Not much Christmas spirit this year.

Recently, a Republican friend of mine (I do have Republican friends) sent me an email, recounting a tale of a Republican father and his hard-working student liberal Democrat daughter who, brainwashed by her profoundly elite college professors, berated her father for his selfishness. The father, giving as good as he got, reminded his prodigal child that Democrats were interested, through some ignorance of the Dickensian realities of life, to surrender all their freedoms; she simply did not understand that the progenitors of individual wealth should not be subjected to redistributionist taxation. Why did she not give part of her hard earned 4.0 GPA to her partying 2.0 GPA friend as a token of her undying friendship? When his daughter refused, he pronounced her a Republican.

The histoire continued in a vein of how Republicans benefited from hard work, self-reliance, control over the self, and how Democrats were willing to surrender all individual freedoms to the common good. Other included pronouncements were that conservatives who did not like guns did not buy them, homosexuals “quietly stayed at home,” (as if there were some shame to that), and how down-and-out conservatives lift themselves up by their bootstraps instead of looking for handouts.
Like all exaggerations the tale had some truth to it, but a little truth is as good as a prevarication. Democrats are hard working people, Democrats are not Socialists, and yes, they have social consciences, they believe that society has a duty to help care for those who cannot care for themselves. Is that not what America says in its constitutional preamble? “We the people…promote the general welfare…?” Do conservatives want to ensure the elimination of the middle class, transforming its persona into a 21st century version of 19th century England? In 1970, the top 1% controlled 9% of the wealth. Now the top 1% control 35% of the wealth. It is of these figures revolutions are born. Perhaps conservatives should think of social progressivism as a way of preserving the societal structure we are now fortunate enough to inhabit.
Lately, the political discourse in America has degenerated to an almost religious dichotomy of thought. The willingness of right wingers to denounce all efforts to help the unfortunate, and the condemnation of social progressives for trying to do so has become the underlying theme of present political reality. And by the same unfortunate token, the progressives depicting conservatives as social brutes stoke the fires of more polarization.