“Liberals Are Determined To Tear Down America.” Ouch, Lady.
Here’s an email I just got from Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley’s marketing team:
“What are we standing for?” This question means more now than ever.
Why? Because liberals are determined to tear down America, our values, and our principles. And it’s up to us to stand up for America and show the far Left we WILL NOT let them remake this country.
It’s clear liberals don’t know what America stands for. President Biden doesn’t know. AOC and the Squad sure as heck don’t know.
But you and I know what America stands for: Opportunity. Freedom. Fairness. Law and Order. That is what we are fighting to protect.
A few comments:
• The idea that “liberals are determined to tear down America, our values, and our principles” is insulting, but I guess that’s the point. Someone or something must be attacking America, and you should be mad as hell about it, otherwise, why not sit idly on the sidelines? Ever since Vietnam and the “America: love it or leave it” days, conservatives have been insisting that people who want to improve our country actually hate it. Further, all that illogical vitriol has only gotten stronger over the last half century. As time passes, educational levels sink, wages continue to stagnate, people get angrier, and language like this becomes more and more effective.
• She conflates “liberals” with “the far Left” because, I suppose, she knows her audience does too. It is true that many Americans wish that the United States would function more like the countries in Europe and Scandinavia, but is that really “the far Left?”
• I don’t think anyone seriously differs with the values conservatives are fighting to protect, but there are important subtleties. Everyone wants opportunity, but apparently some people don’t understand that looting the Treasury to make billionaires wealthier, and offshoring businesses to Southeast Asia actually reduces opportunity.
• We all love freedom, but most of us realize that with freedom comes responsibility. The COVID pandemic is the perfect example. Do people have the freedom to act in such a way that puts the health and safety of all of us at risk?
• I’m not sure what “fairness” is doing here. To me, fairness speaks to a one-tier justice system, which everyone except wealthy criminals want.
• We want law and order, too, but we hasten to add that we want the police to stop murdering unarmed black men. We also want immigration reform in which our officials treat everyone trying to enter the country humanely, and obey domestic and international laws.
Again, Haley’s target audience isn’t a particularly nuanced bunch, which is why we see rhetoric based on oversimplification and hostility.
