Okay, so that specific sentiment was my sister's line, but it's true: this #AltRight conservative grew up in a place that moonbats claim is the ideal. Guess what. I came out the other end not a moonbat...although I was one of the few.
(Probably because we went to Catholic schools, and were encouraged to learn on our own away from pop culture, all the kids in my family are massively conservative.)
The reason I write this today is somewhat in reaction to the whole Kellyanne Conway take down of the Clinton crybabies at Harvard last night. Jennifer Palmieri seriously stepped in it when she essentially defined #AltRight as being white supremacist sorts without taking into account those of us who actually grew up with diversity, not in the lily-white suburbs.
Decades before "diversity" of the skin deep and genital high variety (thanks Larry O'Connor) came to be the buzzword of the 90s, this writer grew up on the racial dividing line in a polarized city. It's one of the few places, actually, that this writer has ever been that defines what the word really means. On one block we had largely white collar grunt professionals: stock brokers, engineers, journalists, professors, symphony members...college educated, but those who worked for a living.
Aside from the first chair clarinet in the symphony, the most prominent neighbor at the time was a landscape architect who happens to be Chinese. His wife then was Japanese and two of their kids are deaf. They were some of our most steady playmates, actually.
Then there were the orthodox Jewish kids across the street. When we played house, we had to compromise on dinner. No pork in the pretend playhouse.
There were three black families on the block then. All educated, and all refined people who left their property more valuable then when they bought it.
There were the old Jewish bakers who escaped war-torn Europe who used to sit on their front porch and yell greetings to anyone who walked by, and the old Irish dentist whose wife was the parish Bridge whiz.
Not everyone was of the same faith. We had, obviously, Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, protestants, and atheists. There were those who considered building war machines immoral, and one person who worked for one of the fighter aircraft contractors.
This was - and is - diversity. There was no talk of being all the same, and there were no arguments over what one person or another did for a living. But then, this was the era before the internet and social media.
This was a time, even in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and in the age of celebration of Roe vs. Wade that was indoctrinated in the people around us in the feminist mindset, when the nation was far more civil. It was also the time, in the wake of the true unrest of the Civil Rights era, when just letting diversity be made more headway than talking about it.
And that is what is confounding.
The left - the political left that really wants all of us to be subservient to a few "elites" and agree with them despite empirical evidence - is shouting "racism" without thinking what it means. Do my neighbors of my childhood think of me as a racist simply because I believe in the American ideals of the founders. Or because I recognize the brilliance of a man like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas? Is it racist to say, yes, Martin Luther King had a point, and that his legacy is really ignored?
As a person who grew up in a neighborhood as described above, I question those who preach that people who hold the views that I do are racist and prejudiced...just what is diverse about the place where you live? How many people on your block do not look like you or agree with your religion or veiwpoints?
A moonbat acquaintance once said that she wanted to live in a neighborhood where everyone voted Democrat. How is that diverse even if the neighbors descended from immigrants from Asia, Africa, Europe or South America? Simply, it isn't.
Having grown up with diversity - true diversity at all levels - it is difficult to reconcile being labelled a racist simply because I believe in free enterprise, and non-confiscatory tax system. My feelings and thoughts about subcultures within the American experience...that's something else. And it has to do more with civilized behavior than it does with the color of any one's skin.
(Probably because we went to Catholic schools, and were encouraged to learn on our own away from pop culture, all the kids in my family are massively conservative.)
The reason I write this today is somewhat in reaction to the whole Kellyanne Conway take down of the Clinton crybabies at Harvard last night. Jennifer Palmieri seriously stepped in it when she essentially defined #AltRight as being white supremacist sorts without taking into account those of us who actually grew up with diversity, not in the lily-white suburbs.
Decades before "diversity" of the skin deep and genital high variety (thanks Larry O'Connor) came to be the buzzword of the 90s, this writer grew up on the racial dividing line in a polarized city. It's one of the few places, actually, that this writer has ever been that defines what the word really means. On one block we had largely white collar grunt professionals: stock brokers, engineers, journalists, professors, symphony members...college educated, but those who worked for a living.
Aside from the first chair clarinet in the symphony, the most prominent neighbor at the time was a landscape architect who happens to be Chinese. His wife then was Japanese and two of their kids are deaf. They were some of our most steady playmates, actually.
Then there were the orthodox Jewish kids across the street. When we played house, we had to compromise on dinner. No pork in the pretend playhouse.
There were three black families on the block then. All educated, and all refined people who left their property more valuable then when they bought it.
There were the old Jewish bakers who escaped war-torn Europe who used to sit on their front porch and yell greetings to anyone who walked by, and the old Irish dentist whose wife was the parish Bridge whiz.
Not everyone was of the same faith. We had, obviously, Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, protestants, and atheists. There were those who considered building war machines immoral, and one person who worked for one of the fighter aircraft contractors.
This was - and is - diversity. There was no talk of being all the same, and there were no arguments over what one person or another did for a living. But then, this was the era before the internet and social media.
This was a time, even in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and in the age of celebration of Roe vs. Wade that was indoctrinated in the people around us in the feminist mindset, when the nation was far more civil. It was also the time, in the wake of the true unrest of the Civil Rights era, when just letting diversity be made more headway than talking about it.
And that is what is confounding.
The left - the political left that really wants all of us to be subservient to a few "elites" and agree with them despite empirical evidence - is shouting "racism" without thinking what it means. Do my neighbors of my childhood think of me as a racist simply because I believe in the American ideals of the founders. Or because I recognize the brilliance of a man like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas? Is it racist to say, yes, Martin Luther King had a point, and that his legacy is really ignored?
As a person who grew up in a neighborhood as described above, I question those who preach that people who hold the views that I do are racist and prejudiced...just what is diverse about the place where you live? How many people on your block do not look like you or agree with your religion or veiwpoints?
A moonbat acquaintance once said that she wanted to live in a neighborhood where everyone voted Democrat. How is that diverse even if the neighbors descended from immigrants from Asia, Africa, Europe or South America? Simply, it isn't.
Having grown up with diversity - true diversity at all levels - it is difficult to reconcile being labelled a racist simply because I believe in free enterprise, and non-confiscatory tax system. My feelings and thoughts about subcultures within the American experience...that's something else. And it has to do more with civilized behavior than it does with the color of any one's skin.
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