Elvis: Just consider the left’s opinion of most conservatives. Listen to how they talk about Newt Gingrich, Reagan, Bush, etc. Now compare that to how conservatives talk about people like Tom Dashiell or Bob Kerrey or Al Gore. Let’s leave Clinton out of this, because he’s an aberration, and because people’s hatred of him have nothing to do with his politics - they hate him because of his perceived personal flaws. In the same vein, I’d leave Nixon out of the equation.
When a conservative disagrees with Al Gore, they’ll almost certainly say that his ideas are naive, or that he doesn’t have all the facts.
When Liberals disagreed with Newt Gingrich, they portrayed him as a heartless bastard who wanted to help his corporate ‘buddies’ at the expense of the poor.
Or think about how the issues are framed:
If a Liberal says that the minimum wage should be raised, how do conservatives argue with him? They’ll argue the merits of the issue. That higher minimum wages will cause unemployment, slow growth, etc.
But when a conservative says that minimum wages should be lowered or abolished, the argument often goes ad-hominem. He’s heartless, cruel, doesn’t care about people, etc. As a libertarian, I can vouch for that. I’ve had to learn not to talk about such things at work-related parties and such, because it gets personal immediately.
Liberals never seem to want to believe that a conservative can be just as caring and charitable as they are, and just disagrees with them on how the world can be made better. They see caring compassion as being THEIR turf, with the conservatives being the heartless bastards who don’t care about anyone but other rich people.
But hey, this is an undefinable argument, and you can dig up anecdotes to prove either side all day. All I ask is that you consider what I’m saying with an open mind.
And if that’s not enough, just read anything Stoidela posts. She has raised personal hatred of conservatives to a new level.
