To my conservative friends

[substitute]

I listen to the local grandees slapping their knees and chortling as they talk about shooting a few liberals so we get the point. I look at the paper and I see an editorial saying that people with my opinions aren’t American and should leave the country. I look at the TV and I’m being called a traitor, a liar, a sympathizer with our enemies. I see nice clean smart educated middle-class people in sweaters agreeing with each other that homosexuals and liberals and non-christians should be excluded from our schools and government jobs because “they just don’t share our values”.

I see this more and more, and a hundredfold again more since this election.

And then I look at my conservative friends, who vote and donate and support these people. I think about people who are very nice to my face and share food with me and appear to enjoy my company, and call themselves my friends. And then I look at their friends. And I think: “What do they say when I’m not around?”

Do they stand up for me and mine at all? Does anyone ever say “No, those people are Americans, too; their viewpoint is legitimate”. Or “Don’t be silly, this country has room for more opinions than one.” Or even just “live and let live”?

I was raised to build bridges to others; to find points of agreement; to share values when I couldn’t share politics; and to agree to disagree. I can’t do that any more, because they’re making total war on me. When I do it with you now, I feel like an idiot, because no one on your side plays that game now.

My father and his father and his father before him back to the founding of this country have fought in all our wars. I am an American or I am nothing. The liberal values we have are Kennedy’s, and FDR’s, and Jefferson’s. But your friends say that’s all a lie, or at least it’s all over with, and it’s time for me to leave and let them have their way.

Is that how you see me, too? Is that what you want, too? Because if that’s the case, please tell me. Then I’ll know who isn’t my friend, and never was. I’d never thought I’d say this, but I don’t feel safe around you any more.

Comments

Re: Your answer...I hope: Part Two of Two

[substitute.livejournal.com]

Reading your response makes me wish the debate was still like this. You and I disagree on a lot, but it's disagreement and not war.

I think I'll avoid responding to your points because that's not the purpose here. If all I had to do was argue my case with others who had different philosophies I'd be upset when I lost but not this upset.

My question to my conservative friends was: will you say anything, do you say anything, when your friends want me exiled and disenfranchised and dead? Will you stay with your party if they keep eroding the Bill of Rights? Is there a point at which Christian conservatives could say "stop here, we don't need a theocracy"? I haven't seen an answer to that yet.

What I see is this kind of talk going unchallenged by anyone in the conservative camp. It gives me the same feeling that Louis Farrakhan or David Duke or Le Pen do; a cold breath of fear that we're losing our moderate core in this country and sliding into demagoguery and neofascist hate. The only people who can reverse that are principled conservatives who are willing to take a stand on Americanism for all of us.

Re: Your answer...I hope: Part Two of Two

[pbd.livejournal.com]

It is always dangerous when the core of the party is so obviously expressed through their candidate. This is case on both sides. Kerry tried to be moderate, but his record is anything but. He is not a second Bill Clinton by any stretch of the imagination. This election was vital to either core due to the number of Supreme Court nominations that might come up. The difference in this election is that the core for the Republicans were much more motivated and organized. They got their message out there more effectively than the left because the message was simple and would impact voters on an emotional level. They did not bark about fiscal policy, international politics, social welfare, health care, etc., they focused on values: family values, effects on children, effects on the direction of the country. This is what turned the tide on the election.

Hence this impact. So, those that do not hold to the same values are the enemy. Do I hold to the notion that the liberals are now subdued and will submit to this new agenda. Absolutely not. I do beleive though that this does give them the opportunity to reevalute their goals and refocus on what their core should be and what it should fight for.

What I hope happens is that the left reinvents themselves and finds innovative ways to help solve the major problems that this country is currently dealing with and will face in the future. I think that they can. All they have to do is look at the influencial presidents of the past and what they did. Here are a couple of examples:

If they can find ways to move companies away from cheap inefficient overseas labor to retraining Americans to be a small, more efficient employable group, this will be winner on both sides of the isle.

If they can find ways to tell the Middle East to kiss off and use natural gas or electric cars instead of gas-guzzling V8's, then we can lower the cost of goods and services by moderating fuel costs as well as reducing our portion of the world pollution to make the UN happy.

In the 1930's, we provided power to most of the rural South by building dams and power plants through employing out of work Americans. There is not reason why today, we cannot do the same thing with renuable energy.