Liberals and Elitism

Being that you are a political blog reader, I assume you heard about Barack Obama’s comments at a California fundraiser regarding the folks over in Pennsylvania.

In case you somehow missed it, let me refresh:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Immediately, both Hilary Clinton and John McCain, and others, accused Sen. Obama of being – get this – elitist.

Obama has since explained his remarks.

There has been a small “political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois, who are bitter.”

Thanks for clearing that up. Obviously, you’re not an elitist.

Sen. Obama is not the first liberal politician accused of being an elitist. It is a charge that the left vehemently denies, yet – I believe – fails to fully understand.

To better explain, let me take a comment I read on a popular liberal blog just last night.

The writer was trying to explain that the image people have that certain liberals are elitist is the result of a successful GOP marketing campaign.

It’s been an effective branding campaign and the end result has been for many hard-working people to turn away from the very party working for their best interests.

The bottom line is this: We don’t think you are elitist because some Republican blow-hard tells us to think you are elitist. We think you are elitist because you think you know what is in our best interest better than we do ourselves.

Further, that you think we are unable to formulate our own opinions without first checking in with Rush Limbaugh or FOX News, doesn’t help our opinion of you.

Yeah, I include myself here.

People seem to think that just because it is well-known that I am a conservative and I have been involved with the local GOP (which, by the way, is just a handful of regular people, mostly in the New North End; it’s not like I worked on strategy with Karl Rove or anything, for Pete’s sake) that means that I am one of them (whatever that means).

But I am not. I am one of the people who you think should be voting for your guy. I am one of the people who clings to my stupid beliefs because I don’t understand that I am voting against my best interest.

The problem here is that you fail to grasp the reality of the conservative voter.

We are not voting against our self interest.

What you do not seem to understand is that our interests are not the same as yours.

Some of us place a higher value on eternal things. That’s to say, we believe that our religious values are more important than our temporal comfort.

Some of us place a higher value on freedom and our constitutional principles. We are not willing to trade our freedom for the promises of material gain.

Some of us just plain know that your plans for a government-controlled economy and income redistribution will not work the way you say. They have been tried and failed.

We are not ignorantly or bitterly clinging to these things because we have lost faith in government; these ideals were arrived at often times through much thought, research, and reflection – just like your own ideals – and to imply otherwise is just downright condescending and insulting.

So go ahead and reach out to these people and tell them – tell us – how you plan to work for our best interest.

But if we choose our faith, our values, our gun rights, our free-market ideology, or any other belief that you disagree with over what you are offering, please just accept that we make these choices not because we are bitter, not because you are smarter, not because we just don’t understand that we are voting against our self interest, but because we are as passionate about our beliefs as you are about yours.