I hate being political. I hate the separation it causes between people of different ideologies. I hate the blind despising it causes towards those of a different political party than your own.
For four years at Whitworth I have remained apolitical for the sake of peacekeeping, my own sanity and conflict avoidance. I’ve sat amongst friends while they called members of my own ideology retarded, racist, Nazi, uneducated, uninformed, morally inferior, anti-feminist, elitist and many other less than pleasant names.
Since I am from Alaska, almost everyone I know pestered me about Sarah Palin and Ted Stevens during last year's elections. They would ask me where I'm from in Alaska, in the hopes that my answer would be Wasilla and that I would join them in the glee of bashing her. They would start a long-winded speech about how Palin loves shooting wolves from airplanes for sport, how she's ignorant because people claimed she said she could see Russia from her house and how Stevens is an ancient, corrupt politician who deserves to be hung out to dry.
After a while I just stopped responding to their questions. I stopped answering, not because I didn't have answers to their claims, but because they wouldn't ask me about Palin or Stevens for my insight or opinion. They asked me simply as a precursor to judging and bashing these people and issues.
The intolerance for any viewpoint other than their own was so impassioned that it was hard at times to be cordial while spending time with them. They were my friends, though, my closest friends. They spent hours loathing the intolerance of some fundamentalists, never stopping to think that being intolerant of those who are intolerant is still intolerance.
I am conservative. I am educated, I am not racist, I am not anti-feminist, nor am I any of the other things they claim that members of my ideology, and thus myself, are. The characterization of conservatives as mindless drones does nothing for this country except keep genuine debate from occurring between opposing views.
I do not hate members of different classes than my own, different races than my own. I do not pine for their demise. On the contrary, I desire for every American to succeed. I don’t care if you are Hispanic, Asian, female, male, rich, poor, I want you to succeed. And that is what other conservatives also desire.
I would almost say that those who desire for members of other races, classes and genders to not succeed are not only not conservative, they are not American. For this is what America was founded on, that every person in this country should be given and equal right to work hard and labor for their own success. However, in America you have the luxury of a level of free speech nearly unparalleled in the rest of the world, and that is why there are racists.
Certainly there are conservatives who are uninformed, just as there are liberals who are uninformed. We don't like it when this sect of our ideology is played out as the majority. Don’t liberals also dislike it when the most asinine of their leanings are publicized? We don’t want to be characterized by the weakest of our group. It is lazy thinking to make a blanket statement that conservatives are racist, rich, white bigots. It is simply untrue.
In all my years at Whitworth, the most closed-minded and intolerant people I’ve met were those claiming to be the exact opposite. They did not think introspectively about ideas different than their own, they discarded them as loony and stupid, not even worthy to be entertained by their far superior mindsets. It was an elitism the likes of which I have never experienced in any other group of people.
It's possible that my liberal friends won’t like me after this article. I hope they look beyond it, because I truly love them, regardless of what their political leanings are. If not, so they say, those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.
For four years at Whitworth I have remained apolitical for the sake of peacekeeping, my own sanity and conflict avoidance. I’ve sat amongst friends while they called members of my own ideology retarded, racist, Nazi, uneducated, uninformed, morally inferior, anti-feminist, elitist and many other less than pleasant names.
Since I am from Alaska, almost everyone I know pestered me about Sarah Palin and Ted Stevens during last year's elections. They would ask me where I'm from in Alaska, in the hopes that my answer would be Wasilla and that I would join them in the glee of bashing her. They would start a long-winded speech about how Palin loves shooting wolves from airplanes for sport, how she's ignorant because people claimed she said she could see Russia from her house and how Stevens is an ancient, corrupt politician who deserves to be hung out to dry.
After a while I just stopped responding to their questions. I stopped answering, not because I didn't have answers to their claims, but because they wouldn't ask me about Palin or Stevens for my insight or opinion. They asked me simply as a precursor to judging and bashing these people and issues.
The intolerance for any viewpoint other than their own was so impassioned that it was hard at times to be cordial while spending time with them. They were my friends, though, my closest friends. They spent hours loathing the intolerance of some fundamentalists, never stopping to think that being intolerant of those who are intolerant is still intolerance.
I am conservative. I am educated, I am not racist, I am not anti-feminist, nor am I any of the other things they claim that members of my ideology, and thus myself, are. The characterization of conservatives as mindless drones does nothing for this country except keep genuine debate from occurring between opposing views.
I do not hate members of different classes than my own, different races than my own. I do not pine for their demise. On the contrary, I desire for every American to succeed. I don’t care if you are Hispanic, Asian, female, male, rich, poor, I want you to succeed. And that is what other conservatives also desire.
I would almost say that those who desire for members of other races, classes and genders to not succeed are not only not conservative, they are not American. For this is what America was founded on, that every person in this country should be given and equal right to work hard and labor for their own success. However, in America you have the luxury of a level of free speech nearly unparalleled in the rest of the world, and that is why there are racists.
Certainly there are conservatives who are uninformed, just as there are liberals who are uninformed. We don't like it when this sect of our ideology is played out as the majority. Don’t liberals also dislike it when the most asinine of their leanings are publicized? We don’t want to be characterized by the weakest of our group. It is lazy thinking to make a blanket statement that conservatives are racist, rich, white bigots. It is simply untrue.
In all my years at Whitworth, the most closed-minded and intolerant people I’ve met were those claiming to be the exact opposite. They did not think introspectively about ideas different than their own, they discarded them as loony and stupid, not even worthy to be entertained by their far superior mindsets. It was an elitism the likes of which I have never experienced in any other group of people.
It's possible that my liberal friends won’t like me after this article. I hope they look beyond it, because I truly love them, regardless of what their political leanings are. If not, so they say, those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.
Johnson is an opinions columnist and a senior majoring in journalism. Comments can be sent to elizabeth.johnson@whitworthian.com.
7 comments
It is very difficult for me not to respond back with my own jokes about Obama. I have resigned myself to just not giving my opinion that often unless seriously asked. Even then I might not. Thanks for writing this. I'm glad someone finally had the guts to come out and talk about this because it's something that needs to be considered by everyone on both sides of the aisle.