The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

There's been a great deal of controversy swirling around HB2, a bill recently passed in North Carolina and signed by Governor Pat McCrory. The law prevents transgender individuals from using public restrooms of the gender with which they identify. This has led to a series of boycotts, ranging from businesspeople to athletes to musicians and beyond. One musician who cancelled a show in North Carolina due to the controversial bill was "The Boss" Bruce Springsteen. In response to his cancellation, several conservatives criticized the rock star for being hypocritical, as he cancelled a show in the U.S. due to anti-LGBT legislation yet didn't do so in foreign countries which possessed far more extreme anti-LGBT laws. I've heard this line of reasoning on multiple occasions from conservatives, especially with regard to the LGBT community: "Things aren't so bad here. Just be grateful you don't live in Africa or the Middle East" or "Why do you critic...

It's very commonplace for liberals or progressives to desire change, to want the country to "progress" and move forward on a number of issues. It's one reason why I believe self-described liberals to be less consistent making it to the polls on election day, because if we don't see the progress we had anticipated or been told to expect, we'll often times feel less motivation to vote the next election cycle. Conservatives, meanwhile, as the term would suggest, tend to want things to stay as they are, for things not to change too drastically. Because drastic changes aren't very common, they tend to be regularly more content come election day than progressives, which may be one factor why Republican candidates have a tendency to outperform Democratic candidates in the midterms. Going along those same lines, conservatives tend to claim that they love this country as it is or "as it was" and will even go so far as to criticize progressives for seeki...