I suspect most Americans going about their daily lives seldom give much thought to whether they are liberal or conservative. Most people are likely a mixed bag when it comes to social and economic political ideology and if they vote at all, they tend to vote for people they like without regard to how that candidate’s stance on important social and economic issues will affect their lives. In the past, it may not have mattered too much who wins an election. However, this election is much different. We can’t afford to ignore low information nor disengaged citizens. The stakes are way too high. In the coming months, those of us who understand the consequences of this election must do all we can to inform the uninformed and to convince the apathetic among us to vote.
I’m a Christian liberal who spends a lot of time trying to convince others to elect candidates who will help to build the kind of society that I want to live in and a society where “everyone’s” children and grandchildren have the opportunity to thrive. Conservatives want the same thing for themselves and “their posterity”. Our idea of an ideal society differs.
As a liberal, I believe in a strong social safety net that prevents vulnerable people from starving and freezing in the streets. I believe in investing in the underlying welfare of all Americans by providing access to affordable healthcare, adequate education, clean air and water, roads and bridges, public safety, and emergency services. Liberals believe that a strong safety net empowers and enables people to work hard, support themselves, be inventive, pursue opportunities, and contribute their talent without worry and restrictions. Liberals believe that economic and social opportunities reduce crime, particularly crimes for economic gain. Conversely, conservatives believe that private businesses, churches, and individuals with a monetary incentive or an altruistic incentive are best suited to provide most of these services to citizens at market prices. They trust market incentives and religious sermons to ensure public safety against greedy unethical capitalists and petty criminals. In conservative thinking, the impoverished, fortified by religious underpinnings, should depend on the charity of others as opposed to a government safety net or resorting to crime. But just in case, they are willing to incarcerate impoverished law breakers and allow the market to punish unethical clergy and businesses. They envision a society where Americans pay the private sector for healthcare, education, roads and bridges, emergency services, and even those prisons.
These opposing views over human nature and the role of government fuel the fight over tax policies. This is why liberals fight to expand the safety net while conservatives consistently fight against funding food stamps, school lunches, public schools, improving prison conditions, moderating banking costs and debt relief, environmental protections, public health initiatives, and access to affordable healthcare. Conservatives genuinely believe these programs rob Americans of the incentive to work, the opportunity to be charitable, and stifle the competitive market’s ability to make bigger profits. Liberals believe these policies give hope, broaden opportunities, stem crime, and save lives.
Liberals believe that private sector monetary incentives or greed without regulations always lead to the exploitation of the vulnerable, the loss of innocent lives, and environmental hazards. Our country has a history of slavery, child labor, unsafe working conditions, and unfettered pollution that liberals worked to end. However, conservatives want to return to the days of deregulation. They are willing to sacrifice human lives and the environment for short-term profits because they believe poor working conditions, unbreathable air and undrinkable water, as well as low pay will incentivize “the fittest” people to work harder to improve their lives. In the conservative mind, a poor person remains poor because they are too lazy or too stupid to do better, so they rightly deserve their impoverished place in society. They believe that liberals want to rob from the rich to give to the undeserving poor through socially engineered safety nets. They believe some people are inherently better than others and that the better people deserve everything and the poor, nothing.
Liberals see people differently. They believe that every American is inherently equal and should have the freedom to choose how to live their lives without harming others. Liberals believe that children trapped in poverty have limited access to the very bootstraps for “pulling oneself up” that conservatives insist is a virtue lacking among the poor. Not surprisingly, a disproportionate number of the poor are from historically oppressed groups.
Conservatives fought integration, the Civil Rights Movement, and programs like Affirmative Action that opened previously closed doors to women and people of color. And they haven’t changed their tune, now fighting against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Conservatives have dug in their heels against a multicultural society, insisting instead that Christian males and some would add, “white” Christian males are the founders and rightful conquerors of this country and that they are therefore the only ones deserving of freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. They believe they have a mandate to return this country to the time when they made all the rules and held the highest positions. They pretend as if they are the only ones capable of leadership. They seek a return to the times when women, people of color, and LGBTQ people lived as second-class citizens.
Project 2025 is the blueprint made for Trump to follow if given a second term. His public denials are just more lies as proven by British undercover journalists in a taped interview of one of the authors. Project 2025 is designed to take this country to a place where the social safety net no longer exists and where women, non-Christians, and LGBTQ folks are stripped of their basic civil liberties and subjected to male Christian leadership. The idea is for women to be subjected to the men in their lives while stripping them of their reproductive rights and trapping them in marriages. The plight of people of color will be erased from the history books as contributors to the nation and as victims of a racist system that trapped many of them in cycles of poverty. LGBTQ folks will be stripped of their rights and their visibility. And immigration will be limited to white Christians. The disabled will become beggars. Any mention of climate change will be illegal. Liberal opposition will be silenced by the military. And the private sector market economy will be free of regulation to exploit workers and the environment as they take over healthcare, education, prisons, law enforcement, and infrastructure.
Those are the stakes in this election in a nutshell. Make sure your family, neighbors and friends know that sitting this election out can have dire consequences for them and the people they love. We must vote as though our lives depend on it, because it does.