By CHARLES CAMPBELL, Juneau newspaper 'My Turn'

When I last crossed the Douglas Bridge a bouquet of faded flowers was still tied to the balustrade, marking the place where one of our fellow citizens chose to end his life by dropping into the waters of Gastineau Channel. We are told that he saw this as the best way to deal with his family's health care crisis. (The man had spinal cancer. Ebbie)

For this tragedy to have happened in today's America is heartbreaking. It was another sad result of our country's having been propagandized into abandoning the liberal ideal. For us to have reached the 21st century without having established universal health care in our country is a disgrace and an outrage. It is no less disheartening that we have fallen so far short in coming to grips with other significant social problems.

I am 81 years old, born and bred in "the Old South," a World War II combat veteran, the son of a Baptist preacher and a liberal. Call me a "progressive" if you like. A liberal is what I am. Liberalism is what made this country great - not "progressivism" (if there is such a word) and most certainly not conservatism.

One of the great things about being a liberal is that you don't have to buy into all of the dubious positions many prominent people on the left espouse and the media gleefully publicizes. In some ways I am deeply conservative. My views on the vulgarization of American culture, for example, and I have little patience with overly aggressive emphasis on causes not related to human suffering. Moreover, I don't much like some of the cockamamie assaults on Christianity. I frequently get out of sorts with the American Civil Liberties Union.

But when all is said and done, I am an unapologetic, unequivocal liberal. First of all I am persuaded to this view because of a visceral belief that when Jesus Christ preached the Sermon on the Mount he meant what he said. My conviction here is reinforced by the evidence of history. Virtually all of the great and good achievements that have served the betterment of humankind over the past three centuries issued from liberal initiatives, and, overwhelmingly, the most honored leaders of western society adhered to the liberal ideal: political leaders from William Penn to Franklin Roosevelt, great humanitarians from William Wilberforce to Florence Nightingale, great social revolutionaries such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela - all liberals.

The gift of the best in literature has come to us from liberal writers: from Walt Whitman to John Steinbeck, from Dickens to Dostoyevsky. Name a great novel, honored by time. The high probability is its author was a liberal, oftentimes writing to express liberal convictions.

Liberals have been the prime movers of virtually all recent important advances in human welfare. Let me ask this question. Over the course of recent history has there been even one great social advance or governmental action, primarily benefiting the poor, the aged, the ill-housed and ill-fed or, for that matter, the working classes or small-farm families, that was not given its impetus by liberal forces and opposed by conservative forces?

Today the American government is in charge of people who aggressively reject the liberal ideal. Despite all evidence to the contrary, they want us to consider the "War on Terror" a noble cause. The current administration and its political allies would have us believe that America has been made safer by the death of 2,500 American soldiers and the continuing agony and death among the Iraqi people. The current administration has taken the position that the rapidly deteriorating health of planet Earth is less important than corporate profits.

The catastrophic course on which our country is proceeding will not be altered until the American electorate is persuaded again to embrace the liberal ideal and follow it where it leads.
• Charles Campbell is a Juneau resident.