I was not either. I was a bit too young to vote then. I found my conservatism in the library and in the life I led in WV. I found it in the value of the patriotism of our forefathers and the plain speaking men and women who surrounded me. The message of the liberal Democrats never appealed to me because of its fatalism. I saw the value of hard work in my one grandfather who worked two jobs all of his life, the farm and the tannery and still knew how to crack a joke and stoke the fire of my grandmothers ire in jest. I saw the value of ones personal sovereignty in a grandfather who believed he owned what he owned and would not back down in a fight for what he believed was right and still found to dream in the darkness of a coal mine.
I saw it in the love of my grandmothers and mom who always let me dream and never saw limits in me. I found in the love of a father who worked every day in the coal mines to make the best life for his family even though he had the simple desire to be a history teacher. I thankful that he taught me through his kindness how to be a good father and a good man.
There is no shame in sacrifice but those who would heap it on us in the name of public charity and guilt laying claim to the gratitude of the weak and lazy for themselves and then feed us on a diet of bitterness and class warfare are not our saviors. We not they are the sovereigns of this great land! We will have our say because those who came before us were not so weak as to sell their souls for the the empty promise of a bit of bread and entertainment.
Great post. It is funny how one can come to conservatism from so many different paths, because it is, after all, the correct way to live. G-d has taught us that we humans are all brothers and sisters and that we must help people who cannot help themselves at all, and the rest should be best helped by not being humiliated with donations but shown a way to make it on their own.
This morning I listened to the radio discussing what my Governator wants to do to get all children covered with free healthcare in CA. I was thinking, if I were poor, why would I need to then include health care into my budget at all? I then can go out and get a widescreen HDTV! I don’t see how it helps the poor (and the illegals - do not get me started) to tell them they needn’t worry about their kid’s health - go out and party.
My arrival at conservatism came so differently from yours. I was brought up upper middle class, Jewish; I was politically somewhat ignorant. But as a teen I read all the women’s magazines that were full of feminist propaganda. I just took it all in as “fact.” Then I went to the university; again, every professor was a liberal.
It was when I went to live in Europe that I learned about socialism by living it. Laid off, I made 90% of my obscene salary by doing nothing. I was married, had a baby, and that cinched it. After trying for 6 years to have an embryo that grew to a real live baby, every embryo was sure as heck life to me. I’ve been a graduate student at the Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies ever since. Spending time with real communists really is quite eye-opening.
But it doesn’t matter how we get here. What matters right now is that we elect a leader who gets it, too.
I think we should send Huckabee to a socialist state for a while.
SO well said!!
Whoa! Tom Paine, Is that you?