Conservatives pound into us incessantly how virtuous they are, how they and only they have a work ethic, believe in Law and Order, are patriotic, brave, civic-minded, entrepreneurial, religious, ambitious (but always in a good way!), determined, self-reliant. They'll look you straight in the eye and tell you, without the slightest trace of irony, how they, and only they, love FREEDOM. Clearly, they must actually believe anyone who doesn't agree with them hates it. Somehow, they've managed to convince themselves Liberals love high taxes, and want to coddle criminals and be soft on crime, or put up with lazy welfare cheats. Or that Liberals can't wait for a chance to betray their country.

The obvious corollary is that anyone who ISN'T a Conservative obviously lacks these properties, and probably is a Communist, to boot. Come to think of it, anyone who disagrees with them on anything must be a Communist.

And when anyone tells them otherwise, they perceive of it as Liberal propaganda. If they don't like what they hear on the news, it must be because the journalists are trying to brainwash them. Maybe its just because, as a rule, journalists are smart people, and read books (sometimes just for fun!). Or maybe its just because journalism loves to blow the whistle on crooked businessmen, business being the only intellectual activity considered manly, virtuous and virile by Conservatives.

Hey, don't get me wrong, everyone has their biases and prejudices, Liberals do too, but Conservatives are really blatant about it, and seem to be incapable of seeing those same flaws in themselves.

I was brought up bi-cultural, and I quickly learned to pick up on cultural markers like this. An excerpt from my memoirs...

It is difficult for recent arrivals to Tampa to understand how completely and pervasively Cuban culture was once established in the major cigar-factory neighborhoods of the town: Ybor City, West Tampa, and Palmetto Beach (Desoto Park to the Crackers). There was remarkably little conflict between the Cracker and Cuban communities. There was some discrimination, especially in the business world, but as a rule, people got along, played together as kids, intermarried as adults, and lived and worked side by side. In fact, if there was any racial prejudice, it was more likely to be directed at the Crackers, not the other way round. I was taught at home that although many of them were 'nice people', they did have a tendency as a race to dislike hard work, drink too much, beat their wives, abuse their kids, and not bathe very frequently. Their food was bland, their music barbaric, their religion ridiculous and they had little use for culture or education. 'Crackers', by the way, was not a pejorative term, it was the name native Floridians adopted, referring to their skill with the bullwhip driving mule trains during the pioneer days. I suppose that makes me one as well. On the other hand, we felt the way they treated their colored people was totally unforgivable. Cubans weren't free of racism, slavery was outlawed in Cuba well after the American Civil War, but they felt that they kept racism confined to social relations. Jim Crow laws and the KKK were totally incomprehensible to them, and lynching was as much a horror as the ovens at Dachau.

One of the advantages of growing up bicultural is that you soon learn that the superstitions of your tribe are not necessarily the laws of physics. With close contacts on both sides of the fence, I soon understood how similar the misconceptions of each were about the other. But I believe that rejecting unfair prejudices about others should not lead to cultural relativism. Individuals and civilizations (but not races) have their good and bad points, and some are corrupt and decadent, at least in part. Another advantage of being bicultural is that you are under no obligation to make excuses for the ugly and the bad your conscience sees in another nation; you learn to have confidence in your ability to recognize evil when you face it. You also develop a keen insight into the nature of hypocrisy. Americans did not invent racism, it is a natural phenomenon that exists in every society and even its victims embrace it. But underneath the genteel politeness of the American South it was never far below the surface, and it could erupt unexpectedly with an Oriental ferocity. I am old enough to remember institutionalized segregation, and even worse, the rationalizations and excuses for it. Although I sincerely believe that the worst is over now, the disease is still not cured, and none of us, not even its victims, is totally immune from infection. In this respect America was like a beautiful woman with rotten teeth.

Of course Americans, and by this I mean "Conservatives", unlike Europeans, know very little about other cultures, and somehow imagine everyone else must be just like them, and if not, then something must obviously be wrong with them. Many Americans, through travel or education, are outgrowing these attitudes. But the ones who haven't, I call "Conservatives". I don't mean to imply ideological or political conservatism is synonymous with cultural chauvinism and provincial ignorance, or an inevitable consequence of being white Anglo-Saxon/Northern European, but there is a clearly a definite correlation.

You will forgive me if I have a tendency to lump them all in the same boat.