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Letter to a Conservative

Submitted by Ken Watts on Sat, 08/07/2010 - 14:11

ONE MEMBER OF THAT small, but elite, group who read the daily mull has posted a rather long comment at the end of my response to John Wall's request for a divorce from all us "American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al."

It just means that we aren't willing to discount conservatives or exclude them from the process.

You can read that comment, here, and post your own comments and responses as well.

Like most readers of the daily mull, Chris is polite, civil, and respectful of others.

Also, Chris disagrees with me.

Because Chris is my kind of person, speaks in a civilized tone, and makes some interesting points, I'm going to respond here.

Of course, I disagree with Chris as well.

So here goes...

Dear Chris,

You begin by referring to the John Wall email, and my response:

I have heard both his and your arguments before, so forgive me for taking this somewhat simple view of the discussion.

Already I'm going to have to take issue with you.

No offense, but I honestly don't think you really have heard my arguments before.

I say that because the rest of your comment makes it seem that you haven't heard my arguments this time around.

Let me explain, with some help from you:

...it seems that the argument from the Conservative perspective is more of "leave us alone and let us do this ourselves", while the argument from the Liberal perspective is, well, "do not leave us because we cannot do it without you".

I won't argue about the conservative perspective right now, but I have to say that your characterization of "the liberal perspective" doesn't fit anything I've ever heard a liberal say—and I know a few liberals.

More to the point, it doesn't resemble anything I said to John Wall.

Liberals are inclusive, and, as the current administration has proved, we will often go the extra mile to achieve a bipartisan solution.

We like compromise, we like including everyone—even conservatives—in the decision making process.

But this isn't a sign of neediness.

It's a sign that we believe in democracy, that we think a solution which involves all the players is generally a better solution than one that doesn't.

This doesn't mean that we couldn't run the country better if there weren't any conservatives (come on, you think the same about us).

It just means that we aren't willing to discount conservatives or exclude them from the process.

Next: Conservative Motivations and Taking Responsibility