Posted on 08/06/2009 3:28:00 AM PDT by Scanian
I get asked by readers all the time: how can you go from left to right at such a rapid fire pace? Were you a conservative all along? Are you just yanking our chain; you're really still a liberal in conservative clothing?
Great question. This is a topic I ponder daily.
Now that I look back, I had the seeds of both a conservative and a liberal in me all along. On the liberal side: I was raised a secular Jew, and, for some God forsaken reason, most of us are Democrats. My upbringing lacked meaning and substance, which propelled my devotion to social causes. Of course, arriving in Berkeley in my 20's only hardened my liberal propensity.
I became a therapist, made friends with therapists, and spent tons of money having shrinks dissect my psyche. So my life was focused on problems, complaints, and kvetches. As Milton said, our minds can make a hell of heaven or a heaven of hell. My preoccupation with the darkness put me in a liberal state of mind.
But the conservative was alive and well in me too: My grandparents came from Russia with only the shirts on their backs. Yet they never complained about the hardships or expected any government help. My parents, in their own wacky way, were devoted, dutiful, and fiercely patriotic.
I was also victimized early on by do-gooder liberal politics (though I didn't put two and two together until last year). I attended public schools with forced busing that ignited tremendous animosity and racial violence. As an adult, I've been harassed and molested innumerable times on urban streets both east coast and west, and was mugged several years ago in broad daylight.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The American Academy is sick joke.
I love that hypnotize example. I’ve never tested this out yet, but I always viewed that I could never be hypnotize either. I hate losing control of myself
My immediate first thought at the article title:
Dude, you grew up.
Now there is some real hope and change.
I like the honesty of her story. Not too many of us are so purely conservative that we never have a liberal pang or two.
For sure the left enables the feelings of victimization. It enhances their power over us. We must stand up for ourselves and this horrible man who is president may be the catalyst for awakening.
Shouldn't that read "God forsaking", as a "secular Jew"? ;-P
My story is a little more simple than his....i actually voted for carter in ‘76, then joined the military...i watched and lived the dismantlement of our armed forces in the late ‘70’s...vowed never again to vote for a liberal, and have not since
As a Conservative (former) resident of Berkeley, I know where Robin is coming from.
I lived in Berkeley for years, happy as a pig in slop. But suddenly, the blinders fell off and it was clear how ridiculous that entire town was. For me, the only thing to do was leave.
Berkeley was beautiful, and I still miss the climate, the scenery and other things. But I only have to remember the screwed up politics to know that I never want to be in that town for more than a few hours ever again.
I was raised in a mixed home with my mom being the zombie trade union lib and my dad being the conservative.
I voted for Reagan in my first election (so did everybody else in the country), but was made to feel uncool and guilty for my conservative leanings among friends in college.
During the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings I was pretty much split right down the middle. I honestly did not know who to believe and I thought that the incident had great historical significance; either this woman with her exceptional credentials was lying or the Supreme Court had a perjurer on it's bench.
When I discussed this dichotomy with a liberal friend, and mentioned that it was difficult to ponder, she told me flat-out, that it really did not matter whether Thomas really harassed Hill or not, as long as he was kept off the bench.
The liberal side of me looked at her and kind of thought; he's a black man, he's accused by a woman of having done something terribly wrong.
I got this same outcome from more than a few libs, when I came at them from the liberal side. It was like honor among thieves and they assumed that I was ALL lib and naturally on their side and would arrive at the same conclusion. However, this turned me into a conservative.
A few years after this event, with Clinton in the White House having done far worse things to Monica Lewinsky and Kathleen Wiley and then having attempted to destroy both women for far less than talking about “pubic hair” or X-rated film. What Thomas had been accused of was practically moot, whether it were true or not. What was very clear to me after these events is that a woman, and a true liberal, with impeccable credentials, such as Anita Hill, would have no difficulty lying about a man such as Thomas.
And that is how I eventually became a conservative.
My work with clients changed. I stopped reinforcing their stale, rigid stories. Rather than dredge up the past, we talked about how to live now, how to harness inner resources like courage, perseverance, and faith. I hoped to offer them the guidance and wisdom that I lacked in my younger years.
And then two years later, Obama came on the scene. He felt creepy; and I saw before my eyes that the sick, evil fringe of the far left had invaded the Democratic Party. As though I'd been slapped across the face, I snapped out of my trance. The last vestiges of my liberalism flew the coop, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Interesting. I’ve always been conservative, so have trouble understanding the whole liberal thing.
Excellent article!!!
When I was politically educated by the TV, I was a Liberal. When I discovered Rush in ‘89 or ‘90, I became more conservative. When I became a father, I was here to stay.
I do have difficulty with folks, even FReepers and even my mom, sometimes knee-jerk into “there oughta be a law” stuff that would be anti-freedom.
I see with new eyes these last couple of decades.
I’ve always been conservative too, but I became even more so after I worked for a contracted government agency that worked with mothers on welfare. Parts of my job I loved, working with the children, but it angered me to see these women with nicer cars than mine, $300 weaves, manicures, gold chains, etc. and they were on welfare. Some of the women had a mutual father, he would have 5-6 women with as many children as they could have, and they would collect every gov’t assistance plus the new “crazy” money for their kids. They knew how to work the system. Ironically, many of the people that worked there went from liberal to conservative, not all, but a good deal. You got to see up close and personal what your tax $$$ went to, and it wasn’t pretty. Such waste.
ping
Joe you became a conservative by using your critical thinking skills and being honest about the facts before your eyes.
It happened to me somewhere between the end of the Carter Administration and the middle of the first Reagan Administration. I cannot point to a single set of events. However, I became profoundly aware that I was (unfashionably) proud to be an American.
Because of my connection to academia, I constantly come across fashionable ant-Americanism, anti-capitalism and anti-colonialism (i.e., the influence of the evil White man and all his modern developments that feed and generally provide for the world).
Sometimes I argue and come to false truce or a point of agreement. However, I always try to make the point that we are blessed to be Americans. Otherwise we would not be able to dissect our country’s faults in such detailbecause we would lack the freedom and the time to do so.
Ditto on that. My favorite story as a child was "The Little Red Hen" where the hen did all the work growing wheat and making bread with all the other animals refusing to help until it was time to eat the bread. In elementary school when we did group projects I heard the words "We want Karl in our group so he'll do the work" as the real life version of that story. Those same words now echo in my head every April 15th.
It probably wasn't until Reagan's second election that I was politically aware enough to put together a coherent argument why I supported him. Too bad I was a few months too young to vote for him then. However, the belief that people are not the servents of the government stuck with me.
ALL.
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