Why Conservatives are Losing

Matt Barber is a staunchly anti-gay right wing Christian. He's also, in my humble opinion, a complete asshole that epitomizes the delusional conservative and illustrates why conservatives are losing, and will continue to lose, the culture wars.

Barber is upset with Target stores for supporting gays. He is so upset that he is calling for people to boycott Target stores, “I hope people will go into Target stores across the country and tell them that they are no longer going to buy products there because Target has joined in the attack on the institution of natural marriage."

Now Barber is well within his rights to be upset with Target and is also within his rights to boycott the store and ask others to boycott it. An economic boycott is a form of "freedom of speech." It is a method of expressing disagreement with a company's policies by hitting them where in hurts the most, in the pocketbook.

That's not why I think Barber is an asshole.

I think he's an asshole because what he takes for granted as his right he would openly deny to others. When gay rights activists called for a boycott of Chick-Fil-A over its donations to anti-gay political groups Barber expressed outrage that liberals were "intimidating" the restaurant chain.

When a similar boycott was organized against the Charity Give Back Group, also over donations to anti-gay political groups, Barber called it "economic terrorism."

And therein lies the arrogance of the conservative. They believe they have the privilege to decide how other people should live and how other people should act. They would like to impose their morality on everyone else. They're also convinced that they have "privileges" (they call them rights) that, according to them, no one else seems to have.

That's not to say that liberals aren't sometimes guilty of trying to enforce their opinions on everyone else. The difference is liberals are usually trying to remove restrictions while conservatives are usually trying to impose them. The other difference is liberals are usually motivated by harm to a third party while conservatives are usually motivated by their concept of so-called morality.