Progressive remembrance

Yesterday I was reading the Town Topics’ front page story, September 11 Remembrances to Be Held Saturday.

One ceremony of commemoration and protest will be held by the Progressive Patriots, “an ad hoc group of concerned area residents without organizational or political affiliation who have united solely to organize this event,”

and which will have plenty of political readings, such as “an account of the attacks in A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies”,

other readings that “repudiate the implication that Iraq was responsible for the attacks,” said Mr. Leifer, adding that “additional readings critical of the Bush Administration’s response to the 9/11 attacks will also be included”,

among them “The Case Against George W. Bush,” a critique of the Bush Administration written by the late President Ronald Reagan’s son, Ron Reagan, Jr., for Esquire Magazine.

This is what passes as non-partisan in The Principality: Non-partisan = “anyone but Bush”. That there might be a place at a remembrance for the 9-11 attack for people who were actually in the buildings and survived, or for the relatives of those who died, is beyond the scope of the progressive mind. Heaven forbid that any of the guests might say something that could be interpreted as being slightly in favor of Mr. Bush.

Hardly surprising, then, that many of us feel like the man that’s been Living in a Closet

You know me. If you don’t, you’ve seen me…eating dinner in a midtown restaurant or walking up Broadway on a Saturday morning or sitting at the playground in the park as my child climbs the monkey bars. I take the subway to work every morning like thousands of other New Yorkers. I shop at Fairway and Zabar’s. Maybe you’ve even been sweating on the next treadmill at the gym. I look like a hundred other guys around my age. I dress like them, too. And if you saw me, you would never guess my secret.

I am not gay. That is certainly no reason to hide. I am not a person of color. That prejudice should have been erased from our national consciousness decades ago. I don’t carry any disease microbes that I am aware of. I don’t even smoke.

But the information that I will now transmit has caused people to shout at me, brought dinner parties to an abrupt end on less then polite terms. It has even ended long friendships.

Here it is. I will just say it. I am a Republican.

The writer, as myself, has been through enough to reach this conclusion:

I believe an intolerance has settled over the land. I’ve seen this unwillingness or inability to hear another point of view before: in college during the Vietnam War and in cities like Madison, Santa Fe, and, of course, the Bay area. Sadly, I would now add my own neighborhood to the list.

It’s not just intolerance. These are people who would never, in 3 million-years, consider themselves intolerant. Yet they seem completely unwilling to even hear my side. I only hear conversation-enders like “Bush is an idiot” or “It’s all for oil” or “The family is in bed with the Saudis.” I hear those a lot.

Oh, how could I forget? Mr. Bush really is an illegitimate president, having stolen the election in 2000. I hear that a lot, too.

Today, it’s no longer Osama bin Laden who’s the villain. It’s Mr. Bush. It’s not Al Qaeda who is trying to “take away our rights” by killing us. It’s the Republicans.

This line of thinking knows no bounds.

Fortunately, the anonymous writer’s not the only one to Escape From The Zabar’s Left

But the liberalism of today is even more bullying and conformist than it was in my youth. And if there is one thing my experience shows, it’s that bullying conformism breeds rebellion in earnest young people, like my daughter and her friends. A new generation is rising, and while they may eschew the conservative label, they will undoubtedly challenge the stridency and dogmatism of their liberal parents and teachers. In the end, for all their alarm over the Republican invasion, the city’s liberals might do better to address the flowering of conservatism closer to home. We are your bastard children, and as long as you deny us, you will continue to spawn rebels who reject you.

Call me a neo-liberal. Just don’t call me that in public!