Racist. Sexist. Homophobes.

I love college. Part of why I love college is because I am fortunate enough to revel in new experiences, to hear new ideas and grasp their implications, and to discuss and expand my ideas with other people who have different backgrounds or values.

I am currently enrolled in a class called "The History of the Modern Conservative Movement". I decided to take this class because it was in my major, and also because I am an avowedly fierce liberal. I wanted to hear the "other team's" take. I wanted to better understand conservatives and their ideas.

My professor, politically speaking, can match my liberal beliefs with his conservative beliefs, blow for blow. He doesn't usually advocate for his beliefs in class, but rather uses the lectures to deliver an understanding of events which the "conservative movement" would espouse.

I am extremely committed to understanding other people's beliefs. How so, you may ask? I agreed to take this class once a week from 8:10 PM to 10:40 PM at night. That's right - PM, not AM. Honestly, it's probably a good thing, because if I was more awake, it would be harder to restrain myself from vehement disagreement (just kidding, just kidding).

Several weeks ago, I was listening to our professor deliver his lecture, when he lamented that conservatives are constantly, unfairly portrayed and vilified by the media and by liberals as "racists, sexists, and homophobes".

Is this an unfair accusation? No, I believe it is an entirely fair charge. I find plenty of evidence to substantiate the accusations.

Please observe the virulent, entirely over-the-top outright hatred for President Obama. The demeaning, racially-charged nicknames. The implied foreignness and otherness expressed in the ridiculous campaign to assert that the President was born in Kenya, not in Hawaii.

Note the ludicrous statement by Senator Jon Kyl (R-what else?, AZ) that women could receive pap smears at Walgreen's, that 90% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortion, a blatantly false exaggeration, even if it was "not intended to be a factual statement" - which itself is a ludicrous assertion.

Even worse are the efforts of Republican Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana to end all public funding for Planned Parenthood in his state, an action which displays an outright contempt for women's health.

Bemoan the foul river of accusation and negative portrayal of homosexuals. The statement of a Tea Party leader that a condition for raising the debt ceiling should be the reinstitution of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the removal of woman from the military. Witness the absolutely stubborn and close-minded refusal by many people to recognize that you are a human being with the same fundamental rights, no matter what gender you are or who you love.

That's not all. Let's tackle some other "unfair accusations" conservatives have decried.

My professor also resented that conservatives have been labeled as "reactionaries".

Let's examine the mad-cap rush to screw the poor and the elderly and reward the rich, evidenced not only in the provisions of the Paul Ryan plan, but in Republican economic policy over the last 30 years. See the rampant hypocrisy in the fight over deficits: Republicans insist that the deficit is an immediate and overwhelming problem, but refuse to take any steps to raise revenue. An absolute refusal to raise taxes is as reactionary a stance as any in American politics; if that stance is not reactionary, then the word itself has lost all meaning.

Conservatives will stop being called racists, sexists, homophobes, and reactionaries only when they purge the elements of their coalition that are racist, sexist, homophobic, and reactionary! A mere whitewashing and meaningless rebranding of history (and language itself) may work in some isolated cases, but Americans will ultimately see through the charades, if President Obama and other liberals will quit relenting their positions, commitments, and promises.

I'm not only speaking as a liberal, but also I speak as an American. Our country cannot allow the whitewashing and implicit censorship of our political and historical records. We cannot allow our history to perish from the Earth, or our democracy shall soon follow it.

Empathy for Conservatives/Our Shifting Moral Values

I have been thinking about the differences between how liberals and conservatives tend to perceive the world recently.

I have made a realization which has given me increased empathy for conservatives.

What will society be like in 100 years? 50 years? 20 years? What difficult and thorny ethical questions will arise due to new technology unveiled within the next few decades or centuries?

New advances in technology can be scary stuff, raising difficult ethical questions. I thought about how I would feel in a future society...how afraid I would be if I thought that the moral paradigm and the traditions of my society were eroding and deteriorating before my eyes.

And that is when a powerful observation struck me: this fear of erosion and deterioration may just be exactly how many conservatives feel today.

I now understand why people would be afraid of changes in society which could possibly be unnerving and apprehension-inducing.

The struggle that we all share is navigating a course between tradition and modernity. This, I believe, is the great moral struggle of every generation of humanity.

We have struggled to define our moral values in each civilization, in each society, and in each generation of human history. We witness this phenomena in the movement to end slavery, the 20th century civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, the controversy over abortion, the controversy over the death penalty (and which forms of execution are cruel or unusual and who should be executed or not), the struggle over gun control, the struggle over communism, the struggle over fascism, and the clash of other religious and political ideologies.

What is morality? What defines when an act is moral? Who defines it? Conservatives and liberals are largely answering the same questions -- they just tend to seek the answers in differing places.

We have a changing moral paradigm. Some people would deny this, but I contend that I have presented enough evidence to confirm this phenomenon's occurrence.

Conservatives and liberals tend to argue over which course to follow on the continually revising moral paradigms of human history. Conservatives seem to be largely guided by "tradition"; liberals seem to be largely guided by "modernity". Neither of these concepts is particularly well-defined; both seem quite nebulous. Neither concept seems to be a clear or resolute guide for future action; neither concept is fully coherent. Both ideas seem equally capable of badly misleading our decision-making. I do believe that over-adherence to either idea will produce disaster.

What is tradition? Yes, we learn from our mistakes, and we have derived ideas and beliefs to help us avoid them. I admire conservatism for trying to preserve our heritage of knowledge and experience and hedging against futile attempts to subvert our best practices. However, since our environment is continually shifting and evolving, there are many occasions where we find ourselves in need of new and inventive approaches for a changing world. I admire liberalism because I believe this way of thinking provides the capability to arrive at such bold solutions.

I must admit, conservatism is awfully appealing to me at times. I like the notion of sticking with tested and broken-in ideas over radical departures from known strategies. I am an incremental thinker; I have never been good at "out-of-the-box" thinking. When I make decisions, I try to build upon the best information that I have. Before I will try a new approach, I tend to re-try older approaches first to see if they work better. I tend to avoid risk in my personal life.

So why am I more liberal than conservative? I don't know for sure. Perhaps it is a function of when I grew into politics. I believe in change. I believe that we have adhered too much to tradition, and that we need new ways of thinking. The way we treat the environment, the way we treat minorities and the poor, the way we treat foreigners, the way we treat homosexuals -- the traditional approaches are not good enough for me. I want to go in another direction.

I have empathy for conservatives, but it has been apparent to me for many years that our country needs to travel in another direction. There are many policies which the Democrats espouse about which I am either ambivalent or with which I disagree. I do not know whether Obama's economic policies are sound. I am, as I have been for most of my life, largely ambivalent about the abortion debate, embracing neither the strong pro-choice nor the strong pro-life position. I wish that the Democrats would move faster and more radically on healthcare and gay rights.

The battles of the future will define and guide our moral values, just as they have in the past. I eagerly await further full and vigorous participation in the debates to come.

Michael Steele is Not Very Bright

Current National Chairman of the Republican Party, Michael Steele, threated Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter after he voted for the stimulus funding a few months ago.

Steele tried to warn Specter that the party would withdraw support from Specter if he did not tow the party line. Insurgent conservative candidate Pat Toomey threatened to unseat Specter in the Republican primary in 2010.

Now Arlen Specter is a Democrat!

Steele's cajoling has backfired. Terribly.

I am reviving this blog (for now) to state for the record just how amazed I am at the sheer incompetency of Michael Steele and his organization.

Thanks for the filibuster-busting 60th vote in the Senate, man! We Democrats really appreciate the help!