Philosophical Formation

One fact of life is that young liberals often age into old conservatives. Although that has a kernel of truth in my case, I'd have to say my philosophies are simply a natural result of my life experience.

Growing up, I had a Democrat father and Republican mother. Dad was a teacher, which is probably all you need to know about his political choice. Despite their opposite political views, it was never a source of friction for anyone in the family. When the topic did come up, it was mostly worth a chuckle, hearing Dad spout his Democratic talking points and Mom just responding that she'll make sure to get to the polls to cancel out his vote.

Before I went to college, it all pretty much rolled off. I didn't know or care a thing about politics. Up until I took government class in high school, I would have told you I was a Democrat in deference to Dad, but would not have been able to tell you why.

That high school government class wasn't really a great eye-opening experience for me, but I did learn more about what sort of political process we had and the basic arguments between the two major parties. Mr. Harley impressed me the day he announced to the class that he was neither Republican nor Democrat, but an independent. He told us that he found himself agreeing and disagreeing with both parties to an extent that he couldn't choose one or the other. That seemed inspired to me at the time, so mostly through college, if you asked, I would tell you I was a political independent.

Of course, I couldn't avoid the whole story of the Nixon years. I heard a lot of grumbling about the wage and tax freeze he used to try to slow down inflation. Then Watergate was all over the news for what seemed an eternity, until finally that night at the football game the announcer told the crowd that Nixon had resigned and Gerald Ford would take over as President. I'd never heard of Gerald Ford before that day.

In college I didn't have much time or use for politics either. Going to the state university (Ball State), naturally most of the faculty were on the liberal side of the line. Jimmy Carter was elected my sophomore year, and most of the campus celebrated, and even my singing group, the University Singers, were invited to perform at one of his inaugural balls. I was disappointed that, as a first-year member, I wasn't eligible to make that trip. It sounded like a lot of fun.

Generally, not because of any knowledge of Jimmy Carter's politics but because of the glowing comments from professors and those students who cared, I was pleased that he won. But if you were to ask me any question about Jimmy's policies or political philosophy at that time, I couldn't have given any sort of intelligent answer.

There were attempts at left-wing indoctrination on campus. One of my honors classes was a popular elective on "Violence in America", or something like that. It was taught by a colorful, highly entertaining professor, who utilized multimedia and the talents of a variety of student artists and musicians to explore the "culture of violence" in society.

Even though the class was tremendously entertaining, I couldn't help but develop a sort of "give me a break!" attitude. From the Vietnam war to anti-gun to spanking children, the message was that it was all violence and if we were to be an enlightened society, we should stop it in all its forms. I instinctively understood that this was utopian silliness.

There was an active gay group on campus, which was quite an eye-opener for a naive boy from Amish country. I knew some guys who arrived on campus as just ordinary 18 year olds, no more "gay" than the meanest member of the Cardinal football team. But they were uncertain of themselves, maybe had a little trouble finding and keeping girlfriends, and going through that identity crisis I think we all experience at some point during our formative years.

Well, the group of gays on campus were on the prowl for just these people, who were ripe for their brand of indoctrination. They reminded me of a sort of strange religious cult, only their religion just happened to be centered around deviant sexuality. They attracted people with friendly acceptance and understanding, and closed the deal with the message of a persecuted, "us-against-the-world" mentality. These quite normal but malleable young guys I knew transformed in short order into skinny, vain, trite, effeminate caricatures. They had crossed over into the cult that now campaigns to force everyone via government fiat to bow down and pay deference to their religion.

A particularly egregious example on campus was my Sociology instructor. It was one of those core classes everybody was required to take, and freshmen were jammed into one of those giant lecture halls to listen to a daily diatribe from a professor who is quite possibly the most radical person I have ever encountered in person. She was an open lesbian who went against the normal dress code of professors, who at that time were still mostly wearing professional suits when in front of their classes. She instead wore jeans and usually some sort of long-sleeved t-shirt, braless of course. She was extremely angry and disaffected, and gave daily rants on the evils of the American European Christian-inquisition white-male-dominated minority-exploiting native american-killing capitalistic minority and women-enslaving society.

From my perspective, she was a sad joke. I came to feel sorry for her, because there had to have been some horrible experience in her past that led to her hostility toward all things American, and male.

One other example was when I attended a session about the Kennedy assassination. Presented by (I later discovered) a communist party activist, the presentation was mostly a replay, over and over and over, of the famous Zapruder film of the JFK assassination. And the message was that Lee Harvey Oswald was set up, the assassination was spearheaded by the CIA in support of the vast so-called capitalist military-industrial complex, that the Warren Commission was a fraud and a coverup, etc.

At first, that evening got me worried. But as I did some reading and studying on that topic later, I began to discover who the purveyors of that theory were and what their underlying motives might be. I suspect we'll never know exactly who might have been behind or involved with the JFK assassination, but I came to believe it most likely was not the CIA.

So then I graduated from college and learned about "real" life under Jimmy Carter and the Democrats. These were the post-RFK-JFK-VietNam-Watergate years when Democrats dominated the political landscape, and for the most part the public never heard conservative thought on key issues. We lost the VietNam war due to poor leadership and lack of commitment, but were told our military were just a bunch of evil dopers and baby killers. There was a gigantic recession, and jobs were hard to find. Taxes were extremely high, with the top marginal tax rate on income around 70%. But the word was that very few people paid the top rate, because there were plenty of "loopholes" they could exploit to shelter their income from such confiscatory taxes. High wage-earners simply deferred salaries or took compensation in forms of non-taxable "expense accounts" and company cars to avoid those huge tax bites, while those of us at the bottom of the scale paid all of our ten to fifteen percent.

I struggled personally in those first couple of years after college, leaving my high school teaching job to try to find something that actually paid a living wage. The news stayed bad through the Carter years, ending with the Iran hostage crisis, which made Carter look extremely weak and indecisive.

Then I voted for the first time, casting my vote for Ronald Reagan. And from where I was, life improved dramatically almost immediately. Tax rates went down for the lower and middle classes and the top marginal rate was slashed, while loopholes were closed, gas prices stabilized, I found my career in computer software, and life just got better and better.

These days, whenever an important issue comes to my attention, I try my best to understand the issue and listen to all sides before arriving at my own position. Now and then I will end up siding with a reasoned Democratic position, usually if it involves trade or economics. But most of the time, especially since the current president took office, I find myself siding with either the Republicans or neither side. I almost always side with Republicans on social issues. The last three or four years, I haven't really heard any reasoned Democratic arguments at all; the only message they have is to beat the drum over and over, "Bush sucks" (boom-boom), "Bush is a liar" (boom-boom), "Bush is a Nazi" (boom-boom), etc. Talk about your intelligent political discourse.

Right now I side with neither party on issues like illegal immigration, tax reform, government spending, the role of the federal government, and some parts of foreign policy. Those few I find agreement with on those issues tend to lean conservative, but don't represent the Republican party. I'm disgusted by the latest highway bill out of congress that is little more than a gigantic pork barrel, and does nothing to solve our real energy and transportation problems while wasting my tax dollars on politicians' pet projects and graft for big campaign donors.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, their historic populist message has been obscured by the radicals who have taken over the party. The party isn't run by pragmatic people who believe that government should care about all of the people and not just the fat cats. It's now a party of atheists, gays, racial minorities who want handouts and preferences, socialists, communists, radical environmentalists, abortionists, radical women's groups, labor unions, and globalists. To me, that is hardly a party that represents me, the ordinary little guy just trying to get by.

But as to my early idea of remaining an independent, I've decided that is just a synonym for irrelevant. These days, for good or bad, you've got to choose your party and stick with it, or the other party will take over and we'll return to the bad old days of Jimmy Carter. Despite their faults (which are defined very differently by me than the Democrats), at least there are grown-ups in the white house now, if you compare them to the arrested-development 60's-retro Clinton gang.