I hear what you're saying, and as a Texan, I feel like I understand your viewpoint. I've got thoughts on the issue too, having lived in the Bay area for a couple years now. Mostly they revolve around this point:

>half the country.

I disagree that half the country is conservative. I was put onto this idea by Michael Moore actually, who argued that if you run the surveys, turns out most Americans support liberal values. This article is a good summary: https://prospect.org/article/most-americans-are-liberal-even...

> 82 percent of Americans think wealthy people have too much power and influence in Washington.

> 59 percent favor raising the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour.

> 78 percent of likely voters favor establishing a national fund that offers all workers 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave.

> 60 percent of Americans believe “it is the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage.”

> 60 percent of registered voters favor “expanding Medicare to provide health insurance to every American.”

> 58 percent of the public favors replacing Obamacare with “a federally funded healthcare program providing insurance for all Americans.”

> 63 percent of registered voters—including 47 percent of Republicans—of Americans favor making four-year public colleges and universities tuition-free.

> 76 percent of voters are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about climate change.

> 84 percent of Americans support requiring background checks for all gun buyers.

> 60 percent of Americans believe the recent killings of black men by police are part of a broader pattern of how police treat black Americans (compared with 39 percent who believe they are isolated incidents).

I could go on. The point is, a true conservative is somewhat of a minority in America, and also, a "conservative" isn't what one might think. There are probably a lot of people in the Bay Area that believe they are liberals but are actually conservatives - tons of self-described libertarians here, for example, whose opinions on the invisible hand and free market I would argue are conservative.

Then, there's the "modern conservative" - the MAGA hat wearer that thinks Mexicans are taking their jobs, but are also somehow draining tax money by illegally being on welfare. The racists, the homophobes the ones that believe bullying is a valid "treatment" for the "disease" of transgenderism. The ones for whom "conservatism" isn't so much a political belief as an ethical one - "we need a conservative judge to prevent abortions, and if he's a misogynist so be it, it's for the Greater Good." These people aren't necessarily "alien," but their thought process in 2019 is, especially compared to the rest of the world.

I think the world as a whole is becoming more rational. I think more people are getting good educations. In a rational world, racism and homophobia and all the things that are "scarily conservative" just don't jive. There's no good arguments for it. It's the Mexicans are taking our jobs and our tax money at the same time thinking - totally irrational, totally incompatible.

> I have met exactly one co-worker that openly expressed conservative views

If "conservative views" means "government should spend less," I think SF could use more people like that, for god's sake just look up the budget for Van Ness improvements. The existence of opposition would help cases like that.

But if "conservative views" means "gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry," fuck'm, why would you want someone like that around? How does that "help the public discourse?" How does exposure to that viewpoint help anyone? "Free speech?" I don't buy it.