[bigjoesaddle]

Please share your coments, thanks.

[cricket]

"They don't realise that, just because you are "good", doesn't mean you're "right".

. . .the old axim 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions' sums up pretty well, what it is to be a Liberal. . .at least for the naive ones. . .

[Iwentsouth]

1992 was the first time I could vote. That vote went to Clinton since I was a Democrat

1996 became a Libertarian.

2000 finally grew up and became a Republican =)

[cricket]

p.s.. . .so glad you are now 'enlightened' to the political realities and 'freepin' about it as well!

[Cicero]

On the whole I believe you are right.

Freud was wrong about human nature generally, but he had a pretty good grip on the psychology of secular, atheistic modernists like himself.

When I was younger, I found it exceedingly depressing to see so many people dropping out, taking drugs, and "doing their own thing," thinking that they were revolting against custom and convention and everyone over 30, when in fact there was never such a bunch of like-minded conformists in history, all wearing the same clothes, smoking the same dope, and running together like a pack of lemmings headed for a cliff.

[VoiceOfBruck]

I have NEVER met a person who grew up a Conservative, then switched to the Democrat Party AFTER COLLEGE!

My mother did. Well into her teaching career, she got involved in the NEA/teachers' union politics and became a hardcore democrat. It's a source of consternation to me, and I try to avoid discussing anything political with her. It's useless.

But in general I think your premise is true - it's a rare person who switches from light to darkness.

[NativeNewYorker]

I was a liberal until the Democratic Party of New York City and State turned a deliberate blind eye to those commiting murderous racial and anti-semitic violence in my home town of Brooklyn NY in the 1991 Crown Heights riots.

When Dinkins refused to use his police to stop the anti-white, anti-Jew violence, and Mario Cuomo refused to call out the National Guard, AFTER 2 BLOODY NIGHTS, the light bulb went on for me, and I've never looked back.

[Xenalyte]

I have NEVER met a person who grew up a Conservative, then switched to the Democrat Party AFTER COLLEGE! Many switch during college, because of the rebellion aspect of going against their "Dads politics", etc, but after entering the real world, a person NEVER switches to Liberal.

Boy, do you have me pegged. My parents are yellow-dog Republicans, and during my stint at (get this) Houston Baptist University, I turned hideously liberal. (I was a goth too, but that's for another thread.)

I held to the left as long as I could, which was just over seven years counting grad school, but about three months into my real life, I had a road-to-Damascus moment, and I'm all better now.

[KoestlersRedFiat]

I too voted for clinton in '92 (gag!)

But having lived through the antics of Bill & Hill, and the media's excusing their every deed, I turned hard right. Even my parents (moderate Republicans) are shocked when I mount the soapbox.

Hence my freeper handle.

[w_over_w]

Richard Nixon once said "The difference between a Liberal and a Conservative is a Liberal thinks with their heart and a Conservative thinks with their mind". I first voted in 1976 for Gerald Ford. As an Econ. major in college I listened to Jimmy Carter (in the debates) take the unemployment rate, the inflation rate and the prime rate, add them together and call it the "misery index". This violated every sound and reasonable economic principle I was studying at the time. It also epitomized what Nixon was trying to convey. And it's still true today . . . that is IMHO. Good thread BigJoe!

[linuxnut]

Once you get a job, have responsibilities and start paying taxes, chanced are, you become a conservative (or start thinking like one).

[thinktwice]

Growing up liberal means growing up brainwashed, and ... that makes you a Manchurian Candidate liberal when push comes to shove.

IMO, the only conservative cure is the adoption of a rational philosophy; but that is a staggering obstacle because your enemy is within you.

You might try monitoring Ayn Rand threads on Free Republic. That name -- as a search term -- will introduce you to the rational philosophy world.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

"The theory basicly is that [pop psychology deleted]". Even if we assume we're working with good data, there are other explanations. People with a college education tend, on average, to earn more than people without. And the Republican party is perceived as being more friendly to people in the upper income brackets. So assuming that voting patterns bear some relation to self-interest, we don't need much in the way of speculative psychology to explain the data, assuming the data is reliable to begin with.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

One implication of your analysis is that people who are concerned with what's taught in college are having paranoid fantasies about the degree of control liberal academics have over the future voting patterns of the students they teach. Growing up does involve getting over the adolescent urge to rebel. But it also involves getting over the pre-adolescent disposition to irrational fears.

[Archie Bunker on steroids]

I never liked liberals and I always will.

[SamAdams76]

There are a few who become more liberal as they get older (Goldwater gal Hillary Clinton being one) but they are in the distinct minority. It can also be argued that those folks were never conservative to begin with.

I can honestly say that I was a dyed-in-the-wool liberal in my early days. I thought Jimmy Carter was swell back in '76 and thought Richard Nixon was an evil man. In high school, I wore a "No Nukes" T-shirt and a few friends and I talked of joining a commune when we grew up and maybe hitchiking or across the country and "seeing America."

It's funny to think back on those days now, but at least I grew up. Some never do.

[js1138]

I am mostly libertarian (small "l").I vote mostly for people I think are personally honest. Sometimes I leave blanks on ballots (actual undervotes).

My first presidential vote (after returning from Vietnam) went to George McGovern, most out of protest. I hated LBJ more than most of you hate Clinton. I disliked Nixon because I thought he had no personal morals and because he represented for me, all the worst aspects of government -- increased police powers, wage and price controls, massive hypocracy. I saw nothing very conservative about his politics.

My father is a lifelong Roosevelt democrat. It has taken me a long time to accept the possibility of voting Republican. I liked Reagan, but admitting this would have caused cause open warfare in the family.

The 2000 election recount was the final straw in a long list of horrors, that allowed me to argue openly with my family.

[Sally II]

Hi! I grew up conservative. I've never voted Democrat, but for a short period in college I did try to act like a liberal. And I've given this a lot of thought, and based on my own experiences with liberals (especially since 9-11) I've come down to pretty much the exact same conclusions! My oldest brother is a Bay Area liberal, and I swear that even at age 45 he has the emotional maturity of an adolescent. He's still trying to find himself. He spends hundreds of dollars a year taking classes at Esalen. And he still thinks our parents owe him the world, simply because they chose to give birth to him.

Also, after 9-11 I did have a few lengthy debates with progressives. And I had one really interesting conversation with a Canadian who believed that religion was the cause of all evil and wars in the world and he really believed that George Bush was evil. After several fruitless exchanges, I asked him what his basic beliefs about the world were. His reply: "It all comes down to good intentions."

What's the quote? The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Anyhow, I can't say this for all Liberals, but from what I can tell I'm willing to bet that the majority of "progressives" believe that humanity is evolving toward a higher spiritual consciousness, and that through sheer will and good intentions mankind ---excuse me, "humanity"-- can acheive world peace, equality, goodness, and end hunger and suffering, etc. Basically, they ignore what thousands of years of history tells us about human nature. And personally, I don't see much difference between Progressives and any other religious cult. It takes a huge leap of faith to believe that humanity can will itself to become something that so many thousand years of history has proven it is not.

[bandleader]

Didn't Mr.Churchill say something like:"Show Me Someone Who Isn't A Liberal At Age 20,And I'll Showw You Someone With No Heart!On The Other Hand,Show Me Someone Who Isn't A Conservative At Age 40,And I'll Show You Someone With No Brains"!!!(or words to that effect...............

[bankwalker]

That's why over the past 30 years or so there has been a big push toward getting every chald a college edumacation. There is a method to the liberal madness.

[GunsareOK]

I was a liberal, in that I parroted my parents' liberal views, until junior year of high school (36 years ago).

Long before that, during junior high (now middle school), I was disturbed over the atmosphere of hooliganism at the school. The thug element was openly disrespectful to teachers and I wondered why adults accepted the kind of behavior that would have gotten me the back of my father's hand at home--the inmates were running the institution.

It took two years for the light to go on--for me to realize that the atmosphere of permissiveness, even during the early '60s, spawned and encouraged this type of behavior, both in (public) school and society.

I would have voted for Kennedy in 1960 and Johnson in 1964, but by 1968 I favored George Wallace. In 1972, the first year I was eligible, I voted for (former) Congressman Schmitz from California. I believe he died only very recently.