Shaping the narrative
Regarding “Pitts: It’s hard to fight from a crouch,” (May 8): In the Sunday column by Leonard Pitts, he expressed what I have been saying for years. The right wing has lost the battle of ideas but has won the battle of words. I virtually gag every time the media refers to the extreme members of the GOP as “conservative.” Somehow over the last 50 years “conservative” took on a positive connotation and “liberal” a negative one.
Today’s right wing has totally abandoned traditional conservative values. Fiscal responsibility has been discarded and replaced with favoring anything that lowers taxes, particularly on the wealthy. Long forgotten is conservative icon Barry Goldwater who voted against a tax cut that was not offset with spending cuts.
Particularly absurd is the term “social conservative.” Traditional conservative values call for less government involvement in our private lives, not imposing our religious beliefs on others. Here, too, the right wing has won the war of words. The debate over abortion rights is framed as pro-life vs. pro-choice. The right wing position is better described as pro-birth than pro-life. The other side calls for doing more to ensure life’s necessities once someone is born. Also “social conservatives”
have managed to describe their opposition as “woke.” Whatever that means, it must be bad if one sneers when she says it.
Most distressing is the right wing's abandonment of what have always been shared values between our political rivals. Liberals and conservative are not opposites. They are terms that describe positions on a continuum which define more or less government involvement in the life of the country. Somehow the extreme element of the right wing has decided that winning is more important than free and fair elections and, to some extent, that freedom of speech, of religion and of the press can be compromised.
If our politicians could focus more on issues and less on labels they would find there is much common ground with their opponents. They could then concentrate on solutions rather than name calling.
Marc Freedman, Houston
I sometimes read the weekly antiRepublican rants from Leonard Pitts just to keep track of how far out there the left can be. This column defines words used to describe left-leaning individuals but, of course, his definitions are structured to make them look good. Let’s take a look at what he said with my edits to bring them into alignment with reality.
“Woke” means awake and aware.
In reality “woke” means we see things a certain way and if you don't agree with us you must be racist, homophobic, xenophobic and just generally hateful — so you're canceled and no one will be allowed to hear what you have to say.
“Liberal” means “generous and broad-minded.” Rephrased, a more complete definition is “generous with taxpayers’ money and broad-minded as long as you agree.”
“Progressive” means “characterized by progress.” Progress toward which goal or goals? Based on observation of progressives’ behavior and advocacy the correct answer is progress toward communism or some other form of left-wing totalitarianism where the “progressive” government micromanages the lives of citizens under the belief that they alone know what's best.
Greg Groh, Houston