I have deep respect and even affection for A Waco Farmer. He's one of my hetero-life-mates. But sometimes I do a different take on things. Take his recent expression of respect for Joel Klein ( I don't think Farmer was being sarcastic). I did read Klein off-and-on, but gave up on him a couple of years ago as being a great example of the smart fool, the worldly-mind. I will grant that Klein here is honest about his own, and most liberal's, attitude toward America. But he misrepresents conservatives, and so concedes to a straw man.

In Klein's recent LA Times opinion piece he made these statements:

I don't love America. That's what conservatives are always telling liberals like me. Their love, they insist, is truer, deeper and more complete. Then liberals, like all people who are accused of not loving something, stammer, get defensive and try to have sex with America even though America will then accuse us of wanting it for its body and not its soul. When America gets like that, there's no winning.

But I've come to believe conservatives are right. They do love America more. Sure, we liberals claim that our love is deeper because we seek to improve the United States by pointing out its flaws. But calling your wife fat isn't love. True love is the blind belief that your child is the smartest, cutest, most charming person in the world, one you would gladly die for. I'm more in "like" with my country.



Klein here tells us a lot about himself, but nothing really about conservatives. He contrasts liberal love--seeking to improve the U.S.--with conservative love and concludes that liberals just "like" America. A conservative's love of America, Klein wrote, is "the blind belief that your child is the smartest, cutest, most charming person in the world." Wrong. "True love" does not mean blind belief that your children are the best. My wife and I have raised three and we are proud of them. But I have always been aware of their flaws and weaknesses, as well as their strengths. I have sought to minimize the former and encourage the latter. Conservative love for America is not blind. Any real conservative can list on the spot at least three things that objectively make America the greatest, and the ideal place to live. At this moment I would list our Constitution including the Bill of Rights, our national history of self-improvement, and the generosity of Americans with their own money and resources toward those in need. And conservatives, so long as their has been a conservative movement, would like some things in America to be different, and work to change them. Our love is passionate, but not self-deluding.

. . ., I still think conservatives love America for the same tribalistic reasons people love whatever groups they belong to. These are the people who are sure Christianity is the only right religion, that America is the best country, that the Republicans have the only good candidates, that gays have cooties.

So, Mr. Klein, you have advanced enough to transcend tribalism. Perhaps, though, you're just afraid of commitment.