Thinking like a conservative
John Hawkins, at Right Wing News, sent out a poll to conservative bloggers asking them about political issues of the day, such as Larry Craig, the 2008 elections, patriotism and religion. You’ll find the results here. Would you have answered the questions as the majority of responding bloggers did? I did, although I included in my email to him a lot of caveats that Hawkins could not, of course, reproduce in his straight-out numbers format.
Thus, I thought the questions about religion, patriotism and supporting the military were kind of loaded, because the two parties have ended up with such radically different ideas about the meanings those terms have. To me, supporting the military means supporting the job it has been assigned to do, whereas for liberals, supporting the military means treating the troops like infants, slapping their hands, and bringing them home. Both sides would argue that they strongly support the military. I suspect, though, that the military prefers my support to the TLC the liberals provide.
Likewise, to me (and speaking as a Jew), supporting Christianity means being reasonably true to Christian tenets set out in the Bible. To liberals, supporting Christianity seems to mean bringing the religion out of the Biblical dark ages and aligning it with modern PC values. I certainly recognize that healthy religions do and must change with times. I think it’s great that we no longer burn witches, and I wish Islam would stop stoning women and wrapping them in veils. However, as you can tell, the changes I’m discussion are related to practice and procedure. When you start messing with the core morality of the religion, I’m really not sure you’re supporting it any more, no matter what you say.
And as for patriotism, I’ve covered that before: For me, patriotism means recognizing America’s flaws, but celebrating and encouraging her basic American-ness. For liberals, patriotism means highlighting American flaws and correcting them by moving America towards being a pan-European, UN governed nation.
