Conservatives: Hanging Tough?

In the last few years, at least in the 8 years between 2000 and 2008, Americans got a good look at many forms of conservatism. One fundamental tenet of modern conservatism, especially if you recognize the views of people like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Joe the Plumber as representative of modern conservatism, is that conservatives are tough. They're tough on crime, tough on terrorism, tough on foreign policy. They support rugged individualism, hard work, and making tough choices. They supported the war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, and the war on terror. They support a strong military, tough border policies, and guns for everyone. Conservatives  would have you believe that they are the only people standing between Americans and those that would massacre them.

In contrast, liberals are supposedly soft, weak-willed naifs. If Republicans are the party of strong national security, Democrats are the party of cut-and-run and surrender. According to conservatives, liberals only care about making everyone feel good with politically correct language, affirmative action policies, and massive government spending. As Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly and Beck are all too happy to announce, liberalism (also called "socialism," "fascism," and "communism" by voices of the conservative movement) is going to result in America's fall from grace.

If all you listened to was the way the two sides talked about themselves, it would be easy to fall into the trap of believing that conservatives are hardened, realistic defenders of American values and liberals are gentle, vulnerable, sentimental weenies.

And yet, conservatism is, at least in its current incarnation, nothing less than the fear of nearly everything. American conservatives' entire platform is based on the fear of something: terrorist attacks, government bankruptcy, higher taxes, divine retribution, the weakening of traditional marriages, feminists, the siege of illegal immigrants, Muslim infiltration, watering down of the 2nd Amendment, and on and on and on. I'm not saying they're wrong to be worried about some of these things, but for tough guys, they spend a lot of time cowering in fear of every shadow on the wall and breath of wind in the trees. On the other hand, those sad-sack, weakling libruls are getting pepper sprayed for protesting Wall Street abuse and getting their asses kicked in support of free speech.

Just as I'm not saying all conservative fears are misguided, I'm not saying all liberal demonstrations are justified. I'm simply pointing out that from where I'm standing, the "tough guys" look like a bunch of fraidy cats, and the supposed fraidy cats are standing tough for what they believe.

So I'm left wondering, how did conservatives get the reputation for toughness, again?