I'm truly angry about the outcome of this election, but until now I've had trouble pinning down why. I've said that I'm angry about the stupidity of the general electorate, but that doesn't quite explain it. I know that stupidity simply exists, it's not a thing to be angry about but rather simply a fact to deal with. It occurred to me that it might be the cheating. I hate cheaters, and I hate feeling that I've been cheated, especially when it's something that matters as significantly as an election. (No, I'm not conspiratorial, but it does bother me that every election brings more and more stories of dead voters registering 15 times in Ohio and I can't stand that it could continue to exist). But I don't think there were enough of those votes to sway this election, so I'm not really mad about that, either. I hate that an election about ideology, truth, and governing philosophy is daily diminished to a racial landmark in the media. But again, that's not enough to explain the depths of what I'm feeling.
These questions aren't new. I've been distraught for a while at the liberal direction that my country has been taking. I've been bothered since Reagan by the lack of truly visionary leadership on the right. But tonight I realized the source.
I can't leave. I have no options, and the frustration is killing me. Every election year we here a bunch of liberals claiming that if the Republican wins, they'll leave the country, but the cowards never do. You never hear a conservative say that. It's because we have nowhere else to go. As bad as it's gotten since the 80's we're still the most free country in the world. That sounds like a compliment, but it's not. It's a lament. If I found somewhere with more freedom and better protections of my liberty, I'd leave in a heartbeat, because America is an idea, not a land. But I don't have the option. Liberals do.
And THAT is the source of my anger: If you like socialized health care, redistribution of wealth, public transportation and high taxes, more power to you. Go to Sweden. Go to England. Go anywhere in Europe. But don't ruin my America because it's all I've got. If I ruin your America, there's always France.
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That is so true. As it so happened, I was talking to a friend from Germany the other day. She said that she likes paying taxes and having health care for everyone. If people don't like it, she says, they can move somewhere else. But she didn't have an answer when I asked her where I should move if I'm already in the country with the most freedom. The only countries she could come up with where people pretty much just do as they please were third-world countries. But a country that cannot provide security for its citizens is not a free country either.
ReplyDeleteFor now, I think, we just need to fight for the little liberties on the local levels and hope that Obama messes up so badly that people will pick someone more conservative next time around. Conservatism isn't dead in this country, it just needs to be rediscovered. And maybe a major failure of a Liberal, Democratic president will help to do that.