50 Things Conservatives Believe
What conservatives really believe
One of the worst things about modern politics is that debate between both sides has mostly been replaced with naked propaganda. Instead of finding out where people stand by trying to come to an agreement with them, many people only see the worst comments from the other side told through propaganda outlets that are looking to generate outrage, not produce understanding. Quite frankly, if the only information I had about other conservatives was acquired from MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, and Keith Olbermann, I’d assume they were evil. However, the vast majority of what liberal news outlets tell the world about conservatives is unrepresentative or just not true.
I can definitively tell you that’s true because I created Right Wing News in 2001 and it ended up being one of the most prominent conservative websites in America for over a decade. I was part of the Tea Party movement and have done hundreds of hours as a guest on conservative talk radio. I’ve created one of the biggest and most active conservative Facebook pages in history. I’ve been one of the most-read conservative columnists online and my work has appeared EVERYWHERE in the conservative movement. Among other outlets, I’ve written for Human Events, Townhall, PJ Media, Bongino.com, The Daily Wire, BizPac Review, The Western Journal, The Gateway Pundit, The Dispatch, Hot Air, and National Review. The conservative movement has become significantly more splintered in the last few years and NO ONE PERSON can truthfully claim to be a spokesman for all conservatives, but if anyone could, I’d be just as good of a candidate for the job as anyone else you could find out there.
Granted, NOBODY can give you a meaningful list of 50 things that EVERY conservative believes because there’s enough intellectual diversity in the movement to make that impossible, but I can tell you that what you are about to read are things MOST CONSERVATIVES believe. I can tell you that from two decades of experience and I can also tell you that I deliberately left certain issues that I personally believe in, that I don’t think a majority of conservatives buy into, off the list to try to make it as accurate as possible.
If you have friends, family, children, or even know people who’ve been fed a lot of propaganda about what conservatives believe, show them this list. Let them see what we really believe and what we really want for the country.
1) So very true.
2) Safe spaces are ridiculous, even talking about microaggressions is evidence you are way too sensitive, hearing a different opinion isn’t “trauma,” and having “personal pronouns” is evidence of mental illness.
3) Being a Christian nation with strong morals is a big part of the reason America has been a success. The further we get away from our Christian roots, the more immoral the country will become and the less successful our nation will become.
4) There’s no moral difference between aborting a child and drowning a baby to death in a bathtub.
5) Women already get equal work for equal pay. To the extent that there’s a difference between what men and women make, it’s a result of women quitting work to stay home with kids, working fewer hours than men, or taking less dangerous, more pleasant jobs.
6) Both men and women lie about everything under the sun, including sexual assault. So no, an allegation alone is not proof that a man acted improperly or illegally. Like every other crime, there needs to be proof, not just blind acceptance of someone’s unproven claim. #MeToo
7) You can’t change genders and claiming that you can is as ridiculous as claiming you can turn into a buffalo or a wolf. Of course, if you genuinely believe that you’re a wolf, we’ll send you to an asylum, but if you claim you can change genders, we try to bring your deranged fantasy to life. This is bad for everyone. It hurts women who have to share bathrooms with men and compete against them in sporting events and it hurts the mentally ill people who believe that they can change genders. You don’t cater to and encourage people’s mental illnesses; you help them get better.
8) Gender is not a social construct. Masculinity in men and femininity in women are healthy things. Men and women are not interchangeable.
9) What we’ve been doing is this:
10) Racism exists, but America isn’t structurally racist or even racist at all in any meaningful sense. If it was, you’d have American minorities leaving the country and minorities certainly wouldn’t be flocking here by the millions.
11) White supremacy is a tiny, nearly irrelevant fringe movement in America, not a serious problem or a significant threat.
12) Diversity of opinion is important, but diversity based on skin color is not.
13) We should select people based on merit, not skin color.
14) Falsely calling someone racist is as wrong as being racist.
15) If you need to show ID to buy alcohol, fly on a plane, cash a check, or drive a car, asking people to show ID to vote is a no-brainer, especially since it would make our elections more secure.
16) MLK was right when he said:
17) Putting career criminals in jail is the best way to reduce the crime rate.
18) Homeless people should not be allowed to defecate on the streets.
19) Shoplifters should be prosecuted.
20) The government should not allow looting or rioting, and people engaged in looting and rioting, whether it’s at Wal-Mart or the Capitol Building, should face severe penalties.
21) Deliberately blocking traffic during a protest merits time in jail.
22) Efforts to take guns away from law-abiding citizens because criminals do bad things with them makes about as much sense as taking your car because your neighbor got drunk and killed someone in a wreck.
23) Competition is healthy and good for kids, which is why participation trophies shouldn’t exist.
24) Parents should have a lot of input into what their kids are taught, and those same parents should be given a great deal of latitude to choose which school their tax dollars and children go to if there are multiple options available. This is why charter schools, magnet schools, private schools, and school vouchers are good for the country.
25) Schooling should be about reading, writing, math, science, and history, not promoting or encouraging, homosexuality, transsexuality, or Critical Race Theory to students. People can promote or endorse what they want on their own time, but it shouldn’t be occurring in the classroom.
26) If you take out a student loan, yes, you should have to pay it back and you shouldn’t be asking everyone else to pay your way. Not only does it make no sense, because the vast majority of college graduates make enough money over their lifetimes to pay for the degree, but it’s also obviously extremely unfair to people that paid their loans off. It’s also unjust to ask people who didn’t go to college to pay because someone else changed their mind about paying off a college loan they willingly took out.
27) Teachers work for the parents, not vice-versa. The government works for the people, not vice-versa. The purpose of immigration is to benefit the Americans that are already here, not vice-versa. We have far too many people that get all of this backwards.
28) Real science requires genuine and open debate, testable hypothesis and proof, not just empty rhetoric declaring that something is “scientific consensus” or that anyone who doesn’t take a particular position “doesn’t believe in science.”
29) The case that global warming is happening, is caused by man, and can be realistically reversed by policy changes being suggested on the Left is so dubious that it’s practically non-existent. Between the dishonest studies, climate models that don’t work, and innumerable failed predictions of doom, there is simply no rational case for spending massive amounts of money or making widespread changes to our lifestyles to fight global warming without a real and solid scientific case being made.
30) The best way to help the poor is not to make them dependent on the government, it’s to create an environment that allows them to help themselves. Excellent K-12 education, low taxes, low crime, low inflation, low regulation, and low barriers to small business creation, along with creating an environment that’s generally friendly to business, all help people succeed.
31) Why would anyone who cares about the country want more criminals, people that don’t pay taxes, or people that are completely uninformed voting? If anything, we’d be better off if it were significantly harder to vote and fewer Americans were voting.
32) When it comes to the government programs, John D. Rockefeller was right when he said:
33) Given the fact that even if you get vaccinated and get not 1, not 2, but 3 boosters, you can still get COVID and spread it to other people, it makes no sense for the government or companies to hassle people that aren't vaccinated or force them to get the COVID vaccine if they don’t want it. Worst case scenario, they're only hurting themselves. There should be no one discriminated against or forced to take the COVID vaccine if they don’t want it.
34) It’s clear at this point that cloth and paper masks quite obviously do so little, if anything, to fight COVID that they shouldn’t be mandated.
35) We should have a loser pays legal system. If you sue someone and lose, you should have to pay their legal bills.
36) Communism and socialism run counter to human nature and increase the amount of poverty, dysfunction, and oppression wherever they are implemented.
37) The minimum wage should be zero. If someone wishes to pay you $4 per hour and you wish to work for $4 per hour, why shouldn’t both of you be able to voluntarily agree to that? Forcing businesses to pay people more than what they’re worth costs jobs and makes it harder for new workers to get experience.
38) Whether we’re talking about energy, housing, or goods, government-imposed price controls inevitably lead to shortages
39) The private market is cheaper, more efficient, and better run than the government. That’s why, as often as is practical, we should let the private market handle as much as possible while giving the government as little as possible to run.
40) Government-run public schools aren’t performing poorly because they’re underfunded. They have plenty of money. They’re performing poorly because of teachers’ unions that care nothing about kids and because of a lack of competition. Put vouchers in place that allow parents to choose which school to put their kids in and you will start seeing real improvements.
41) Illegal aliens are bad for the country, depress wages for the poor and middle class, and don’t deserve citizenship since they entered the country illegally. That’s why the United States should make every effort, including building a wall, to keep illegal aliens out of our country.
42) The solution to healthcare isn’t letting the government take over the whole thing, it’s making market reforms that will reduce costs. Let insurance companies sell across state lines. Implement tort reform. Require hospitals to post the cost of procedures. Change abusive patent laws that allow companies to charge exorbitant prices for drugs for decades. Make healthcare plans portable between jobs. Too much government control is why healthcare is such a mess today. Less government and more of the private market will lead to better service at a lower cost.
43) Just so:
44) New laws and regulations often do harm and seldom do any good. In fact, if we didn’t pass a new law or a new regulation for the next decade and only took existing laws and regulations off the books, the country would be much better off.
45) The individual will do a far better job of determining what’s in his best interest than the government.
46) The closer the government is to the individual, the more likely they are to do a good job of serving him. This is one of the many reasons we don’t want centralization of government power in DC.
47) We are not citizens of the world; we are citizens of the United States. We may wish the rest of the world well, but America should come first and what happens to our fellow Americans is more important than what happens to people in the rest of the world.
48) Government is a necessary evil under the best of circumstances and when it gets as big as it is today, it’s a dire threat to the American people.
49) The biggest long-term threat to America by far is our own spending. If we don’t get our spending under control, it will lead to the end of Social Security and Medicare in their current form, the loss of America’s status as a reserve currency, out-of-control inflation, and eventually a debt-driven economic apocalypse that will destroy the country.
50) Yes, indeed:
43 and 50 made me think of a suggestion I saw somewhere (Mark Levin?) that we add a "House of Repeal" whose sole purpose is to repeal existing laws that we don't need or shouldn't exist. Similar to a new rule that for every new law passed, 2 existing laws must be repealed.
Increasing the accuracy of #5 - my addition: 5) Women already get equal work for equal pay. To the extent that there’s a difference between what men and women make, it’s a result of women quitting work to stay home with kids THEN RETURNING TO THE JOB MARKET YEARS LATER, or working fewer hours than men, or taking less dangerous, more pleasant jobs.
Great list, well done John.