Monday, April 23, 2007

Calling You Uncivil Is a Compliment

Via Brothers Judd blog comes this terrific column by Andrew Klavan.

The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don’t have to lie. I don’t have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don’t have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine. I don’t have to say that everyone’s special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don’t have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don’t have to pretend that Islam means peace.

Of course, like everything, this candor has its price. A politics that depends on honesty will be, by nature, often impolite. Good manners and hypocrisy are intimately intertwined, and so conservatives, with their gimlet-eyed view of the world, are always susceptible to charges of incivility. It’s not really nice, you know, to describe things as they are.

This is leftism’s great strength: it’s all white lies. That’s its only advantage, as far as I can tell. None of its programs actually works, after all. From statism and income redistribution to liberalized criminal laws and multiculturalism, from its assault on religion to its redefinition of family, leftist policies have made the common life worse wherever they’re installed. But because it depends on—indeed is defined by—describing the human condition inaccurately, leftism is nothing if not polite. With its tortuous attempts to rename unpleasant facts out of existence—he’s not crippled, dear, he’s handicapped; it’s not a slum, it’s an inner city; it’s not surrender, it’s redeployment—leftism has outlived its own failure by hiding itself within the most labyrinthine construct of social delicacy since Victoria was queen.

Typically, when I go to a lefty site, I start out trying to be polite but make points that undercut their arguments and/or assumptions about conservatives, Christians, Republicans, etc. It usually doesn't take more than a couple of comments before the rudest language imaginable is used at me and then someone attacks me as being "rude" for bringing up the truth. This hasn't been an isolated incident at, say, Echidne of the Snakes. It happens on most lefty blogs.

But as Klavan says, I don't feel the need to lie. It's a refreshing thing about being a conservative that I don't feel compelled to put pretty faces on unpleasantness. Therefore, I call Indians Indians, not Native Americans (since I'm a native American, as well). I call a swamp a swamp, not a "wetland." I call black people black, since that's the term I was brought up with, not "African American" which seemed singularly snotty and exclusive (what about the black woman from Panama I knew? She was neither African nor American and resented that classification). I call bums bums, not "homeless." I call handicapped people handicapped, not "differently abled." I call normal people normal, not "non-disabled."

Why do this? Because it is paternalistic to change the names of things in an attempt to find a less offensive term, rather than dealing with whatever is the problem in the first place. Maybe "Indian" isn't an accurate description, but "Native American" excludes all of us born in this country who aren't of Indian descent. Calling handicapped people handicapped isn't putting them down; calling them "differently abled," as if such silliness changes anything important about their lives, is demeaning. And calling a swamp a wetland doesn't make it less a mushy, bug-infested, nasty place just because you changed the name.

The problem, as Klavan points out, is that conservatives still tend to want to be liked and will therefore back down after stating an unpleasant truth. That's why you see Republicans apologize frequently for the most minor of offenses but never see Democrats do this. Democrats know the rules of engagement and how to use and abuse them. They don't mind breaking the rules if it suits their aim. It's time for conservatives to stop apologizing for telling the truth. The truth hurts sometimes and adults should be able to take it.