You Can Always Tell A Conservative

Articles

You Can Always Tell A Conservative

By Frederick Smith
Apr. 24, 2005

I just read the, “You Can Always Tell a Liberal” piece, found here: http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/apr/article262.html

To this piece, I say, “Hogwash”, or as they say in these parts, “hogwarsh”! See? Not only can I take a joke, I can make them too ;)

What's more accurate is that you can tell a Conservative by the fact they lack complexity and nuance. Rather (to avoid sounding like a hypocrite), some vocal Conservatives limit themselves to one dimensional thinking. In some cases I think this is for political reasons. The traditional Republican platform is no longer enough on its own to get the votes, so the party must throw bones to the extreme Christian Right to remain in power. Bill Frist was once considered moderate, for example, and currently, he's undergoing a “makeover”.

I'll break this down into two broad counter examples – two flavors of nuance.

Al Franken is a liberal but also a religious Jew. He's not a fundamentalist Christian; he doesn't believe in Jesus as a savior, but he's no atheist either. See the nuance there? He even believes in the Bible – well, half of it, anyway (see, that was a joke)!

Similarly, some Conservatives have convinced many that worshiping Jesus is one in the same with supply-side economics and low taxes. Yet, in some parts, socialism has strong Protestant backing. No, I don't mean Soviet style communism, but the modern Western socialism that nearly all wealthy industrial nations employ to one degree or another these days, including the US. Again, note the nuance – much more complex than, “liberals are communist atheists”. In the real world (the complex, non-one dimensional world), Christians need not be free-market radicals to gain salvation.

Those are but a few examples of one set of nuances. Nuance set number two comes from those who believe that religion should be a private matter. I belong to this camp. I'm a non-believer, but many believers can provide theological “evidence” for this approach, while others stick to historical evidence/precedent.

The Founding Fathers agreed, of course. What annoys the Left about the Bill of Rights is how the Right can be so wrong about it ;) It's this that gives some liberals the willies - not religion itself, but how it's expressed and how much influence it has on public affairs. We've, "been there, done that" with the Dark Ages, and we can see the fruits of theocracy today - Iran, for example. With the “brain-drain” in America placed on a short list of post-Cold War threats (alongside terrorism), many understand the dangers of replacing science in the classroom with a specific religious dogma to appease fundamentalists.

The current president of Americans for the Separation for Church and State is a Christian. He realizes that this wall protects religion from government, not just government from religion.

There is a subtle line between attacking religion, and attacking the public nature and influence of religion; it merely takes a bit of nuance to get it.

Don't blame me; I didn't create this complex world, but I do consider it "sinful" (in any value-system) when folk fail to try to understand it. It's not that I normally mind the “ignorant hayseeds” on the Right, but sometimes, too much is at stake (yes, that was mostly meant as a joke).

As for liberals looking worried and stressful, well, I smile rather often when I read how successful “leftie welfare-state” countries like Norway are faring in the world. I also quite enjoy the almost daily science stories about evolution and/or cosmology. It's also rather stress-free at work, since I avoid confrontation with my gay co-workers - I never try to “show” them how “wrong” their life is ;) For the one-dimensional readers out there, these generalizations are meant as sarcastic statements; an attempt at humor on my part.

------------

About the author Frederick Smith: I enjoy writing about the positive virtues of humanism - humanists are the good guys.

Email: dahlek65@yahoo.com

Tell a friend about this site!

------------

All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal).