I’m not a fan of labels. Labels divide us and I believe we do better as a community when we seek commonality and win-win solutions. Progressivism embraces a view of scarcity – a zero-sum game in which the rich got so on the backs of the poor – a world in which one can’t win without someone else losing. It pits rich against poor, white against black, male against female. Relying on on such a worldview, progressives naturally seek to divide us into neatly defined identity groups based on race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. and to embrace policies that benefit certain favored groups at the expense of the “others”.
I believe conservatives on the whole reject such “identity politics” and instead seek equal treatment under the law for all people regardless of identity. We seek to maximize opportunity – not necessarily outcome, and we believe every person is important and valuable, based not on what group they belong to, but on the very fact of their being human.
So if I reject labels and believe they are divisive, why would I create a blog called Conservative in Seattle? Why would I do so, knowing that such a name will trigger so many of my neighbors, and will necessarily set me and those who share my values at odds with the majority of Seattleites and other urban progressives? I do it because words matter, and we have a right to call ourselves whatever we want.
And by the way, the idea that “words matter” will be a recurring them of this blog.
Owning your label is important. It is empowering and it is an expression of self. Just as the LGBTQ community adopted the word “queer”, and just as those who identify as non-binary insist on being called they/them, those who believe in liberty, free markets, limited government and fair and equal enforcement of the law can and should claim (or reclaim) the word “conservative”. If we fail to do so, our communities will define it for us, and in so doing, they will define us as people too.
Dictionary.com defines prejudice as: “unreasonable feelings, opinions, or attitudes, especially of a hostile nature, regarding an ethnic, racial, social, or religious group.” I find it interesting that this definition fails to include political beliefs when such prejudice is in our faces every day. Imagine how offended my progressive neighbors would be if one was to assume that because a person is gay, or black, or practices a certain religion, that he or she (or they) is evil. However, my neighbors here in Seattle openly call conservatives evil every day – assuming everyone around them is in full agreement. It’s time to call them on that.
If we don’t stand up to such prejudice and say “Enough!” then it will not end. If we don’t stand up and proclaim that we are for free markets not because we are greedy or evil, but because history has shown that freedom and choice benefit the maximum number of people at the lowest cost, and move our entire society forward, then our neighbors will continue to assume we are greedy. If we don’t explain that our love of liberty is based on a deep and abiding respect for our neighbors as human beings with inherent value, they will continue to accuse us of using empty words and outdated concepts to advance a cynical, self-serving agenda.
It is up to urban conservatives to define who we are and to call out prejudice whenever and wherever we see it. We can start by proudly embracing the term “Conservative”.