What Makes Me a "Liberal"

This is something that I posted as a reply to a rather bullying comment to another post -- but I hope you'll read it here. 

I think this is not the time for bullying and name-calling. Think back to what you may have heard at sometime in your life: "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand."

We'd better start looking at the bigger picture and we'd better do it soon. Emotional outbursts may "feel" good, but they don't solve anything.

Nobody "won" or "lost" this election. The only way in which we MIGHT lose is if we can't arrive at some common ground... if our election process is destroyed.

So... here's what I wrote earlier (edited a little) after he questioned how I can call my music "country" (by the way, I now call it "Blue Country"). I should probably call this, "What Makes Me A Liberal".

I was born in Ft. Scott, KS -- a town of about 8,000 -- where my parents moved after my dad served 6 years in WWII. My mom was from Oklahoma, her parents were from Oklahoma and Texas. My lineage traces back about 400 years to a bunch of un-schooled, but hard working coal miners and farmers who believed in the ideal of this country. 

My grandfather, James Rufus Butler, was sent out into the world when he was 14 years old, because his rural family in Palo Pinto, TX, was too poor to feed the mouth of someone capable of finding his own way. He lied to get a job working on the railroad gangs. Each time he would be anywhere long enough, he would check himself into a local school. He never earned a diploma that I know of, but he was one of the smarted and kindest men that I ever met, eventually becoming Central Office Chief (head guy) at AT&T in Joplin MO. He believed that poverty was no excuse for ignorance.  

Of his children, Norma (the oldest) studied piano and was a spectacularly talented pianist and organist; my mom, Vivian Lawanda, also was a pianist who taught probably over 200 kids the basics of music and life; Jim Butler, was an entrepreneur and inventor who had several successful businesses based in Tulsa, OK; and Charles Butler, the youngest, earned his PhD in nuclear physics, and wrote one of the first published books on the basics of AI ("Neural Networks"). 

In my immediate family, my oldest brother was the first to graduate college -- and he did so in a grand way, earning a PhD in theoretical physics with honors. I and my two other siblings also earned various college degrees.

My point is NOT to brag, but rather to illustrate that my background is very similar to many Americans who do not come from families with money. Some live in rural areas, some in cities. Where you live makes absolutely no difference. What matters is how you think, and how you treat others.

I respect anybody's well thought out opinions, but I don't like prejudice, bias or bigotry. I don't like bragging, entitled elitists, or the powerful badgering and making life difficult for the powerless. I believe that we are best when we help those who need help, without expectation of return.

I play the music that I love -- the music of my Tennessee-Kentucky-Missouri-Kansas-Oklahoma-Texas heritage to make people happy,  to feel good, and to enrich their lives -- for rich, poor, urban, or rural, liberal, and conservative, American and world citizens, and I will continue to do that as long as I'm able.

And if you want to troll, bully, hate, coerce or exploit -- any or all of these things -- well, I just don't have any room in my life for you.