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Viewpoint

Getting Rid of Our Liberal Guilt


By Bob Minor
Minor Details

I watched the TV panel uneasily, cringing. The right-wing minister of a suburban mega-church had already received a lot of media attention for pushing an amendment to a state constitution to ban gay marriage. Now he was debating an intelligent, kind liberal minister. The liberal was losing. He was no TV match for the right-winger.

That's not because the liberal didn't have his facts straight, or his arguments weren't more cogent. He was, it seemed, arguing on solid grounds to keep U.S. society open for the multiplicity of voices on moral values. He was even prepared for arguments using the Bible. And he was an experienced writer - writing a column for a mainstream daily on the diversity of religious understandings of human issues.

The problem was, he was arguing as a nice liberal. Unlike the right wing preacher, he didn't interrupt, put down his opponent's arguments as mere "parroting" of some hackneyed position, or respond by saying that that's just how you people argue. He was polite, reasoned, and inoffensive to everyone. And, as a progressive friend of mine commented, he was eaten alive by the right-winger.

Though the right-wing minister continued to put down both liberal panelists with arrogance and provocative remarks, no one was ready to point that out, confront him, or, frankly, offend him. No one would say, "Wow, to make those statements, sounds arrogant and condescending," even though he was arrogant and condescending. The liberals were awfully, awfully nice.

Certainly, I'd rather have nice. I'd pick nice people as friends any day. But media expectations have changed. The right wing itself has seen to that. Nice has to be redefined. It's not the same as being fair, after all.

Right wing people speak as the convinced. They argue as if they have no doubt at all. They don't hem and haw. They don't deal in subtleties.

They get their key talking points from the gangs at Virginia Beach and Lynchburg. They're trained in soundbites - much of right wing religious talk really is jargon and soundbites. Notice how they always come back to the same, often coded, wording that the spin-doctors of their think tanks have carefully worked out for them.

Liberals, on the other hand, try to speak in nuance. They weigh the alternatives, knowing correctly that there often are more than two sides to any issue.

Yet in this day of seven-second soundbites, which do you think people remember most? The very valid points made by a liberal who weighs the subtleties: "Well, there's this to consider and then this, if not this? Or the simplistic right-wing soundbite: "It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." What's your favorite liberal soundbite that you hear repeated throughout the country by most liberals?

Liberals often seem to be ineffective because they're plagued by a liberal guilt. They don't want to repeat offenses from the past. They know offences existed and don't want to deny them. They know there's been discrimination and know that often their own group has historically been the culprits in white racism, sexism, heterosexism, even classism - though classism is tough for many otherwise liberal folk.

Liberals don't want to repeat the sins of their ancestors, nor do they want to be dogmatic and absolutist the way right-wingers are. They recognize that we're all human beings struggling together. Yet, there's something else. It's as if they need to atone for the oppressions of the past by avoiding anything that would be offensive to someone in the present, even if the offended is continuing the oppression.

Guilt-feeling liberals believe that the right wing should be given equal time for their arguments - they'll even provide it, as if the right wing doesn't already dominate most of the time in most of the media. They believe that the views of the right wing should actually be respected. They want to appear understanding about the personal circumstances that produce such bigotry in people.

They're afraid that they might come across as too dogmatic, or that they believe too much in absolute values, or that they'll appear just as arrogant as the right-wing. And they don't want to offend the people who are still offending them.

Guilt-feeling liberals cringe when another does state the truth. Presidential hopeful John Kerry was probably accurate when he was caught off the record March 11, saying the Republican attack machine is: "The most crooked, you know, lying group I've ever seen." Republican responses were predictably critical because, you know, they've never ever say such things themselves.

Yet liberals themselves cringe when anyone says: "The Emperor has no clothes." They're some of the quickest critics of more radical left-wing activists.

So when ACT-UP staged its outrageous protests because people were dying and the Reagan government wasn't paying any attention, many nice liberals stepped back in criticism of such tactics. These critics would have done the same, I suppose, during the Stonewall rebellion. Who needs right-wing critics when we do it ourselves?

Rev. Fred Phelps' group doesn't scare conservative thinkers and radical left-wing groups shouldn't scare liberals, says Dr. Minor Let's face it. Radical activists get attention. Just as Topeka Rev. Fred Phelps' "God Hates Fags" tactics make Jerry Falwell more appealing to conservatives, so left-wing activists often prepare the way for more moderate liberals to be heard because "we'd better do something before they burn down our cities."

The result of liberal guilt and its accompanying hesitancy is that liberals appear to believe in nothing sincerely. They act as if values such as equal opportunity and treatment for all human beings, ending the abuse of everyone, and trying to do no harm are negotiable. They act as if all values and ideas should be respected no matter how destructive and hurtful they are.

Liberals can be effective again. It will be when we're guilt-free enough to act as if we really believe in our values and to our death won't compromise them, when we talk and live as if equality, fairness and full acceptance of all human beings are values we will not negotiate -- even if our forcefully saying so offends those who disagree.

Robert N. Minor, Ph.D., is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas. HisGay & Healthy in a Sick Society (HumanityWorks, 2003) was a finalist for the 2004 Independent Publisher Book Award and was named one of the "Best Gay Books of 2003." He may be reached at www.fairnessproject.org .
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