I came across this post on Facebook:
“Just to clear the air: I’m a MAGA conservative, but that doesn’t mean what a lot of you apparently think it does. Let’s break it down, because I’m tired of being told what I believe and what I stand for. Spoiler: not every conservative is the same, but most of us I know share these same principles.
1. I believe America should never depend on another country for energy, protection, or basic supply and demand. We are strongest when we build, produce, and protect things right here in the USA.
2. I believe America must put itself first. We cannot pour from an empty cup. Our country should prioritize our own people before trying to save the world.
3. I believe only legal citizens have the right to vote. You must have a valid ID to vote. I also believe in a secure election process.
4. I believe no foreign aid should be given until every veteran at home is taken care of.
5. I believe immigrants make America stronger — when they come legally. If your first act in this country is breaking the law, you aren’t an upstanding citizen.
6. You can marry who you want. I may agree or disagree with your lifestyle, but your life is not mine to judge, I leave that to God Almighty.
7. I believe men are men and women are women. Surgery or hormone don’t change that. Men should use men’s bathrooms, and women should use women’s bathrooms.
8. I believe schools are for education, not indoctrination. Kids should learn math, history, reading, and science – not political propaganda. They should not be taught they were “born in the wrong body” or pushed into gender delusion.
9. I believe America is in a mental health crisis. Mental health care is real, it matters, and it desperately needs to be addressed.
10. I believe guns aren’t the problem – people are. Gun control only infringes on constitutional rights. But I also believe in common sense: background checks are necessary to keep firearms out of the hands of the mentally ill.
I’m a conservative because I believe in faith, family, freedom, and personal responsibility. I don’t want a government that controls every aspect of our lives – I want a government that protects our rights, secures our borders, defends our freedoms, and then gets out of the way. We are strongest when Americans take care of America first, when families are supported, when our veterans are honored, and when our children are given truth, not propaganda. I love this country, and I believe it’s worth fighting for.”
There is actually quite a bit in this post that I have no interest in “debunking.”
If you believe the United States should spend less money overseas, that’s a political position. If faith informs your values, that’s your right. If you believe immigration laws should be enforced, we can debate what those laws should look like. If you believe veterans deserve better support, I doubt you’ll find many people arguing that veterans deserve worse.
Those are beliefs.
But this post also illustrates something that increasingly frustrates me about political conversations: we keep blurring the distinction between what we believe and what is demonstrably true.
So, let’s talk about a few of these.
America Needs to Be Energy Independent
Okay, but here’s the problem: by one of the most common measures of energy independence, the United States already produces more energy than it imports.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the United States has been a net total-energy exporter since 2019. In 2025, the country exported 31 quadrillion BTUs of energy while importing 21 quadrillion BTUs. U.S. energy production also reached an all-time record in 2025.
That doesn’t mean we import nothing. We both import and export petroleum and other forms of energy because we’re participating in an international energy market. The EIA specifically notes that petroleum is the largest component of both U.S. energy imports and exports.
So if the argument is that America should produce lots of energy domestically, fine.
If the argument is that America currently relies on foreign countries because we aren’t producing enough energy here, the numbers require a much more complicated story.
“Only Legal Citizens Have the Right to Vote”
This one jumped out at me because it is presented as a political principle when it is already the law for federal elections.
You have to be a U.S. citizen to vote in federal elections.
USAGov states explicitly that noncitizens — including lawful permanent residents — cannot vote in federal elections. Some jurisdictions allow noncitizens to vote in certain local elections, but that doesn’t mean they can vote for president or Congress.
Voter ID is a separate issue. States establish their own identification requirements, and most require voters to provide some form of identification when voting in person. Exactly what qualifies varies by state.
We can debate whether every state should require a particular kind of photo ID.
But “only citizens should vote” isn’t a proposed MAGA reform to federal elections.
That’s already how federal elections work.
“Immigrants Make America Stronger — When They Come Legally”
This is where language starts doing a lot of work.
You can absolutely believe immigration laws should be enforced.
But saying that someone’s “first act in this country is breaking the law” treats immigration as though everyone arrives under identical circumstances.
They don’t.
Someone lawfully admitted as a refugee, someone requesting asylum, someone who entered with a visa and overstayed it, someone who crossed the border without authorization, and someone who received lawful permanent residency are not the same legal category.
Immigration policy is complicated. We don’t make it less complicated by collapsing millions of different human beings and legal circumstances into a slogan about whether someone is an “upstanding” person.
“You Can Marry Who You Want, But…”
This one is personal for me.
If you believe your religion teaches that my marriage is wrong, I cannot control your religious beliefs. Nor do I want the government telling you what you must believe about God.
But calling being gay a “lifestyle” isn’t simply an expression of religious liberty.
And here’s where I struggle with the larger argument of the post.
It ends by saying government should protect our rights and then “get out of the way.”
Great.
Then get out of the way.
My marriage doesn’t require your religious approval any more than your marriage requires mine.
Religious freedom means you get to practice your religion. It doesn’t mean the rest of us have to organize our lives according to it.
And Then We Get to Transgender People
Within a few paragraphs, we’ve moved from:
Government should get out of our lives.
to:
Government should determine which bathroom another adult is permitted to use.
Those ideas deserve to be placed next to each other.
People can hold traditional beliefs about sex and gender. People can also debate policies involving sports, prisons, schools, medical treatment of minors, and privacy.
But those are debates about where government authority should begin and end.
If your definition of limited government includes government regulating someone else’s gender expression, medical decisions, identification documents, and bathroom use, then your position isn’t simply that government should “get out of the way.”
It’s that government should intervene in some people’s lives but not others.
That’s a very different argument.
“Schools Are for Education, Not Indoctrination”
On this one, I actually agree with the first sentence.
Schools should educate.
Students should be taught accurate history. They should learn how to evaluate evidence. They should encounter ideas. They should learn to distinguish credible sources from misinformation. And they should learn that sometimes evidence will challenge something they previously believed.
That’s education.
Teaching students about slavery isn’t indoctrination.
Teaching students that gay and transgender people exist isn’t indoctrination.
Teaching students about racism, sexism, religion, gender, sexuality, political ideology, or inequality isn’t automatically indoctrination either.
The question should be:
Is what we’re teaching accurate, supported by evidence, appropriate for the educational setting, and relevant to what students are supposed to be learning?
Calling information “propaganda” because it conflicts with someone’s political or religious worldview doesn’t answer any of those questions.
And Finally: Guns and Mental Illness
This might be the most frustrating part of the entire post.
It says:
“Gun control only infringes on constitutional rights.”
Then, two sentences later:
“Background checks are necessary.”
A legally required background check is firearm regulation.
So the actual position isn’t that all firearm regulation infringes on constitutional rights. The position is that some firearm regulations are acceptable and others aren’t.
That’s a legitimate position.
But then let’s debate which regulations are effective, constitutional, and appropriate instead of beginning with an absolute statement that the writer immediately contradicts.
I’m also uncomfortable with casually turning “the mentally ill” into the explanation for gun violence.
The research is considerably more complicated than that.
Research does not support treating mental illness as the primary explanation for violence. A major review of the evidence concluded that the overwhelming majority of people with mental illness are not violent and estimated that only about 4% of criminal violence can reasonably be attributed to people with mental illness (Rozel & Mulvey, 2017).
That doesn’t mean mental health is irrelevant to firearm policy. It is particularly important when discussing suicide; epidemiological research finds a strong relationship between mental illness and suicide risk.
But “guns aren’t the problem — people are” doesn’t magically resolve an extraordinarily complicated public-health problem.
And treating “the mentally ill” as a synonym for “dangerous people” isn’t a mental-health policy.
It’s stigma.
Believe What You Believe. Just Don’t Call Every Belief a Fact.
Here’s where I ultimately land.
I don’t expect conservatives and liberals to agree about the proper size of government, immigration, taxation, foreign aid, firearms, gender, religion, or a hundred other issues.
We’re going to disagree.
That’s democracy.
What bothers me is something different.
It’s presenting political preferences as objective facts and then treating anyone who questions them as though they oppose America, veterans, families, freedom, children, or common sense.
You can say:
I want stricter immigration laws.
That’s a political position.
You can say:
I think we should spend less on foreign aid.
Political position.
My religious beliefs shape how I understand marriage and gender.
Personal belief.
I oppose most gun-control legislation.
Political position.
Fine.
But when you tell me noncitizens are voting in federal elections, America isn’t producing its own energy, schools are systematically indoctrinating children, or mental illness explains gun violence, you’ve crossed from telling me what you believe into telling me what is true.
And once we’re talking about what is true, we have something better than Facebook memes to work with.
We have evidence.
We have data.
We have research.
We have laws we can actually read.
And none of those things require us to agree politically.
They just require us to care whether what we’re saying is true.
You are entitled to your politics.
You are entitled to your beliefs.
You are entitled to your religion.
But none of us — MAGA, liberal, progressive, conservative, independent, or otherwise — is entitled to our own facts.
References
U.S. Energy Information Administration. (2026, May 27). The United States is a major energy exporter and importer, especially for petroleum. U.S. Department of Energy.
U.S. Energy Information Administration
Supports: 2025 exports of 31 quads, imports of 21 quads, record net exports of 11 quads, and the explanation that petroleum represents the largest portion of both U.S. energy imports and exports.
U.S. Energy Information Administration. (n.d.). U.S. energy facts explained: Imports and exports. U.S. Department of Energy.
EIA — U.S. Energy Imports and Exports
Supports: The United States has been a net total-energy exporter since 2019.
U.S. General Services Administration. (2026, February 23). Who can and cannot vote. USAGov.
USAGov — Who Can and Cannot Vote
Supports: U.S. citizenship is required to vote in federal elections; noncitizens, including lawful permanent residents, cannot vote in federal elections. Some jurisdictions allow noncitizen voting in certain local elections.
U.S. General Services Administration. (2026). Voter ID requirements. USAGov.
USAGov — Voter ID Requirements
Supports: Voter-identification requirements differ by state, and voters without the requested ID may have alternative procedures available depending on state law.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. (2026). Affirmative asylum at a glance. U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
USCIS — Affirmative Asylum at a Glance
Supports an important qualification to the immigration section: U.S. immigration law permits a person who is arriving in or physically present in the United States to apply for asylum if the statutory requirements are met. That is one reason “illegal immigrant” cannot accurately describe every person seeking protection at the border.
Library of Congress. (n.d.). Marriage and substantive due process. Constitution Annotated.
Constitution Annotated — Marriage and Substantive Due Process
Supports: In Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to license marriages between two people of the same sex and recognize lawful same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. (n.d.). Federal firearms licensee quick reference and best practices guide. U.S. Department of Justice.
ATF — Federal Firearms Background Checks
Supports: Federal law requires licensed firearms dealers to conduct a NICS background check before transferring a firearm to an unlicensed person unless a statutory exception applies. In other words, background checks are themselves a form of government firearm regulation, which supports the contradiction you identify in the original post.
Rozel, J. S., & Mulvey, E. P. (2017). The link between mental illness and firearm violence: Implications for social policy and clinical practice. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 13, 445–469.
PubMed — Rozel & Mulvey Article
Supports: Mental illness is a weak risk factor for violence, and firearm policy that focuses indiscriminately on people with mental illness can contribute to stigma.
Metzl, J. M., & MacLeish, K. T. (2015). Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms. American Journal of Public Health, 105(2), 240–249.
PubMed — Metzl & MacLeish Article
Supports: The commonly asserted relationship between psychiatric diagnosis and gun violence is substantially more complicated than the “guns don’t kill people, mentally ill people do” framing. The authors specifically examine assumptions connecting mental illness and mass shootings.
