swing voter = values voter

It is one side's failure to understand the very real concerns of the other side - or even to acknowledge that the other side has legitimate concerns - that is at the heart of "elitism". Values are about being able to keep the community from falling apart. It's really that simple.

I am beyond angry at the way the liberals in this election have dismissed the 'less educated' or even the 'less successful'. And this from people who call themselves "democratic" (apparently without irony)!

It reminds me of every time I have tried to talk to a school administrator about problems at school. The answer was always the same - you gotta have a degree in education before your opinion can even be heard. You are "only" a parent and therefore you do not understand the situation. What is needed are experts, not a bunch of opinions based on nothing more than listening to a lot of frustrated parents and illiterate students. If there is a role for parents, it is only after the parent submits. If that role is to consist of anything more than mere obedience, that requires the parent first consent to be educated by someone with a degree - someone who is, unlike a mere parent, qualified to have an opinion about how to raise a kid.

In fact, if you are a parent who is going around having opinions without authorization, you are the problem. It's because of you that teachers must spend so much time educating themselves on how to shut you up that they don't have time to teach the little brats to read. You parents should send the kids to school already literate, please. (But, no - just because you are responsible for teaching them does not mean you can just keep them home).

These are the elite (self-proclaimed). They see nothing at all wrong or unnatural about a one-way flow of information. They know better and everyone else should just siddown and shuddup. And by the way, this is the same unpleasant sanctimonious self-righteous power-playing control freak attitude that has been around ever since reformers decided the working classes needed to quit spending their one day off lounging about doing nothing. It is this sanctimoniousness that inspired Jane Austen to invent (or describe) Mary Bennett. It's part of thinking yourself qualified to reform the world, and it is an attitude that can and will kill everything liberals ever stood for if it is allowed to go unchecked.

Liberals have repeatedly waged war when they should build alliances. They have repeatedly mocked instead of building trust. Liberals have dripped their contempt for the muggles - why bother to try to understand them when it's more fun to just bap them across the room?

The real reason people oppose abortion is because they have genuine and, yes, legitimate anxieties about sexuality and the damage that is done to their community. They do have a point. Liberals don't see any connection and don't feel any responsibility. To them, it's all about personal freedom and doing whatever you want to do. They're still thinking Murphy Brown has a right to go out and fix herself up a baby any time she wants to*. Skyrocketing teenage pregnancy rates mean nothing to them - except that it's proof (as if proof were needed) that abstinence only education can't work, won't work, never worked, never will work, HA HA HA mock those who don't agree with us! Did you know that more pornography is bought in red states than blue states? HA HA HA we're so better!

But I want to tell ya (and I am pro-choice) if you're down here on the streets and you care and you're involved and some girl you love (maybe even one whose own mother never finished her education because of a teenage pregnancy) is coming home from school with literature from the local pro-choice group hoping to use the high school kids as pawns in a larger war, and that literature is there to remind her that she has the right** to screw around as if she were an adult - well, it's hard not to get angry. Especially when that literature emphasizes that this girl also has the right** to ignore her parents and the right** to not tell them things and the right** to treat them as if they were the enemy, because in the "real world" poor parents are presumed to be, at best, ignorant - at worst, criminal.

I mean, the fact that an open, casual attitude toward sex might be really appropriate for prosperous people living in Europe - what makes anyone think that this transfers to any culture, anywhere? Have these people ever even been to places like Youngstown, Ohio?

Can we at least get universal health care passed before the liberals take it upon themselves to make our fourteen year old girls aware that they "have the right**" to decide when and whether they can have sex?

Liberals like the idea of parents 'just talking to' their daughters, because if you raise your child just right (and your child happens to be a sensible sort) that is supposed to be enough. They live in the world of how things ought to be, a world where children are absolutely trustworthy and mature enough to make the right choices. The liberals like to emphasize at every turn that a girl has the right to do whatever she wants without her parents knowing. That isn't adequate as a solution, not in a culture that glorifies sexuality and romanticizes rebellion. Not in a culture where, thanks to liberals, it's now considered racist to object to hot explicit lyrics equating female with whore, where pimp means cool and it's just harmless fun for elementary school kids to listen to songs detailing exactly what the singer likes to do to female bodies. And the boys get just as bad with all that shoot-em-up crap. And that's just the schoolyard itself. Liberals do not appreciate just how much money it costs to keep kids on the right side of the gate. Those with ten grand to spend on after-school lessons have no idea what ordinary neighborhoods are like between three and seven o'clock.

But they do not care, because affluent liberals not so secretly enjoy judging less affluent parents as unworthy and inferior. The parents who are most inclined to outsource childrearing to shrinks and summer camps and fancy "programs" for misbehaving teens have nothing but contempt for those of us who actually deal with our own damned kids***.

This isn't about sexuality. It's about management. Governance. Democracy. The right to have an opinion and be heard and be taken seriously. We're people, darnit. We have to live in this neighborhood and we are the ones who have to take care of these kids and if reformers are going to come in and have opinions about how people "ought" to raise their kids, as if we didn't deserve the right to raise our kids any way we think best, well, those reformers can at least not be totally clueless. But the Democratic party is populated by the self-righteous, and the rest of us are expected to just shut up and let liberals with good intentions**** do our speaking for us.

While I tend to side with the Democrats on the environment, on racism, on sexuality, etc. that is really changing, and it isn't because I don't care about racism or don't care about the environment or don't care about women's choice. But people cannot rely on incompetent leadership. We need leaders who actually take the time to understand the issues, and that includes understanding why there is opposition. We need leaders who will respond appropriately to what ends up being about management and governance.

The problem with affirmative action is that the real need today, right now, is not with college admissions. I don't know what life was like in 1970, but I tell you what we have today: we have a crisis in the K-6 classrooms. Anyone who has actually spent real time in real inner city classrooms vs. more affluent white classrooms can see that it's just absurd to let kids go to this school and then try to 'fix' the problem by giving them a college education later on.

And furthermore, stop thinking you can just throw more money at the problem and it will go away. Those of you who want to get credit for being all about fixing the world have to do better than that. You have to get off your lazy butt and come down here and see for yourself what is going on. More money won't do anything. What is needed is for those who care to wake up and get out of the bubble. Listen to the parents and the kids and what is really happening. If you don't know where to start, find that one teacher who is singlehandedly trying to fix the whole system and ask her. She'll tell you - if she isn't totally exhausted from trying to teach nine hundred third graders how to read while everyone else is too busy blaming (parents) and whining (about money) and crying (pooooor me, how can anyone be expected to teach kids like these?) and protesting (because they hate everyone else for not fixing things).

And, yes, there will need to be an adjustment made to the culture - to the values.

OK. Here's another one: people oppose medical research because the liberals and the scientists have been insensitive to the sacredness of life. I don't oppose medical research myself, but I can understand the concern here. It's a legitimate concern. It's real.

Anyone who wants the political middle to come back needs to understand that these concerns are based in the reality of living life in this world, the one we have - not the one that we could have someday if everyone would just cooperate. Anyone who wants to truly fix the problems associated with the environment, with sexuality and choice, with the right to die and the progress of medical research and the hope of real equality for all Americans, needs to come to understand these concerns. For four decades now the liberals have been pursuing their goals at the expense of mainstream Americans, who are expected to just give way and shut up. It is time for liberals to make allies of those who oppose them. Mainstream America really does know things you don't. Like why the same old tired stuff you've been doing for forty years isn't working. Ask us.

The conservatives' deep anxiety about the sacredness of life is not conservative stupidity. It is because they have a different approach to a question that is absolutely beyond being right or wrong - the question of why we exist in a seemingly random world. They do not believe that you can just say, oh, well there's no reason, it's all random. That is a logical answer, but it is not a thoughtful one. If you really believed it all to be random, you'd go mad. This is the real meaning of "there are no atheists in foxholes" - the quote is not about how people secretly believe in God so much as it is about people being forced to confront their own cognitive dissonance (something that often happens when one must face one's own mortality).

I think conservatives are the ones being logical when they point out that medical science ain't going to provide a meaning in life. Liberals think that logic will somehow lead to the eradication of death, and to that end they are willing to sacrifice the very idea of "the sacred". But liberals are the ones who haven't thought much about it. Why do we even have this idea of "the sacred"? Anyone who cannot answer that isn't in much of a position to say what we can or cannot sacrifice in our quest to make the world a more scientific place.

The conservatives' deep anxieties about female sexuality are not all about being hateful. Some conservatives are, some of them are not. (The same can and is said about liberals.) There are reasons beyond that. You don't have to agree with those reasons. Understanding is not the same as agreement. But when you can understand their viewpoint without feeling rage, then and only then will you be able to make meaningful progress toward real freedom for all people - regardless of gender.

And, yes, the feelings of men do count too. Even narrow insecure ones. Unless you are going to kill all the hetero white men, you have to include them in your world. It's an either-or. You cannot have equality without everyone being equal.

I am in favor of full equal rights for homosexuality, but it's not my pet cause. I tell you what, though - if it were, I would spend a whole lot of time trying to find out why conservatives are so afraid of homosexuality. Instead of thinking you know - why don't you find out? Because I can see that "oh he is just afraid of his own sexuality" is not adequate. I see issues with boundaries. I can see why a logical person might be afraid of boundaries being blurred or destroyed. I would check that out further. If it's about boundaries, then the homophobic person might be perfectly okay with the existence of homosexuality once the gays stop belittling the desire for clearly marked boundaries and instead start finding ways to build fences that everyone can live with. Isn't that the very essence of the saying good fences make good neighbors?

Because, let's be honest - the 20th century destroyed a lot of boundaries, and that's anxiety provoking. Don't attack them for being anxious. We're all anxious. Anxiety is a normal and healthy response to all the craziness that has happened.

The conservatives' deep anxieties about values and the so-called "work ethic" has a basis in reality that the liberal position has failed to comprehend time and again. It is not success or material prosperity that brings happiness. The struggle is the point. Achievement without having earned it means nothing. This is the message we need to be teaching our children.

The self-proclaimed elites need to grow up. No more major elections are likely to be won until they do. Those who want to be granted the respect and authority we grant to leaders have to actually be a real leader. I want them to all stop throwing tantrums because nobody wants to follow them. I want them to accept the challenge. It is a responsibility, not a privilege.

If you are a liberal, use compassion and understanding. Liberals are so fond of thinking they are good at that. It's time to demonstrate that.

Oh, and quit using the word Republican as if it were an insult. That just sounds so stupid.

update: if you think I sound like a Republican, please think about what that suggests. Why do you suppose "flyover country" has been turning steadily red? Answer: because the Republicans have been recruiting former Democrats - by listening to our issues. It has given them power over America - power that we need the Democratic party to be challenging. Especially right now.
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* To rich people, babies are apparently things you go and appropriate from whatever poor nation is selling, and there is no sympathy whatsoever for the kid who wants to know the truth about who s/he really is, because we all know that kid who is so so beloved so how dare you upset your mother by asking such a question?

What? I can't say that? Why can't I say that?

**these "rights" are based on the typical liberal assumption that any parent who does not agree with them on issues relating to childrearing are not qualified to have an opinion, and must be overridden - forcibly if needed.

***Unfortunately, less affluent parents must find a way to get through without relying on that staple of the spoiled upper middle class type: bribery. It is out of our price range.

So, no "do what I say, or else you can't go on that trip to China".

And no" get good grades or else I won't buy you the car you want."

And no, "if you do that one more time I'll take your cell phone away."

From what I have seen, I would guess that most reasonably affluent parents today would be absolutely defenseless against their own teen if they were for some reason stripped of their bank account.

****yeah, that's a dig at how Barack Obama appropriated to himself the right to speak on behalf of the white working class - and then told us what our problem "really" is, insinuating that he knows us better than we know us. "Marxist" false consciousness? Liberals missed how angry that made some people. (Conservatives didn't.)

Not that I believe Barack Obama has good intentions. I've seen pictures of the slums in his district.