Nothing Against John Moe Personally, But….

 

I paid $1 for an abridged CD version of John Moe’s Conservatize Me, an account of his attempt to “become a righty with the help of Richard Nixon, Sean Hannity, Toby Keith, and beef jerky.”

The insights weren’t worth half of what I paid.

To be fair, my copy was abridged, so perhaps any intelligent or interesting points he made were edited out in this shorter version. As it is, he spent five hours and 55 minutes bashing Conservatives – not Conservatism, mind you, but Conservatives, with hard core, mean spirited, relentless mocking and insulting attacks – and devoted five minutes to glorying in the wisdom of his so-called profound conclusion.

I am conservative, in many ways, but the conservative culture he describes is foreign to me, implausible, ridiculous. The book was nothing but sweeping, unkind generalizations and vicious stereotypes, condemning anyone who shops at Walmart, eats meat, drives a truck, listens to country music, lives in Rexburg, Idaho, wears anything red, white or blue, or actually believes in the Constitution and appreciates our country and our past. It’s just more hate speech disguised as (attempted) humor, flat, mean humor, again illustrating why some think that the liberal view of freedom of speech applies only to people who think like liberals do.

The weighty, insightful conclusion that Moe seems so proud of – that none of us is 100 percent conservative nor 100 percent liberal, and that we should all get along – is something most people already know, you know, but to John Moe and people of his ilk, it is a hard-earned epiphany.

Of course, he had this epiphany before writing the book, so judging from the condemning, critical nature of his words, his ah-ha moment didn’t take.

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