Why do you think the lambasting is gratuitous?
First, plenty of conservatives are not especially religious, if at all. Second, plenty of liberals profess to be religious. Thus, the "invisible friend" is not especially apt as a point of ridicule.
Actually, most conservatives are embarrassed by Creationism, hate to be mixed up with bigots, and want to make clear that they personally have no love affair with guns. In other words, the ridicule is effective, and makes them self- conscious. If I could get people to be equally self- conscious about supporting PETA or Earth First, I will have accomplished something.
There is a reason why I moved from one side to another. I neither inherited my conservatism (my mother preferred Stevenson to Kennedy), nor did it come as a result of personal trauma (I was not mugged, for example). I did not profit from it particularly, in fact, I suffered for it at the time. I am not a close minded sort: I read the New Republic and the New York Review of Books, for example. I am perfectly capable of friendliness with liberals, and polite disagreement. But there is a time to every purpose under heaven. What you take as partisan attack, I think of as candor about a primary motive for moving from Left to Right. I never gave up wanting to leave the world better than I had found it. I just decided that liberalism was not the best way to pursue it, and that serious people, once they had grasped the problem, would leave it behind...... |
