The tendency of extremist liberals to demonise conservative attitudes towards sensitive moral issues.
'A Bigot Is A Conservative Beating A Liberal In Debate’.
This popular bumper sticker captures the experience that many conservatives have when they debate liberals. Rational argument is impossible when your debating opponent is determined to demonise you and your views.
Totalitolerant liberals cannot bear views that are different from their own. Their propensity to call someone a bigot is greatest when discussion turns to senstive issues like abortion, homosexuality and anything connected with race.
A conservative cannot say that there are too many late-term abortions without being accused of hating women. A conservative cannot defend the institution of marriage as existing for one man and one woman without being branded a homophobe. A conservative cannot say that Britain's overcowded islands can't take too much immigration without being smeared as a racist.
The views of the conservative majority are much more moderate than the views that extremist liberals would like to pin on them, however. Sarah Baxter – writing for The Sunday Times in the days after President Bush’s 2004 re-election – spotlighted the morally serious but real world views of America’s values voters. She wrote:
“They are anti-abortion, but will rally around a girl who gets pregnant. They believe marriage is between a man and a woman, but have gay friends and relatives… Middle Americans are not embarrassed to say aloud they would rather their children grew up heterosexual, married a member of the opposite sex and had children within wedlock. If it’s not the way things turn out; they’ll cope with it.”
Do liberals de-mon-bate because of their own extremist views or from ignorance?
Extremist liberals – and their typical beliefs in unrestricted abortion and a lower and lower age of sexual consent - would be unacceptable to most people if they did not hide behind a fog of attacks on values and religious voters.
US commentator Mort Kondracke, also writing shortly after George W Bush’s 2004 victory, speculated that the tendency of liberal Democrats to demonise religious voters might be rooted in ignorance:
“I have the distinct impression that many secular Democrats believe that hidden away in most Evangelical Protestant churches is a secret room filled with white Klan sheets or maybe even Swastika armbands... If fair-minded secular Democrats went to church - they are open to the public, by the way - here's some of what they'd learn: Lesson No. 1: Far more than abortion, evolution or homosexuality, Evangelical Christianity is about love, redemption, forgiveness, charity, humility, hope and self-sacrifice. The best Evangelicals I know truly change lives - they turn around people who are addicted to drugs and pornography. They give the despairing and the guilt-ridden reason to persevere. They restore marriages. They transform criminals in prison. They try to follow Jesus, who, if they studied him a little, no Democrat could possibly be scared of.”
Comments