Liberals, not Conservatives, Reject Traditional America

More and more I have read and heard from various liberals following the election that they just don’t believe in the same America as the Bush voters do. Duh! Some posts I read from the spooky Democratic Underground website on Free Republic showed just how deep the liberal angst truly is. George Bush’s America is not my America. I might as well leave the country,” etc. And these people question why we question their patriotism sometimes. But it’s not just the hysterical Democratic Underground site where you see this lament about a different America. Check out celebrated New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s latest.

Friedman writes:

But what troubled me yesterday was my feeling that this election was tipped because of an outpouring of support for George Bush by people who don’t just favor different policies than I do – they favor a whole different kind of America. We don’t just disagree on what America should be doing; we disagree on what America is.

Yes, Mr. Friedman. We can agree on that much. And thank you, by the way, for candidly admitting it.

Friedman continues:

Is it a country that does not intrude into people’s sexual preferences and the marriage unions they want to make? Is it a country that allows a woman to have control over her body? Is it a country where the line between church and state bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers should be inviolate? Is it a country where religion doesn’t trump science? And, most important, is it a country whose president mobilizes its deep moral energies to unite us – instead of dividing us from one another and from the world?

Since Friedman invokes the Founding Fathers, perhaps he should familiarize himself with what they stood for. Is it conservatives who want to change the moral landscape of our country? Is it conservatives who want to redefine marriage from the way it has existed for five thousand or more years, not to mention for the entire history of the United States of America? Is it conservatives who judicially rewrote the Constitution to impose severe restrictions on a state’s right to regulate the evil practice of abortion? Is it conservatives who favor a radical, extremist separation of church and state light years beyond what the founders envisioned? Are Christian conservatives opposed to science because they have faith? Or is it secularist liberals who want to ostracize Christians and suppress their faith because of their fear and intolerance of Christians? And as for this bogus, specious argument that President Bush is a divider, not a uniter, please see my just-posted column. For President Bush to be considered a uniting force by liberals, he would have to be a national sovereignty-challenged liberal. In their worldview you can’t be a uniter without being a liberal, period. Conservatives, by definition, are divisive. The only nondivisive conservative is one who will abandon his principles and embrace liberalism – which is to say there are no nondivisive conservatives.

Friedman also says that Bush has failed because of his poor performance in Iraq, with which I disagree, and his “stagnant economy.” This economy is not stagnant, and I’m amazed at the Democratic propaganda machine in its effective salesmanship of this myth to the voting public, as revealed by the dubious exit polling “internals.” But there’s no point rehashing those issues here.

But I do take strong issue with this Friedman statement:

My problem with the Christian fundamentalists supporting Mr. Bush is not their spiritual energy or the fact that I am of a different faith. It is the way in which he and they have used that religious energy to promote divisions and intolerance at home and abroad.

This is so maddening. At the risk of sounding divisive and intolerant I repeat that it is the liberal, Friedmanesque attitude that promotes intolerance. It is not Christians who are promoting intolerance just because they want to preserve age-old societal institutions. Christians are not promoting divisions at home. It was not conservatives who issued the lawless decision by the Massachusetts Judicial Court rewriting their state constitution to redefine marriage. It was not conservative mayors who lawlessly issued marriage licenses to people who cannot marry according to law. And it is not George Bush or conservatives who are promoting intolerance abroad, unless Friedman is referring to President Bush’s stubborn refusal to abide by Osama bin Laden’s or Saddam Hussein’s demands.

It is liberals like Mr. Friedman who reject the America loved by our Founding Fathers and every other generation of Americans preceding the mess known as the Vietnam War.