Hi. I have a favor to ask. This is for everybody out there who calls themselves a conservative or who calls themselves a liberal.
Stop. Just stop.
I know, i know, those are terms that have come to symbolize where you might stand on the political spectrum, but do they? Do they really? They’re adjectives, they descibe a facet of you. Nobody is completely conservative or completely liberal. All of you are combinations of both of those words. You might be conservative in your spending habits and liberal in your love for your family. You might be liberal in your time spent with social groups and conservative in who you choose to be close friends with.
The point is, we’re all both liberal and conservative, all the time, every one of us. And neither of those words really corresponds to a political party. I knew someone who was a lifelong member of the Republican party—always supported their candidate, went to state and national conventions, and he was one of the most overall liberal people that i knew. He helped the community, kept his workers employed, and welcomed any guest into his house. Friendly, outgoing, willing to learn, open to change. In contrast, i met someone once who declared that she was a proud liberal but held the party-line beliefs to the letter and never varied in her outlook. In short, she was very conservative, but a Democrat.
So i don’t think that it’s a failing to say that you have a liberal or conservative viewpoint in regards to politics, but i think it’s disingenuous to believe that you are one or the other in all things. You might be conservative in how much olive oil you want on your pizza but liberal in how much cheese you want on your nachos. And the more we realize that we all share ideologies across a wide spectrum, the more we’ll reject the polarization and us-versus-them attitudes that seem to pervade all the narratives in the media.
And speaking of the media, i’m so tired of this trope of “the liberal media” being a scary awful bad thing. Of course the media is liberal. It has to be liberal. Being liberal in reporting means looking at all sides of an issue and finding the truth. If you claim that your media outlet is conservative, then that tells me that you’re not looking at the whole picture—that you’re investigating only the side that you want to investigate and ignoring whatever storylines might take you down an unwanted path. And if you do that, you’re not reporting. You’re looking at the world through a narrow, conservative lens, and that’s not news, that’s propaganda.
Sure, media organizations have biases, and they will prioritize certain news stories over others, but if any news outlet doesn’t approach every news story with a liberal outlook, then they won’t be getting the whole story. And we, the citizens, can’t afford that. We rely on the news services to inform us but more importantly, we rely on them to hold the powerful to account. And as more and more money accumulates in to fewer and fewer hands, we will not survive without a robust liberal media.
So, if you call yourself a conservative, embrace those things that you’re liberal about. If you call yourself a liberal, embrace those conservative aspects of your life. But better yet, just stop using those terms. Realize that those you disagree with on some things, you probably agree with on others. The “other side” isn’t evil. The “other side” is not looking to destroy your way of life. In fact, there isn’t even an “other side.” U.S. politics is not a sporting event. We don’t have to revel in “our side” winning and “their side” losing. We are all on the same side. What we’re arguing over is who the coach will be.
So please, see everyone as complex, multi-faceted human beings. See them as having every single right under law that you have. See them as equals. See them as agreeing and disagreeing and having views that you like and others that you dislike. See them as conservative and liberal and moderate in anything and everything. See them as loving their families and striving for success and happy to do good in the world. See them as you see yourself—a big bundle of confusing, contradicting chemical reactions that make you you. We all need to live together in some way and if we can strip off the labels, we can probably get along a whole lot better.