Fight for Democracy, Part 14: Fiscally Conservative, Socially Liberal, Completely Full of Sh!t

Being a middle-class, straight white guy, I have a lot of straight, middle-class, white friends. A phrase I hear from a number of them is: I’m socially liberal but fiscally conservative. This is white-guy speak for ‘I often vote Republican but I’m not racist’. It fails both morally and logically but people let them get away with it.

First, if your socially liberal it means you believe in things like gender equality and marriage equality. You believe multiculturalism is a good thing, that people with darker skin and a different language are just as worthy human beings as you and your cultural friends. Social liberals don’t like discrimination, whether it be based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or financial status. Liberalism is about everyone being treated equally without restrictions. If you vote Republican, you are supporting policies which directly oppose those concepts.

Republicans are against gay marriage. They want to give people the right to discriminate (though they hide this under the guise of ‘religious freedom’). They advocate for banning Muslims from the country and for immigration policies that treat Hispanics inhumanely. You can’t honestly say you are against such policies if you vote to support them.

But, you say, I don’t want to support those things but I think economic policy is more important. If you think economic policy is more important than basic human rights and equality, then I think your morality is suspect. Especially when the arguments in favor of Republican economic policy are so weak (unless you are really rich, in which case it’s quite honest and apparent that conservative policy favors the rich over the poor). As a white, middle-class guy I can say with much confidence that government economic policy never really affected me, other than at the margins of my bank account. So if you’re willing to screw over basic decency in order to get a slightly larger tax refund, just admit you don’t really care about other people and are in it for the money.

I believe Democratic economic policy is better for me and the country, but I’m willing to concede that it isn’t a settled question. Others can disagree in good faith and I won’t fault them for it (though I’d be happy to argue with them over it). But if you think gay people shouldn’t be allowed to get married; If you think businesses should be able to discriminate against them or fire them at will; If you think black people aren’t as smart or capable as whites; If you think immigrants and refugees are mostly criminals who don’t belong in ‘our’ country; If you think putting up barriers to voting and rigging voter districts for partisan reasons are okay; If you think women, especially poor women, don’t deserve the right to control their own health care choices - I simply don’t accept those as equally valid positions. I won’t agree to disagree. Republican policy, Republican ideology, is immoral and wrong, and I won’t be bought off for a few hundred dollars off my taxes or a slightly higher GDP growth rate. And I don’t respect anyone who does.