Time for liberals to stand up to right-wing extremists

I am proud to be a liberal, a word used by the political left “until the political right got hold of it and made it an object of ridicule,” as Leonard Pitts Jr. writes (“Why is the left allowing the right to frame the debate about who they are?” May 9). Why am I proud?

It is because, as John F. Kennedy said in his acceptance speech of the New York Liberal Party nomination on Sept. 14, 1960, if a liberal is “someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a ‘liberal,’ then I’m proud to say I’m a liberal.”

It is way past time for the majority of Americans — liberals and moderates — to stand up to the loud, toxic reactionaries of the political right.