Coming out Conservative in a Liberal World:

A plea for civility and level-headed debate in search for common ground

I’d like to start this article with a brief comparison.

On either side we have well-known and accomplished actors. One of these supported a movement that harbored suspected rapists while unlawfully occupying private property. This same actor currently, publicly supports a candidate who once said that most women (upward of 60%) have rape fantasies and who spent his honeymoon in a country with an oppressive one party regime responsible for killing tens of millions of its citizens.

The other actor went to a rally to hear out the views of a candidate who he did not yet claim to support, a candidate who is hispanic and the child of political refugees from an oppressive regime and whose platform is based around the idea that the current political system is stacked in favor of those who control the levers of power and against the average American.

What a difference perspective makes.

I was moved to write this after reading an article by the son of actor #2, Harry Dreyfuss, about the reflexive criticism his dad, Richard Dreyfuss, received for attending a Ted Cruz rally. In the article Dreyfuss points out the hypocrisy of a movement that claims to preach tolerance yelling down a person for hearing out the arguments of someone just because most of Hollywood doesn’t support that candidate (or political party). The implication is that if they criticize him for hearing out Cruz without the filter of media soundbites then it means their own criticisms of Cruz must be based on nothing but hearsay. How could his detractors know otherwise if they so frown upon just hearing the counter arguments except through their own self-imposed filter. (Actor #1 in the example could have really been almost any celebrity but I had Mark Ruffalo supporting Bernie Sanders and the OWS movement in mind).

This story resonated with me because I felt I could relate to it personally. This in turn drove me to start putting my thoughts down to paper.

A Tale of Two Millennials

Here’s another story to give as an analogy:

On one side we have a Millennial who grew up in New York City, went to college in Toronto, and lived abroad for over half a decade. This person works in tech and is an avid hiker, a general lover of the outdoors, and has thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail. This person also grew up listening to NPR on the radio and regularly listens to their podcasts today.

On the other side is another Millennial. His parents owned a small business and are gun owners. He is a subscriber to National Review, listens to Ricochet podcasts and among his favorite books are The Law by Bastiat, The Road to Serfdom by Hayek, and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. He supported McCain in ’08 and Romney in ’12.

Both of these paragraphs describe me (disclaimer: for the last two elections I actually was not able to register my votes as I was living abroad and, for some reason, every single absentee ballot I applied for after the first primary in 2008 was lost in the mail). For most of my life, most people I’ve met only find out about the first part and I rarely talk about the second (see reaction to Dreyfuss’ attending the Cruz rally or recent death threats to a conservative high school student for reasons why). Later in my life, over the past few years when I began to “come out” as a Conservative/Libertarian it was not uncommon for my pronouncement to be met with mixed degrees of shock and, sometimes, near disgust, even from people whom I’d known for years. People would ask my (half-Chinese) girlfriend behind my back if I was racist after finding out my political affiliations. They would ask me with eyes wide, in disbelief, “Why??” You see for them, I appeared on the surface to be a reasonable, open-minded, and generally good human being, the person from paragraph #1. So how could I also be that second person? Most had never met a Republican face to face and I didn’t match up with the stereotype of the knuckle-dragging, racist, sexist, homophobic, polar bear killing, white trash, resistant to change, money-bag banker image that they’d been conditioned to believe a Republican was.

The Conversation We Could Be Having

I bring all of this up because I feel like the dialogue in recent years has become so diluted by rhetorical platitudes, demagogues who flood their messages with so much poison, that people have become more focused on bogeymen and straw men than on the ways to actually improve the country.

When people Tweet about a $15 minimum wage, why is nobody asking why 15 is the magic number? Why 15 for the whole country? If there’s no effect on hiring why shouldn’t it be $20/hour, or 50, or 100?? The right isn’t against an increase in the minimum wage because they don’t care about poor people but because they have legitimate concerns about its effectiveness (and even question its original intent) in lifting these people out of poverty. When people talk about gun violence why does nobody question why cities with strict gun laws like Chicago and DC have some of the highest rates of gun violence in the country? Why does nobody question the practicality of an Australian style confiscation in a country with over 300 million guns. We ridicule Trump (rightly) for saying he’ll knock on doors and make 11 million illegals leave the country but think that somehow knocking on 100 million doors and confiscating the property of law abiding (and armed) citizens will somehow be an easy to enact magic bullet. How is a NYT article saying that it’s not the outcome that matters but the effort not roundly ridiculed? How does nobody question the fact that the party that makes out income inequality to be the great challenge of our time also happens to have political monopolies over the states and cities with the highest income inequality in the country (particularly when cost of living is taken into account, e.g. NY and California). When people talk about giving the government more control over our healthcare, Internet, and education, why don’t we question the judiciousness of giving more power to an organization that used over a billion dollars to build a failed website, that sells guns to criminals who eventually use them to kill Americans, and that everyone on both sides agrees is bought and paid for by a small number of powerful individuals from our society (the dreaded “establishment” and billionaire class)? How can the same people that cheer Obama’s presidency as a success, at the same time support Sanders who not only points out that Obama’s employment numbers are at worst a lie or at best a mischaracterization (and thus his presidency hardly the success he touts) but wants to continue and double down on the same policies Obama has put in place?

Maybe the base of the right comes off as angry and intransigent because every time we turn on the TV we have to watch a president who morally equates us with apocalyptic, Iranian sponsors of terrorism, commercials where politicians on the right are depicted pushing the elderly off of cliffs, and Hollywood celebrities (and the president) who repeatedly tell us we’re on the wrong side of history and mock and dismiss our opinions. These are not examples of civil debate, it’s demagoguery.

Our concerns are serious, legitimate, and in many cases they are shared with people on both sides of the aisle.

Did anyone on the left ever think that one of the reasons conservatives on the right had such a big problem with Obama’s pen and phone, his use of executive action and unelected regulatory agencies, was not just because we didn’t like his policies, but also because if you give the authority for someone like Obama to do whatever he wants, you also give the authority to someone like Trump to do whatever he wants? If a president Obama can unilaterally sign an executive action legalizing 5 million illegals, what’s stopping a president Cruz from signing an executive order giving the IRS “prosecutorial discretion” to not enforce tax laws on people making more than $1 million per year? The constitution restraining overreach is not a bug, it’s a feature. It’s a system designed to put Rule of Law over Rule by Man. It’s not just an out-of-date annoyance that stops your guy from getting done what you want him to get done. It’s to stop anyone from getting something done that a plurality of the country does not agree with thus preventing misappropriated and discriminatory uses of force (of which the government has a monopoly over) by any side.

The Common Ground?

I’d like to share some anecdotal stories from my own life to illustrate how I have formed my world view. I am aware of the risk of using this strategy, but please observe that this is not an effort to convert or convince. My hope is just that maybe it can help establish some common ground.

On Small Businesses

My mom owned a restaurant in New York City for over 30 years. She was a successful small business owner in an industry that has a 90% fail rate of businesses within the first year of being open. In 2012/2013 she had to sell her business because Obamacare was going to squeeze her, the city over-regulated her, and the only organizations that could keep businesses like hers operating were those with much more resources or with “friends” in the health department and the city council. She had offers for financial support to keep going but they all backed out after the 2012 election because the regulatory and financial environment would remain too unstable. Rules that were gradually accumulated over the 30 years, put in place with the goal of protecting workers and consumers, were being applied discriminately by city regulators trying to meet cash-raising goals (or to line their own pockets) and felt small businesses like my mom’s were the easiest targets. The only people that could survive in such an environment were ones with political connections in the system. The rules put in place to help the little guy, drove the little-guy, my mom, out of the city, and with it all the jobs she had provided (with pay that had been consequentially far above the market rates in the city).

On Employment and Housing

One of my younger brothers recently decided to follow in our mother’s footsteps and learn his way around a kitchen. He has been working in restaurants for the past few years since graduating college and last year moved out to LA for some opportunities there. He’d never left the northeast before on his own so it was a risk but the opportunity seemed like a good one. Things went south with the company that owned the restaurant he was working for and they started shortchanging him. Despite experience in high profile kitchens like Tavern on the Green in NYC, finding other work in LA turned out to be difficult. Opportunities (especially for someone with a social security number) were slim. When he finally was able to move to another restaurant, no one could afford to let him work more than 30 or 40 hours a week even though he needed the extra money after spending a lot on the move. He also wanted to work more hours in order to build his skills, but this wasn’t possible because the restaurant couldn’t afford it. Why couldn’t they afford it? Because local laws required the restaurants to pay high overtime rates and supply health care after a certain number of hours. Margins in the restaurant business are notoriously slim and they couldn’t afford the extra cost, nor risk paying him under the table (for work they needed him to do and work he wanted to do, even at normal rates). Meanwhile, looking for housing was almost impossible in LA. He spent months searching and was repeatedly cheated by agents just looking to collect application fees, which was more profitable (and less risky due to law suits, etc.) than actually renting. His only (temporary) opportunities came through Airbnb (which has been under assault recently in places like NY and California). Compare this to the experience of my other brother who lives in Charleston, SC. He needed a job for the summer and, despite having no past experience, had two opportunities at restaurants immediately. The workforce was diverse (black, whites, latinos, etc.). He could work overtime to get enough money for the upcoming school year. He needed housing for a couple months and found it no problem.

(Speaking of South Carolina, did anyone happen to notice that when there was a racially motivated shooting in this Republican, Southern state that whites and blacks joined together for a peaceful march to remember and mourn those lost? The community and the state also worked together to address, through an established political process, its legacy of racism. Later the families of the victims came out, motivated by nothing but their religion, to forgive the perpetrator of the hateful crime that took away their family members. Meanwhile in places like Ferguson, Baltimore, and New York City, in response to unfortunate incidents that were dealt with according to established judicial and legal norms (as later vetted and confirmed by the Obama Justice Department) there were cops targeted for murders and assaults, private establishments destroyed, and day-to-day commerce stopped by protesters in the streets and at local businesses. On one side we have something that resembles orderly civil society and rule of law, the values that have created the relatively prosperous and just world we live in today. On the other, we have something that resembles more of a Maoist Cultural Revolution than anything that could ever be considered “civil”.)

On Healthcare

Back to my mom for one last anecdotal example. In 2005 my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had a rare and particularly aggressive strain of the cancer attacking her body. Luckily a drug had recently been developed and put on the market in the US in the prior 6 months. This drug, called Herceptin, would be able to directly attack this aggressive cancer, eventually saving her life. If she had developed the cancer even a year earlier she would not have survived. Even more shocking though is that if she had contracted this disease in almost any other country, she also would not have survived. When my mom was going through chemo, there was another patient at the treatment center receiving radiation for colon cancer at the same time. This person was Canadian. She had had to mortgage her house and cash out her family’s savings in order to raise the money to come to the US and get the immediate treatment she needed. She would have had to wait another 6 months to a year to receive the same treatment at home, time she did not have. Another friend of my mom’s meanwhile also developed breast cancer around the same time. She lived in the UK. She had to borrow money so that she could get care outside of the UK’s NHS since she did not have faith in the level of service given by the public system. Meanwhile, the nurse who was treating my mom’s friend soon was diagnosed with breast cancer herself. She had the same aggressive strain as my mom and needed the same drug that my mother received. She sued the British government for two years trying to get access to Herceptin. Unfortunately two years was too long and the woman eventually lost her fight against the disease.

Ironically, my mom would end up also having to take out a second mortgage on her house during the time she was fighting cancer but it wasn’t to cover her care, that was done by her insurance. It was instead to help protect her business from the assault it was under during the time she was away. Not only were the regulatory burdens so high, but in the time she was sick, her business was audited by the IRS. The government agent, after occupying one of the most lucrative tables in her restaurant for over a week (the audit was done onsite at this table, making sure that no customers could sit there, which cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars for my mom and her employees) and pouring over the 7 years of records she was required to keep for just such a review (interesting that the IRS itself is unable to keep records this old), arbitrarily decided that she owed in the six figures in taxes. No reason or calculations given, just the demand that she pay.

I’m not saying any of this to necessarily convince anyone to support Ted Cruz or the Republican party (I haven’t decided yet who I’m going to support in the upcoming election) or even to necessarily make an argument for specific policies. I’m sure there are plenty of stories out there of previously uninsured people for whom Obamacare was beneficial. The overarching point I’m trying to make is that there are good reasons for conservatives like me to believe what we believe. There are reasons other than just reflexive partisanship or racism (as is often accused) for our distrust of government. I’m sharing these stories to paint a better picture of what’s going on in the country and to outline the kind of debates that we should be having. Whenone side of the argument is silenced, openly ridiculed, threatened, and denigrated, it makes us all worse off. There are reasonable arguments to be made for why one identifies as a conservative. There are also legitimate arguments to be made about why the left has its own problems to face and for which the other side might have reasonable recommendations. When Bernie Sanders tells you that the Billionaire class is taking advantage of you and he’s going to make them pay, he’s not also telling you that the U.S. already has the most progressive tax system in the world (our rich pay a higher percentage of government revenues than in almost any other country) or that we already tax our corporations significantly higher than anywhere else. He doesn’t tell you that you could tax every person that makes more than $10 million 100% percent of their income and it barely even fixes our deficit, let alone provide enough money to pay for college tuition and healthcare for all.

The fact is that we all, except for a small minority on both sides, want to see everyone better off. We all want more job opportunities, less homicides (by guns or otherwise), more equal opportunity under the law, more access to better healthcare, more access to better education, less discrimination (based on race, class, or religion), and more opportunities for people to make money for themselves and their families. Most of the time, we just disagree on how to get there. However, if one side goes into the conversation from the starting assumption that the other side is racist, hateful, stupid, and evil then we’ll never be able to start a conversation in the first place. Finally, if you allow one side to monopolize the conversation over you, then you cede that side ultimate control, until you’ve forfeited not just the right to think for yourself but eventually even one of the most fundamental rights that have made us who we are today, that of free speech.