Posted on 07/21/2014 4:38:02 AM PDT by servo1969
How far left was I? So far left my beloved uncle was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party in a Communist country. When I returned to his Slovak village to buy him a mass card, the priest refused to sell me one. So far left that a self-identified terrorist proposed marriage to me. So far left I was a two-time Peace Corps volunteer and I have a degree from UC Berkeley. So far left that my Teamster mother used to tell anyone who would listen that she voted for Gus Hall, Communist Party chairman, for president. I wore a button saying "Eat the Rich." To me it wasn't a metaphor.
I voted Republican in the last presidential election.
Below are the top ten reasons I am no longer a leftist. This is not a rigorous comparison of theories. This list is idiosyncratic, impressionistic, and intuitive. It's an accounting of the milestones on my herky-jerky journey.
10) Huffiness.
In the late 1990s I was reading Anatomy of the Spirit, a then recent bestseller by Caroline Myss.
Myss described having lunch with a woman named Mary. A man approached Mary and asked her if she were free to do a favor for him on June 8th. No, Mary replied, I absolutely cannot do anything on June 8th because June 8th is my incest survivors' meeting and we never let each other down! They have suffered so much already! I would never betray incest survivors!
Myss was flabbergasted. Mary could have simply said "Yes" or "No."
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
1) Hate.
A long article but well worth reading.
The article is well written and perceptive. Well worth checking out in its entirety.
LOL! I see you went ahead and posted the “cliff notes”, quick read, summary of the gist of it. I saw it yesterday and thought about posting it but it was rather lengthy so I didn’t. I should have more faith in the FR population huh? Sadly not enough libs/progs/socialist/commies/dimokkkrats ever get to the point the author got to. One’s better than none. There may be more closet conversions out there we don’t know about.
Excellent article about what Leftists really are and what drives them.
This goes hand in hand with # 6. If you believe in God, you can't continue on in a life that is based on actively trying to destroy "the rich" as if they were some evil enemy. Its a sin.
As an aside, she calls herself a "working class Bohunk." I have not heard that expression in a while and had to laugh when I did. It describes my ancestors and they used to be liberal Catholics 100 years ago. A lot of us went through the same evolution to conservatism.
The females in College Republicans were sweet, beautiful and genuinely pleasant to associate with. The females in Young Democrats were already starting to lose their beauty at that tender young age and were perpetually angry.
This is a very good article. Unfortunately, those who most need to read it either won’t or they would never see themselves in the words. I have liberal friends who are exactly the same as the “Julie” in this article ... their self-righteous virtue lies in “trying” to be nice to everyone (they don’t actually have to succeed in this) and they do not see their own hypocrisy and hate or the shallowness of the latest bumper-sticker philosophy.
Agree but wish the author had used more “common” language instead of showing off her vocabulary. Perhaps a lingering display of “ elitism”.
True.
Thank you for posting this article. It was very thought provoking for me and I am now looking within myself to ensure I do not become a Conservative version of what she ran away from.
One of my professors, a Humphrey Democratic, taught in the political science department in the mid to late 1960’s. I took an American Government class from him. It was a good course and free of political bias. He liked me (I was president of the college Republican club) and recommended I attend American University in Washington, D.C. for one semester-the Washington Semester Program-I believe it was called.
I read the whole article. Excellent read. A transition many young people make as they grow older and see things as they really are rather than what they wish them to be.
The difference if the "Humphrey Democrats" loved America, and just disagreed with us on what would serve her best. Obama RATs do not like America as she used to be and want to complete the transformation started by Obama.
"10) Huffiness : Myss was flabbergasted. Mary could have simply said "Yes" or "No."
I've noticed this often : I said to the wife of a couple I like, that her husband was a nice guy and she told me he was a jerk. My pharmacist had to tell me 'she didn't go to Walmart' and a lady in a store who replied to my question about a nearby restaurant with how she didn't eat red meat.
I thought it was because of their self pride but this author shows it is deeper than that. Maybe ungratefulness too.
The difference IS...
Excellent Article, one I hope bumps through the day.
You are absolutely 100% correct.
Yeah she finally woke up after doing 40+ years of damage. I’m tempted to say to little to late, however she is trying to make amends. I just wish people would open their eyes a little sooner. We have a lot of leftist history and it never ends well for us common folk.
I shredded one history professor in class who was using the Sacco-Vanzetti trials of the 1920s as an example of American racism and prejudice of the era. I'd just read a book at the time and was better informed on the topic than he was.
In reality, Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty as hell and just wanted to use the courts to promote their warped political views as Angela Davis had successfully done just a few years before the lecture that day.
The prof asked me to stay after class and speak to him more and I thought, 'uh-oh, here it comes, a bad grade.' In reality, he was impressed with how well informed I was and I got a straight A in the course. To this day, I suspect the prof. was a less than committed leftist who was just repeating talking points from the text.
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