Conservative vs Liberal...Force vs Argument...

Today, on Twitter, a woman who is an acknowledged Conservative Republican tweeted that she was in an elevator and a Liberal called her “the enemy”.  Her response was to remind the person offering this description that many Conservatives “pack heat” in what can only be characterized as a not-so-veiled threat.

 I consider this interaction between a Liberal and Conservative to be quite enlightening of the different ways in which the two groups think, or don’t think, as the case may be.  Liberals have gotten to the point where they no longer perceive Conservatives as "loyal opposition".  They perceive them as "The Enemy."  I will not necessarily condone this, but it does point out that our polarized politics has reduced many of us to the perception of the us vs. them mentality, Liberal and Conservative alike.  It is a view by both sides that the system is a zero-sum game, that is for every victory, there must be a corresponding defeat by the "other side". If you have it, you must have taken it from me.  My objection to Conservatives however is the length to which they have taken this way of thinking.

Conservatives are forever citing the Second Amendment as one of the freedoms that they hold near and dear.  Unfortunately, they apparently do not hold the First Amendment in the same high regard, especially when it is someone offering a difference of opinion with their particular viewpoint.  It is seemingly all right for them to cite their own First Amendment protections whenever someone exercises it, but when a Liberal does, not so much.

 Now before someone gets all technical on me, I know that the First Amendment only protects a person’s speech against government infringement.  If it protected us against infringement by anyone, then an employee of Coca Cola could not be fired for going on television for endorsing Pepsi.  Let me assure you that Coke can and probably will terminate the employment of their employee for doing such a thing, and they are within their rights to do so.  However, the government cannot make a law that infringes  any citizen’s right to endorse Coke over Pepsi or Pepsi over Coke.  The Constitution is intended to protect us from our government, not each other.  Okay, civics class is over, now back to our regularly scheduled blog.

 Conservatives seem to have this predisposition to the use of force and/or violence as a mechanism to achieve their wants, needs, goals and desires a lot quicker than Liberals.  In the thinking of the Right, might really does make right and to the victor go the spoils.  Thus, they have a tendency to go to the force option faster.  This is true in many different circumstances.  In the example at hand, a woman, identified as the enemy, immediately raises the specter that those that identify her as such had better watch out.  Because, as a Conservative, she might be exercising her Second Amendment Right and be carrying a gun; she implies she might be willing to use it against someone that disagrees with her point of view in a manner objectionable to her.  Personally, having seen my share of death, destruction, violence and mayhem by my fellow man against my fellow man, I tend to go with the sticks and stones option first, possibly followed by a stern sticking out of my tongue or raspberry.  To go directly to the “be careful, I might have a gun” option first is, pardon the pun, overkill.

 As I said, there are many different examples of this kind of behavior within the ranks of Conservatism.  Sharron Anlge, of Nevada called for “Second Amendment remedies” to what she perceived as the takeover of the U.S. Senate by the Left.  While discussing these so-called Second Amendment remedies, she said, “I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.”  While I may think she is a complete nutball; folks she was an elected member of the Nevada Assembly from 1999 to 2007 and a Teapublican candidate for Harry Reid’s Senate seat in 2010.  If you can’t beat ‘em, kill ‘em?”  Sarah Palin, the darling of the Right Wing said, “Don’t retreat, reload.”  Uh, she was a candidate for Vice President of the United States.

The other thinking that runs through Conservative America is the concept of picking up their ball and going home.  When a state does this, it is called secession.  The Governor of Texas jumped on board this bandwagon and called for secession based on the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.  The Supreme Court in, coincidentally, Texas vs. White (1868) declared secession to be impossible and illegal.  Thus, the only way to do it would be armed insurrection.  Now the last time I checked, armed insurrection against the government of the United States was treason, but because of the way they think, the Conservatives don’t seem to have a problem with resorting to “the nuclear option” right off the bat.

 The Conservatives have become the bullies of politics.  They use force to get what they want and to stop anyone that has the temerity to disagree with them.  Much like the school yard bully, they make you afraid to disagree because you might get beaten up, or, in the case of our elevator woman, might get shot.

The Liberals/Democrats Eat Their Young….Once Again

Once again, the Democrats (I shall use the term Liberal interchangeably) have demonstrated the self-destructive capacity to figuratively eat their own young.  Representative Anthony Weiner of New York was basically forced to resign.  He lost the support of his Liberal colleagues and was going to be the subject of a long, personally destructive and embarrassing investigation.  He  was also going to be stripped of his committee assignments, all at the hands of his own Party. 

Weiner was arguably one of the brightest rising stars in the Democratic Party.  He was young, bright, charismatic, and was a firebrand with regard to Liberal issues.  Very clearly, he was destined to be great and do great things, which makes it all the more tragic that he has been forced to resign.  A bright, and possibly the brightest, light in the Democratic Party has been extinguished, and we broke the bulb ourselves, in the interest of intellectual honesty, and the appearance of impropriety.  Unfortunately, the negative consequences of this action far outweigh either the benefits or the offense, not to mention the fact that the opposition would never have committed themselves to this kind of destruction simply because it might be the right thing to do.

I cannot state it any better than the comment made by “DLW” regarding my previous post entitled, “Scandal….The Zombie Cat of Politics”.  He points out that individuals who may have perfectly dreadful decision-making skills in their personal lives can be extraordinary decision-makers in their professional lives.  I would only add that most of us tend to lead compartmentalized lives.  We try to neatly divide our lives into manageable parts that we can handle.  It is seemingly easier to manage life one compartment at a time, and I can tell you, from exquisitely painful experience, that sometimes, one compartment can bleed over into another; try running a business and getting divorced sometime.  However, for the most part, we do manage to keep the compartments separate.

History has shown us that this separation is entirely possible as great Presidents have had less-than-stellar personal lives.  We of course know of Bill Clinton.  He got impeached for what I refer to as “the BJ heard round the world.”  Once of our most revered Presidents, John F. Kennedy, can hardly be held up as an example of chaste behavior.  If you go back to the Founding Fathers of this great country, we have now nearly confirmed that Thomas Jefferson fathered children by his slave, Sally Hemings.  It was used by political opponents of the time against Jefferson.    So peccadilloes are nothing new in politics.  Now, however, in spite of the fact that he wrote The Declaration of Independence, contributed in large part to writing The Constitution of the United States, was the first Secretary of State and the Third President of the United States, under the circumstances, we would humiliate him, force him to resign or impeach him for lying about it (Jefferson did deny it, by the way).

I think that the Democrats can take a lesson from the Republicans on this one.  Senator David Vitter remains in office, blocking every single Liberal effort in the Senate at every opportunity, by the way, after being found to be utilizing the services of prostitutes.  Republican Senator Larry Craig of Idaho managed to stay in office after trying to pick up a man, who happened to be a police officer, in a Minneapolis Airport restroom; the infamous foot-tapping incident.  Let us forget for the moment the continuing hypocrisy displayed by the Right Wingers, the fact that they display this kind of party unity, loyalty and take care of one another, has placed them in a position to remain the disloyal opposition and thwart every effort to change the politics of our federal government.  They manage to remain in a position to be hypocritical by being, well, hypocritical.  Maybe it is time for liberals to be more consistent, and a little less intellectually honest.  This is politics you know, and we all know how to tell a politician is lying, right?

Anthony Weiner was sacrificed, unnecessarily in my opinion, on the altar of intellectual honesty, in the philosophical interests of morality.  Us Liberals seem to have this enduring dedication to near chastity as it relates to politicians, and we expect to them to fess up the minute they are confronted.  I am not sure there is a man or woman on the planet that, upon being first confronted with some sort of extra-marital, sexual indiscretion, whether it be in the virtual world and ether of the internet or real life, will not try to deny the accusation; it is human nature.  Apparently, it is the nature of Liberals to eat our own young, even the best and the brightest among us.