2009 November 3It’s all a matter of your point of reference. Many liberals see their ideology as the default center. They believe that they represent middle America. The far left see themselves as moderately left. From that perspective, the moderate right seem conservative and the actual conservatives appear out on the fringe. It would be like living in Anchorage all your life and wondering how those crazy people in Seattle can stand the heat.
Don’t forget that liberals think they’re the standard and norm in this country.
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Ideology is really relative stuff. The terms are always changing and mean different things to different people. David Horowitz is fond of pointing out that the “liberal” politics of John F. Kennedy are identical to the “conservative” politics of Ronald Reagan. And that the politics of those called “liberal” today would have been called radical when promoted in the ’60s.
In my own life as an ex-leftist who often has to describe his new politics to his friends and family I get confronted with especially skewed ideas of what it is I’ve become. Some seem to think that now that I identify as a “conservative” it means I hate gay people. To that my response is pretty basic: meet my friends Mark J. Koenig and Cynthia Yockey. I think they can explain how a support for gays is compatible with conservatism better than I can.
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