LETTER: Puzzled by Tippins’ ideas about liberals

One might expect the big three to include something like the overwhelming influence of the NRA, or Fox News, or the partisan nature of the current Supreme Court. The author might have chosen to list the Iraq war and the duplicity around selling it to the American people, or the fact that it, along with the war in Afghanistan, was left unfunded even as our troops lacked vital life-saving equipment. He might have touched on the well-oiled misinformation machine featuring the likes of Karl Rove as the man behind the curtain, or shown how political advertising and now even an entire “grass roots” Tea Party movement is being funded largely by wealthy, anonymous donors. If it’s desperate we’re after, how about global warming?

Instead, he gives us, of all things, the Peace of Westphalia, women and meaning. An exhaustive list of liberal laments, desperate or otherwise, would surely have these near the bottom.

Tippins’ puzzled reader might be forgiven for lamenting something else entirely, the apparent information blockade (see Fox News above) insulating the right from obtaining accurate information about liberals, keeping them from knowing we love our country, families, churches, and communities just as they do. If I may assume the role of average liberal for just a moment, I wish to announce that I do not worry about the Peace of Westphalia. In fact, I often pass an entire week or more giving nary a thought to the Thirty Years War, or its end in 1648.

The rest of Tippins’ piece requires similar trips down the rabbit hole to parse what he’s getting at, trips that leave one feeling vaguely queasy and disoriented. Try following an argument too far to the right, or to the left for that matter, and one is likely to turn upside down.

None of this would matter too much except that it amounts to grandstanding. The author seeks to influence, but instead of clarifying anything he merely adds to the sort of mean-spirited, quasi-intellectual morass that currently substitutes for dialogue in our country. If our revered founders behaved as we do, refusing to debate and demonizing those with whom we disagree, they could never have succeeded in accomplishing something as great as our Constitution and the founding of a nation.

Tippins, who evidently views himself as a truer conservative than most, also gives us a list of words: marriage, process, conservative, and illegal, that he says liberals are working hard to redefine. Who knew? While we’re on the subject of words, though, perhaps we’d do well to reflect on ones a little closer to where we need to be: honesty, discourse, context, sincerity, civility.

Sincerely,

Michael Hill

Comer