By myself and other authors, organized by Author and Subject
Contributed by guests to this board...
A memorial section devoted to my departed dog, Clover.
My Personal Rants
These and archived rants are the property of Kara Wild, copyright 2000, 2001, 2003 and may only be used with her expressed permission.
Talkin' 'bout My Generation
May 25, 2003
The New York Times magazine is hyping the latest evidence of a so-called conservative movement amongst members of my generation ("The Young Hipublicans").
What marks a nouveau conservative? Disrespect for entrenched authority! Love of individual rights and responsibility! Less enthusiasm for casual sex! Love of Reagan, war, and uncritical patriotism. And in some cases a heap of ignorance and nostalgia for things that never were.
First off, I have a confession to make. I am a closet nouveau conservative. Yes, it's true, all that cheerleading for the Democrats was just part of my clever disguise. My plan is to spread the word of God and tax cuts, but mostly tax cuts. And that abortion is murder. But killing cows for fast food isn't. Same with killing anyone Middle Eastern who looks appropriately "sinister," or a Frenchman.
So what makes me a conservative? I don't believe in casual sex! Oh sure, I believe in the right for two unmarried people to have sex, but that they should be in a committed relationship, use the utmost caution, and be prepared to accept any consequences. But sleep around with a Joe you met ten minutes ago in the hotel parking lot? Hell, no! Therefore, I am a conservative, since the true mark of a liberal is one who supports sleeping around anywhere, any time, with anyone.
Another thing: I believe in individual rights and responsibilities! I don't believe in "My gender... color... ethnicity... deprived childhood... made me do it." I get annoyed by hyper-sensitivity toward perceived racial, ethnic, or gender slurs. Sometimes, it is just a misunderstanding. Also by over-strenuous attempts to be all-inclusive that manage to do the opposite, like textbooks that wipe out any mention of Japanese internment camps because it might "upset" Japanese-Americans, or standardized forms that make you lump your complex background into a single ethnicity. (As an American Jewish female of English-German-Dutch-Russian decent, I am White.) At least they finally got smart and added a Multi-Racial/Ethnic option.
And yet, even though I've outed myself to you all, I have this strange urge to keep calling myself a liberal. Maybe it has something to do with that affinity I have for preserving the environment, keeping the media out of the hands of mega-conglomerates, punishing corporations that do wrong, getting rid of off-road vehicles large enough to be patrolling the desert of Iraq, keeping abortion safe and legal, advancing the equality of women everywhere on earth, and providing programs for those who want to work toward a better life, but weren't fortunate enough to be born with a trust fund.
My point? This article, or rather the disturbing plethora of conservative groups featured within, busy crafting a sunny, soft-conservative message palatable enough for today's youth, presents liberalism as overly-permissive, intolerant in its very tolerance, and reactionary. When in fact, liberalism is far more complex, as are the people who believe in it.
What would these kids say if they learned that many, probably most, liberals agreed that people should take responsibility for their actions, or that a woman has the choice to work or stay at home? They might have the same slack-jawed reaction as this one anti-abortion college student with whom I debated recently, when she found out I wasn't some "'f it feels good, do it" pushover with no complex or logical reasons behind my beliefs.
Liberalism had its roots in the 1930's and 1960's, but it would be unfair to forever define it by those eras. I would bristle at a 50 year-old former hippie telling me how to feel about war, sex, or patriotism, even though I wear the liberal mantle just as proudly, because we came of age under very different experiences. Older liberals' views of sex were shaped by having to grow up in the relative conformity of the suburban 1950's, where girls who got pregnant in school were treated like pariahs and gender roles were more restricted. Conformity plus restriction equals fewer choices, and it must have been maddening for comfortable, well-educated kids to live with these limitations. Then the birth control pill became available and BOOM! Sex became a way of flouting the old order, changing the rules. By contrast, members of my generation have more choices available, so sex is no longer regarded as a tool for change. We grew up learning about the consequences of unprotected sex, and that choice meant being able to say "no" as well as "yes".
In the same way, an old and a young liberal might feel differently about war. A fifty year-old faced the possibility of being drafted, or watching a loved one get drafted, to fight a war that few understood or believed in. Therefore, war to him or her is a product of corrupt old men in power, something to be avoided at nearly all costs. Whereas a young liberal... well actually, I don't know of too many young ones who are in favor of war, either. People who bothered to watch anything other than the FOX News channel know that the Bush administration lied about Iraq having Al Qaeda ties and stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, I can understand how members of my generation, as a whole, might have a different view of war. There is no draft, so we are in no danger of being called into combat. The conservatives who waved their big flags from their big Hummers never had to suit up to fight for what they believed in. Our experience has been with small, controlled skirmishes, like a month in Kuwait here and a few months in Bosnia there. Our wars are fought with "kewl" computers, like so many video games available for sale. We've never faced the pain of mass-scale war, nor the possibility that our frighteningly vast military could meet its match.
So while conservative groups would love to define liberalism by its 1960's roots, in reality many young liberals, while seeking to preserve the basic tenants of tolerance and equality, have moved away from some 1960's practices. Analysts have pointed out in numerous articles how much more "conservative" the young generation is by the fact that we don't drink in everything our liberal forebears say and that many of us believe in self-imposed restrictions. To which I would reply that unless someone defines him/herself as a conservative, he or she isn't necessarily a Young Republican in waiting. I am a liberal; I'm just not that kind of liberal.
Similarly, these kids aren't that kind of conservative. In fact, the great irony of this so-called movement is that it is producing just the sort of conservatives that the Republicans in power could come to dread. They scorn the Southern-based, Trent Lott brand of conservatism, supporting immigration and same-sex unions. In fact, these conservatives are so open-minded, they might just might be... liberals!
Hey, why not? If it's true that they've internalized the messages of Reagan and the gun lobby, it's also true that they've heeded the messages of liberalism. They can scoff all they want at the petty restrictions imposed by political correctness, but the fact is they've embraced the heart of liberal ideology: tolerance and choice. If they choose to stick with the conservative label, they might find themselves clashing repeatedly with the Old Guard of Southern religious right-wing Republicans. The Old Guard might then either get ousted for good, or force the nouveaux conservatives to look elsewhere. The Democratic Party...?
I started this rant prepared to defend liberalism from the narrow, constricted POV being peddled by conservative groups, and end it feeling strangely encouraged. The religious right-wing may be in power now, but there are signs that its hegemony won't last, even if conservatism does become a dominating ideology. If a person is less traditionally "liberal" for not supporting everything the Old Guard once believed, then it is also true that today's "conservatives" are less conservative. Groups containing ideologies have to be prepared to change with the times, or risk becoming irrelevant. Liberalism is not failing because its members do not feel the same as they did over thirty years ago; it is adapting.
I suppose the only thing that disturbs me is that the conservative movement seems to have co-opted the energy and open-mindedness that has traditionally marked liberalism. But then again, we might not be seeing the whole picture here. The liberal movement could be just as strong as it ever has been, but since so many consider "college student" to be synonymous with "liberalism" anyway, to report on that fact would be... boring. Whereas this conservative movement seems fairly new, just as Republican control of government is new, and therefore it is worth noting. The author of "The Young Hipublicans" admits early on that the last campus conservative movement coincided with Reagan's election, and more liberal movements followed a Clinton election. Maybe it's just a matter of gravitating to where the "winners" are. In which case, maybe the election of a Democrat will re-energize liberals of all generations.