When I cast my first-ever conservative vote – for Ronald Reagan, in 1984 – I didn’t tell anyone. Part of it was that the whole conversion from mushy-left to right was so very recent. Part of it was that I was still feeling my way around an unfamiliar place.<\/p>\n
And a big part was that I really just didn’t want to be associated with “those” conservatives.<\/p>\n
In the media of the day, “out” conservatives were pretty much portrayed as smug fundamentalist televangelists, warmongering caricatures or malthusian skinflints. I edited a college newspaper at the time, and our syndication service – the “Campus News Service” – fed us a constant stream of anti-conservative, anti-Republican propaganda in written and cartoon form, all of it based on the three stereotypes above and the notion, constantly hammered in story after story, cartoon after cartoon, that President Reagan was<\/p>\n
a) a doddering buffoon
\nb) a warmongering psychopath
\nc) both.<\/p>\n
I got over it.<\/p>\n
I graduated, moved to the Twin Cities – and it got worse. The media of the day ranged from left-leaning (it was the golden age of Jim Klobuchar; Nick Coleman was just getting started as a columnist) to falling-over left. Just before I started my old KSTP talk show, I remember reading a piece in the City Pages<\/em> about some counselor\/”artist” type in some political action group saying – unchallenged – “liberalism is the only intellectually acceptable philosophy”.<\/p>\n The attitude one perceived could have fairly been called “contemptuous” against conservative people and ideas.<\/p>\n And on the issues? Well, it was at KSTP in 1987, in a discussion on handgun control, where I first heard the old chestnut “I think people who think they need guns are…[brief pause as a verbal wink and nudge] com<\/em>pensating for something…”. It is, of course, the standard line for anti-gunners who want to believe they’re bringing the forces of soft science to bear against their opponents without actually understanding any. And it is nothing if not contemptuous. And it’s not the only issue where conservative substance has been met for decades with ignorant contempt.<\/p>\n To sum up: Twenty years ago, the contempt for conservatives was everywhere<\/em>.<\/p>\n One thing that was not<\/em> everywhere was avenues for response. This was before the market drove talk radio to the right. This was before conservatives had any written outlet, short of the National Review<\/em> and the odd token George Will or Cal Thomas column set into the OpEd page like an exhibit at a zoo. The Strib’s <\/em>letters to the editor, then as now, published only the most carefully-bowdlerized selection of conservative opinion (seemingly selected for sounding the least coherent, at times)<\/p>\n Today, of course, it’s a different story. Conservatives have voices – and those voices pretty well crush the opposition (which is why the Democrats are talking about bringing back the “Fairness” doctrine). Conservatives have outlets, and they’ve become influential out of all proportion to their size, which is why George Soros and his deep-pocketed friends are trying to buy a share of the blogosphere; it’s not really working (which is why the left has already tried to regulate blog content).<\/p>\n At any rate, in the last twenty years – and especially the past five years or so – people on the left, especially people who remember what life was like back when the conservative in the street only got to speak at the bar and around the table and every couple of years at the polls have had to learn that there really are<\/em> more than one side to an argument.<\/p>\n The masthead of Charlie Quimby’s blog<\/a> reads “How Can People Disagree And Still Build a Decent World?”; it’s a good question, one that I ask a lot in this blog and – rather more often – in personal conversation. It is <\/em>important, and not merely because I’m a conservative with a mother who thinks Jane Fonda is a reactionary.<\/p>\n Charlie poked a little fun last week<\/a> at the selection of Republicans getting credentials at the Convention next month. The common thread he found: “From <\/a>Ladies Logic<\/a> to Grizzly Groundswell<\/a> to Pair O’Dice<\/a> you’ll find at least one thing in common: a fairly strong contempt for liberals.” It is<\/em> possible to separate personal relationships and politics. The success of any free political system depends on it. But over the past 20 years or so, it seems to be happening less and less. Contempt<\/em> \u2014 not just philosophical disagreement \u2014 has been ratcheted up and real tolerance for human differences over policies is given the sort of smirking pro forma observance we see between Hannity and Colmes…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The difference, I suggest, is that over the past twenty years contempt and ridicule (and the guys behind their respective curtains, ignorance and fear) have become two-way streets. There’s not more <\/em>contempt and ridicule; you can just see it. And if you’re a Twin Cities’ liberal, you can see it aimed at you<\/em> for the first time. Or bloggers and their invisible moonbat\/wingnut friends. Which is why here I try to make those exchanges real and open, aimed at understanding rather than refuting the other.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Contempt is the tip on the iceberg of ignorance and – toward the bottom – hatred. I try to avoid it, and seek out conversation with the rare liberal blogger who’s not too stupid and sodden with fake intellectual entitlement…<\/p>\n …oh, crap. Let me start over.<\/p>\n Contempt is the junk food of rhetoric; it’s cheap, easy, and sometimes all you have in the cupboard. It’s easy to say “I don’t use it”; everyone knows better. There are times when it’s the easiest way to respond to the gaffes and slights and sins of the “other” side. It was the same thing twenty years ago; if Hubert Humphrey and Ronald Reagan are the respective ego<\/em>s of the left and right, “guns are compensating for something” and “liberalism is a mental disorder” are the respective id<\/em>s. And we all balance these in different ways.<\/p>\n At some point, contempt for ideas and values becomes contempt for a group becomes contempt for a person, as the bones in mass graves the world over attest.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n True.<\/p>\n But a lot of things have changed in the last decade or two. Liberals in the Twin Cities are having some inevitable growing pains realizing that there is more than one point of view in this world (just like conservatives in Austin Texas and Chapel Hill North Carolina have been having to do). The only real question now is how people deal with it – a question people have to answer whenever<\/em> there is more than one side to a debate.<\/p>\n Which is why it’s such a new thing in the Twin Cities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I cast my first-ever conservative vote – for Ronald Reagan, in 1984 – I didn’t tell anyone. Part of it was that the whole conversion from mushy-left to right was so very recent. Part of it was that I was still feeling my way around an unfamiliar place. 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\nOver the weekend and still on the subject (having gotten some pushback from a couple of the bloggers he’d names), he asked<\/a>:<\/p>\n
\nYou don’t have to read Nick Coleman or Lori Sturdevant or Brian Lambert all that terribly long to realize that Minnesota liberals of a certain age just aren’t used to being questioned, much less criticized, to say nothing of being the objects of contempt. I’m going to venture that not one of them, growing up in acceptably-lefty households, coming up through a left-leaning academic establishment, and working a career in left-leaning newsrooms, has ever heard someone say “I don’t know why people need pay-equity laws, unless they’re com<\/em>pensating for something, nyuk nyuk”.<\/p>\n
\nIt’s just all out in the open now.<\/p>\n