As a conservative American, I’m always perplexed when I dig into our conservative agendas that profess, to love America – to be fair, I do believe, we ‘believe’ we love America – but I also believe our messaging can be confusing, even within conservative circles – messaging is critical as it relates to policy positions, political agendas, and voting records.
What does it mean to be a conservative American? What does it mean to vote with the conservative agenda? What is our message? I wonder what it means to love America as it relates to the people and policies in America that our rhetoric and platforms simply DO NOT support – what specifically are we saying when say we love America, but there are so many American things we seem to hate.
We say we love America, but many of our conservative policies demonstrate that we hate, or are in conflict with so many American citizens (weird, right?) – in spite of overwhelming evidence we’re slow, or all together absent when it comes to dealing with so many real issues surrounding people of color, the poor, the under or uninsured, poorly represented voters (due to gerrymandering), victims of predatory lending, grocery deserts, failing public schools, unequal policing and legal persecution, ‘redlining’ , etc., etc… Other than personal gain or party driven agendas, why wouldn’t we want and fight for these Americans who do not benefit from the same privileged perks that we enjoy?
We say we love America, but we fight tooth and nail against ensuring constitutional civil rights and liberties are enforced equally for all Americans – how is it that we still claim these civil inequalities DO NOT exist, and yet we have failed to spend any real time or effort in the shoes, the neighborhoods, the schools, the trials or the history of Americans fighting every day for equal civil rights and liberties?
We say we love America, but we fail to tolerate or provide equal voice to Americans whose religious beliefs differ from our own – shocking for conservatives, but lately we seem to hate the separation of church and state, in favor of a twisted ideal of Christian Nationalism – very tough for non-Christian Americans to digest this message.
We claim to love the American economy but, we hate some of the larger American states that sustain the economy.
We claim to love the average American, and hate the rich, but we fight hard for tax breaks, loopholes, and concessions for the rich while the average American remains average.
We claim to love the American worker, even to the point of subsidies for farmers, industry, and special projects – but we battle against a living wage for hourly waged Americans – so, some Americans deserve a living wage, but others don’t?
We claim to love America, but our messaging and policies demonstrate a shocking lack of empathy for American’s poor? How do we think the poor interprets this?
We claim to love America’s natural beauty unless it gets in the way off industry – mixed message?
We claim to love American industry, except when they give jobs to immigrants.
We claim to love (certain) Immigrants coming to American, until they need the things we feel we were intitled to – but we hate American liberals for also feeling intitled.
We claim to love American government, but not government interference if it gets in the way of big business – but, we hate big business for being too globalized – we hate globalism for taking jobs from American workers, unless we (or our lobbies) benefit from globalism – hmmmmmm, I guess money talks.
We claim to love the American worker, until they unionized and demand better jobs, conditions, and benefits – but it was us that turned a blind eye when industry abused the American worker requiring them to act on their own – weird messaging, right?
We claim Pro-Life is an American agenda, but we only claim pro-life in the context of abortion – we ignore the equally horrific loss life in:
Illegal or unjustified wars.
Poverty, hunger, homeless and the elderly.
Unequal/abusive policing, false/unequal convictions, unjust bail processing, or wrongful executions.
Overdosed Americans whose additions were fueled by protected big business.
Leadership’s failure to provide a clear, concise messaging in the face of a global pandemic.
Etc., etc., etc…
Remember, we are supposed to be the party that stands for the moral right side of all issues.
So, what aspects of American is it that we love? Does our messaging mirror the things we claim to love?
What does all American hear when we stomp our moral feet and claim liberals, socialists, communists, and progressives are the problem – while they watch our political agendas fail half of America over and over.
Or, when we stand tall in the security of our well-financed, safe and secure homes insisting that all Americans need only follow our paths to success, failing to see we’ve denied their entry.
What do we portray when we pound our well fed, healthy chests and insist our agenda is the best agenda for America, without policy consideration for anyone but ourselves?
I’ll ask again, what aspects of American is it that we love? Or do we just love the American that looks, acts, and thinks like us….
What is our message?
NOTE: The concept of this blog is not entirely mine – I saw the premise, “how can we claim to love America, if we hate so much of America” on a tic-toc video by @theloneliestwolf – I added my spin as a conservative who thinks he presented a fair and good question.
Kevin's Thoughts 