Hi Drillbit,

While I applaud the attempt to engage in a discussion with conservatives, I doubt that you will have much success through a platform like Medium. I’ve written more fully about this before, but I think that the platform is mainly dominated by liberal and progressive writers.

Further, while I do consider myself a conservative, I don’t claim to speak for or to be represented by all conservatives.

With that said, there are a points that I would like to raise.

Pro-Life Movement

Your argument of conservative hypocrisy on the issue of life does not hold. Conservatives, and especially Christian conservatives, spend a great deal of time working to children. Through charity, foster care and adoption, conservatives spend plenty of time trying to help those in need. That entire issue, however, is merely tangential to the argument of the Pro-Life movement: if you are “sympathetic” to the position that abortion is the killing of innocent children, then abortion must be opposed.

Compassion

As far as conservatives more broadly failing to be “compassionate,” this is a highly misleading argument. While conservatives do not support state-enforced “philanthropy,” they are indeed more generous of their own free will. As the article notes, the Left tends not to take individual responsibilty for charity, but rather leaves that up to the state. In a way, it’s very convient: instead of individually supporting those in need, leverage the power of the state to take money from others in the name of “charity.” This is hardly compassionate however.

(Note: this is not directed at you as a person. I have no idea what your charitable giving looks like, but I fully believe that you are indeed charitable. Rather, this is a critique of the argument that conservatives lack compassion because they oppose government programs. Conservatives are fully open to being compassionate, but they believe in the idea of subsidiarity: that charity should come first from family and friends, then community, then state, and only from the federal government if necessary.)

Support For Trump

First, it is important to clarify that President Trump was not supported as a candidate by many conservatives, especially the more ideologically rigorous conservatives. Most mainline conservatives supported more principled candidates until they dropped out of the primaries. There were plenty of “NeverTrump” conservatives who did not vote for Trump in the general election. However, those that did vote for Trump were more likely to be casting a no-vote against Clinton than a yes-vote for Trump. Consider that some of Trump’s biggest accomplishments in the eyes of conservatives, such as the supreme court nominations, were preventing the would-have-been democratic agenda.

Second, we must separate the policy from the politics. The majority of conservatives I know hate the character flaws and moral failings of the president. However, those same conservatives also support the very conservative agenda that the president has enacted. Thus, you will often hear most conservatives praising the president.

Finally, conservatives are active when it comes to dissociating themselves when it comes to legitimately hateful people. In the case of Steve King, for example, the conservatives gave him the benefit of the doubt for many years, but when it was unambigious that he supported racist ideas, almost the entire conservative establishment turned against him. Contrast this with the anti-semitic comments of Representative Ilhan Omar: the Democratic establishment seems to be acknowledging and apologizing for her hateful rhetoric, but has failed to cast her out.