
poison the words, tear down the symbols, because they can't
actually defeat the truth underneath.
Truth is undeniable. Truth stands and illuminates,
just like the Statue of Liberty, a sovereign feminine holding a
torch of illumination, welcoming the tired, the poor, the masses.
The Statue of Liberty isn't masculine conquest, it's
feminine sanctuary, a place to breathe.
Authoritarians must hate her because she stands there
silently exposing their lies. Freedom doesn't need permission
or cruelty to exist, and that threatens systems built on fear,
speed, obedience, and extraction.
When people scorn at liberal or left, what they're really
mocking is conscience with courage, awakening with action,
and love that refuses to stay quiet when dignity is being
dominated. And that is exactly what the
first days of 2026 have been all about.
People rising, asserting their rights, refusing oppression, and
demanding that power actually serves them.
It is humans everywhere saying enough, we matter.
I am forever thankful for my freedom, all my freedoms.
Freedom of speech of expression, freedom to think, Freedom from
tyranny, freedom from oppression.
I'm thankful also for my freedom to support equality for all
people and stand against injustice and oppression
everywhere. May all free people use their
privilege of freedom to free all oppressed people.
And may those who try and reframe left and liberal as
insults educate themselves, study history, and maybe even
buy a dictionary. I will end with a quote John F
Kennedy said. If by a liberal, they mean
someone who looks ahead and not behind.
Someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions.
Someone who cares about the welfare of the people, their
health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil
rights and their civil liberties.
Someone who believes we can breakthrough the stalemate and
suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad.
If that is what they mean by a liberal, then I'm proud to say
I'm a liberal. Compassion is not weakness,
authority is not lawful when it crushes human dignity, and
humanity is only radical for those who harm.
I'll see you next week.