I am a conservative.
In all the time I’ve written this column, I never felt it necessary to say it this plainly. It’s become increasingly clear during my tenure as editor that people need to know that.
Several times a week, someone calls to chew me out about something they saw in the newspaper. They’ll remind me that the majority of people in this area are conservatives. Then they’ll tell me to stop spreading my liberal propaganda.
Honestly, that line makes me a little bit mad. I don’t think people in an age of misinformation should say such blatantly stupid things that they could check beforehand.
Frankly, you could’ve use Google to look at my name and type the word conservative. When I did, a 2020 column where I said it popped up. Or you could look up my name via the board of elections site to see that I’ve voted in every Republican primary since I moved back to Ohio in 2004. It’s all public record.
Unfortunately, in the current economic climate, people love to make a lot of assumptions about people. If you work in the media, you have to be a liberal, right? Does that mean every police officer has to be a Democrat, since their national unions generally support that party? Not around here, right?
More importantly, why are people so obsessed with this particular label right now?
I have a lot of labels that apply. Father. Christian. Journalist. Midwesterner. Youth coach. Punster. Bears fan.
Instead, though, people have been trained to fixate on political leanings and make a bunch of assumptions based upon them.
But since it seems to matter so much to so many of you, yes, I’m a conservative. I’m probably more libertarian-leaning than most of you, wishing the government would stop spending money to legislate morality and leave that to families and churches. I despise abortion, since it’s murder. I wish the government would focus on what only it can do, which is provide for a common defense.
I am someone who enjoys hearing both sides of a story, even when I’m personally convinced someone’s wrong. I like to be challenged with alternative points of view. I find they help me solidify my own logic if they’re weak, and sometimes they force me to reconsider my own ideas. Some good arguments changed my mind on the death penalty, for instance, realizing that favoring it didn’t match up with the value for human life I professed to believe.
We have robust discussions every day at the office about what belongs on our front page. Some members of our newsroom staff are more conservative than I am, and some are more liberal. We try to keep those beliefs to ourselves when we’re working on the news sections, though, to remain objective.
The general likes and dislikes of our audience come up every time we plot out what we cover and what we don’t. Sometimes we disregard what might make you feel comfortable because it seems just important enough.
You can say the congressional hearings on the Jan. 6 insurrection are just political theater, and you might even be right. Historically, though, a hearing like this summoning a local congressman is unusual, making it news. We’ll keep putting it where you can find it because of how unusual it is.
We’re not making a paper that we necessarily like or promotes what we want you want us to believe. Frankly, I don’t care what you think. I care that you are thinking, and we’re giving you the facts you need to consider.
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