OPINION: What Is a Liberal?

"Practically everybody I know is a 'liberal.' At least that's what they call themselves," a reader in Bethel, Conn, wrote last week to the New York Herald Tribune. "What is a liberal? A man who wants . . . higher taxes and more schools or lower taxes and more business, more government or less government? . . . I'm confused." The Trib, which cherishes its liberalism as much as its Republicanism, passed the question to its readers. Over a hundred definitions poured in, and a few shed a little light on one of the most overworked words in the...

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