On Liberals, Conservatives, and the C-Word
I'll admit it. I can get pretty ideological at times, and four years ago, I believe I had a damn good reason to be so intransigent. Back then, compromise with the Republicans meant compromise with Bush-era policies that included torture, domestic surveillance, watered-down science and education, the whole nine yards. Then came the Tea Party, and my stubbornness went through the roof. When it comes to transvaginal sonograms, the return of Jim Crow to the voting booth, and fattening the wallets of fat cats at the expense of the working poor, I'm not willing to budge an inch.
What I do miss, however, are old-school conservatives. You can still find some on the Main Streets of small towns across America. These are the kind of conservatives that you can respect, even if you don't always agree with them. My family is chock full of the old-school variety. They voted for Romney, sure, but they weren't exactly in lockstep with what was going on in the GOP, and they've had more than a few frustrations with Party leaders.
Yes, many old-school conservatives have racist tendencies - so did many liberals back in the 1950s. As cliched as it might be to speak of us as becoming an "enlightened" society (like Barbara Walters did ad nauseam on ABC), we're maturing, but there are still growing pains. And that includes many conservatives.
Now, as to the whole compromise thing, the Republicans actually get that they need to stand for something, and this has helped galvanize their party's strength for the past four decades. Democrats have long celebrated our Baha'iesque "unity in diversity" message, but in order to keep ourselves from devolving into The Party of Everybody Who Isn't A Republican, we have to embrace a core vision for our party and the values that such a vision entails. We're still working on that part. But in order to have a legitimate discussion on compromise, you've got to settle on what your party's basic values are before negotiating with the other guys at the table.
And that may be one reason why some of you perceive me as an oddity: the professed liberal Democrat who is suspicious of political correctness, owns an AK military rifle, and believes government works best when it leaves the individual to her own devices. Right or wrong, you may consider these traits to be rather conservative of me. And yet I'm still up there advocating for women's health care, unions, social justice, and the radical notion that GLBT Americans deserve to be treated like human beings. But hey, I'm a Democrat. I already have an idea of what our common vision as a party should be - honest, unabashed labor. Labor doesn't give a damn if you're black or white, gay or straight, male or female, or if your predominant disability happens to be Asperger syndrome, deafness, paraplegia, or just a touch of astigmatism. Are you willing to work? What are your strengths and weaknesses? What sort of career would challenge you and still give you a reasonable amount of happiness?
The average conservative believes in hard work, too. Notice I said the average conservative. Their view on unions and management may be a bit different than yours, but they too believe in the value of the little guy in the workplace and the freedom of little guys to chase mad dreams of making it big in the world. This should be a no-brainer for everyone, a much-needed nexus from which all of us can hopefully sit down and work on making America a better place for ourselves and our children.
You know, that whole "a more perfect Union" jazz.
Off my soapbox now... 
