Liberal? Get over it

Orlando Sentinel ^ | 5/20/06 | Matthew Melone

[qam1]

There's good news for the young and hopelessly naive and liberal: You'll get over it.

It's common knowledge that young people become more conservative as they age. Generation X followed this trend, and indicators suggest Generation Y will be no different.

I understand what life is like on a typical college campus and have gripped with the misplaced mental energies of youth. I can empathize with the temptations of liberal cynicism, the appeal of academic elitism and an almost embarrassingly idealistic view of world affairs.

But I fought the urges, and so can you.

For all the graduates of 2007, soon you will begin being mugged by reality. As you grow more distant from the ivory towers and struggle to root yourself in the middle class, your liberal tendencies will become but a memory.

Perhaps you'll look back on these days and laugh.

Maybe you'll even wise up and realize that if you weren't so scared of the military, you could have signed up for the armed forces and done something worthwhile.

But in the meantime, to avoid embarrassment down the road, it may be prudent to stay quiet until your liberal urges pass.

For example, I've noticed a handful of columns in student newspapers and in "New Voices" that advocate the U.S. pursue unilateral disarmament in order to defuse tensions with Iran.

I enjoy a good laugh as much as the next guy, but this is a joke I've heard one too many times. If you're liberal and feel like shooting your mouth off about unilateral disarmament, I beg you to reconsider. A potential employer could Google your name, read that column, find out what a bonehead you are and not hire you.

If you don't realize how stupid unilateral disarmament is, don't worry. Just wait a few.....

[dfwgator]

I used to be a big time Deadhead growing up.

As Ann Coulter proves, being a Deadhead, doesn't necessarily make one liberal.

[rlmorel]

Okay, before I post a ROTFLMAO, are you saying she has nothing upstairs, or was she really a tie-dyed Deadhead?

[dfwgator]

Ann Coulter is a big Grateful Dead fan.

[San Franistan]

Link to the Slyfox thread please?

[LibertyLee]

You can bet that on his anniversary (8/1) there will be a lot of this. 18 years of filling young skulls full of mush with the Truth!

[ohioman]

My dad has a wise saying: The bigger the F*ckup, the bigger the chance that that someone is a liberal.

[Crispus Attucks Patriot]

Not all of us are liberals. Some of us youngstaz were born conservatives, hehehe.

[cardinal4]

As Ann Coulter proves, being a Deadhead, doesn't necessarily make one liberal.

Yes, she is my saving grace. I shudder to think of what goes on in those circles these days. I got my first taste of how things havent changed when I watched an ANSWER rally on CSPAN in October of 2001. I was ashamed. I thought we grew out of all of that hippy crap. Nowadays, those circles embrace ANYTHING deemed revolutionary-Mumia, ANWR drilling, shooting military officers and getting in bed with Communists. At age 39 I realize my Dad was right all along!

[tcostell]

Nothing makes a conservative out of a liberal faster than getting robbed.... so as soon as these empty headed kids get their first job and discover what the government is REALLY doing to them with that 'progressive' tax base, they will convert.

Just like everyone else.

[cyberdasher]

you just described my college experience to the core. My friends were shocked--SHOCKED--to learn that I didn't go along with any of their mush-brained musings. And then fifteen years later, they finally get it. They also wish they had long hair, too! ;)

[Allegra]

I used to be left of Mao when I got out of college.

And that's quite normal. The thing is, you had a healthy development and grew out of it.

I used to think we could feed the whole world and I belonged to a group called "Arms Race Concern." And I participated in an Equal Rights Amendement march. (Good grief!)

You're allowed to be young and stupid in the college years.

As long as you outgrow it. ;-)

[Billthedrill]

Since I started working on a college campus I've been reminded - often painfully - of my own youthful forays into areas that are best entered standing on the shoulders of giants. Rethinking any intellectual discipline from first principals is an interesting exercise in futility - that's the way you learn it but that isn't the way it was created.

The futility is a result of rewalking well-worn trails and thinking that nobody has ever been there before. So with such perennial conceits as unilateral disarmament - it isn't new, it's as stupid as it ever was, and its results are likely to be the same now as they always have been in the past - a de-clawed cat let loose in the jungle quickly finds that moral righteousness makes for poor defense and turns its possessor into a snack.

One can outgrow these conceits either by finding out the fruits of someone else's hard-earned experience or learning the hard way oneself. Liberals tend to insist on the latter, and the worst of them refuse to learn at all, explaining away the insufficiencies of their sundry theories by deflecting the blame elsewhere. This sort of liberal resembles a young person who refuses to grow up, and it isn't accidental.

[Phsstpok]

One day you'll wake up and think to your self, much like Larry Niven's character Phssthpok from the Book titled 'Protector' "I've been stupid".....

Actuall "I" never got a chance to realize that "I'd been stupid."  The Brennan monster killed "me" before I could figure that out.

But "I" meant well (another liberal failing).

I chose the name for the very reason laid out here.  The character was hypersmart, able to perform amazing feats of physical and mental calculation, but was locked into a predetermined course by external forces.  And he meant well.  But his actions would have ended in our extinction.  I always try to keep that in the back of my mind when I post.

That's why my other tag line is "often wrong, but never in doubt."  Maybe it's time to go back to that for awhile.
 

[rlmorel]

Okay...ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just saw her at Wellesley College a few weeks back (The belly of the beast, so to speak) and she was brilliant! Pulled no punches whatsoever, completely entertaining...

A Deadhead, eh?

[Gritty]

There's good news for the young and hopelessly naive and liberal: You'll get over it

Not neccessarily.

My SIL (on Social Insecurity) and her live-in boyfriend (on disability but he writes new-age Hippy books) have never gotten over it and probably never will.

Last night, she was on the phone raving how she now hates illegal aliens. She blames the GOP of course, with some credibility. But she thought illegals were great until recently when she went to a Peace demonstration in San Franfreako where the La Razas had taken it over and scared them spitless with their threatening racist rhetoric. But her fright didn't really change her views. Anyhow, she especially adores Diane Feinswine and all the great things the fine Legislature in Kalifornia is doing for the people of that suffering colony.

She drives my wife crazy every week on the phone. I mostly ignore her unless she's visiting, because I don't have to listen to her ranting. Face to face, I demolish her silly arguments point by point until she finally is forced to agree with me. Then she goes back home to Kalifornia again and gets her clock reset to maximum insanity.

I don't think there is a cure for her. She reminds my of the Jews tightly holding onto their precious valuables on the way to the showers.

*sigh*

[roaddog727]

Sorry I got the quote wrong, but clearly the intent was there.

"Often Wrong, but never in doubt"

[mad puppy]

"Kids, a mortgage, saving for retirement, are but a few of the things that can change ones view."

I don't know. I think just getting away from "teachers" and an environment where the liberal agenda is the only valid agenda will help. Throw in a couple weeks on FreeRebublic between job interviews while you watch what is left of your saving dwindle away because as an American, there are some jobs you just can't do (because non-Americans already are) and you have the equivalent of an Liberal-intervention.

[eyespysomething]

Why did you ping me to this?


;-)

[cardinal4]

A Deadhead, eh?

Oh, yeah.

[Mr. Silverback]

Roger that.