I consider myself a liberal, and I spend time mostly with people like me. I can tell you from experience that they are normal people, who want to see real social, intellectual, and economic change in the world. However, I think some of them have lost (or need to make a connection with) the real American world. Like comedian Lenny Bruce once said, "Liberals understand everything except the people who don't understand them."

I know that liberals love Michael Moore, treating him as some kind of media deity; the only one with any pull in pop culture who speaks their truth. But read what Michael Moore thinks of most liberals, in his 1997 essay, Is the Left Nuts? (Or Is It Me?), where he suggests that the left is hated by normal America because of the left's refusal to act like imperfect human beings.

While this isn't as prevalent in Eau Claire, I have seen and read about many progressive protests around the country, and wondered to myself, "What's the point? Okay, so there's a protest for a guy on death row for being wrongfully charged with killing a police officer. So the rest of the people on death row are okay? Cuba seems to be doing okay with itself, right? Have the Zapatistas done anything besides being given a musical shout-out by Rage Against the Machine?" If you don't know what those three progressive causes are, then you are more adjusted to the real here-and-now world than my friends and I are. A well-deserved congratulations to you.

I like being progressive. But I'm also afraid that I'm running on untested morals--that I'm just a liberal because I can afford to be a liberal. Right now, my parents are paying for my college. I don't need money right now. I've never had to lay my beliefs on the line for anything. I've just been gliding along, sure of the fact that my friends and I are the intellectually moral minority. You know; "We're right, we just need to wait for the rest of the world to catch up with us."

But let me give you a personal experience: One of the ideals I'm supposed to believe in is higher taxes. Well, this last December I was employed for a week. My paycheck was about $170. After taxes, it was $150. At about that time, I found that I owed $145 of fees on a book I had not returned on time last winter. As a result, my 27 1/2 hours of work got me $5 richer than before I started working. True, if I hadn't been working, I still would've had to pay the fine, and would've been $145 poorer instead. But that's not what I was thinking about.

The $20 that went to taxes, what difference could that have made? True, as I said, probably not much to a fully-parentally paid college student like I am right now. But what if I had been living by myself, as I'm thinking of doing very soon? Would it have been more important? Twenty dollars every two weeks equals $40 a month, which equals $480 a year. That's about three of my paychecks, taken out of my hands, going to someone who isn't me, for work I did.

Having faced the consequences of my beliefs on myself, I decided I could still live with them. I am still in favor of higher taxes, but you could say I've also doubled my viewpoint. I can now understand much better why someone else would be against taxes.

I suppose some people could make the argument that I was just afraid of being proven wrong, so I still refuse to give up my old ideas, even when they end up harming me. Maybe. But my rational for higher taxes is that I want to help people when they're in the gutter, in the hope that if I'm ever in need, the garnished salaries of strangers will help me last just a little longer than I would've if I had to go it alone. So I can still live with part of my paycheck going away. In fact, make it bigger.

Will I stay like that for the rest of my life? I hope so, but I can't tell for certain. The way I see it, my friends and I have three possibilities awaiting us in the future: surrender, separation, or acceptable synthesis.

Some of us will simply not be able to take the constant pressure against our morals. Surrender is not an originally liberal problem though. Any group with any type of belief gets tested, and just like any other belief system, not all present members will be able to hold the fight for their whole lives.

Separation refers to people's tendency to actively look for ways to remain in supposedly elitist groups. I can only speak of what I've seen in liberal exclusivity tactics, but it's something along the lines of throwing themselves even deeper into underground art trends, avant-garde movements, and specialized foodstuffs. "Get me another tofu beer, and put 'Enya' back on the radio!"

The third is the median of the two. Joining the normal humanity and helping steer it in a direction you believe in. And still being a liberal myself, this is a bit of a word of warning to my colleagues; get a job and try supporting yourself. Go into a bar and try talking to people who don't know if they already agree with you. Try a jelly donut and double-cheese burger. See how you hold up in the real world.

This isn't meant as an insult to liberals, it's meant as a suggestion to constantly test yourselves. This goes for everyone, of every group. And even if you don't do it now, it'll eventually be done to you someday. That's part of life. Sucker punches and blind-sides that you don't expect. Sudden changes in the world around you that make you reconsider your viewpoints. So you might as well do it now, on your terms, at your rate. It's part of growing as a human being. And you might begin to understand other people better. And then they can start understanding you better. And then we can all get a beer together.