What do you feel makes you a conservative or liberal *snort*?
What was the defining moment of your acknowledgement that you were?
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29 Comments!
My conservative attitudes are deeply rooted in my belief that marriage is between one man and one woman; that taxes are rarely for the benefit of the taxed; that the average politician can be trusted about as far as I can drop-kick the average anvil; that free enterprise is what drives the US economy; and that socialism eventually runs out of rich people’s money to support deadbeats and parasites.
As a young man, I had many liberal ideas, but I realized that I was a true conservative by nature when my daughters became teenagers and I was forced by circumstance to grow the hell up.
Grew up in a conservative household. Took to the Dark Ages of Hippy-Dippy-Dumpsterdom with a rebellious vengeance; denying and rejecting all I was taught in my yout.
Once I began working for and with a small businessman, saw the overburden of regulations and taxation…..*SUMBITCH!* …..All of what my conservative parents taught me suddenly began to make sense. Been a small business owner of one kind or another ever since.
1977 – The pivotal year. Same year I turned 30.
Tolkiien said it well and in better words than I. Teenage years are just the precourser to the irresponsible “Tweens”…the times twixt twenty and thirty….more or less.
I was raised in a conservative household by parents, and grandparents, that lived through The Great Depression.
There is no one defining moments, but when I became part of management, realized that people were paying almost no income taxes, yet receiving large refunds at the end of the year, I realized that the U.S. was being run be damned Communists and the country wouldn’t be safe until they’re all out of power.
My belief that government is a necessary evil, and should be kept as small as possible for the republic to function (stick to the enumerated powers).
I was a “boomer” brought up straight (all meanings) in the 50s/60s.
Depression-era parents, vet Dad & uncles, Eagle scout, etc.
Realized I was an anti-Communist in high school, and that morphed into political conservatism. Went from religious to atheist, but stayed conservative. In college (late-60s), every time I talked to a lib/prog/commie, I thought, “YGBSM! Do you have any idea how silly/stupid/inane/treasonable that is?” Twenty-something years in the Air Force didn’t disabuse me of that thinking. Don’t reckon it’s gonna change any time soon, neither.
I can not remember ever being anything but conservative.
In 1976, at the age of eleven, I was in the base hospital at Andrews, just outside D.C. having a cast removed from my left arm.
Barry Goldwater was there with a cast on his leg. I was so excited to meet him. I had him sign my cast (which I did not get to keep) and signed his.
That was long before he married a much younger and much more liberal lady. After that he became more liberal and spoiled a cherished childhood memory.
How many 11 y/o kids would have even recognized Goldwater much less known he was a conservative icon?
BTW/ What makes me conservative and keeps me conservative is the intelligence to know conservative principles work and liberal/socialist/comunist ones do not.
I guess I was always a conservative at heart but first registered to vote as a demoncrat due to family tradition. Upon listening to Reagan, i realized that dem did not fit me and promptly changed that registration.
My folks were conservative in behavior, although I don’t recall them ever talking politics. Mom, who skipped two grades in middle and high school, was smart as a whip, but quit work and stayed home to raise us kids, while Dad worked multiple shifts in a gas station, couldn’t afford a car, and finally got one when he moved up to a sales job with its company car. That let us go visit grandparents and other family most every Sunday after church and they always managed to scrape together enough change to take us on a vacation to the ocean for a week every summer.
They really believed in family life.
The first moment I realized I didn’t like big government was at a cocktail party at my favorite uncle’s house. He was whatever the highest GS pay grade there was at the time, making at least three times what my Dad made, yet his wife complained they never had enough money, gushed over Dem politics and all the wonderful things government could do for the people, got really snippy when questioned about that. During my teen years, I was often hurt because they never seemed to have time to visit us at Christmas and Easter, that my folks almost had to schedule a visit to see them, and at this party, I realized that was because they preferred their government party crowd to their family. At that party, I first became aware how much they travelled and partied with their government employed friends, who were loud, drunk, officious, talking endlessly about needing bigger budgets, Dem politics, and exuding self importance to the point of nausea. They were all obsessed with keeping up with the Joneses and the trappings of wealth. That party with those phony, repellent, government worshipping people pretty much sent me off on a staunchly conservative path.
It started when my kids were getting to be teens. I was young myself and a bit of a lib– not what a lib is now — some how we lost control and the school took over and their piers. Every movie was about dumb parents and drugs and parties were in. Styles of clothes got sloppier, hair got longer, The Mr. and I didn’t know a damn thing about all that. ( Now our kids are more conservative than we were then) Everyone had that I don’t give a shit attitude. What really opened my eyes was the Twin Towers, the Iraq war and all the BS that went along with it. Vietnam was bad enough and it was like–Here we go again– that’s when I quit watching network news , switched to Fox News, and when my dad was listening to Rush I got curious and started listening. I’m a Rush Babe—-
My grandpa was Republican county chairman before I was born and still was when I joined the Marines 18 yrs later.
I started it to piss off my liberal big brother. After a while decided I liked it.
I’m really kind of ashamed to say…I never had any clue about politics until that Tuesday morning on September 11, 2001. That’s the day my life changed forever. I’m so not the same person I was on September 10th. It was like I was frozen to my tv for the rest of that day wondering what kind of monsters would attack our country killing more than 3000 innocent people. Then I started listening these asinine democrats talk about George Bush lied about the WMD’s when in fact the rest of the world was saying the same thing, including Clinton. And I thought…WTH?? So…..the lies and the brainless comments continue to come from the left. Thank God, I’ve seen the lite …as a conservative.
Prestonsburg, Kentucky, 1974, eating a chili dog. One of the local characters stopped next to me. ” You new in town?” “Yes.” “Are you communist or dis-communist?” “I’m a dis-communist.” “That’s good. We have too many communists in this country.” I’ve been dis-communist ever since.
Ohhh … I see. Where did the conservatism come from? My parents. My dad was a physician who absolutely DETESTED Lyndon Johnson. Mom detested him too. That is my first memory of politics, and it probably fixed my perspective. I briefly rebelled and voted for Carter (shamefully … because I thought he was a “nice” guy with a good moral compass). One term of that mended my ways, though.
I’ve always been conservative (or really a little “l” liberatarian) I was raised by parents who voted by issue and taught to vote with whom most mirrored your own votes. My 91 yr old grandmother attends tea party meetings, has always detested FDR and it more than willing to defend herself if need be. I got to see Reagan campaign in 1983 when I was 8ish, and still remeber the experience. In my first presidential election I voted for Harry Browne (Libertarian) in 1996. (Hey my other choices were, Dole or Clinton…..)
Vaguely libertarian household (mainly soclib libertarians), but both granddads were Republicans with Libertarian leanings.
When the Libertarians did their three-phase switch in 2001, I didn’t follow.
I never had a “switch” moment, I do remember thinking liberal arguments were silly and smug from early on, even though I would not have labeled myself “conservative” until after 2001 (before 9/11, actually). Before that I was a hawkish libertarian.
I still don’t really consider myself part of “the club.” I help certain people because I think they’re going to do what’s right, or what’s necessary, or both.
Read “Atlas Shrugged” in High Scrule, and considered it a bit of overblown dystopian SF. Then I got a summer job at the Grand Rapids C&O freight yards- just in time for the wildcat strike of ’69. The head of the local union showed up at our meeting and explained that the U.S. guvvamint could legally draft us into the military and force us back to work.
Then came Nixon’s wage and price controls…
I was walking through the mountains one day and came upon this burning bush…
Well, actually it was me, blazing on acid, but I had me this piffany where I realized that no matter how much I wanted everything to be free and easy forever, I, or somebody, was going to have to work for it. I’ve been working at acquiring a large stable of willing slaves and dancing girls ever since… so I was right after all: it takes a lot of work.
Jimmah Carter provided the negative lesson
Ronaldus Maximus provided the positive lesson
A straight commission sales job did the rest
Kicked the everlovin shit out of that punk-ass hippie wannabe I had become as a means of rebellion froma a strict upbringing.
Jesus shapes all my heartfelt values.
Abortion decides my politics. I see the issue as having no shades of grey.
That little girl is all suited up and ready —
I started my drift during the Reagan years as I noticed that the media reporting seemed not to correspond with reality. especially when the Dems controlled both houses of Congress. The final straw was the Clarence Thomas hearing which I got to listen to while taking a few two hour drives.
When a man called my wife and told her he was holding our daughter hostage. That was when I knew I had to have a firearm in the house and that I had to be conservative to protect that God-given right because the Communist Democrats would not.
That was many years ago.
The threat was false, and the caller never apprehended, although the call was traced to a specific location.
1976 in New Orleans at a post happy hour supper with friends in the French Quarter. Somebody’s lawyer buddy proceeded to brag about being a class action lawyer representing some families of an airline crash. I pretty well embarrassed my GF at the time ( I left her there when she enrolled in Law School) asking him why he thought he deserved 33% of these family’s settlements.
PS Peanuts was the last democrat to fool me.
My parents were Republican, i.e., believed in Civil Rights in the Jim Crow south. I was always more of a “classical liberal,” which of course, means that I was a (little L) libertarian. I’d have voted for Goldwater if I’d been old enough. My wife says I was born old. Maybe so.
Her turning point came when she started to earn a paycheck and saw how much the government took of her hard-earned wages.
I turned 18 in the middle of the Carter administration. My Mother was a southern Democrat and my Father was registered independent which was as close to Republican as you could get and still vote in local elections. I wanted a loan to buy a house and the best interest rates were 17% with a 30% down payment plus my parents cosigning and they had perfect credit. I started paying attention to politics right then and my first vote for president went to Ronald Reagan. BTW, I paid off that 17% note in full.
Raised in a pretty conservative house.Not all of the beliefs stuck but work,self reliance,small gov,free markets and no work,no eat made sense and work when applied.Libertarian ideas work.liberal ideas don’t.