Growing up with strongly liberal parents, liberal friends, liberal teachers, and liberal news, I am a conditioned liberal in every way. Since becoming aware of my political socialization, I have remained a liberal, but I have become one who is self-critical and consistently reflective of everything I believe. With this mindset has come the difficult process of confronting convictions I’ve held my whole life–one being my deep disgust and hatred for conservatives. Before I really had an understanding of any political or social issue, I was of the mind that all conservatives were racist, sexist, homophobic, greedy… the list goes on. Liberals, on the other hand, were the struggling saviors of the world, fighting for the good of all people. Today, with a more developed understanding of the political right and left, I’ve come to reevaluate both my resentment towards conservatives and the Republican Party and my love of liberals and the Democratic Party. I’ve found that my hatred towards conservatives was unwarranted, but to be expected considering the image of conservatives I had been spoon-fed. Regarding my own political tribe, I have started to distinguish the policies and practices of the left, which I now see as nothing more than a collective liberal ego. The distinction between the two reveals a bothersome display of hypocrisy in need of addressing.
It seems to me that at the heart of the liberal ego is a sense of tolerance and concern for all people, regardless of gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, nationality, etc. I see nothing wrong with this when it is put into practice. What bothers me, however, is the hypocrisy of liberals who preach this tolerance, but fail to truly act on it when it becomes inconvenient in supporting their egos or their political narrative. When you surround yourself with a flock of like-minded liberals, your love and support for any underprivileged minority group is expected of you. Thus far, you have only preserved your status as another woke, loving, liberal. My challenge to other liberals is to be tolerant and loving of something that comes at the sacrifice of your ego: to love a conservative. It’s not hard to observe the villainization of conservatives in liberal culture. Conservatives, specifically the image of the privileged, greedy, bigoted conservatives that we tend to make all conservatives out to be, have become the socially acceptable outlet for liberal hatred. The only form of hatred and intolerance that remains in accord with our egos is a hatred that fills us with righteousness, pride, and a sense of superiority. It serves as an emotional validation where our views lack logical soundness. I have taken part in this hatred. Had I ever been confronted about my resentment, I can imagine what I may have said in response: The fight for tolerance surely involves making bigotry socially unacceptable. So, why should I be tolerant of the intolerant? Why should I love the hateful? My answer to this brings me to the most contentious point that I have to make: I do not believe that the fundamental policies and ideology of the conservative movement are inherently intolerant or oppressive, as most liberals would assert.
Are there intolerant conservatives? Of course there are. There is no doubt about that. However, it is a simple genetic fallacy to state that because there are intolerant conservatives who hold views grounded in their intolerance, that the common traits of conservative thought cannot be argued for on their merits. There are, for example, perfectly valid arguments to be made for the pro-life movement that are not grounded in misogyny, as there are arguments for border security that are not grounded in xenophobia. There are arguments to be made against affirmative action that are not grounded in racism, and arguments to be made against welfare, Medicare for All, and other government-sponsored social programs that are not grounded in greed. The purpose of this article is not to present and defend these arguments (especially considering that I still align with the left on most of these issues). But when we reduce conservatives’ arguments to their weakest, straw man forms, we not only fail to engage in a proper political discourse, we fail to have integrity in our own beliefs. Dismissing conservative arguments in this way is not only easier for us; it's a laziness that puts progress in danger.
Where this becomes far more problematic, even upsetting, is where it manifests itself in the policies and practices of the Democratic Party. I find that the most shameful display of hypocrisy within the party I vote for is the consistent assertion by Democratic politicians that they act as the champions of poverty in America. Meanwhile, the policies, rhetoric, and attention of Democratic politicians regarding issues of poverty hold an extreme bias towards issues of urban black poverty, ignoring the issue of rural white poverty that occurs at a higher rate. The first time I heard this critique of my party, I jumped to defensiveness, I scrambled for weak explanations and baseless denials. Now, no longer holding the romantic view of the infallible Democratic Party that I once did, it seems rather obvious: Democratic politicians are politicians. Their careers are not built on doing what is right or, in this case, even what matches the ideology they preach. Their careers are built on votes. Not only are rural white Americans absent from the Democratic Party’s voting base, they are also the image of social conservatives that liberals love to hate.
My challenge to other liberals is to take on the uncomfortable task of distinguishing tolerance and acceptance as a trait of the ego from tolerance and acceptance as a genuine practice, and then bridge the gap. My friendships with conservatives have forced me to think critically about my views and exposed me to the merits of conservative thought. When you only allow yourself to believe in straw man conservative arguments, you sacrifice the integrity of your political views for a comforting validation of your own worldview. What’s worse is the byproduct of hatred towards conservatives that inevitably results. This culture of hatred continues to leave a stain on the left, an embarrassing display of hypocrisy that weakens our intellectual validity. We have much to gain from shifting this culture. Strategically, the Democratic Party stands to gain support from moderates who are fatigued by the unnecessary divisiveness of leftist rhetoric. Far more important than votes and election wins for the left, however, is the creation of a less hostile and more unified political climate, one where we commit ourselves to engage respectively with conservative thought, and–in doing so–commit ourselves to progress.