On Liberal’s Acceptance–So Long As It’s Acceptable

I have many liberal friends, an inescapable consequence of attending a post-secondary education institution in Boston, pursuing a post-college degree in Boston, and obtaining a professional job requiring a high degree of education in New York.  While I obviously don’t share most of their viewpoints, they and I have one thing in common:  we all accept each other’s views for what they are–wrong and/or misguided–but listen to them anyways hoping for those rare moments where we can persuade each other to come to our senses.

Where the collegial relationship collapses–as it so often did in college, law school, and likely at the workplace–is when this idea of acceptance or, heck, even tolerance, disappears.  I like to think that anyone who knows me well understands that, although I am seriously conservative, I take my conservatism in good humor.  There are far too many, those on both ends of the political spectrum, who take themselves way too seriously–the same people whose discussion of politics have little impact in the national course of events because they are fans in the stands and not players in the field, yet critiques, slander, and denounce those very players, the politicians, whose political views translate into actual political difference.

The problem, though, is not just in personality but also in ideology.  For all the claims of acceptance the liberals espouse, far too many are shockingly intolerant.  It is a lesson I so disappointingly learned in college and law school:  people of all race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, and mental and physical ability must be fully accepted, embraced, and fostered, but not people of  all political ideology.  Acceptance applies to all except the conservatives, who  need be shunned, mocked, ridiculed, and ostracized.  Far too often, many liberals remind me of Henry Ford who famously proclaimed, when asked about colors for his company’s line of cars, “Any color–so long as it’s black.”

Extremes on both sides are often guilty of the same crime:  insinuations without evidence; mockery without respect; even lack of acceptance without willingness to tolerate.  On the last front, though, at least I take comfort in knowing that the conservatives distinguish themselves from many liberals in one important way: lack of hypocrisy in the core ideal.  I don’t go around telling the world I accept and embrace everyone–then do so only when it’s personally agreeable.  And I certainly don’t go around supporting Barack Obama’s message of change and acceptance, then denounce him for inviting Reverand Rick Warren to the inauguration because the Reverand’s views are, sometimes, not always, disagreeable.  Rather, I, like most other conservatives, believe certain things–most controversially, certain lifestyles–are simply wrong and refuse to accept them, even if I tolerate them as unavoidable elements of the modern society.  We don’t pretend we’re accepting.

The justification for some liberal’s hypocrisy, presumably, is that what they embrace are “right” and “just” while the conservative ideals they reject are “wrong” and “immoral.”  But the conservatives share the same view, only in the reverse.  The liberal rhetoric, then, isn’t really about acceptance and intolerance but rather about right and wrong–notions on which America apparently splits half way.  For the liberals to couch their message in “acceptance,” a tone holier than what it really is–a disagreement of ideas–helps explain why seven years in a liberal educational environment in the most liberal city of the most liberal state have made me no less sympathetic to their cause.

I consider myself educated and, perhaps more importantly, sufficiently clever to intellectually analyze most current events.  Reasonable and intellectual  minds can disagree.  I don’t appreciate the presumptuousness of some liberals who feel the need to emphasize anyone with half a brain would be a liberal.  But since I consider myself to be a sympathetic and caring person, I am most offended by those whose message of acceptance is accompanied by an exculpatory footnote in small print, “Except as to those who disagree.”