I’ve always been slightly put off by the whole conservative/liberal labeling we’re constantly subjected to. For one thing, it’s so overly simplistic to divide people into two camps, like that whole red state/blue state charade, as if we were all these one dimensional robots who fit into little boxes cut out by our political puppeteers. What I find even more disturbing is that these simplifications have allowed some less than genuine minorities with disproportionate power and media access to hijack broad concepts to fit their own selfish agendas. Yes, I’m talking about self-proclaimed “conservatives.”
In her April 2 column entitled Europe on the cheap (They changed the web title to “Washington, Chrysler – no diff”), San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders mockingly claims that smaller, more fuel-efficient cars are nothing more than a liberal fad to emulate those European socialists.
Now, with gasoline in the $2 per gallon range, Obama’s brainstorm for a successful business model is to create “the next generation of clean cars.” Get it: GM and Chrysler are in trouble because their cars weren’t liberal enough.
(emphasis mine).
She goes on to claim that the only reason Europeans are driving smaller cars is because of higher gas taxes and prices, inferring that if they could afford it they would all be driving hummers. Aside from the fact that it’s pretty preposterous of her to mind-read what Europeans are yearning for and that there are a whole host of other reasons (e.g. infrastructure, public transit systems, street & parking space sizes, a history of hip small cars like Fiats, Beetles and Minis, etc) besides a general comfort with smaller vehicles (my Mom in Germany LOVES her Smart car) why Europeans don’t dream of bigger cars, it raises the question: What’s liberal, and what’s conservative?
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Conservative…
photo: Sven Eberlein
Not so conservative…
photo: Debra Baida
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Somehow it just doesn’t compute for so-called conservatives that conserving resources could possibly be conservative. They don’t get that saving money and living a modest life is conservative. It’s so hard for them to wrap their brains around the reality that unregulated markets left to greedy speculators is anything but conservative. After eight years of “War is Peace” rhetoric it’s painful to see Republicans still tie themselves into knots to sell us on their twisted logic. As with so many other concepts and ideas that have been co-opted by these self-styled “conservatives” (see patriotism, religion, or American dream) I’m ready to let my long repressed inner conservative self come out of the closet and let it shine in its full glory.
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Conservative…
photo: Ian Klein
Not so conservative…
photo: George Steinmetz
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See, to me being conservative means taking good care of things that have been there for a while. And while I admit that in terms of a lot of human issues like gay marriage or immigration I am unabashedly liberal, when it comes to mother nature I am all for keeping her the way she always was.
Conservative…
photo: Debra Baida
Not so conservative…
photo: Ed Kashi
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I know it’s really confusing to those who’ve been calling themselves conservative that there are people who they label as liberal who are actually conservative whenever they’re not feeling liberal. It’s called nuance, and with our new president who is intelligent enough to judge each issue on its own merit it’s making a huge comeback. It’s hard to retrain my brain after 8 years of “you’re either with us or with the terrorists,” so I’m going to shock myself just one more time. Because let’s face it folks, with shrinking resources on a warming planet, the days of our wasteful ways are over: We’re all conservatives now!
Conservative
photo: Debra Baida
Not so conservative
photo: Debra Baida
