South Dakota Has No “Hard Right”

Every time election politics draws near in states like South Dakota, it’s de rigueur that the local media will step forth to brand conservatives as “hard right”–or similar language which collectively ostracizes traditionalists from the mainstream.

       This service was diligently just performed by Kevin Woster of the local newspaper on behalf of the self-professed centrists who see the only legitimate conservative position as that which deals with money management.

        Presumably, the “Hate week” piece will have done its job with the local public, most of whom are hardworking folks who don’t have time to sift through complicated political and economic positions.  Tagging any political opposition as “ultra-conservative” is good enough (to his credit, Woster stops short of labeling all opposition to the liberal status quo as “fascist”).

     All of this hyperbolic language seems strange if one considers that there is no “hard right” in states like South Dakota.  The “out there” fringe is yesterday’s center or mainstream, now out-of-fashion in the new liberal utopia being forged nationally.  Christianity and Western Civilization were cultural foundations in recent memory, not considered pariah.

      How far has our society come when the “hard right” now includes people who simply think it’s wrong to kill unborn babies in the womb?  Next time around the new “hater” conservative fringe will no doubt be those who cling to the outmoded concept of marriage between men and women.

     The new libertarian utopian world is probably already looking forward to extending the boundaries of sexual license to include pedophiliac-based “loving, caring relationships” or those derived from incest.   Will only the “hard right” conservatives object?

      I asked a professor friend how a “hard right conservative” might be identified.  He gave the example of the US conquering Iraq back in 1991.  A far right regime, he tongue-and-cheekly asserted,  would have taken all the oil without worrying about remuneration.  They would have imposed English as the only language that could be spoken in public, under penalty of death.  They would have outlawed Islam, giving the Iraqis the choice between Christianity or Judaism, executing those who resisted.

       Come to think of it, the hard right and the hard left are the same once the mercator political projection is laid out.  Weren’t the socialists Stalin and Hitler more alike than different? Consequently, South Dakota has no “hard right” conservatives, Mr. Woster.