What do they want?

LARRY ANDERSON
Larry Anderson

I am conservative, so I know what conservatives want. We want mature leadership that does the hard work and gets the job done. We want security, opportunity and fairness. We would like respect for our history, our way of life, our remarkable governmental design, and our opinions. We long for peace and quiet.

There. Easy-peasy. Is there a problem?

Conservatives are uncomplicated because we are content if left alone. We don’t try to fix things that aren’t broken, and we don’t go out of our way to complicate the lives of others. We mind our business. We’re the maintenance folks quietly mopping up.

It is true conservatives are slow to anger, but that’s because we don’t react emotionally to every cause — genuine or invented- — that comes down the pike. We like to look at things objectively, take time to process, and come up with thoughtful remedies that don’t cost an arm and a leg.

We like to help others but like to see people help themselves too. We prefer independence over dependence.

Conservatives like a partnership between government and the taxpayers who provide the resources for more programs, agencies and departments than you can shake a stick at. We prefer accountability over license.

We like a lean government that asks for our help, not one that puts itself first and makes it clear it knows what is best for everyone. We understand practicality does more in the real world than idealism does in Utopia.

We like to see those responsible own it. What’s wrong with saying, “We screwed up, but we’re working hard to fix it.” Conservatives like sincerity, but we easily see through phoniness. Being conservative doesn’t mean we are gullible. We’re just quiet.

Well, most of us.

You may have noticed liberals are different than conservatives. The big question is what do liberals want?

To answer that fairly a distinction must be made first. Many liberals have no problem with the American design but would like to see it exercised more fairly for everyone. These are earnest people who feel it is government’s job to balance things out, not society at large which may be too busy or too indifferent to be as fair as liberals would like. These are social justice folks who practice what they preach, and they preach a lot.

These liberals will vote Democratic and express their dismay at the very existence of Donald Trump, but they won’t actively work for his failure either. They understand that the American system is based on political sharing; that is, no single party should have power all the time. That is the brilliance of our design. You may thank the Founding Fathers now.

Those who are the problem are on the far left. What they want is different than what the rest of us desire for our country.

The far left sees America as a failure. To them the country is xenophobic, racist, sexist, greedy, materialistic and too hopeless to be salvaged. They want to break the country down and rebuild it into a socialist wonderland where the preceding labels would somehow no longer exist.

Their cover is social democracy, but their ultimate goal is to drop that annoying democracy part. Channel Bernie Sanders.

These lefties want their government to control health care, income, social services, education, and the very details of one’s life. The bigger the government, the better.

They want to control the media and the type of information we receive.

They would re-craft our history. It offends them.

They want a one-party system and would end the principle of majority rule. Their belief is it creates an oppressed minority and is, therefore, imperfect. An omnipotent government, theirs, would be better.

The far left longs to end capitalism which has built wealth for millions and paid for social programs. Not everyone is wealthy, you see, and that is plumb wrong. Being equally poor would be better. Channel Cuba.

What the far left wants isn’t hard to grasp. What some don’t understand at this point is how serious lefties are and how hard they are working for a new America unlike anything you can imagine. You might be, but shouldn’t be, startled by their progress.

Where the far left fails is in its understanding of the strength built into our political design. That and the misunderstanding that Americans would be content with someone else’s definition of social justice and our utter contempt for sameness imposed by an outdated political view and fanaticism.

Larry W. Anderson is a retired educator, author and life-long Northwest Missourian.