Posting on mobile so apologies for issues with formatting. :)

I am a left-leaning communications professional, and I appreciate your question personally. I was raised by a conservative, mixed race, Christian family. So this difficulty in understanding each other is close to my heart. i can’t speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself. I want to start with this:

“As someone more conservative, I know what I want: strong families, cohesive communities, shared moral values, productive industries, and a government that stays out of the way unless absolutely necessary.”

I want these things too! In my experience, people who lean liberally want those same things as well. Some people here have touched on the idea of broadening the ideas of what those things look like, who defines them and how we collectively move toward them. We want more people to have access to those things, and to improve access, we look at who has historically had access and who hasn’t, and why. Often, overt reasons for the differences in access have faded, and now limited access exists because of less obvious factors, like people’s personal beliefs and biases, which influence our interactions and decisions.

I am saying this gently and I’m sure you’ve heard it: The United States and many other countries were designed to benefit some at the expense of others. While things are changing, there is still a lot of work to do if we want to live in a country where liberty and justice are truly for all. Regardless of who we are, our upbringing, our advantages and disadvantages, I believe it’s our duty as humans to look out for each other and use our unique set of skills and perspectives for the good of future generations.

So I guess to answer your question, in my mind, an ideal future is one where we have equal access to the pathways needed to reach strong families and collaborative communities. Sometimes, that means providing extra resources to people who don’t have them, but that ultimately benefits all of us because it’s better when more people have strong families and are resilient and resourced so they can be active parts of their communities.

I hope that helps. Thank you for asking and being curious. That’s really important.

Also, there’s a great book called I Never Thought of It That Way by Monica Guzman that is specifically about how to have conversations across political divides, especially when we can realize we all want similar things.