DO YOU hear that? It's the sound of thousands of liberals across America scratching their heads, wondering where they went wrong.
Last Tuesday's re-election of President Bush clearly came as a shock to many liberals, as indicated by the waves of still-stunned Democratic commentators in both print and on television -- not to mention the collection of angry away messages posted by nearly every liberal student at the University in the past week.
NBC conducted a survey during exit polls that asked voters to identify the most important issue, to them, in this election.The economy, terrorism, Iraq and health care all followed behind the number one issue: "moral values."
Moral Values? Really?
This may, in a way, be somewhat off the mark, considering that "terrorism" and "Iraq," generally seen as two sides of the same important coin, were split into two categories, as were domestic issues of health care and the economy. Moreover, the survey implies that those who picked Iraq or the economy were not motivated by any kind of moral values.
But still, these moral values claimed the top spot among voters of both parties, and of those moral-value-toting voters, Bush won big time: 80 percent of voters who picked "moral values" as their most important issue checked "Bush" on the ballot.
Why? What are these moral values and why do the Democrats apparently not have any?
"Moral values" can mean anything -- which means that their role in this election is open to interpretation. Personally, I believe that Americans voted on moral values because they're tired of not being allowed to have any.
The op-ed sections of newspapers and the endless parade of television commentators are awash with claims that America has become a land of red states -- of the evangelical, Bible-thumping, homosexual-hating, abortion-outlawing, Muslim-destroying faction out to obliterate civil liberties and inflict its stifling morality on the rest of the country. Or, what Thomas Frank of the always-objective New York Times calls the "right-wing populist revolt."
I know these people are dumbfounded as to how Kerry could have lost the election, but they need to realize that a country that votes on moral values isn't a country of extremists.
A ban on gay marriage, for example, ran on the ballots last week in 11 states, and in 11 states the ban was approved.
This doesn't mean, however, that everyone who voted for the ban is narrow-minded or homophobic. Someone who's in favor of civil unions, but not marriage, isn't automatically homophobic. And someone who perhaps would just not rather have activist judges making decisions for them, without the consent of the public, is not homophobic. But that's the label that you get when you vote against gay marriage.
The same is true for abortion. A great liberal fear now is that Roe v. Wade will be overturned with Bush back in office.
But President Bush has never said anything about overturning Roe v. Wade. There exists widespread speculation by liberals that overturning the law is on Bush's agenda because he wants to appoint conservative judges to higher courts who "know the difference between personal opinion and strict interpretation of the law." What Bush is against is partial-birth abortion, a horrible practice consisting of crushing the baby's skull and sucking its brains out. Yet opposition to this procedure, or any form of abortion, gets labeled as something like not wanting a woman to have control over her own body.
But the biggest fear among the liberals, it seems, is that America might be -- oh gosh -- somewhat religious.
Some Americans believe in God. Some like to pray. And some Americans even like to go to church. And these Americans like to see the same qualities in their president.
But not everyone who goes to church is a Jerry Falwell, and not everyone who voted for Bush is a religious nut. There was no increase in the percentage of evangelical Christians who voted for Bush this time from last time, meaning that Bush did not, despite popular liberal belief, go out and rally the extremists.
Perhaps Americans are tired of these labels. Perhaps people have grown tired of having no middle ground on which to stand.
Reading the post-election commentary, it seems that in America, you either support same-sex marriage or you hate gay people; you want abortion to remain legal or you want to take away women's rights; your mind is blessedly free of religious influence or you're a religious nut.
Maybe Americans were trying to send the message that it's actually OK to have moral values, and it's OK to have a president who is clear about his moral values and who makes decisions based on those moral values.
In fact, it should be expected.America, like it or not is a pretty moral place. And for those who really can't stand it, Canandian citizenship is just a year away
Kristin Brown's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached atkbrown@cavalierdaily.com.
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