Posted on 04/25/2007 11:35:16 AM PDT by charming_harmonica
The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don't have to lie. I don't have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don't have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine.
Nor do I have to say that everyone's special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don't have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don't have to pretend that Islam means peace.
Of course, like everything, this candor has its price. A politics that depends on honesty will be, by nature, often impolite. Good manners and hypocrisy are intimately intertwined, and so conservatives, with their gimlet-eyed view of the world, are always susceptible to charges of incivility. It's not really nice, you know, to describe things as they are.
Just found the rest:
This is leftism’s great strength: It’s all white lies.
That’s its only advantage, as far as I can tell. None of its programs actually work, after all. From statism and income redistribution to liberalized criminal laws and multiculturalism, from its assault on religion to its redefinition of family, leftist policies have made the common life worse wherever they’re installed.
But because it depends on — indeed is defined by — describing the human condition inaccurately, leftism is nothing if not polite. With its tortuous attempts to rename unpleasant facts out of existence — he’s not crippled, dear, he’s handicapped; it’s not a slum, it’s an inner city; it’s not surrender, it’s redeployment — leftism has outlived its own failure by hiding itself within the most labyrinthine construct of social delicacy since Victoria was queen.
This is no small thing. To rewrite the rules of courteous behavior is to wield enormous power. I see it in Southern California, in the bleeding heart of leftism, where I live. I’ve been banned from my monthly poker game, lost tennis partners, lost friends — not because I’m belligerent but because I’ve wondered aloud if the people shouldn’t be allowed to make their own abortion laws, say, or if the world might not be a better place without the United Nations.
It’s a rotten feeling. I sometimes think that I’d rather be deemed evil than a boor. Wickedness has some flair to it, even a whiff of radicalism. If you molest a child, there’s always a chance that you can get the ACLU to defend you as a cultural innovator.
But if you make a remark at table about the destructive social effects of broken homes and then discover that your dinner partner is a divorcee — trust me, you feel like a real louse. It’s manners, not morals, that lay the borderlines of our behavior.
This, I believe, is the reason conservative politicians so often lose their nerve, why they back down in debate even when they’re clearly right. No one wants to be condemned as a brute — especially not conservatives, who still retain some vague memory of how worthy it is to be a lady or gentleman.
And because we’ve allowed leftists to define the language of political good manners — don’t say women are less scientific; don’t remark that black people bear the same responsibility for their actions as whites; don’t point out that the gunman was a Muslim, it’s not nice — the sort of person willing to speak the truth isn’t always the sort of person you want to be seen with.
It sometimes takes, I mean, a Rush Limbaugh or a Sean Hannity to withstand the obloquy attached to stating the facts of the matter. If these people in their public personae seem harsh to more genteel conservatives, it may be because it requires that extra dollop of aggression to shatter the silence created by the left’s increasingly elaborate sensitivities.
Still, mannerly as we would rather be, truth-telling continues to be both compelling and ultimately satisfying. There is, after all, something greater than courtesy.
“Firmness in the right,” Lincoln called it, “as God gives us to see the right.”
We find ourselves at a precarious moment in an endeavor of great importance: namely, the preservation of Western rationalism and liberty. It does mankind no good to allow so magnificent an enterprise to slip away merely for fear of saying the wrong thing.
Is being able to distinguish thinging from thinking.....
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
What an absolutely excellent article! Thanks so much for posting it.
Ach. I didn’t know the title so I had to search by words in the article, which didn’t turn up anything.
Whoa... I get a lot of that, but come on. Alice Walker is an incredible writer.
Conservativism by its very nature is orderly. We believe in the natural order of things the way they were intended by God, nature, and whatever. When the liberals try to mess with the orderly, chaos ensues. They have to manipulate that which is good and decent to further their causes and agenda, and we see the results. Look at the chaos created with the presidential election of 2000. There were rules in place to keep things running smoothly and in an orderly manner. When the liberal Florida Supreme court tried to do an end-around of the rules to help their candidate, Gore, chaos was created. I could go on and on.
Good article and I don't even think you have to be impolite to state the truth. Depends on the conditions.
Not even to your spouse?
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