A Concern for Conservatives

(March 4, 2006)  I am way too busy to do all the research necessary for this critique, but I want to express my opinion anyway. I could be wrong, or I could be exaggerating my belief. In a nutshell, I think the conservatives, especially in the conservative press and blogosphere, are starting to focus more on attacking liberals than on proclaiming positive values and virtues.

For example, today’s “scoop-du-jour” for the conservative media involved blasting the wacko geography teacher in Denver who open criticized George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech and compared him to Hitler. A student recorded the spiel on an MP3 player and sent the file to a conservative news agency. Another example is Ed Lasky’s story on “Myths the Beltway Journalists Peddle” in The American Thinker. Lasky makes his point in a superb fashion, so I do not criticize or rebut his content. While these are just two illustrations that come to mind, all one has to do is read the table of contents of e-publications like NewsMax, WorldNetDaily or The American Spectator to draw the same conclusion. A daily perusal of blogs like PowerLineBlog, HughHewitt, MichelleMalkin or AceofSpadesHQ further supports my contention. Rush, Sean and Laura also make the case.

I am concerned that the conservative movement seems to be heading down a reactionary path. Admittedly, liberals make themselves easy targets with their daily smorgasbord of idiocy and bias. Dan Rather’s forgery faux pas, Algore’s vituperations, Hillary’s shrillaries and Harry Ried’s vacuities literally beg us for derision. But that’s the point. It has become far too easy for us to pick them off as the predictable liberal sideshow dangles them in front of us. The harder work is to continue pumping substantive concepts and stories about conservative values into the public arena.

I would like to see more stories and articles which validate freedom, stress the triumphs of capitalism and glorify the heroes of democracy. Tell me why the war on terror is right, not just why the opponents of the war are fools. Tell me why we need a strong military, not just that the San Francisco council which opposes the military is made up of idiots. Tell me why we need to lead the world, not just that the leftists’ accusation of American arrogance is outrageous. Tell me why this is the best nation in the world, not just that liberals are stupid for thinking otherwise. Tell me about celebrities who are good, not just the ones who are bad. And when you tell me these things, don’t just spout off. Use history, charts, graphs, statistics, quotes, reason and logic. Sure, this demands hard work. So what? I work hard at my job, too. When we spend most of our time beating down the opposition, we forfeit valuable energy that could be used to strengthen conservative ideals. We say that the liberals are driven by their hatred of Bush. We must not be driven by our hatred of liberals.

I do not speak in absolutes. Certainly, many of the positive articles to which I refer exist in the conservative media. I do speak in terms of trends and perceptions. Yes, we must answer our enemies and counteract their lies, but we must not substitute these rebuttals for positive proclamations of our values. Today, the liberals run academia. We must out-academe, out-educate, out-work, out-research, out-think, out-write and out-publish them if we are going to out them from their entrenched positions. They may not have facts and logic on their side, but they do have tenure. That may be strong enough to insulate them from our broadsides without a convincing demonstration to the world of our superiority of ideas.