I’m a Southern girl. Born in the South, raised in the South, and have
rarely lived anywhere BUT the South. I actually love the South. I’ll
die in the South. Being a Southern girl, I have more than my share of
right-wing friends, neighbors, and family members — and some of you have
in recent years crossed the line into nut-jobbery.
The fact is — I love you guys and that will never change.
I’ll admit that I’m disappointed and disturbed to see intelligent
and/or educated people who are willfully ignorant. But while it does
change my opinion about you on some level, more than anything I’m
embarrassed for you. It hurts me to see you post conspiracy theories on
your Facebook timeline, only to have them debunked with a quick Snopes
link. It hurts me to see you expressing unapologetic and blatant racism
and ignorance. It absolutely tortures me to see you being on the wrong
side of history on so many issues.
Although I’ll always love you guys, I have had to quit — for my own
sanity and for the sake of our relationships — attempting to engage in
intelligent conversation about politics and social issues with most of
you. From now on, we’ll talk about the weather, recipes, our mutual
friends, our children, our illnesses, thrift shop finds, and our old
memories. I want to know what’s going on in your lives. What books are
you reading? What home improvements are you planning? Hell, I’ll even
follow you on Pinterest!
I very much appreciate those of you who can still have an intelligent
conversation and listen to another point of view. Hopefully this small
group of sane conservatives never changes.
Here is why I have to abandon attempts at intelligent conversation with most of you.
1. You support revisionist history.
When I was in a high school history class, I’ll never forget one
thing our teacher taught us: what you read in history books isn’t always
accurate. The example she used was history books in the Soviet Union,
now known as Russia. She informed us, to my shock and horror, that the
Soviets pretty much included what they liked in the history books and
left out everything else. As a result, she said, there were generations
of Russian students who were misinformed.
Oh we were dismayed, my classmates and I! Those poor little Russian
kids who were being taught false history. But wait….you guys on the
right are trying to
do the same thing right here in the Good Old U.S.A.
Last year, I wrote an article about Texas’ plan to revise history and
include Moses as a Founding Father. When I shared the article with
an educated Texas adult and asked “is this OK with you,” his response
was:
“Why teach our children at length
regarding the horrors of slavery as we have eliminated that curse from
our society? We don’t deny it occurred here or anywhere else in the
world, but, why dwell on a segment of our past that has been corrected? I
don’t think it is appropriate to drag our dirty laundry through our
history lessons at length.”
Because it’s HISTORY. You don’t get to just rewrite history books if
it’s unpleasant. What are you thinking? Shall we rewrite the
Revolutionary War? “A minor disagreement with Great Britain.” How about
the bombing of Pearl Harbor? “A spat with the Japanese.”
2. You cite Jesus as your reasoning for rejecting marriage equality.
Yet the Bible only mentions homosexuality
six times. Six. Times. 6. This many:
So why is this one of the biggest issues on your agenda? Why are you
putting so much energy and hate into an issue that clearly wasn’t one of
God’s major concerns?
As Christians who are pro-family, why would you deny people the right
to the sanctity of marriage? If marriage strengthens families, why
would you not want everyone to have this, even if you disagree with
their choice of mate?
YOU (we) have destroyed the sanctity of marriage. There is no
possible way that gay marriage can do more harm to marriage than
heterosexuals have done. Yet we seldom hear a sermon bemoaning the
divorce rate or people living together before marriage. Why is that?
Because the pews would be empty.
3. You use Biblical scripture to excuse yourself from feeding the hungry.
There is nothing you do that makes me more disgusted with you than your abuse and misuse of
2 Thessalonians 3:10.
For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, If any will not work, neither let him eat. 2 Thessalonians 3:10
You are deliberately taking the scripture — ONE VERSE! — out of
context when you use them to justify your own hatred of poor people. And
again, you’re showing your ignorance.
From Liberal America reader Eric Susee: “2 Thessalonians 3:10. are
NOT the words of Christ. They are the words of Paul of Tarsus, a man who
never met Christ.”
Biblical scholars
have pointed out that the author of 2 Thessalonians was referring to
Christians who stopped working in anticipation of Christ’s return.
4. You lie when you say you value “freedom of religion.”
I had lunch with some conservatives a while back, and the topic of
freedom of religion came up. They expressed concern at the “war on
Christianity.” I cited a recent event that had occurred in which
protesters interrupted the
U.S. Senate’s first Hindu-led prayer. The response from my fellow diners? “Good.”
I don’t know how educated people can be so ignorant. Seriously. You
can’t even see your own contradictions.
5. You claim God speaks to you and tells you to do things.
Over and over and over, we see
right wing nutjobs in the news saying they’re doing this horrible thing or that horrible thing because God told them to. This is, to quote the
Christian Courier, “a very convenient method of authenticating what you want to do.”
He does NOT do that.
God, having of old time spoken unto
the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners,
hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son. Hebrews 1:1
But conservatives believe these nuts. Here is what I think: not only
should sensible conservatives not believe these nuts, you need to start
speaking out against them. These are the false prophets that the Bible
warns us about, in my humble opinion. Most of you lack the courage to
take a stand against these idiots even when you know they’re nuts.
6. You question my faith.
“Christian Left is an oxymoron.”
Oh my, I’ve heard that so much from the right, and believe it or not,
I often hear it from my “friends.” First of all, your questioning of my
faith genuinely means very little to me. What it does is destroy my
opinion of you; I now view you as self-righteous hypocrites.
Recently, I found out that a woman from my church questioned her teen
son for spending time here at my home with my children. I believe her
words were “why would you want to be around someone so liberal.” I’ve
never had a conversation with this lady. We’ve never even made eye
contact. But alas, her comment (and more that she said) has forced me to
now see her differently.
Keep questioning my faith, though, my people, because you can be sure
I’m questioning yours.
One thing I won’t do, however, is accuse you of not being a believer as
you do me. What I will suggest to you is that my faith may be stronger
than yours. I’ve educated myself, dared to question all things, and
STILL believe. Most of you are too afraid to even learn. It may, after
all, test your faith.
I’ll pray for you!
7. You care more about your guns than you do about children.
After the Sandy Hook massacre, and following other similar tragedies, I asked many of you if you
loved your guns
more than you do children. I made the statement of “I’d give up my gun
forever if it would bring back even one of those children.”
I asked you if you’d do the same. You admitted that you would not.
8. You get excited about people dying.
You really, really like to see death. And not just to terrorists. You love the death penalty. You
love war.
You love seeing kids like Trayvon Martin being shot. They deserve it,
you say. But his murderer has shown — again and again — since his
acquittal that
he is a dangerous person.
9. You assume that everyone who needs help are losers and parasites who refuse to work.
Approximately 47 million people receive food stamps, and most of them
are children or the elderly, in addition to people who are employed.
The numbers, from a
2012 USDA report:
- 45 percent of SNAP recipients are under 18 years of age
- Nine percent are age 60 or older
- More than 40 percent live in households with earnings
10. You weren’t concerned about uninsured people– including me.
Most of you know that when I made the decision to become
self-employed that I would be giving up my employer subsidized health
insurance. I’m 47 years old, and like most people my age, have at one
time or another had preexisting conditions that would cause insurance
companies to deny me a private policy.
I didn’t want a free ride. I was eager to pay for my own insurance.
Obamacare
opened that door for me and millions of other hard-working Americans
and disallows insurance companies from rejecting millions of Americans
who were previously rejected. But without even knowing fully what the
Affordable Care Act is, you chose the path of ignorance. You didn’t
care.
11. The Creation Museum — that is all.
You think
this is OK.
It’s not. These people just make stuff up. Do you really think
kangaroos floated from Africa to Australia on rafts? Why are you
condoning this ignorance?
12. You’re liberal in youth, yet grow conservative in age.
I call this the Dead Peter Syndrome in men and/or the Formerly Hot Syndrome in women.
A couple of years ago, a man confronted me on Facebook about my
liberalism. I knew him when I was growing up; he was a friend of my
parents and his children were my playmates. He called me a stupid,
misguided, amoral, liberal. Yes, those were his words. I had one
question for him:
“When I was a little girl, didn’t I sit on your lap while you smoked a joint and drank beer?”
I’m afraid I burned the bridge of that friendship — and good riddance.
Similarly, many women who embraced the sexual revolution are now
taking a stance against women’s rights and suggesting that I’m killing
babies with my IUD.
You don’t get to live it up as a young person and then try to take a
moral high ground when you get old and aren’t interested in living
anymore.
13. You don’t want people who disagree with you to vote.
Oh,
Gerrymandering,
you ugly devil, you. But do we question why this is so common and
seldom questioned by people on the right? It’s because you, my
conservative voter loved ones, agree with it. You think it’s perfectly
acceptable (and necessary) to suppress the vote. It’s for the “good of
the nation.”
I once heard someone tell his wife to not inform her Democratic friend how and where to vote. “She’ll cancel out your vote.”
There you have it.
14. Some of your best friends are black. Or Mexican.
A conservative I know professes that “my best friend is black” and
balked when I called him and his wife racist. Why did I call him racist?
Because my little girl — at that time about 12 — went to a movie with
one of her African American friends and his mother. The conservative and
his wife were “very concerned” about me allowing my little girl to
consort with “blacks.” But oh, no, they’re not racist, are they?
I don’t care how many black or Hispanic friends you have. If you think that mentality is OK, then yes, you’re racist.
15. You scream about undocumented immigrant children at the border, but you hire Mexicans to do your dirty work.
I live in Texas. Duh! Every single upper-middle-class or wealthy
person I know has at one time hired cheap labor to do their menial tasks
like home repairs, yard work, housekeeping, and childcare. They
actually seek out Hispanic people because they know that they do good
work and that they’ll work for cheap.
16. You insist on calling undocumented immigrants “illegals” and “aliens.”
They are human beings. They are undocumented immigrants. Many of them are
children.
It reallyyyyy makes me furious to see you deliberately depersonalizing
these human beings who are doing nothing but seeking the American Dream
that you are so proud of.
And you do this on purpose. You know what you’re doing. You’re proud
of your very unethical and un-Christian attitude towards these human
beings.
17. You don’t mind using force against “lesser” groups to get what you want.
Case in point, protesting outside of abortion clinics.
Or protesting at the funerals of gay people. And yeah, I know that is
Westboro Baptist Church and not you, but if you refuse to speak out
against them, then you’re a part of the problem.
18. You love war, death, and destruction.
And why do you love war, death, and destruction? Because ‘Murica.
Because you think this somehow makes us superior. We may be militarily
superior, but we are ethically inferior.
Even when confronted with the lies, now
confirmed officially,
that got us into the Iraq war, you don’t care. You like for America to
be the world’s largest terrorist organization and the world’s most
formidable bully.
19. Speaking of war, you think draft dodging is OK and military service is for the little people.
Why doesn’t it bother you that Dick Cheney et al are draft dodgers?
Or that Mitt Romney has an entire baseball team of sons and not one of
them served in the military? Or that none of the current generation of
Bush children have served in the military. Let me tell you in one
sentence, as was told to me personally by a wealthy draft dodger:
“Wouldn’t you get out of it if you could?”
Dying for your country is such a noble cause — if you’re not one of the elite. Right?
20. You claim to care about the Constitution, but in reality you don’t.
Oh yes, you scream “CONSTITUTION” at the top of your lungs, but when idiotic Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)
recently tried to strip the Constitution of the 5th and 6th Amendments, where were you? Where was your outrage?
You love the parts of the Constitution that please you personally — NOT the entire Constitution.
21. It’s impossible for you to see your privilege.
If you were born into a family and a place that allowed you to
thrive, you’re blessed and fortunate. This isn’t the norm. A lot of
success and stability depends on the structure that we have during our
formative years. The vast majority of young Americans have not had your
advantages and I can’t seem to make you understand that. I’ve stopped
trying.
22. You don’t care about children.
You care about fetuses. Once those fetuses begin to breath outside
the womb, your concern is gone if they’re born into a poor family that
needs help.
Or how about
poor children
who are in school? Most of you want to do away with free and reduced
lunches, for God’s sake. And let’s not even talk about free breakfasts
for kids. What is wrong with you people??? There is no better investment
that we can make as a nation than in the early childhood health of our
children.
23. You’re greedy and miserable.
You spend more time bemoaning what is being taken from you that you do in being thankful that you have enough to share.
24. You think our religion is the only one.
I’m a Christian — a proud follower of the most amazing man I’ve ever
studied. Most of what is good about me comes from the teachings of
Jesus. I love my religion and my Holy Book. I use the Words in Red as a
compass. But who am I to look at other people who feel exactly the same
way about their own religions and judge them?
We’re all on this earth doing the best we can, making the best decisions that we can.
And we’re all taking our best guess. The evidence for and against
their religion is no different than the evidence for and against ours.
25. You are lazy and you refuse to read.
I provide sources for you that will debunk most of your BS, or at
least help you to see it a little differently. You refuse to read it.
You stick to Fox News, World Net Daily, etc…You refuse to ever entertain
another point of view.
I have a conservative friend who I adore. He and his wife grew up
with me. I think he’s awesome because he did something amazing for me:
he recorded Rachel Maddow for a week and watched her show. Did he agree?
Meh, not really. But him being willing to even listen to another
viewpoint won him favor in my book. Thank you, Michael.
26. Your misfortune is God’s blessing.
When something bad happens to you, you sanctimoniously think it’s God
testing you and making you stronger. When something bad happens to me
(or gay people or atheists or etc…), you think it’s God punishing them.
Really?
27. “Everyone has their lot in life.”
Except you, of course. Well, no….you do have a lot. Your lot is to
have every privilege and entitlement and make sure your children have
the same.
28. You think you’re the only one working and paying taxes.
“My tax dollars….” Here’s a clue: you’re not the only one paying
taxes. Liberals pay taxes, too. Just how far do you think your $2,000 a
year in income taxes goes? Or your $10,000, or even your $50,000? No
matter how wealthy you are and how much income tax you pay — and most of
those complaining aren’t paying that much — you’re actually probably
paying more for wars (that you love) than for food stamps for children
in poverty.
So anyhow….tell me, my loves, what are you cooking for dinner tonight?
All of this said, let me say this: I’m very grateful and appreciative
of my sane conservative friends who can actually participate in an
intelligent and respectful discussion. To name just a few (and if I
leave anyone out, I’m sorry — these are just the ones I interact with
the most on these issues): Michael, Laura K., Whitney, Laura M., and my
pastor, Brent.
Thank you, my dear ones, for being sane. For understanding that
things aren’t always black and white. And for disagreeing with me
without belittling my very existence. And for not rubbing midterm losses
in my face. And for never once calling me stupid or amoral for being a
liberal.
