They’re much worse, and much more dangerous …
The myth of the Conservative-Liberal controversy
By Lee Salisbury
Jan 11, 2007, 09:45
How could anyone say the conservative-liberal controversy is a myth? Our nation has become red state versus blue state, right versus left, conservative versus liberal, Republicans versus Democrats. Some friends and families cannot discuss politics lest tempers flare and fights erupt. Anthony Signorelli’s excellent book Call to Liberty, Bridging the Divide between Liberals and Conservatives clearly explicates the factors behind this divisive polarizing behavior.
Many conservative pundits relish slamming liberals. The liberal response appears inept because liberals do not identify with charges the conservatives make. One of the conservative’s favorite authors, Ann Coulter, even claims that to be a liberal is to commit treason against America.
Former Republican Congressman Jim Gibbons of Nevada once declared, “Tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, hippie, tie-dyed liberals [in Hollywood should]… go make their movies and their music and whine somewhere else…. It’s just too damn bad we didn’t buy them a ticket to become human shields in Iraq.”
Listen to Rush Limbaugh on the radio or Bill O’Reilly on Fox TV and you’ll hear liberals called such things as ‘communists pinkos,’ ‘flower children,’ ‘terrorist sympathizers,’ ‘soft-on-crime,’ ‘tax-and-spenders,’ ‘haughty intellectuals,’ ‘elitists’ and so on. O’Reilly and John Gibson complain liberals demean traditional family values and even make war on Christmas. Fox’s Sean Hannity equates terrorism with liberalism in his book Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism and Liberalism. Michael Savage likens liberalism to mental illness. Christian fundamentalist preachers Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blame liberals for the 9/11 attack.
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