This is number 151 in the blog series, “My Writing Life.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
MITCH TOLD ME I was one of the “good liberals” because I didn’t keep trying to change him. I knew there was no chance of ever changing him, so I didn’t try. In fact, that made me a very bad liberal, not a good one. I went about trying to mitigate the damage he did instead—through my writing and my votes. In fact, I voted just this week.
And Mitch wasn’t a bad person. He bought all my books, for example—not to read, but so he would have an autographed copy in case I got famous one day. To Mitch, everything was based on the payback he could at least potentially get from it. Don praised him and that behavior as being a great businessman. Profit motivated.
Mitch and I agreed on many fundamental concepts. Courtesy was good. Rudeness was bad. But our general principle could be overturned. For example, Mitch drove from Eastern Washington to Seattle. He exercised common courtesy on the road. Someone signaled to change lanes, so he slowed a little to let them in. Common courtesy. But when he signaled to change lanes, a driver sped up and cut him off.
“If that’s the way they’re going to drive here, then hell if I’ll let them in!”
From that point on, no Seattle driver deserved his courtesy. He did not consider that he had become part of the problem.
In Nathan Everett’s (Wayzgoose on SOL) duology, City Limits and Wild Woods, I explored these moral dilemmas from a different perspective. Gee Evars, a man without a memory, struggled to determine what would make him a better man, and his high school work crew often engaged in conversations with him. On one occasion, he overheard the boys talking about an upcoming basketball game.
“Those guys are mean on the court. And the refs give up and stop calling them on the fouls. I hate having to play them in the first game after we get back to school.”
“What are we going to do?” Jim asked. He was another of the basketball players who had joined the crew.
“I say we give it right back to them,” Lonnie said. “I’m tired of getting kicked around the court by them.”
“I agree,” Barrett said. “I’m not going to put up with it. They play nasty, we play nastier.”
Gee stepped into the conversation and asked if they considered themselves to be ‘nasty’ players. If not, why would they let someone else control the way they played? It was a point they hadn’t considered. Were they no longer clean players because their opponents were nasty?
At another point, Gee witnessed his nemesis, who opposed him at every opportunity, miss a turn on icy roads and crash into a freezing river. At considerable risk to himself, Gee went into the river and rescued the unconscious man from his flooding car.
“Why would you save his life when God put him in a river to drown?” Trevor asked.
“Would I be a better person if I let him drown?” Gee responded.
Surprisingly, many conservative readers responded to the chapter saying, “Yes! He would.” Gee was not convinced.
City Limits and Wild Woods are available as eBooks from ZBookStore and the paperbacks are also available online. City Limits is this month’s free Patrons Edition eBook for my Patreon members.
To Mitch and the observable conservatives in our government, the good principles we profess to adhere to—like courtesy, kindness, and aid—should be freely given to those who deserve it. To liberals, those good principles should be freely given to all.
That in a few sentences, is what I consider the difference between conservatives and liberals.
NOT ALL CONSERVATIVES! And certainly not all liberals. And not all men. And not all white people. And not all of anyone else. Just enough to make it observable.
I am convinced, for example, there are many conservative congressmen and senators disguised as liberals. They’ve decided being called a Democrat defines them as a liberal, even though they live and vote for the benefit of those they consider deserve it, or from whom they can realize a profit.
That might be good business. It’s poor government. In fact, it is poor humanity.
Even though this post is short, I won’t dilute it by adding other characteristics or examples. Don’t look at me as if I consider myself a good liberal. I do what I think I can, and it often shows up in the behavior of characters in my novels. I’m frequently accused of being too political. I don’t consider it political. I try to be realistic and humane. I don’t see an end to that.