It’s odd how liberty is such a strong Republican meme, given their practical hostility toward its practice.
Republicans are the party of most social conservatives. That seems reasonable. Republicans have professed to be conservative for generations.
Social conservatives don’t like abortion. Fair enough. Hell, I agree; I don’t like abortion, either. I don’t know anyone who does. I think that legal, safe abortion is necessary, sometimes, but it’s an awful choice for someone to make. I don’t know any woman or man who’s happy making that choice.
Social conservatives go past that, of course, trying to deny other people the option to have an abortion, or even knowledge of the option. That’s both wrong, and illegal, as verified by the Supreme Court. I’m sympathetic to their ideas, but if you honor the Constitution, you have to change the laws.
Social conservatives don’t like contraception, even if it helps prevent spreading terrible diseases. That seems evil to me. I struggle to fathom how any halfway decent father would prefer his daughter risk dying of ovarian cancer when there was a cheap HPV vaccine available. It’s like denying your kids routine vaccines.
Oh, right. They do that sometimes, too. I guess the kids don’t get a choice.
Social conservatives don’t like people having sex. I get that. Odd, but adults should be able to make whatever choices they want. And yeah, America has created a hyper-sexualized commercial environment that gives me hives, too. I’d like to see less of that around impressionable and vulnerable kids.
But that doesn’t mean you can deny another adult their choices. That’s literally in the definition of liberty.
In the end, I’m stuck. For all their denials, social conservatives seem to support unwanted pregnancy and disease as a women’s punishment for their sin. For every denial of that, I keep seeing decisions that don’t make sense any other way.
And Republicans, using ‘liberty’ as a rallying cry, keep their base happy by removing liberty on social issues. So ‘liberty’ isn’t real, it’s something to say, while working against it, provided it gets them re-elected.
So despite what they profess, I don’t see liberty as a principle Republican’s actually support.
