The Real Deal.

I mentioned the other day how Barack Obama being touted as a consensus builder does not impress me. Nor do I think highly of consensus as consensus. It isn’t that I don’t recognize the need for sometimes disagreeable agreement in order to move things along; it’s simply that most people who preach ‘consensus first’ really aren’t ready or willing to concede anything substantial at all.

Liberals are great at this game. They want consensus on abortion or gay rights, for example. Yet they are in favor of both; conservatives are not. They talk about tolerance: they want us to tolerate both. That’s easy for them as they find both issues tolerable. They aren’t moving towards consensus in any way shape or form because they aren’t conceding anything. Yet we right wingers are essentially being asked to give up entirely on core values which we believe in very deeply. In short, it isn’t consensus they request. It’s total acceptance of their world view.

Try this on for size: I don’t merely tolerate the Catholic Church. I am Catholic. It is beyond toleration: it is recognition of the truth of the Creed. I do not ask anyone to join the Church unless they are willing to make that same commitment. There is no consensus: you accept it or you do not. If you do not, I will then tolerate your not being Catholic because that too is part of the Creed: the truths of the Church must be freely accepted or they are valueless. Either way, we can get along.

Not so with liberals. We are pariahs, neanderthals, if we do not go beyond tolerance (which truly is only a recognition of error which we can not, at a given time anyway, overcome) and embrace their ways. There is no room, in their creed or in their philosophy, for us to be us. They are hypocrites who sound like they’re being inclusive when they are in fact less considerate of beliefs anathema to theirs than they accuse us of being. They are, to use the Illinois Senator’s phrase, pigs with lipstick. We need to step back far enough that we may see the sty they wallow in.