Up until my sophomore year in high school, I was also very conservative, but then I started getting involved with more academic things in school and reading more widely, and questioning more, and I noticed that the most intellectual folks in high school (and all of the “cool” teachers) seemed to be pretty liberal, so I decided I wanted to be more liberal. It was more aspirational than absolute, though, as I didn’t think much of the liberal politicians I was aware of. I convinced myself that most conservatives were not well-informed, and that they didn’t understand liberal arguments, and that they were too self-serving and just didn’t care enough about the less fortunate–all the typical stereotypes that I knew at some level weren’t true.

So then I went to college, where I hoped to gain the right sort of knowledge and perspective to convert to being an actual liberal and not just an aspirational one. This conversion never really occurred, so I settled on being a “moderate” who looked favorably on liberals. This lasted from college through graduate school, though the more time went by, and the more I observed, the harder it was for me to look favorably on them. After graduate school, during the Clinton administration, my ability to believe in either the good will or the good faith of liberals began to fall seriously by the wayside. As the years have gone by, I’ve pretty much returned to my conservative roots, though my dalliance with liberalism has left me with far too many friends and acquaintances with whom I have increasingly little in common.

As for myself, the Dems started to leave me sometime in college. After McGovern had become the Democratic nominee in ’72, the party seemed to lean more and more to the left. I didn’t. Congress’ refusal of aid to South Vietnam in its hour of need followed quickly by the Carter presidency made it impossible for me in good conscience to remain a Democratic voter. Reagan came along, and that was that. The last time I voted for a Democrat was 1976. I’m ashamed that I helped to elect Carter, but I haven’t made that mistake again. Never will.

My parents owned a Funeral Home which we also lived in. Because of Carters policies, we were required to keep our thermostat at 68 degrees. My dad applied for a waver since it was also a family dwelling, which was turned down. Sounds more like the soviet union than the United states, doesn’t it? We froze that hard winter of 78/79, heating a 4 story home can be difficult at 68 degrees. My parents had to rent generators to run the street lights during calling hours because the town turned them off at night. We weren’t comforted by that fact that Carter wore sweaters and kept the white house thermostat at 68 as well.

I read Newsweek, watched those Sunday morning shows and wondered why they hardly had any conservatives on. My first vote was Reagan. My thoughts about what I was didn’t really solidify until being stationed in Germany with my husband, I became friends with a German neighbor who liked to talk politics. She’s the first person that ever really challenged my thinking and I loved arguing with her, especially while drinking heavily as was the custom there! We still argue politics and she and her family are coming for thanksgiving, so we’ll have lots to talk about.

And then I discovered there were socialists who thought the others were all hopeless capitalists, and the moral superiority of getting to look down at everyone was delicious to me. McGovern was unfortunately too conservative, but it least it gave us a chance to strike down that horrible Nixon, who had secret plans to declare himself king, just you wait and see.

By the time she was out of high school she spoke French, Latin, Greek.

She tried to raise me as a responsible American and stressed the importance of political involvement and voting.

She was candid about her earlier days. Once when we were out she ordered a shot of vodka and poured it in my beer because she wanted me to know the joys of spike beer.

I loved and respected her more than I have anyone since.

Yet, and yet, she thought Alger Hiss was a delightful, fey sort of intellectual who was besmirched by that awful Whittaker Chambers (that fat loudmouth sat on the stand and beat his breast) attributed the presence of evil in the world to Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon.

She was no political naif. I have a photo of her standing on the tarmac in front of a B-17 talking to Andrei Gromyko. She worked for Army Intelligence.

She was well off. While my father railed about the depression she told me anecdotes about her height-challenged mother sliding off her chair while searching with her to for the button that summoned the maid.

But she was a passionate Democrat. Because of that beautiful boy Hiss and that dark, sweaty Chambers and the man who was mean: Joe McCarthy.

My father may have had something to do with her longing for anything that wasn’t mean. But he, too, was a committed Democrat.

That’s a lot of programming to shed. It took me a near-fatal head injury. You were lucky to have achieved a little clarity by dint of intellect.

I saw Republicans and conservatives as hypocritical Christian witch hunters, rich fat cats who were above the law, and any one with power. The rest of us, as I saw it, needed to take what they had and make things fair… distributing ill-gotten spoils. The workers needed fair wages, the poor needed to be tended, and those of no use needed to be ended.

All I can say is thank God for access to history books that had not been revised and an innate ability to look at people and see that they are evil. Look at Schumer, the Clintons, the Kennedys, and how they lived, closely, sometime. Between the reading and the examination of leftist politician and activists… I realized what I had been supporting was simply evil. It hurt, a lot. I also, then, realized that monsters are real, and I was becoming one of them. I even saw what I could gain. Teachers loved me, before I realized and changed, hated me after. I could have done almost anything, and they still would have loved me, if I was smart enough to get away with it. It is tempting. It is evil. It took years to rid myself of most of that poison, and yet the temptation is still there.

Obama has made mistakes that rightly cost him political support. But I can’t help believing that the tea party’s rise was partly due to circumstances beyond his control — that he’s different from other presidents, and that the difference is his race.

Mr. Robinson has apparently not seen other visible differences between Obama and other Presidents. I refer to graphs of deficits and federal spending.

Apparently irresponsible fiscal policy is genetic.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/11/02/race_and_the_tea_partys_ire_107805.html

Let’s take back this country !!!! That’s the line that makes Eugene think we are racists…