Posted by
Robert Lee Hotchkiss, Jr. on Thursday, November 27, 2008 6:29:50 PM
The stereotype of the American Liberial is one who threatens to leave the country if they don't have thier way. But it is conservatives who have truely left America. It has been happening in small ways and big ways for some time now. While conservatives claim to be driven from the public square by a few anti-reliougious advocates the reality is that they have been leaving the public square by themselves.
An important example of this is homeschooling. Conservatives don't only trust their comunity with their children, they don't even trust each other. Oh, they may have vibrant social interactions through home schooling orgranizations and church, but the majority of their children's time is spent with their parents, like Muslim societies where all social interaction revolves around the family and the Mosque. While this can provide a sense of safty and spiritual cohesion it is the very essense of hiding one's "light under a bushel."
Conservatives have started to think of morality and culture in binary terms. They see themselves has processing the one true moral system and do not value anything but complete acceptance of their views. They refuse to acknowledge that why we may have differences there are moral values that are held by all Americans and that can be identified and promoted for the common good.
For this reason more than any other conservatives are excluding themselves from the conversation. If nothing but complete acceptance of conservative values will please conservatives, there is no motivation for liberals or moderates to negotiate with them. This is why moderates who may be lean largely in a conservative direction especially groups such as Catholics and Hispanics are abandoning the Republicans. There simply is no deal to be made there. By interacting with liberals they can make gains and when no gains can be made with liberals they can stand with conservatives.
It is not that conservatives have lost the argument they have abandoned it. Nothing can point to this more than articles such as Dennis Prager's "Why Reporters -- Judges -- and Professors are Biased. In it he accuses journalists, judges and professors of desiring to promote values. Imagine the arrogance -- but wait. What do judges, professors, and journalists do? Why judges enforce the values of people through the laws. Judges predate the legislature in the common law system. There charge was construct a common law from values of the people who came from different legal, moral, and religious traditions. Socrates, Aristotle, and certainly any of the founders of our greatest universities would laugh at the concept that students should be shielded from their values. And as anyone who has read some of rulings of Justice Thomas, or writings of Lynn Chaney knows conservatives do believe in using teachers to transmit values to students. Reporters similarly have from the dawn of time expressed a desire to uphold and transmit values. Originally many papers were mere organs of the political parties that ran them. Some still have names such as the Such and Such Democrat. And while, however unconvincingly Fox news may claim to be neutral between the parties it makes no claim to be neutral as to values.
Conservatives can deny the existences of a value system outside their own all they want but it doesn't cease to exist. By refusing to join the conversation about common American values, they are losing it by default.