Friday, August 24, 2012

How Liberals View Conservatives

Carol Brown describes how she, as a young liberal, once viewed conservatives - that is, until she became one:
Bill Whittle has nailed it. He has spoken the truth about how liberals view conservatives (skip to the 1:55 mark for this part). Liberals think that conservatives are:
  • Old
  • Stupid
  • Evil
  • Some of the above
  • All of the above
Indeed.

When I was a liberal, this was exactly the way I saw conservatives.

Let's start with Evil.

I would have a knee jerk reaction to any conservative assuming - knowing - they were rich, greedy, uncaring, selfish, and arrogant. Oh, and they liked to go to war just for the hell of it. In a word: Evil. I would not listen to conservatives talk on any issue because of my rock solid belief that they were horrible human beings who cared not a whit for others.

In this way, a feedback loop was created such that when a conservative would speak, I knew they were evil and felt no desire to listen. (Why get aggravated, right?) Or, if for some reason I was compelled to listen for a few minutes, every word that came out of their mouth was tainted with the awful truth that I knew. Yes, they were evil.
Follow the link to read the rest of how liberals view conservatives, or at least how Brown did. She has a follow-up piece here.

For my part, I have to agree with "Some of the above." Conservatives do tend to be older because wisdom is a gift rarely bestowed on the young, and, given the universal opprobrium heaped on Missouri senate candidate Todd Akin by conservatives in the wake of his infelicitous remarks about female physiology, I have to say that their reaction was certainly stupid.