Denying the Facts

Dear Conservatives: you don’t use facts to back you up. You’re scared of certain facts, and you run from them, when you could use them to your advantage. I’m tired of it.

I’m talking about the inconvenient realities of American history. The left is always quick to point out the injustice of America. They point to the Trail of Tears, the internment of Japanese citizens during WWII, secret military tests on unsuspecting civilians during the Cold War, and illegal American interference in foreign nations.

Why does the right run from these discussions? It leaves me scratching my head every time. Almost always, conservatives respond by saying, “Yes…but America has done lots of good things too.” Or we say, “But it was necessary because….” Or we say, “Why do you only focus on these bad things?” Or we say, “The textbooks nowadays are just rewriting history to be anti-American.”

Why are we hiding from the truth? The facts are the facts. We may not like them, we may be ashamed of them, we may say that they are overemphasized…but they are still the facts.

When conservatives sidestep these facts, in any of the ways that I just mentioned, they are directly playing into the hand of the opposition. They are not helping the problem. All that they are doing is confirming the stereotype that the right doesn’t care, that we just want our own freedoms, and that we aren’t that interested in correcting real injustice.

Stop hiding from the facts and start using the facts like they should be.

The reality is, there are a lot of these inconvenient realities in history, but they may not actually support the leftist agenda that they are always marshalled for.

Every one of the atrocious injustices that I mentioned earlier – and probably a thousand more that you will find later – can be used to support a different narrative. The narrative that power corrupts. That big government is a horrible, senseless monster that cares nothing for individuals. That federal overreach has created untold misery in our world and will continue to do so as long as it is uncontrolled. It is the narrative that crony capitalism is not a true representative of capitalism, but an inherently unfair system that relies on crooked politicians. It is the narrative that people do bad things when they are given uncontrolled power, and that now, more than ever, we need constitutional limits on this behemoth that we call ‘government.’

So, the next time you are involved in one of those discussions about inconvenient truths, agree wholeheartedly. In fact, conservatives, more than liberals, should be willing to point out these abuses of power, because they are the most logical, emotional, and influential way to highlight the dangers of big government. Stop hiding from the facts. Start using them.