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We haven't given up on them yet.
We liberals know that the vast majority of conservatives are good people caught up in an ancient and sinister ideology. Every human being has both good and bad impulses; it is our beliefs and mindset that channel our actions one way or the other. All of us have the capacity to be both selfish and selfless, to close or to open, to stand rigid and unchanging or to embrace the opportunity to grow and expand and, yes, evolve. Conservatives are very caring and kind within their in-group, and sometimes they choose to extend that kindness to outsiders. But not often or consistently enough. This is one of the key differences between conservatives and liberals. All we liberals are asking is that conservatives step into the better side of their own selves in their relationship with the wider world of humans - and nature - rather than stubbornly clinging to those too often selfish ways of being. Despite all the trouble they've caused through American (and world) history, and how they've slowed the tide of progress again and again, we stand ready to embrace them whenever they decide they want to join the human race, rather than standing astride it. We will welcome their handshake when they decide that hands belong to nature, rather than nature belonging to human hands. We will walk side-by-side in joy and purpose when they perceive that we are all in this together, when they finally realize it's all-for-one and one-for-all, not I-Me-Mine. We are waiting for the day when they at long last acknowledge and embrace E. Pluribus Unum - from the many, one - as well as that other great triumnvirate of American values: liberty, equality and justice... FOR ALL. The union, the oneness, the collective, We the People, must be the locus of our understanding of what a community, a nation, or the human family, truly should be, not ideology that places selfishness, fear and hierarchical inequality as its prime directives. The essential conservative axiom of remaining separate from others, desperately needing to feel better than, holier than, more patriotic than, must be released. This is Bronze Age clan-mentality, a toxic mix of inflated ego and fearful little child, propagated by the myth-makers, and swallowed down like Kool-Aid by the myth-believers. Our hearts go out to conservatives because we see what internal confusion and anguish, as well as self-punishment, they are stuck in. They think their worldview is simple, straight-forward and true, but it's really a mangled mess, a tangle of contradictions, entirely incongruent with universal truths, only rendered more unworkable by the increasingly liberated modern world. It's a black-and-white mindset in a technicolor world... a wordview that is actually strangling their own mind and spirit. We liberals don't want to crush them (as they do us), we want to rescue them, we want to liberate them. That's what liberals do.
They can't appreciate the vast bulk of the world of ideas because so many of these so readily offend and insult their myths, their shallow and selfish mindset, or flat scare the bejeebers out of them. So they are forced to turn away from art and science and higher education and alternative philosophical or spiritual pathways and all other cultures... because they are ignorant and afraid of them, and therefore feel they must attempt to subdue or destroy them. So it is they remain at odds with higher virtue, truth, and at war with the world. Conservatism is one of the saddest conditions in the world. Conservatism sets its believers apart and against all "others." This means all of nature, and all people who are different, are to be ridiculed, feared, denigrated, conquered, exploited, even destroyed, rather than embraced, loved and protected. Modern psychology, sociology and neuroscience have explored conservatism. It's not a pretty sight, confirming what is clearly visible to the naked eye: conservatives are more conformist, more rigid, more fearful, more anxious, more prejudiced, more suspicious of strangers yet more gullible to fantastical ideas, more easily disgusted by things, more amenable and obedient to authority, more accepting of inequality; they are more bothered by change, by ambiguity, by novelty, are less prone to travel or have an interest in other parts of the world or other peoples, and have much lower empathy for those outside their in-group. They are more prone to bullying and violence. They are terrified of death. They have three times as many nightmares as more liberal people. On the plus side, they are generally happier than liberals. It turns out ignorance really can be bliss. Add in selfishness, and life is grand! After all, it's a whole lot easier to be conservative than liberal. Just indulge your selfishness. When you don't give a damn about the rest of the world, there is far less to be unhappy about, nor do you feel a shred of responsibliity for doing something about all the injustice and suffering in the world. yet conservative happiness is shallow, propped up in no small measure by diversions such as lame TV and movies, sports and beer and junk food, killing animals and spending Sundays pretending to believe in something that their own inner intelligence tells them is just a bunch of fairy tales for the gullible (but hey, it's a good place to make business contacts). This kind of "happiness" only goes so far. It's more or less impossible to experince deep, lasting joy when you are at war with most of the world, having nightmares and are scared shitless of death. Then there are those vaunted "family values," which research suggests isn't a bed of roses, with conservatives experiencing more teen pregnancies, lesser education, lower income, more domestic violence, more divorces and more suicides as compared with the more liberal population. Meanwhile, conservatives are mired in perpetual defense of myths that are centuries, if not millennia, out of date and dangerously discordant with the revealed truths of the modern world. So they are forever embattled, enjoined in a "culture war" they can never win, and that, in fact, for hundreds of years they have been losing, little by little, or sometimes by sudden landslide. Conservatives are not called "reactionaries" for nothing. They don't drive culture forward; they react to liberal progress, usually badly. William F. Buckley was spot-on when he put forward this definition of a conservatives: someone who "stands athwart history yelling, 'Stop!'" Of course, history never stops. Quite the opposite; it accelerates. Conservatives know in their hearts they have lost control of a world that has passed them by. They are well aware of this slip-sliding away of their "traditional" culture, and so they recoil, react, hunker down, and double-down on their mythology, desperately searching for scriptural phrases and racial and/or nationalistic demagogues and demagoguery that might justify their anger and fear, while totally ignoring the more fundamental precepts of both Christianity and Americanism that would lead them out of the wilderness of selfishness. There is a lot of judging by conservatives, and a lot of materialism, while they routinely evidence little humility, forgiveness, thankfulness, compassion and love. They are far more interested in claiming they know Jesus than having any intention of following the pathway he set forward to salvation. They pay lip-service to American ideals; sure they believe in liberty... for themselves... not so much for "the other." Meanwhile, the great irony of history reveals that most of the progress that they have fought so hard to prevent actually benefits them and their children and grand-children. Social Security and Medicare are but two more recent examples, fiercely defended by today's conservatives but viciously opposed by their ideological kith and kin just a few generations back. Yet continue to fight they do. Embattled conservatives can never feel at home in the world. Everyone and everything is out to get them: immigrants, blacks, Asians, Mexicans, Muslims, liberals, unions, gays, lesbians, transgender people, poor people, the rich "elite," smart people, scientists, artists, the media, atheists, vegans, the list goes on and on. This encases both their mind and their heart in armour. As they recoil defensively, trust in the greater good of the world is entirely lost. It is a feedback loop of distrust and angst (with Fox News and such luminaries as Rush Limbaugh gleefully - profitably - throwing oil on the fire). What they don't understand is that the only people really out to get them are the very ones they lionize... the "strongman" (or woman), the charismatic politician or preacher, pundit or other thought leader whose real purpose (lining their pocket and/or promoting them to greater power) depends upon dividing his/her constituency from those that would counter the charlatan's propositions. The leader fully understands three things: 1) that their purpose is fundamentally at odds with the welfare of the common folk; but 2) he/she must convince enough of them to support or vote for them, and 3) that the way to garner that support is to play the victims against the opposition, manipulating their negative emotions to arouse anger, fear, prejudice and greed. In this way the native, usually rather benign, mind is co-opted by authority figures profferring a simplistic worldview that emphatically warns of the malevolent intentions of the "other." The result is that conservatives surrender their belief system to those who would actually enslave and harm them. They end up as mindless soldiers who fight against the liberal effort to spread fairness (including for conservatives), while supporting those who would enrich and empower a small cabal of wealth and privilege that plays them for pawns and suckers. These authoritarians inculcate conservatives to obsessively worry about losing their "traditional" way of life. So they are recruited into the leagues of those who would "conserve" the unfair status quo, the "dominator hierarchy," the very system that occasionally makes victims of conservatives, themselves. They are continually coaxed into reflecting back upon a gauzy dreamlike past that is long gone (and probably never was), and to fear its complete disappearance. They cope by demeaning and complaining about the the rest of the world in their often vast conservative echo-chambers, and by indulging in incessant escapism, devoting huge chunks of their lives to the most banal of human activities: watching mindless television, obsessing over sports, participating in religious activities that have little or nothing to do with deeper spirituality, devoting countless hours playing with motorized toys, going out to shoot up innocent animals, and, of course, satiating themselves with copious amounts of alcohol and other drugs. All of this is the exact opposite of the meaning of life, higher human intelligence and deeper human spirituality, all of which involve acceptance and celebration of the diversity of God's (or of you prefer, the Source's) beautiful and magnificent universe, and participation in thoughts and activities that live up to our potential as the tip of the spear of evolution (which many conservatives don't even believe in... to their titanic detriment). Conservatives are blind to, and apart from, the pervasive Oneness of all things... perhaps the most important philosophical and spiritual revelation of the Universe! God does not want this for them. The Universe does not want this for them. Mother Earth doesn't want this for them. Liberals don't want this for them. We want conservatives to join in the wonder, knowledge and fun of art and philosophy and science, rather than recoiling because these so easily and often fly in the face of their rigid mindset. We want them to know the joy of celebrating and learning from, and welcoming as equals, people of different color, nationality, language, religiosity, and customs. We can see their utter blindess in the way they flail about philosophically and spiritually. There have no intellectual or spiritual depth perception. It's not just black-and-white, it's flatlined. They live in the Realm of Flatland. They have no real beliefs, only belief in belief, and self-serving myths. Their outsized but very fragile and childish ego tells them that they believe in certain things, but then their word and deed prove unequivocably that they actually do not believe in these ideals, they only believe in believing in them... or, at best, they believe in such ideals for themselves and their "in-group" but not for everyone else. In reality they are scared to death of such things as equality, liberty, justice, love for one another, forgiveness, and most especially, non-judgment, for above all the ego is insecure and seeks a feeling of superiority over others. This is true of all conservatives, around the world and throughout history. Liberals have great compassion for conservatives because we plainly see they are prisoners of their own mindset. We keep trying to give them the key, which is simply the Golden Rule, but they keep biting our hand. They continue to do everything they can to keep themselves locked tight in the self-centered mindset. They are egged on in their conclusions and seclusion by the myth-makers who desperately need dupes and mind-slaves to side with them as they exploit the masses, including the bulk of social conservatives, right along with their exploitation of the natural world. We liberals plainly see how social conservatives are bamboozled, befuddled, bedazzled, bilked, baffled, deluded, flimflammed, hornswoggled, hoodwinked, swindled, tricked by the very same, old nemesis that has always taken advantage of them. The myth-making conservatives, whether they be royalty, the aristocracy, the oligarchy, the rich, the powerful, the priestly caste, the religious the welfare of the rank-and-file conservatives, only about their rigid allegiance. They think of their followers as dupes, pawns, sheep. And, alas, social conservatives prove them right, time after time.
This has been going on for a thousand years, and conservatives still can't, don't, won't, see it! CorpCons, those who seek total possession and domination of the human spirit and Mother Earth, are our common enemy! Together, we could crush these demons. But divided, we all suffer from their never-ending greed and tyranny. Conservatives are the zombie army that protects these corporate pirates and thugs from We the People. Conservatives, awaken! Those chains are another myth. They are only mental. You can break the spell anytime you want. It is easily within your power to break free. Many, perhaps most, liberals have been in your place. Many of us were raised within that same herd, indoctrinated by the same propaganda, bought into the same prejudices and fear-monginering, and willingly surrendered to our bondage to the selfish self. We believed the charlatan lies. It felt good.... for awhile. We were greedy. We crave self-importance. We so want to believe we are special, superior, exceptional. And so the mantra, "We're No. 1!" The ego is difficult to dethrone. After all, it is the selfish and all powerful No. 1! And it is fully supported by the myth-making clan. The childish ego-self clings to the clan's promises: security, superiority, perhaps even wealth and power and fame. Without wilfull determination, the conscience cannot match the ego in self-serving favors or worldly goods. And so, even those who are partially awake often fail to fully free themselves. As with a junkie and his dealer, it feels too good to let go completely of selfishness. Most often, the ego-tyrant is never fully conquered. It still lingers deep inside, waiting for an opportunity to be selfish. But as a new worldview emerges, a new self takes primary control: the conscious/conscience self. It's not that selfishness has been destroyed, just controlled. This new self is a deeper human, open to experience, knowledge, change, cooperation and respect, even love, for "the other." Hmmm, doesn't that sound familiar, Christians? This new-born self perceives the vacuousness and destructiveness of the ego-self's "values" of ignorance, fear, prejudice and greed, and replaces them with true, universal values: love, respect, compassion, equality, liberty, justice for all, each of which threatens to deflate the ego. The more the conscious self imbibes in these values, the more the unconscious ego-self shrinks and recoils deep inside, and the more liberal one becomes.. And so the great ideas of human history are embraced by the new self, which recognizing itself as no longer No. 1 is free to climb much higher in consciousness. It's a paradox. The more you lose, the more you gain. The less you inflate yourself, the more you are filled, and bigger, better person you become. The more you help others, the more you help yourself. This worldview, opens up a vast landscape of meaning and potential happiness. From this landscape liberals can look only with pity and sadness upon the tiny, tattered worldview that conservatives have imprisoned themselves. The world, the Universe, for liberals becomes an infinitely larger and more awesome realm, more stunningly interesting and beautiful, yet far less fearsome. Spirituality inevitably becomes much deeper and broader in direct ration with our bonding with the Universe, loving everyone and everything. The message of Jesus becomes so much clearer. It becomes possible to believe you really could love your neighbor as yourself, even love your enemy. This is all but impossible to even imagine when you are stuck in clan-mentality, and that's exactly why so many social conservatives are such terrible "Christians" and Americans. In practice they are closer to anti-Christian and anti-American. Yet as prejudice, fear and greed fall away, the human family becomes more interesting and endearing, as well. Diversity becomes a high value, rote conformity shrinks in validity. All of history comes into focus, and we can easily see that its arc is toward greater knowledge, greater liberty, greater equality, greater justice, greater universal love. Who in their right mind would want to fight against it?
Thus emerges the quintessential "American," or "Christian," or one could say liberal: one who is favorable to progress or reform in terms of concepts of maximum individual freedom within a just society free from prejudice and bigotry, characterized by compassion and generosity, and actively seeking to understand and bond with the entire Universe. This is the transformation that many liberals have undergone in their quest to find their authentic self, a self in harmony with all of nature, as well as with the legacy and potential of the human family. Now here is a potential problem. Some sociologists claim that many conservatives just cannot make this transformation. They are hard-wired to be selfish and childish, and will never change. They need an authoritarian figure, they love their myths, and take to fear and greed and prejudice like a duck to water because it's in their brain chemistry. We liberals don't necessarily accept this pessimism. We know it's possible, because we did it ourselves. Many of us grew up steeped in conservative beliefs. We believe that if we escaped such thinking, anyone can do it, if they want to. It's not rocket science. It can be a little bit painful as each link of the chain is broken and the unconscious ego-self laments the loss of a once-cherished possession or perception or mythology, just as a child might throw a fit at having a dangerous toy taken away from them, or when they finally learn that there is no Easter Bunny. But the place in the self where that chain once held tight is revealed to be an open wound, and now at last it can begin to heal. The pricks and pangs of loss of ego are actually precursors to emotional, intellectual and spiritual healing, growth and strengthening. After just a short while you are feeling much more free, much more happy, much more aware, much more alive. Why, it's like an elephant has been lifted off your chest. Conservatives! Repent! Put away your anger and fear and prejuduce and selfishness. Like the liberal man named Jesus, we bring you the Good News of love and harmony, of knowledge, awareness and consciousness. Like the American Founding Fathers, we call upon you to embrace the true value of this nation: liberty, equality, justice for all. Awaken! Your myths aren't working. They have left you estranged from the world, the truth, and your own better self. They have left you shackled to a demon master, the CorpCons, the money changers and Pharisees, to whom you are nothing but a trusting but terrified sheep they intend to fleece. Proclaim your independence! Walk away from your bondage, and your vicious and ever-angry clan, and join the human tribe. We have many challenges and obstacles ahead. The folly of ego and clan mentality that you stubbornly wish to "conserve" has wrought a terrible toll upon humanity and nature. A more perfect union, a new covenant, is possible. Won't you join us? Throw off your chains and set yourself free. We will bring that more perfect union and new covenant to fruition by ourselves if we have to. But we would much prefer to have you working with us, not against us. We will eventually completely defeat the CorpCons and the mythology of conservatism. Alas, there is little or no redemption in store for the CorpCons; their sins are too great, greed too deeply ingrained, their insanity incurable. But you, dear social conservatives, are different. Although they have pulled the wool over your eyes and convinced you that you are bound to their ideology, we know you have a golden heart beating deep inside your armour, and it is that which we will continue to try to reach, and to save. We hold out for the day when you open to your heart and see the light. We can reach that day of justice, that promised land, much quicker and much easier if you will, at long last, join We the People! What humanity needs is a Conservative Reformation! Human society, and the entire world, would greatly benefit if conservatives would return to the golden nugget at the heart of their impulses, the idea that some things need to be conserved, and reconfigure they way they conserve, protect and serve it. Conservatives, just hold that idea in your hearts and minds for awhile. You hold one of the two most precious jewels of human thought! Then the obvious next question is, "What needs to be conserved?" There is great danger here. This is the very crossroad where conservatives have gone bad and so disserved the world. They have chosen poorly throughout history. But it doesn't always have to be this way. A Conservative Reformation would start all over again, and get it right this time, and thus take their rightful place as conservers of the true good. It's not hard. They key is to take the Second Greatest Idea in the World - that Some Things Need to be Conserved - and then link it, unbreakably, with the virtues. Start with just one virtue: Love. Enough with the selfishness, the division, the distrust, the bigotry, the hate. LOVE must be CONSERVED! Then move on to a second virtue: Truth. Enough with the myths, the distortions, the incessant lies. The TRUTH must be CONSERVED! With just those two virtues, you can hardly go wrong, but there is one more that should be immediately added to form a strong moral triangle of values: Home. No intelligent creature fouls its own nest; no ethical creature plunders its own ecosystem; no moral creature harms or destroys the innocent;, no non-demonic creature rapes its own mother. Yet that is what conservatism has not just allowed but encouraged to happen to our Mother Earth. This must stop NOW! In all the wide world, the No. 1 thing that should be conserved is the world! So the Conservative Reformation could start with just those three virtues - love, truth and home - and the world would change for the better tomorrow. Of course, there are other virtues: wisdom, mercy, integrity, valor, patience, equanimity, generosity, discipline, prudence, and many more. Together we can nurture all of the virtues, which combine to make universal values. These, and only these, should become our "traditional values." Humanity is too large, and too powerful, for any ideology to wander far from the roots of virtue. Come on, conservatives. Meet us at the tree of virtue, you with your jewel of truth and we with ours, and let us put them side by side to shine forever more, guiding us precisely toward becoming the best liberals and conservatives... all of us together, at the exact same time! Love, The Liberals
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At this website we've been pretty rough on conservatives. But it's tough love. Liberals don't hate conservatives. Despite all that conservatives do that is divisive, despicable, deranged, despotic and sometimes downright dangerous, we are still diligently trying to love them. They are our friends, family members, at the very least fellow countrymen. We are all Americans, and beyond that, whether they like it or believe it, they are part of the ONE human family that we (and science) know to be true and good. We hold out hope that one day they will see the light of the very ideals they profess to believe in. You see, we liberals don't want to divide and separate ourselves from conservatives, as they do us... and just about everybody and everything else on Earth... we want to bring them into the common fold, the shared soul of the world. 
We clearly see what great damage their ideology does to them. It is the worst kind of shackle they find themselves in: the entrapment not of the body, but of the mind, the heart, the soul. Indeed, in their rigidity and emotional immaturity, they actually rob themselves of the true wonder and joy of being human. They become childish automotons, empty clones, crass comformists, and terrified sheep, blithely bending to whatever emotional strings their charismatic leaders pluck within them. They have little depth or vision or creativity or wider compassion. So they cannot perceive the beauty throughout the human family, and in all of nature. By their very political definition, they must "conserve" traditions, which importantly includes clan mentality and a hierarchy of inequality and injustice, prejudice, greed, fear and ignorance. Progress itself becomes something to fear and fight against. 
The myth-makers lead social conservatives around by a chain through the nose, pointing with one hand at "wedge issues" - religion, gun control, abortion, gays, transgnders, blacks, immigrants, unions - while picking their pocket with the other hand. They are the ones who manipulate the banking system and "free market," rig the insurance companies, hide their wealth offshore, pay lower taxes than you do (or no tax at all), pay a pittance to their workers, try to deny you a fair retirement, steal your farm, ship jobs overseas, cause health care and education costs to skyrocket, feed you crap food, and get us into ill-conceived wars. These pirates are plundering YOU and YOUR COUNTRY, while they have you riled up about gay marriage and a tiny number of transgender folk using the bathroom that matches their gender identity! And after diverting your attention, they screw you over and laugh all the way to the bank. 
So the transformed person is no longer at war with the world, but in love with the world, no longer sees themself as separate and superior from other humans, but precisely the same in innate worth, and in deserving equality, justice and pursuit of happiness for all. The commonality, the oneness, the unity, pervades such a system and elevates us to yet a higher level of consciousness.