You Don’t Have To Be A Social Conservative To Be A Republican

10 Nov, 2004 by John Hawkins

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Michele Catalano over at A Small Victory is one those “security moms” we’ve heard so much about. While Michele isn’t comfortable with everything in the conservative agenda, particularly the social issues, she is concerned about national security and she’s repulsed by the bile spewing Michael Moore element of the Democratic Party. I think that’s a pretty good summary of why she ended up in the Bush camp this year.

Well, Michele is a little worried. After losing the election, she’s a little worried about where the country is headed and the whole what the “moral values” thing means for people like her.

Here’s part of her post yesterday on the subject,

“I’ve been writing about the “vocal minority” the past few days; they would be the group of Americans who have suddenly crowned themselves the morality police. This is not a slam on Christians because this group is made of up of much more than Christians and they have less to say about religion than they do about how you and I should live our lives.

Perhaps the reelection of a conservative president has emboldened them. They see the perceived red state/blue state divide as a chance to rush in and push their mandate on everyone.

…One person in the comments on my Simpsons post wrote:

“I wonder if the producers of the Simpsons and a lot of other so-called entertainment vehicles are sorry they have these installment in the can already. There’s a new clean wind sweeping the land and vulgarity and violence are out.”

….What exactly is your agenda? Would you like television to consist of nothing but Little House on the Prairie reruns interspersed with Davey and Goliath clips? Do you want to ban everything you don’t like or that doesn’t fit your moral ideals? What about radio? Let’s just get all the disc jockeys off the air and let muzak fill the airwaves! Movies? I’m not sure what you want there. You don’t like Disney movies because the Disney company likes them gay folk too much. And if we discount anything rated PG13 and up, that doesn’t leave us with a whole lot of options, does it? Perhaps that’s what you want, for our only entertainment options to be the ones you would choose.

….Your “new wind of morality” will always be just that; a wind. You will never gain the full force hurricane blasts you want to sweep us up with because you keep forgetting one thing: America is about freedom. We have the freedom of choice, the freedom to listen to crappy satanic music, the freedom to watch movies where people get stomped on by alien monsters, freedom to watch tv shows that ooze sexuality, freedom to underline all the smutty parts in a good novel. You may think you have the right to take that all away from us, but you don’t and you never will.

….I’ll make my own utopia, thank you. If I want to lock myself in my house and watch every vulgar, violent movie imaginable while I reminisce happily about my divorce and commiserate with my childless friends, there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop me. You can look down on me through your holier-than-thou glasses, but the only time I’m ever going to give you any notice after this is when I’m throwing rocks at your glass house.”

Here was my response to that in the comments section of Michele’s post…

“I want to lock myself in my house and watch every vulgar, violent movie imaginable while I reminisce happily about my divorce and commiserate with my childless friends, there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop me.”

That’s why we’re going to have to put you in a morality camp for your own good, dear. Once you’re in there, we’ll have you watching Davey and Goliath and listening to the uplifting music of John Denver and the Osmonds until you get so filled to the brim with happiness that you’ll never want to watch any more filthy cartoons featuring pantless ducks (thank you Mr. Walt Disney for that perversion) or whatever it is you crazy kids like to watch on the smutivision these days.

Also, dear, remember when we take you away, we’ll be doing it out of love. If only your heathen idols like Brittany Aguilera loved people so much they’d stop getting naked on MTV and would sing songs about how girls who wear make-up will end up being prostitutes. Now that — and putting people in camps for their own good — is what love is really all about…

;D”

I even toyed with the idea of offering Michele a detention camp waiver if she’d “straighten up and fly right” =D…

Yeah, yeah, I know I was being a bit flip, primarily because I wasn’t totally sure how serious she was. But today, she touched on this topic again and I learned she was really worried about this…

“Where do people like myself go in this overblown gang fight? People like Michael Totten or Roger Simon, who do not define themselves as red or blue, tree hugger or God-fearer, north or south, heartland or LaLa land. Everyone seems to be moving to their side of the line, but I don’t know where to go.

It’s not that I really want to pick a side. But it’s strange feeling disinvited to both parties. If the right really wants to embrace the notion of Jesusland, even to a lesser extent, I’ll be pushed out of the fold. I’ve already been pushed out of the left and although that was mostly of my own accord, the door still hit my @ss on the way out.

It’s not easy being in the middle. You hear the slings and arrows buzz past you from both sides. While you’re ducking the stones being thrown from the left, you get hit in the head with a bullet from the right.

If I had to absolutely make a choice, if America was physically splitting down the middle and one side was blue and the other red, I think you know where I would go. The left has become too ugly, dark and dangerous to ever think of siding with them again. I’ve seen reasonable people slide so fast into the depths of vitriolic insanity that I they became unrecognizable within mere weeks.

…(N)ow I’m suddenly a target not just for the left, but for the right. I’m being told I must fight the good fight, rethink my stance on gay issues, abortion, the definition of family and religion. I’m seeing the first hints of alienation. They got my war on terror vote. I was part of them for this whole election cycle, working side by side to get Bush elected. And now that the election is over, I’ve been given a put up or shut up demand. Bad enough to get the bullets from the opposing party, I’m now being eased out the door of my own.

….As much as my Republican compatriots are trying to drag me into their lair, at least they’re not coming to a street fight with nuclear bombs. But, hey, whatever gets your point across, right? Means to an end and all that. Personally, I’d rather hang out with the folks in Jesusland than with people who think the idea of starving all red staters to death is funny. But that’s just me.”

First of all, in all seriousness, I know that some people are worried — at least just a little bit — that the left is correct about conservatives. That we’re really glassy eyed, Taliban wannabes, who want to turn the country into a theocracy with big mouthed Pat Robertson running the show. But the “fundie wacko” is just another one of cartoon characters the left has created because they can’t compete in the arena of ideas with conservatives.

Sure, there may be a few goofs who believe Harry Potter is some sort of subversive way to teach witchcraft to children and that Barney is really a tool of Satan, but they’re very much on the fringes of the Republican Party.

And are there people who truly think the Simpsons are eeeevvvviiillll? Probably there are somewhere, but I watch the Simpsons and South Park, enjoy listening to rap records Bill O’Reilly gets angry about, truly love a nice, gory, slasher flick and I’ve never felt uncomfortable, even around the hardcore social conservatives in the Party. Maybe that’s because P.J. O’Rourke was right when he said,

“I’m a registered Republican and consider socialism a violation of the American principle that you shouldn’t stick your nose in other people’s business except to make a buck.”

Even if PJ wasn’t right about the principle in every respect as it applies to Republicans, everyone is probably familiar with the places where conservatives break with it like abortion, gay marriage, and a few other assorted odds and ends.

So are people who disagree with social conservatives welcome in the GOP? Absolutely….although I won’t make any promises about supporting you if you run for President or Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee =D Everything else is pretty much up for grabs though =D

Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of conservatives aren’t buying into this whole “If you didn’t vote for our guy in 2000, we want to secede to get away from you because you’re an idiot” meme that the left has been touting since the election. I mean I don’t look at Wisconsin and go, “Those cheeseheads voted for Kerry so we must bomb ‘Lambert field’ & destroy any building occupied by a Democrat and sow the earth with salt so nothing will ever grow there again!”

My view is that if we lost in a state, it’s because conservatives didn’t do a good enough job explaining our positions. We’ll try again and hopefully we can turn states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and dare I say it — California, red next time. Even if we don’t, that doesn’t make them bad people just because most of the folks there didn’t go our way.

So Michele and all the other moderates out there who went Republican this time around, it’s great to have you on board, and watch all the “vulgar, violent movies” you want…..but if you ever make fun of Davey and Goliath again, it’s into the “sinner camps” with you =D.