First, a friendly hello to everyone. I'm a 21 year old college student in Northern California, I've been a long-time reader, but I only recently created an account here. For most of my teenage years, I was a conservative, primarily due the faith I was born into (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, also known as the Mormons). I gradually became less and less conservative after I quit the Mormon church at 17 (a long story for another time that basically boils down to my bishop not being able to adequately answer why we were an officially racist religion for so long, among other questions). That really shook the foundations of my conservatism, and I find myself sharing similar company on sites like DailyKos, these days.
But enough introductions, I wanted to write this diary after being shocked at something I saw today. I sometimes listen to conservative talk radio on my way to and from college. It's my way of making sure I'm really firm in what I believe; if I ever actually started to agree with Sean Hannity/O'Reilly/Limbaugh/Savage on any significant, controversial issues, I would know I had some political soul-searching to do. That hasn't happened so far. Yet, despite listening to them on the radio, I always thought they only had small cult followings, and they catered only to the really extreme right.
I was shocked to find this on the front page of RedState today. It was my first time really taking a long look at a conservative blog, somehow I just thought there would be a level of discourse on them higher than the bile Rush Limbaugh spews on his radio show. For those who don't want to click the link, it's an audio clip from Limbaugh's show. A little girl asks Obama why he's running for President, and Obama essentially says that he's running for President because he wants to create a better America for his children. Of course, Rush Limbaugh jumps on this and attempts to paint it as Obama slamming America.
I know that the Limbaugh crowd thinks calling America anything less than "The best country in the world" is tantamount to treason, but I really expected more of the conservative blogosphere than a regurgitation of this hideously twisted logic that demands a person to never criticize their country or attempt to improve it.
My question, then, is this: Is this how most large conservative blogs operate? I picked out RedState because it's the only one I've seen linked to several times (McCain's own site links to it, if I recall correctly), so I figured if there was a conservative version of DailyKos, RedState was probably the closest thing to it. Was I wrong? Is RedState just an outlier, and there are other large, less ridiculous right-wing blogs who don't just regurgitate Hannity/Limbaugh/Savage/O'Reilly's fallacious, hateful smears?
"Thinks America has room to improve, and wants to improve America" = "Hates His/Her Country"
This can't really be mainstream, can it?