Woman’s “Top 10 Reasons I Am No Longer A Leftist” Goes Viral

Dr. Danusha V. Goska was a lifelong liberal who “could not conceive of ever being anything but a leftist.”

Her fantastic column, “Top Ten Reasons I Am No Longer a Leftist,” details how and why her philosophies changed.

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.

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.

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!

That was downright beautiful.

Like her, I was once a liberal leftist too. I thought I was being “modern” and “cool” and that I was fighting “oppression.” I hated nearly everything and fought against it, just like her. For a while I felt so free and liberated I just didn’t worry anymore. Being seduced by your newfound “freedom” is appealing for many on the left. However, just like her I always had a deep down worm of discontent about what I was doing and believing. Like her I began a long process of introspection and questioning that allowed me to break out. I am so thankful for the voices of conservatism on the internet that aided my process of deliberalizing.

I went through this process 10 years ago. Fortunately I was still young and so I won’t spend decades wallowing in the sewer that is the American Left.

Just like that old saying... if you’re not a leftist at 20 you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative at 30 you have no brain.

Just like that old saying... if you’re not a leftist at 20 you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative at 30 you have no brain.

The phrase originated with Francois Guizot (1787-1874):
“Not to be a republican at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head.”
It was revived by French Premier Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929):
"Not to be a socialist at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head.”
. . . and others, including Churchill and Will Durant, have said similar things.

Like her, I was once a liberal leftist too . . . I am so thankful for the voices of conservatism on the internet that aided my process of deliberalizing.

At the start of the Twentieth Century the term "liberal" meant the same in America as it still does in the rest of the world - essentially, what is called "conservatism" in American Newspeak. Of course we "American Conservatives" are not the ones who oppose development and liberty, so in that sense we are not conservative at all. We actually are liberals.
But in America, "liberalism" was given its American Newspeak - essentially inverted - meaning in the 1920s (source: Safire's New Political Dictionary). The fact that the American socialists have acquired a word to exploit is bad enough; the real disaster is that we do not now have a word which truly descriptive of our own political perspective. We only have the smear words which the socialists have assigned to us.
And make no mistake, in America "conservative" is inherently a negative connotation - we know that just as surely as we know that every American marketer loves to boldly proclaim that whatever product he is flogging is NEW!
American “conservatism” conserves freedom. And freedom allows people to do things their fathers never did - in ways nobody ever did. Small wonder that Americans are conflicted about “conservatism”; what we all believe in is liberty - and “conservatism” is hardly the word for that.
The indictment this article makes of so-called “liberalism” is excellent. I would point out that if you read

From Theodore Roosevelt's 1910 speech at the Sarbonne:
There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities - all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The rôle is easy; there is none easier, save only the rôle of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
you will find a great deal of overlap.

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