The City's "Emerging Right"?

I'm still mulling over Tim Cavanaugh's piece on conservatism in the city (San Francisco's Emerging Right, SF Chronicle, Jan. 23). His first error is to confuse conservatism with membership in the Republican Party, though it's probably more or less the same thing in a practice. His second is the tacit assumption that either leftist or rightist ideology is of any use when dealing with local issues. Cavanaugh notes that one of the defining characteristics of conservatism is fiscal conservatism, and the main evidence he cites for an upsurge in city conservatism is the rejection by city voters of the tax propositions on the November ballot. But Proposition A, the $200 million housing bond measure that would have helped both first-time homebuyers and the homeless, came very close to passing, getting more than 64% of the vote when it needed two-thirds. And President Bush, as Cavanaugh also notes, got little more than 54,000 votes in the city, a total dwarfed by Kerry's 296,000. These numbers don't bode well for a revival of either conservatism or the Republican Party in SF.

Actually, it may be liberals like me who represent an emerging conservatism on important issues facing the city, issues that don't lend themselves to easy ideological categorization. I'm a former draft resister who went to prison for refusing to report for military service in the Sixties, an animal rights vegetarian, pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-civil liberties, against capital punishment, pro-gay rights, pro-integration, pro-medical marijuana, pro-working class, and pro-environment. On the other hand, I'm anti-graffiti/tagging, anti-Critical Mass, anti-illegal immigration, very critical of the city left's ongoing failure on homelessness, against tolerating sex---gay or hetero---in the city's parks, a hawk in the war on Islamic fascism, and alarmed by the city left's growing alliance with developers on the housing issue. Do the latter positions make me a conservative? It's hard to think so.

What I---and people like me, whether they call themselves liberals or progressives---really represent is the right-wing of the left.

The moral of the story: ideology is bunk and an actual hindrance to understanding political issues, especially local issues. As I've said before, $1.65 plus political ideology will buy you a large cup of strong coffee in D5's finest coffeehouse, Cafe Abir.