Why is it that conservatives are accused of being divisive but liberals almost never are? Conservatives find themselves today on defense against an onslaught of liberal attempts to "fundamentally change the country," as former president Barack Obama famously put it. They're like the guy being pushed and punched by an assailant, who puts up his arms to ward off the blows and is then accused of provoking his attacker because he tried to protect himself.
Our liberal friends evidently think it's divisive to believe that we have inalienable constitutional rights to free speech, free assembly, freedom of religion and freedom to bear arms; to believe that the breakdown of the traditional nuclear family has been a social disaster; to refuse to pretend that biological men are really biological women; to think that traditional marriage shouldn't be tinkered with; to believe that killing unwanted babies is a bad thing; to believe that people who come into this country should do so legally and that immigration should be controlled and orderly; and to believe that before we commit to bankrupting the country to address climate change we should be given some solid evidence that the climate is actually changing, profoundly and irrevocably, that the change is caused by human activity and is not part of a natural cycle and that the change is, on balance, a bad thing.
Liberals call conservatives divisive because conservatives refuse to just give in and accept their view of things. For liberals, bipartisanship and comity are only achieved when everybody agrees with them.
Here are several other questions we might ponder:
Why is it that President Biden wants to impose stricter gun laws on lawful citizens while his own son has apparently broken one of the gun laws already on the books but will almost certainly not be prosecuted? It's clear that Hunter Biden lied when applying for a firearm in 2018. His offense is a felony carrying a sentence of up to ten years in jail, but no one thinks he'll face charges let alone go to prison.
I'm not saying that Hunter should be punished, but I am asking why the president thinks it's a good idea to promulgate more laws restricting gun ownership if we're not going to enforce the laws we already have?
And speaking of firearms, why is it that progressives want to make owning a firearm as difficult as possible but casting a vote as easy as possible? Doesn't our Constitution grant us the right to do both?
And speaking of making it easy to vote, why is it that it's widely considered racist to require people to produce proof of eligibility in order to vote but no one considers it racist to be required to produce a proof of eligibility, an ID, to get the Covid vaccine?
Finally, why is it that the media relished "fact-checking" President Trump's various departures from the truth, and roundly mocked him for them, but after President Biden served up a farrago of falsehoods and deceptions in his recent press conference the mainstream media pretty much decided that it's no big deal?
If Trump's uneasy relationship with objective truth was really all the justification one needed for despising him what must those who voted for Biden because of Trump's prevarications be thinking right now?
A liberal acquaintance of my wife's wrote to her shortly after the election saying, "Isn't it refreshing to have Joe Biden in the White House? No more lies." I hope she wasn't watching that press conference. It would've been a deeply disillusioning experience for her.
That is, if it really is a president's lies that repulse her.