"Common sense" is a phrase you hear a lot today in American politics and culture. The MAGA brand tries to sell itself as the "common sense movement." And given that the Trump-Vance ticket won both the electoral and popular vote in 2024, this messaging both works and is quite popular with Americans. This is so because Americans have been clamoring for common sense. Now, I’ll get to why, but we first have to establish what common sense actually means.
Common sense is what instills the feeling of “duh” when dealing with what is true or right. It’s what occupies the position of obvious when on the playing field of truth or right and wrong. And because being obvious is the nature of common sense, hence the inclusion of the word “common,” it can have a unifying effect on a people. But if "common sense" is so obvious, why have the American people been clamoring for it?
Because of what common sense represents. It represents clarity. And because we’ve been living through times where the water has been quite muddied in the recent past.
There’s been a glaring lack of clarity on the moral front, the political front, and just about every front that has a cultural impact. And it’s divided us. It’s divided us to the point of feeling closer to the brink of civil war than to the brink of coming together as a nation. And I’m not a “We’re heading towards a civil war” type of guy, but I don’t think, God forbid, a 9/11-type of event would bring the country together today. That’s how divided we truly seem to be. Just waving Old Glory herself was a rallying cry back then that I firmly believe it wouldn’t be now.
But I can’t just leave you hanging by saying there’s been a lack of clarity on multiple fronts. So I guess I ought to explain myself in more detail, shouldn’t I?
I already mentioned the moral and political fronts, so let’s focus on those.
Morality, more than anything else, is going to be a defining factor with regard to what constitutes common sense. This is so because morality is the foundation for right and wrong. And everything springs forth from this foundation.
Well, does it feel like we have a clear sense of right and wrong anymore in American society? No, it doesn’t. And because we’re struggling with clear parameters for right and wrong, our politics is immensely suffering.
All a law is is the official codification of a moral principle. Therefore, to say that morality defines politics would be a correct statement to make. This truth presents a major problem when the opposing sides in politics are effectively separated on the most fundamental level, the moral level, which is what we see in American politics today.
Let’s take a couple of issues as examples.
Look at transgenderism. I could take on the issue as a whole, but let’s focus on a specific facet: “gender-affirming care” for minors. Just to cover my bases, I’m going to expand that out to anything transgenderism-related or adjacent that involves minors.
One of the ways this conversation has gone over the past several years, particularly when numbers are involved, is as follows. The conservative, if they don’t know the numbers, will exaggerate the rate of frequency for the practice of “gender-affirming care” for minors or any transgenderism practice involving minors. The individual or individuals on the left in the conversation can then discredit the conservative and hone in on that. This process is the muddying of the waters that I’m talking about. And now we’ve missed the point. The problem isn’t that the conservative got the numbers wrong with regard to the frequency of the practice. The problem is the fact that “gender-affirming care” for minors is happening at all.
This exact thing happened a couple years back when Matt Walsh went on Joe Rogan’s podcast and was fact-checked by Rogan’s producer during the middle of the recording. Media Matters, not exactly a bastion of conservatism, wrote an article on this event. Now, being on Rogan is a much friendlier environment, particularly on the trans issue because Rogan, too, thinks we’ve gone batty on the issue overall in American society, and the conversation essentially continued rolling. But had Walsh been fact-checked live for overstating the numbers on a dyed-in-the-wool left-wing show, the argument would’ve been pointless for him to continue having despite him having the correct position, which, again, is that it’s totally unacceptable that transgenderism practices involving minors are happening at all. The overarching point of primary importance would’ve been missed.
But let’s look at another issue because it’s not just transgenderism practices involving minors where moral and political clarity is lacking. Look at immigration.
What is the Democrat position on immigration? From voters, that’s likely a variety of positions. From the party itself and its elected representatives, especially at a national level? Well, safe to say, how immigration helps America and its citizens is not the first concern, despite that being the moral obligation of our elected national representatives. Case in point, look at what happened under the Biden administration. Over 10 million people flooded the country. It’s probably north of 15 million, but let’s roll with 10 because that’s a figure that no one can possibly dispute. And then they tried to muddy the waters on this issue.
Remember the immigration bill that Republicans shot down last year? The Democrats tried to use this bill to say that Republicans weren’t actually concerned with fixing the problems at the border. And James Lankford, a Republican, was foolish enough to go along with that bill. According to Politico—again, not exactly a bastion of conservatism—that bill provided 250,000 work visas over five years and provided work authorization for relatives of H1-B recipients. I don’t care that that’s only 50,000 visas a year. Those are jobs that can be occupied by Americans. And the same goes for the H1-B provision. Providing work authorization for relatives of H1-B recipients only solidifies the status of the H1-B holders in the country, and it incentivizes more people to apply for H1-B status because they know if they get it, there’s also a solid chance they can get their whole family over here on work authorization. Again, those are all jobs that can be occupied by Americans. Furthermore, the most frequent H1-B recipients are from a nation—India—that may be sending people who do well materially in the society, but they’re a nation that does not share our moral foundation, and therefore, the more individuals from this population there are in the country, the less moral and cultural cohesion we have as a country, which should be the number one consideration regarding immigration. Yes, even more so than the ability to materially contribute. Fortunately, like I already said, that bill was shot down.
But as with the trans issue, the waters were now muddied. We were focusing on this particular bill and Republicans supposedly not actually wanting to fix the border instead of focusing on the actual issue, which was, of course, how our immigration policy should be structured to benefit the American citizenry first and foremost.
And these are just two issues. The modern Left attempts to muddy the waters on basically all issues because their moral framework(s), which inherently informs their politics, is flawed. It’s untrue. And, in many cases, like the aforementioned two, it’s becoming increasingly indefensible.
If we actually had honest political conversations, where both sides were totally transparent with what they believed, and with clarity present, Democrats would have difficulty winning elections. Most Americans do not jive with the way they view the world. They may not totally agree with the way Republicans view it, but most Americans are closer to the GOP worldview(s) than the Democrat one(s). Admittedly, I’m not backing this up with any data here, but the previous election and my gut feeling, as someone who’s from middle America—real America—, give me quite a bit of confidence that I’m correct in my assertion.
Sources:
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/05/biden-bipartisan-immigration-deal-00139558
https://www.mediamatters.org/joe-rogan-experience/spotifys-joe-rogan-falsely-claims-being-trans-cult-mental-illness