2009 thread: Have you always been a Conservative/Moderate/Liberal?
In that thread I said,
I haven’t changed much since 2009, though today I would consider myself more of a “libertarian conservative” than a libertarian.
When I was younger (say, in my 20s), I don’t know if I was really liberal or conservative, so much as naive and unaware. I’d grown up white, male, and solidly middle-class, in a small city which was, at that time, extremely homogenous. I voted for Reagan in '84 (when I was 19), and Bush in '88, but I don’t believe I really thought too much about it.
I went to college at a particularly liberal school, in a stridently liberal city (Madison, Wisconsin). And, I used to make fun of the rabid liberal activists who were always present on campus, protesting against one thing or another (CIA involvement in Central America, ROTC presence on campus, nuclear weapons, etc.) I remember, in that time, having a long conversation with a good friend about affirmative action – I was against it, because I didn’t understand why I, as a white guy, should be penalized for the sins of past generations. I had a hard time comprehending things like homosexuality and non-cis gender orientations, because (I thought) I didn’t know anyone like that, and culture had told me that being gay, or being what we now call transgender, was deviant and/or sinful.
Looking back, I was clueless. My eyes finally began to open when one of my college roommates (a guy who is still a good friend) came out as gay.
Over the years that followed, I finally started to realize just how little I understood about how priviledged my position in life was. I started to get to know people who weren’t white, and people who’d grown up in very different situations from my own. I discovered that, yeah, I did, in fact, know quite a few non-straight people, and non-cis people. (I also came to eventually realize that I was not, in fact, strictly heterosexual, nor strictly cis-gendered.)
So, yeah, not only did I become more liberal, but I became pretty flaming liberal. I now strongly believe that our current system and culture are still fundamentally, inherently biased against anyone who isn’t a straight, white, Christian man, with at least a fair amount of money and education.
I have friends who are conservative, and I respect the views of the ones who are intelligent and reasoned in their views about it. But, when I look at how “conservatism” gets expressed in America these days, I see:
- Blatant attempts to impose a conservative Christian theocracy
- A philosophy that is deepening income inequality
- A willingness to ignore the carnage of gun violence due to holding the Second Amendment as sacrosanct
- A willful distrust of science and ridiculous rationalization about climate change
I’ve probably gotten a little more liberal on social issues while staying 1930’s union member on economic issues.
My father (who actually WAS a 1930s union member) became much more conservative over the years, even as he became much more of a non-believer (which I only mention because the Believer=conservative thing just doesn’t hold up in my experience.)
That really depends on who’s talking about which value. Religion is much like parliamentary democracy - you can take the same ideas and twist them pretty much anyway you want.
I dunno. Three of the most amazing activists I know of are Christian. Two are Quakers who have worked in their nonviolence organizing committees and in an immigrant support organization. Another is a reverend of some denomination I’m not sure of, who was at the forefront of the movement for marriage equality in the South.
And then there’s the Reverend William Barber, who’s freaking amazing.
I’m not a Christian, but if I were, I’d 100% be in Barber’s tradition. Indeed, I have trouble understanding how anyone can profess to be both a Christian and a Republican. It comes across like claiming to be a technophile who refuses to use electronics.
As others have noted, you’ve blatantly mischaracterized “the beliefs of the Left” in a manner that makes them appear much worse than they are.
That aside, I’m not sure what your Christian faith has to do with anything here. Where does the Bible say we should require believer and nonbeliever alike to conform with our beliefs about indulgences of the flesh such as drugs and porn? When you talk about Cuba, it sounds like you’d like to make America into Cuba, just with religious dictators instead of a Communist dictator.
You’re right that God says we are all equally tainted by sin, but that equality just has to do with salvation, not politics. If Person A punches Person B in the arm, and Person C deliberately kills Person D, Persons A and C are both sinners in God’s eyes, but in this world, should we treat them equally?
Of course we shouldn’t, and that’s why we don’t. The same is true of racism and sexism. Prejudice by groups with power against groups without it has widespread consequences; prejudice in the other direction has little.
Count me as another who thinks that the writer of the OP, as they have expressed about their younger beliefs, suffered from multiple logical fallacies, including believing strawman arguments about what constitutes the thoughts and philosophies of “the left” in the US. The greatest percentage of people who are self identified Liberals or Democrats do not subscribe to what the OP describes. Perhaps if rosecoloredboy had been exposed to and understood conventional Liberal, Progressive, or Democratic, principles, they would not have found the need to run in the opposite direction.
[off-topic]Isn’t that pretty much steampunk? :)[/o-t]
I was a Goldwater Republican through most of my teens; and a pacifist anarchist by my early twenties. I eventually decided that anarchism doesn’t work in human groups of any size larger than maybe a couple of hundred (and not always in smaller ones), and in certain limited cases pacifism doesn’t work either (I’m still not at all certain that alternatives to pacifism work any better in the long run; but sometimes you have to get to the long run.) So now I’m mostly a fairly far left liberal.
I agree that the OP has mischaracterized a lot of liberal positions.
I’m not a Christian. But I’ve noted that there are various devout Christians with positions all over the political spectrum.
I grew up in a moderate Republican household. I drifted more to the right in my teens - reading people like Limbaugh and such. However college and especially the George W. Bush adminstration turned me back around. By the mid 00s, I was referring myself as a libertarian Republican and voting for some Democrats even (Kerry over Bush for one).
The left ward shift got pushed into hyperdrive when I became a Christian. I started reading the Bible and realized it was full of injunctions to take care of the poor. The Old Testament was especially concerned with the poor and needy. I realized that if I going to be following God, I needed to concern myself more with the poor. I even started dabbling in Christian Socialism for a while. I’m probably now moderate left with a few Christian Socialism leanings these days… but it’s been a shift from moderate Republicanism.
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“Atheist / New Ager”
Hmmm.
While I realize those positions aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, and there seems to be a disturbing resurgence of things like Astrology among young non-religious people, I find myself unsurprised that you’ve undertaken a major shift in your thinking.
Not trying to be insulting here, but I think a person who simultaneously identifies (or did at one time, in your case) as atheist and New Ager is a little… unsure of their position on the nature of reality. I find the so-called New Age stuff silly in the extreme myself, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how it can mesh with atheism. While it’s true that there is a faction of the left that is susceptible to woo beliefs, it’s probably a mistake to think there’s a substantial cross section of carefully considered atheism and New Age beliefs.
But if you were eventually repelled by what you felt as woo nonsense, I can certainly see wanting to find something new to believe. That you chose Christianity is fine, but surprising to me. Reminds me of James Randi’s debunking of the evangelist Peter Popoff. After learning he was a fraud, many of his followers simply shifted to other evangelists.
As for me - most people would consider me liberal, although I support things like nuclear energy. I’ve always stubbornly tried to follow data, so some of my beliefs have changed. Mostly still liberal, on balance.
I had two friends who were VERY Liberal , but were avid gun owners, and now are reactionary single issue gun voters.
Funny rosecolloredboy I went from hard right to supporting Love, which allinges with many leftist stances, but not totally for many of the reasons you said you went right. I thought God’s side was on the right till God showed me no, most of that was deception, Love and God’s Kingdom, based on Love and Grace, not on rules and laws, is the way Jesus taught. My views which I thought were God’s way when I was far right I repented of, and God had revealed to me wonders beyond what I could have thought back then. Even what we consider a very religious issue abortion, God has handled and never given us a choice aa God has taken the ability to harm the unborn out of our hands. I consider what a religious rat bastard when I got a woman to repent of murder of her aborted child, instead of embracing her for the hard circumstances and decision she made. Instead of sharing the love of God, I expressed the condemnation of the pharisees. Thank god God showed me His way.
As for Capitalism, it doesn’t have such a good reputation in its pure form, Well there are the rich and powerful who enjoy the fruits, and then the workers who do little more then enslave themselves to participate. Communism is also a extreme end, perhaps socialism which is working in places in Europe and we can see some much better results then the limited socialism we have in the US’s more capitalistic system, particularly in things like healthcare, may of the european systems are both higher quality and cost less than the US equivalent. Traveling outside the US broke the lie that the US system is so good, it’s comparatively really not, but you won’t hear that much inside the US. It’s like the lie everyone keeps telling each other to keep the lie going.
Also I don’t see many saying we have to de-industrialize, except the right is accusing the left, but that is a strawman. The left in general want to live more harmoniously with out environment and to find solutions so we can maintain and increase our standards of life by finding ways to work with our environment in preserving it instead of exploiting it. So really that is a strawman.
You also put up a strawman about virtue. I think many believe there are classes of people who unfairly suffer disadvantage, and actions to correct it should eliminate disadvantage, not to give them a advantage, but yes in practice there are advantages given out and disadvantages that still persist.
Smokers murder 50000 non smokers a year in the USA, mostly children and older people. Think about that.
I come from a very hyper conservative MAGA family and I was always the “tree hugging liberal” of the bunch to my family. Even then I would have been regarded as a nazi bootlicker by the louder elements of todays left.
Thanks to to the patient and thoughtful commentary board I have wandered far more liberal, but still have a few “distasteful” views to the most progressive types.
Given that less religious countries are happier, wealthier, better educated, and safer, while I respect that one can’t help what they fear, the data doesn’t bear out.
That said, the world doesn’t sit still long enough to really say anything about whether what we’re doing today will continue to prove out but it’s probably better to think of it in these terms:
You try things - sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t - now you know and now you can make an informed decisions. We thought it would be a good idea to let women work. Taxes dropped, inequality rose, the crime rate dropped, stay at home wives seem to be more neurotic and unhappy than ones who go out, men are being called out for mistreating women and put to task for it. (Note: The crime rate decline is probably unrelated but, I suspect, people in the past would have expected the crime rate to go up because they wouldn’t have a full time parent letting them continue to suckle into their teens.) Overall, outside of the rise in inequality, I’d say it was a good step. Legal marijuana, less so. Vaping… We’ll have to see.
But, consider that the conservatives of before wouldn’t have let women work, black people marry white people, etc. Fear of change is reasonable. But don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
I was absolutely oblivious to politics when i was young. I saw politics as a “how much government do you want to pay for”
I have probably been moving to the left every year since then.
Of course the far left boundary of what is considered mainstream liberal has moved left a lot faster than me.
Folks like AOC used to never be taken seriously by liberals.
George mcGovern.
Not so much me, but my father.
Growing up, he was very conservative. He once said that the only presidential vote that he felt completely confident and comfortable casting was his vote for Barry Goldwater in 1964.
Then he was appointed to the federal bench by George H.W. Bush. That turned him surprisingly quickly into a liberal. He’ll be voting for Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic primary.
Heck, Nelson Rockefeller. That’s right, back in the sixties and seventies even the Republicans had liberal politicians who espoused some of the same policies that modern leftists like AOC are advocating, such as radical environmental and housing reform, pension plans, etc.
I was a Libertarian in my young adulthood, bordering on anarcho-capitalist. The Market For Liberty was my vade mecum. Then one day I realized it’s easy to say you don’t want to be shackled to the mediocrity of others when you’re born white to the upper-middle class and had your college education paid for by your parents. I also realized that many people are just too stupid to make their own decisions so I voted for Bloomberg and cheered his getting rid of big sodas.