Yesterday an article from the Chicago Tribune was reprinted in our home paper written by a business woman named Rosemary Warschawski.
It was entitled, “A Letter To My Liberal Friends,” a letter she said was intended to explain to liberals what really is going on with conservatives that we apparently don’t understand.
“Conservatives,” she said, “feel their values and their way of life are under fire from a government that has stopped listening to them, that shuts them out of negotiations, that belittles their concerns, that is manipulating information to fortify a progressive agenda and that is constricting free speech to stifle opposition. I’m not writing exaggerations here. This is how about half of America feels.
“Half of America is frightened that all that they have worked for, that the people they cherish, that the very structure and the rules by which they have organized their lives and for which they have paid a personal price are in danger.”
My response as I read her words was that if you changed the word “conservative” to “liberal” and you wouldn’t have to change anything else in these two paragraphs.
I feel like my way of life is under fire from a government that stopped listening to me the minute George W. Bush took office. Worse, it was a government via the Supreme Court that put him in the White House against the will of the majority of the voters in the first place.
If that is not belittling liberal concerns I don’t know what is.
How about “manipulating information to fortify a conservative agenda that included starting a war of choice in Iraq, and then calling anyone who raised questions about it unpatriotic and soft on terrorism.
Do I feel frightened that everything I have worked for is in danger? You bet your life I do.
So, “my conservative friends,” I decided to write you a letter of response in an attempt to explain what is really going on with liberals that I don’t think you understand.
Let me begin by saying straight out that your idea of a way of life that makes America “America” is not even close to the way of life I and liberals like me believe makes this country great.
I believe a fire needs to be put under a business culture that has made it difficult for the best qualified woman to get a fair wage or the top job because for too many years any old man would do, a business culture where minorities still have trouble getting an interview because of the color of their skin, a business culture that believes it is morally acceptable for people at the top to make 300 times as much money as they pay their employees.
While you and others like you believe too many Americans want you to pay for what they want instead of working for it, the way of life I cherish believes there are too many Americans who work one, two, and three jobs every week and still don’t make enough to live on.
You, my conservative friends, may feel discarded and forgotten, unrewarded for working hard all your life, unappreciated for all you have done to make this country great, but the way of life liberals believe in recognizes that what you are really experiencing is the uncertainty of your position of privilege being challenged precisely because it is privileged in ways our nation can no longer afford or tolerate.
You obviously believe you are having to pay for bad choices others have made, but I want to remind you, liberal that I am, that you didn’t get to where you are and have what you have without help from people you never knew, people whose homes you never even see as you drive your Lexus across the interstate bridge that goes over their neighborhood.
And since you brought it up, I want to remind you that you are not the only person who has worked hard all your life. I’m thinking of the teachers who took low salaries in order to teach you to read and write, to do math, and to learn about the world.
I’m thinking about the custodians who names you probably didn’t know who cleaned the bathrooms you used without you giving their work a thought, or the waitress who has taken your order time and again without you thinking about her sick kindergartener she may have had to leave at home alone in order to come to work because her mother was cleaning your house or someone else’s and couldn’t help her.
What I am sure of, my conservative friends, is that what you think is true is mostly not because what you think is happening to our country is shaped by the fact that you are now one of the “haves” in the world who sees a few “have-nots” who don’t want to work or work hard and that has made you believe they are all like that.
I realize you are worried about the playing field being leveled to the point of absurdity, a point you are sure liberals are pushing the nation toward, but some of us think what is truly absurd is you thinking the playing field will ever be level in a country that has become a plutocracy.
You seem to think that liberals don’t believe in what you say is the “Judeo-Christian principle of individual liberty coupled with individual responsibility.”
Pardon me if I correct you here, but there is no such thing as a “Judeo-Christian principle of individual liberty.” Just the opposite is the case. In Hebrew and Christian scripture “commitment to the community” is the guiding principle of life together where all care for all all the time.
What you named is more accurately an Americanized version of a mythical “Judeo-Christian” principle.
Not that individual responsibility is unimportant to liberals. It is. We just don’t isolate it from the need for compassion that arises from the bond of community our Judeo-Christian tradition reminds us to honor and nurture.
I am glad, of course, that you want your taxes to be used for the common good, but I confess that after reading your letter I was not sure what you meant by that, given the fact that more than once you reminded me that conservatives like you don’t like paying for somebody else’s bad choices in life.
Didn’t conservatives go all in when they supported the war in Iraq that all of us are still paying for that? Is there a difference between your bad choices and others?
I want to say so much more to you, my conservative friends, but I will resist.
Let me just say in closing that I appreciate the invitation to move to the middle of something (I confess I wasn’t sure what that “something” is) and for all of us to start taking responsibility for what you think is real progress.
But in all honesty I have to say that I would be more inclined to accept your invitation had you talked a lot more about what you wanted to do to make that possible instead of spending your time telling me all the reasons why I and those like me are standing in your way.
Your disappointed liberal friend…
linnposts.com 