Red, Blue and Purple
Not only was Ilya Shapiro’s “It’s Never Black and White Inside Purple America” (Commentary, July 5) well written and a joy to read, he also hit the nail on the head for me. My Purple America also “welcomes diversity, but not the false diversity that considers a black lawyer’s kid from Brentwood more worthy than the son of a West Virginia coal miner or of a Vietnamese fisherman.” I also resonated with “only in America are people who favor more government control over the economy called ‘liberal’ and those who want to deregulate and privatize ‘conservative.’ ”
Shapiro certainly was accurate in describing libertarians such as me as “Purple Americans [who] defy political and cultural stereotypes, and thus confound the conventional wisdom of the media, pollsters and pundits.” “Purple people” has more cachet than “libertarians,” but I’m happy at last to see that someone has taken note of the millions of us Purple libertarians!
Devon Showley
Cypress
I know exactly how Shapiro feels. An L.A. native living in the deep Red of Bakersfield, I also am Red in the voting booth and Blue in cultural tastes. I find myself reading every word of the daily soccer columns by Grahame Jones in The Times, even though most of the teams and players are unknown to me. I have never attended a motor racing event of any kind, even though Bakersfield is well known as a center of motor sports. Luckily for me, I can drive to L.A. for the occasional Brazilian movie that doesn’t make it to Bakersfield. Shapiro has written for a lot of people like me.
Mike Burns
Bakersfield
Perhaps the writer’s term “Purple America” comes not from his combination of Red politics with Blue culture so much as a lack of oxygen to the brain. His strong beliefs in “personal responsibility, ordered liberty and civil society” are so completely at odds with the policies of the current administration, it makes me wonder if he knows that conservatism used to stand for fiscal responsibility, states’ rights and individual freedom.
How is it possible for this writer to value diversity in food, film and sports, yet recoil from that concept when it is applied to gay marriage and affirmative action? How could he desire organic products from Whole Foods but ignore policies favoring polluters and energy extracting companies? And does a taste for imported cars and clothing mean that he supports outsourcing U.S. jobs and union-busting?
One would hope that this writer’s “Purple America” would be far more sophisticated and nuanced in its political and cultural views rather than simply black crashing into white without any introspection.
Lon Shapiro
Granada Hills
Shapiro’s friends seem to find it curious that he calls himself a Republican. I too find it hard to understand how “nice” people can be Republicans. But I think I can see the process. They take literally the Republican mantra of being “conservative” but do not see the revolutionary import of disregarding the Geneva Convention in order to elicit confessions from recalcitrant prisoners. They take literally the professions of devotion to environmental concerns while labeling laws to increase mercury emissions as “Clean Air Acts.”
They take literally President Bush’s lies that his tax cuts, 95% of which go to the upper 2% of the population, as creating an “average” benefit of $1,700 per family. Color them Red or Blue, most Americans share most of the same values. It’s only that the present administration has falsified its beliefs by its practices and therefore deserves to be retired in November.
Leo A. Goldberg
Los Angeles
Shapiro has it exactly right in naming his country Purple America. Royal purple has always been the color of those who have everything except the willingness to share. Washington is the Purple paradise now, but wait until November, when America’s true blue nature will reassert itself.
Lucy Horwitz
Los Angeles
Shapiro seems to suggest that the only way one can be “Purple” is to mix a Red (conservative) political perspective with Blue (liberal) food preferences. What about the inverse ... fiercely progressive politics and a solidly middle-American penchant for cheeseburgers and fries? Seems to work for Michael Moore, and probably quite a few others as well.
Richard Levinson
Van Nuys