When someone asks my politics, I say I am an Anarcho-Syndicalist. What? I then send them to 8 minutes and 30 seconds into Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when Graham Chapman on his Hobby Horse as King Arthur asks the peasants:

“Who lives in yonder castle?”

And they answer.

I must insert some movie trivia here. I am a cinephile. The only member of the Python troop who was not English was Terry Gilliam. He was the cartoonist of the segments on the BBC TV show (e.g., foot coming down on top of someone). He also was a Director. He directed their films and “Time Bandits”, “Baron Munchhausen” and most impressively, “Brazil”. You must see that last film.

He has only appeared on film three times. One of those appearances was as Arthur’s squire Paddy in that scene, clopping together two halves of a coconut shell to make the horse hoof clopping sounds.

More seriously, what is a liberal to me? I do business in New York City. When I walk down Eighth Avenue, I will see homeless people sleeping in a doorway on the sidewalk. I typically try to stuff a $5 bill into their jackets. I remember one time when one of them woke up!!! Why do I do it?

When a present day “conservative” sees them (the people who call themselves Conservatives today are mostly NOT in my opinion! Until very recently a conservative in America was one who wanted to keep what was good, and make things better through adaptive change. The current version are radicals, who want to throw out what we have and go back to a time before we made things better, mainly a time that benefited them more than anyone else!) they think:

“Doesn’t that person have any pride? Why don’t they get a job and a place to live and make themselves better?”

What do I think?

“There but for the grace of G-d go I!”

That’s what a Liberal is to me.

The best presentation of this feeling I have ever heard was in a folk song, “There But For Fortune”, by Joan Baez and Phil Ochs. Listen to the link here after the lyrics.

There But For Fortune

Joan Baez, Phil Ochs

Show me a prison, show me a jail,
Show me a prisoner whose face has gone pale
And I’ll show you a young man with so many reasons why
And there but for fortune, may go you or I

Show me the alley, show me the train,
Show me a hobo who sleeps out in the rain,
And I’ll show you a young man with so many reasons why
There but for fortune, may go you or go I you and I.

Show me the whiskey stains on the floor,
Show me the drunken man as he stumbles out the door,
And I’ll show you a young man with so many reasons why
There but for fortune, may go you or go I you and I.

Show me the country where bombs had to fall,
Show me the ruins of buildings once so tall,
And I’ll show you a young land with so many reasons why
There but for fortune, go you or go I you and I.
You and I,
There but for fortune, go you or go I, you and I.

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Phil Ochs
There But For Fortune lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group