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The America I Grew Up In, Now Gone
Ever notice that certain people lose their cool whenever a conservative claims that the America he grew up in is disappearing? It doesn’t matter whether the claim is made by Donald Trump, the Tea Party, the Chamber of Commerce, or the RINO squish brigade. Mere mention provokes apoplexy on the Left.
“You preferred the America where blacks were getting hosed in the streets?” they howl. “When gays were discriminated against and couldn’t live openly? You think those were the good old days? You liked it better when the poor, the elderly, the sick, and the uninsured were just abandoned and left to fend for themselves?”
Well, gee, I don’t know. When you put it like that …
For those who may be interested, when I say the America I grew up in is disappearing, I’m talking about the loss of social values and attitudes that even the Left used to revere: the right to speak your mind, a belief that hard work should be rewarded, a commitment to expanding economic opportunity, the right to be left alone.
These things are disappearing. Even the language used to describe them is disappearing. We observe it happening. We feel it happening. But if we say that it’s happening … KABOOM! … we find ourselves in the crosshairs of the social justice sniper unit.
Curt Schilling, come on down.
I won’t rehearse the details. You’ve probably read about them. Suffice it to say that, this week, a man lost his job for making political comments in public that the giant corporation employing him disagreed with. He got fired for his opinions.
There was a time, still within living memory, when the idea that someone could lose their livelihood for expressing a political opinion — or any opinion — was an outrage. And it was an outrage felt not just on the political right but by the political left as well. Indeed, it was felt keenly by every American.
We used to think that our freedom made us unique in the world. We had freedom of speech. We could express ourselves, and our political opinions, without fear of being shamed, suppressed, erased, or visited by the thought police. The Left used to be the fiercest defenders of this ideal.
Didn’t you see Trumbo?
Some will say, “Hey, ESPN is a private company. They can do what they want. They could fire the guy for not keeping his nose hairs in check. His public comments reflected poorly on the company.”
Maybe. But when you see Curt Schilling, you don’t think, “Hey, there goes the ESPN guy.” No, you think, “Hey, there goes that loudmouth right-wing baseball pitcher who had the fake blood on his sock.”
(Sorry about that list bit. I’m a Yankee fan.)
Last I checked, it’s not a crime to be a loudmouth, or to be right wing. Last I checked, dissent was patriotic. I always thought that patriotic dissent included the right to dissent from certain social orthodoxies and certain faddish opinions.
Admittedly, I haven’t checked in a while.
I’ve been fired. The reasons given were not terribly convincing. The boss was the boss, though. It was his company, so I took the hit and moved on.
But the guy that fired me didn’t take to the media basically to denounce me as a bigot. ESPN did that to Curt Schilling. And they did it for the purpose of signaling their total agreement with the belief that some opinions are no longer valid. The implication: The people who hold such opinions should be punished.
Does that sound like America to you?
It’s hard to believe, but there was a time in this country when liberals insisted that what a man did and said in his personal life had no bearing on whether he could adequately do his job. Unfortunately, that time is rapidly receding in the rearview.
Somebody has to say it.
Published in Culture
Because at present, no one is trying to force the atheist to do anything, and your willful blindness on this point is infuriating.
Brad – sorry – I’m not following you. ??
Really? So when the federal court ruled this week in VA that public high schools cannot prevent boys from using the girls bathroom and vice versa, that wasn’t forced on everyone? So it’s fine for the Left to push and push to subvert our culture but anyone who wants to preserve the culture is supposed to just shut up and let it happen? We’re not discussing issues here. You’re using half-truths and misrepresentations to go after social conservatives and Christians because they won’t fall in line with your desired policies.
Using courts, government “human rights” commission and social pressure via socia media like boycotts and villification, is not changing hearts and minds, it is force. Look at how the media reacts to jokes about Bruce/ Caitlyn Jenner. People don’t want to go against a tide like that so they shut up, because it’s easier. Of COURSE this is being forced on the culture, no one wants to speak out against it because of fear of having the professional grievence left go after them. If you can’t see that this pressure exists then you aren’t paying attention.
Agree 100%.
You know, it is actually possible that I don’t know what I’m talking about. I don’t watch television, so I miss a lot. I’ll google around but could you put in some links? I promise to apologize abjectly if I’m being too dismissive of something more threatening than the stories I’ve cited.
I’m not trying to be infuriating, Sabrdance. I agree that, at the moment, the left is targeting Christians in an attempt to make any faith-based objection to same-sex marriage socially unacceptable and illegal. And I agree that this is a bad thing—indeed, an absurd thing, given that Hillary and Barack have only been on board with SSM for, what, five years? Less?
It is true that, at present, no one is trying to force the atheist to do anything—the point is that agreement on the inviolability of the first amendment is actually more important (IMHO, anyway)as well as more possible than agreement on gay marriage. The bill of rights always invites us into thought experiments as a way of getting at the principle involved.
While it is not, at present, atheist bakers who are being forced to bake Jesus Saves cakes, liberals often invent horror stories of what might happen if conservative Christians “took over.” So why not take them at their word, and suggest that a good, strong first amendment —that is, one strong enough to protect that eek!-so-homophobic! Christian baker—might one day be the only thing standing between them and conversion-at-swordpoint?
Kate that point has been made to leftists over and over and over again. They never think that the power they use to force their opponents to do what they want can be turned on them. The reason for that is, it never is, well in America it’s not. The right doesn’t use the courts to push through social changes like abortion, or gay marriage. The right actually does believe in free speech while the left does not. The left is full of it when they come up with these fantasy doomsday scenarios that when the right takes over we will all be oppressed, like they did in the 80’s with books like The Handmaids Tale. It’s garbage, the left is for oppression the right for freedom. In the 80’s with the most conservative administration in my lifetime I don’t remember any oppression. I remember prosperity, big hair and bad fashion not oppression
The Handmaid’s Tale—that’s the book I was thinking of! Thank you!
Because I was a leftist myself, I am probably more optimistic than most that leftists can be brought to understand at least some things differently. I’m with Jonathan Haidt on this; isolating ourselves into bias-confirming echo chambers is a bad idea—something I sermonize about quite often these days.
Just a few days ago I was in a used book store and noticed several “right wingers taking over and destroying/oppressing America” type of books from the early 2000s. Seems extra silly now.
Apparently Margart Atwood intended the book to be about Islam, Way back in the 80’s which was very forward of her but chickened out and made it about the Christian Right, which if you think about the book makes much more sense if it was Islam.
Kate, You’ve made the leap from leftist to liberal, to which I’ve seen a lot of this lately, and I’m currently trying to get my sister to come over since she actually is Liberal BUT had leftist influence in her life that makes it difficult. But I have seen Former rock ribbed Liberal Democrats disgusted by the totalitarian behavior of leftists who claim to be on the same side.
We conservatives and liberals ( not leftists) are going to have to eventually join forces to defeat the “regressive left” as Dave Rubin has said. You need to bring more of your liberal friends to our side with your influence, we may not agree on everything but freedom is tops on our list and we need to focus on maintaining that freedom
Yup.