Question Number 5: What makes you a liberal? What are the values that underlie your allegiance to your chosen form of political belief?

The phrase "Liberty and justice for all," sums up why I support progressive social and political values and policies. This sense of fairness was deeply ingrained in me long before I knew what politics was.

I believe in compassion and respect for all God's creations, and I've been influenced by the saying attributed to the Iroquois confederacy, "In our every deliberation let us consider the effect on the next seven generations." This influences my views regarding the effect of policy on people (including other nations), animals, and the earth and environment as a whole. I believe we should have a government "of the people, by the people and for the people."

Government should not be something outside us that we try to make "small." (A dictatorship with no involvement of the people is the smallest form of government!) I also have a basic understanding that we are all interdependent. As much as we might like to think of ourselves as "self-reliant," such people do not really exist today. No one makes everything they need for themselves. We are all dependent on others for our food, clothing and shelter.

I believe we should have a government and an economy that helps to bring out the best in human potential, qualities and values. I think there is enough on this earth for all to live a decent life without resorting to wars over resources and "markets." I also value constant thinking, analyzing, and re-evaluating.

The right-wing agenda usually favors those who already have the advantage over those who don't - the wealthiest 1 percent over the rest of us, white over other "races," men over women, straight over gay, etc.

I believe what America needs now to solve the problems we face and to move forward is a more progressive direction than we have ever seen before.

How I developed this view is encompassed by my life. I grew up in a rural Southwestern Pennsylvania area at the tip of Appalachia. My father was a brakeman on the railroad and cynical about politics. My mother worked as an office researcher and social worker before marrying. Together, they both ran a small business for a decade. I did not realize it at the time, but I benefited greatly from pro-grams developed to fight the "War on Poverty" - bookmobiles, films, plays, lunch programs, etc. Much of the funding for these types of programs has since been cut.

As a very young child, I can remember always wanting to be good and to do good things. I could not understand children who thought doing bad things was fun. I always looked forward to attending church and Sunday school and prayed often. It hurt me when children made fun of others and I always came to the defense of the ones who were wronged.

I remember holding my hand over my heart and being so proud to be part of a country that was all about "liberty and justice for all." It seemed then that the main thing I should do to help the world was to develop my skills in math and science and be good at a scientific career. Automatically this would be helping towards liberty and justice, since that was the direction of our whole nation. Yes, I knew about racism and other injustices, but felt that was just due to uneducated people. It never occurred to me that intelligent or well-off people would support such things.

As a pre-teen and teenager, I began to see hypocrisy and cracks in the facade. When our minister died, we received word that we would be getting a minister from India. I remember my shock when some of the parishioners expressed feeling that they did not want a minister who wasn't white. Didn't they really believe we were all God's creations? Always interested in meeting new people, I looked forward to the minister coming. Then, I became disappointed when he seemed more interested in gold jewelry, his Cadillac, and other material wealth than in justice. He gave sermons saying that God supported the United States in the Vietnam War and that God did not support other nations.

I had friends with older brothers who had gone to Vietnam, and the protests were becoming larger. When they were small, my mother thought the protesters were just crazy. As the demonstrations increased, she decided she should read everything she could find about Vietnam. She became the only anti-war activist of sorts in our tiny town, putting out a newsletter on the church mimeograph (despite the differing views of the minister.)

We both became active in the McGovern campaign for president in 1972.

In 1974, I entered the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering. I decided to study bio-engineering. I loved math and science. I figured I could make the greatest contribution to the world by being good in a scientific career, since most people are not good at math and science. However, the coming year would instead be a turning point in my political development, with increased understanding of the importance of the role of class and corporate economic interests in national and world conditions.

The first semester I had to take one elective along with five math and science courses. I chose a course with the word "democracy" in the title because I knew I supported democracy. This was a turning point my thinking.

The course was about the coup in Chile a year earlier that overthrew a democratically elected government that was making improvements for the majority of people. We learned the role the CIA and U.S. corporations played in orchestrating the coup, and in installing the Pinochet dictatorship and paramilitary death squads. At first I could not understand. Why would my CIA, my corporations do such a thing? Weren't they for democracy and liberty and jus-tice for all? I didn't want to believe it. But the more I read and analyzed, the more I began to see it was true. I also became convinced by multitudes of evidence that the more U.S. corporate investment in Latin America, the worse the living standards of the majority of people.

Until then, I had thought that corporations produce jobs and make everyone's life better.

In 1974 and 1975, I also became friends with Iranian students who had been victims of the Shah and his SAVAK secret police agents. They told me about the role my government played in overthrowing a democratically elected government there. I started to see this was a pattern not just in Lain America. It was also around this time that I began reading of CIA and U.S. military support for General Zia of Pakistan who was supporting the training in Pakistan of extreme fundamentalist Islamists from Afghanistan. There was a progressive government in Afghanistan at the time, with women playing a major role in society. Again, I wondered why my government would be supporting fundamentalist Muslims who didn't believe women should even be educated.

The more I have read and learned, the more I've become convinced that the foreign policy that guides our country has virtually nothing to do with the "national interest." Instead, the economic interests of the top 1 percent are what rule. Then they convince us to spend our tax dollars and the lives of our young people to fight against our own interests. So, my basic values and increased understanding and analysis have led me to support progressive politics.