"You're smart, it's everyone who agrees with you that's stupid"

A lot of my friends are liberals and as such I regularly witness conservative bashing, either in person or over the Internet. What's odd is I will have a friend go from telling me how much they respect me and and my intellect, to immediately sneering at everyone who holds the same views I do.

One moment I will be a shining star, and the next I'll hear how everyone who stands up for issue X is stupid, evil, insincere and even insane, even if they know I support X.

Even more telling is the open hostility I'll get from friends of friends who see something I write in an online conversation. It's as if I had just donned a Klansman robe. I realize peoples online interactions can be ruder than in person, but there should be more constraint when you know a loved one is friends with the person and will probably see everything you write.

So in that spirit, here are some views I strongly, sincerely hold that a big chunk of my friends associate with being an evil, greedy dolt:

I believe the Tea Party is correct in all the major issues they advocate politically. I don't call myself a member, but I went to the first protest on April 15, 2009 at our state capitol. I was given a turn at the microphone and told the crowd exactly what I thought and was applauded heavily. I told them I think public protests are a waste of time but since we're here we now have an opportunity to network with each other and exchange contact information.

I attended because I expected to see a caricature of the protests online and in the news, which has proven true. Critics simply cherry pick a few statements or protest signs from nutcases to mischaracterize the group.

I find claims that opposition to President Obama is motivated by racism to be shallow and wishful thinking. I think he is a weak president and fundamentally fails to understand how the world works. In addition, my biggest problem with George W. Bush was his big-government economic policies. I didn't like his social conservatism either, but that's secondary.

I support the free market and capitalism. I think it's the government that creates monopolies and if capitalism can handle a problem then it should be used instead of governmental interference. For example, I oppose all price gouging restrictions, as they harm people's ability to get the supplies they need.

I want America to try a free-market based health care system. I think it's government interference that inflates the cost of health care and college education and it's government interference that caused the current recession. I think welfare programs and the minimum wage cause poverty. I think foreign aid harms the poor while sweatshops help them.

I don't like government programs that help small businesses at the expense of large ones. I have zero problem with factory farming and I oppose subsidizing small farms, as I see no virtue in them. The only sustainability problem I'm worried about is Social Security.

I think fascism is a form of socialism and I think the Nazis had a lot in common with the American progressive movement at the time, as outlined in Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Fascism and while I don't think most of the left are socialists, I think some of their policies are.

I think Karl Marx cemented his entire philosophy on the unrepresentative city of Manchester and lacked the intellectual discipline to change his mind when proven wrong. I don't think he contributed anything of importance and his popularity in colleges is a scandal.

I think the media has a liberal bias. I don't think it's a conscious plot, and it also tends to side with underdogs and people who are willing to talk. I don't think Fox News has reached some sort of peak of bias, and I see it as no worse than PBS, CNN or MSNBC.

I am glad the Supreme Court ended the ban on corporate speech and I have no problem with wealth inequality. I love guns, meat, genetically modified food, fast food and Walmart.

I think the biggest threat to freedom of speech is the left. Occasionally I listen to Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, although I prefer Russ Roberts, Mike Munger, Tyler Cowen, Don Boudreaux, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Frédéric Bastiat , George Will and Charles Krauthammer.

I think high speed rail, net neutrality, green energy, alternative medicine, organic food and protecting American jobs are boondoggles. I oppose politically correct speech, third-wave feminism, labor unions, all bond issues, media pirating and anti-discrimination laws (with the exception of bans of discrimination by government employees.)
So dear friends, you have a choice to make. Either change your notion that holding a selection of these ideas qualifies someone for villianhood, or significantly lower your opinion of my intellect and motivations.

Sure, I'm leaving out some of my other views - like support of gay marriage, drug legalization and open borders - but none of the quick dismissals I'm writing about include a person's entire body of views

This reminds me of my favorite Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quote:

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

I think the biggest factor in dismissing people with opposing political beliefs is the prejudice and stereotyping of rival groups demonstrated in the Robbers Cave experiment of 1954. Two competing groups of strangers quickly became hostile to each other. They perceived their own faction as a diverse cluster of individuals, but saw the other group as homogeneous and interchangeable.

What better way to describe America's left and right. Politics cannot be reduced to a simple good versus evil battle. It's an impossibly complex mess of balancing endless value judgments. It's not easy and waxing superiority over your opponents is an exercise in vanity. A real flexing of intellectual muscles comes in understanding ideas one disagrees with, instead of assuming the worst of motives for their supporters.

Update: I am not criticizing conservative bashing - I do it too. I'm calling attention to people who tell me "you're different" and I see that as mere extension of tribalism - that I'm not different, and they are imagining some right-wing bogeyman holds all of these beliefs. The only reason they see me differently is they have met me. People's responses are very different to strangers with identical beliefs to mine, such as my example with hostile friends of friends.