By Deauwand Myers
American conservatives are fully invested in the (false) assertion that America has always been and will always be a ``force for good.”
The genocide of America’s natives, slavery, and Jim Crow notwithstanding, of course. They believe that America should resist egregious human rights violations around the world, except for our allies and friends: Saudi Arabia, Iraq (under Hussein), various eastern European countries, and for a very long while, Libya and Syria, for example.
Either we are for human rights everywhere, or we are not. A South African’s life is worth the same as a Maori in New Zealand, or an American in Manhattan, or a North Korean. America’s schizophrenic foreign policy has never reflected this simple, yet profound, principle. Neither has our domestic policy.
And yet, when were conservatives ever for human rights in America? Conservatives were against the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, voting rights, racial equality, dismantling apartheid in South Africa…the list is quite extensive, but you get the gist.
The truth: the ``moral clarity” of conservatives is amoral and murky. To resist every major civil rights movement for the past century and more is evil. Period. And one cannot name a prominent conservative in modern history who fought for any of these movements. Books have been written on all the liberals and progressives who have. The contrast is stark and depressing.
So concerned are conservatives about abortions and the ``lives of the unborn,” yet that same concern disappears after the child is born. Post-natal care, quality K-12 education, job training for the mother who had the child, health care, and all the rest are deemed too costly and too socialistic. But have the child, she must. Their hypocrisy is stupefying: they care about the giving of life, but not its quality.
They reject science. Many of our conservative presidential candidates do not believe in evolution, or global climate change, or the laws of physics. However, they do believe in talking snakes, talking donkeys, magical apples, virgin births, angels of death, and the like. They believe that gay people are bestial and inherently corrupt, that women are lesser than men, that all other religions are hell-bound and damned. The two Mormons in the Republican race belong to a faith that, among other absurdities, believed until the very late 1970s that black people were not fit to enter the faith, as their dark skin precluded them from being accepted into heavenly realms.
It would be funny, in a sad and jaded way, if these people were not policymakers, governors, congressmen/women, senators, and god forbid, possibly president of a country with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
It would be comical if these people, and their hateful, bigoted views, did not negatively affect the lives of millions.
It would be. But it’s all too serious.
I get into discussions with other Americans, usually white men, who are angered or disturbed by my angst-ridden and complex relationship with America. They seem to think that loving America means only praising it.
Love for country should be like love for a person. We praise his accomplishments and virtues, and reproach his vices (in the hopes that he gets better). Love is not worship. America is not my god or idol. I love her for all her culture, her literature, her music, her food, her democracy, and her potential. I dislike her sins and call them out. It is the richest nation in human history and yet children still die because of lack of healthcare and millions of Americans go to sleep hungry every night.
If left up to conservatives, there would be a lot more of this. They hate the New Deal, the Great Society, and how it lifted millions of the poor and elderly out of poverty. They believe that poverty is a personal sin. They don’t care to help the poor. Their own Bible says otherwise.
There is not one redeeming quality I have found in all my years to pity conservatives. Luckily, for us, the very winds of history are against them. But while they linger as a clear and present danger, the next time you hear a conservative say something ridiculous, as they inevitably will, don’t call it silly or unenlightened. Call it evil.
The writer holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory and is currently an English professor outside of Seoul. He can be reached at deauwand@hotmail.com.