Posted on 04/22/2011 7:29:09 AM PDT by yetidog
This perhaps has been asked on Free Republic previously and if so, I apologize. But to the extent we are populated with any converted liberals, briefly explain what brought you over to the conservative side. I have heard 9/11, parenthood, maturity, marriage etc. as reasons, but as a "cradle conservative," I have to ask on behalf of my continuing efforts to convince liberals (and moderates) that their ideology is fuzzy-headed at best and terribly harmful to the future of the United States.
My parents were genetic Democrats, especially my mother whose father had a job which at the time was a political patronage position. She told me how she cried when Eisenhower was elected because that meant my grandfather would be fired (he did end up keeping his job). What converted them was 4 years of Carter followed by the Reagan campaign. Maybe we’ll have more conversions after four years of Carter version 2.0, but what a price to pay for the nation.
I grew up in the Baptist Church and thought because the Democrats were for helping people and the evil Republicans were only for big business that I was a Democrat. When the pro-life issue came to the fore I actually started looking into politics and learned the truth and it made me free.
Truth is what cuts through the darkness of evil and shines the light so all may see. Opening eyes and ears is only done by the Almighty, so prayer is also required. That is why today’s education is warped and clouded. Truth is a necessity.
Honestly I don’t think I was ever liberal. In my youth I guess I was moderate at best.
The result of growing up in a rural farm community didn’t expose me to a great deal of liberalism.
I was a typical leftist college student in the ‘60’s until I read Ayn Rand. There’s not a lot of drama or mystery in my conversion; I simply read a rational presentation of a defense of capitalism and I havent looked back.
It strikes me as odd that so many so-called conservatives dislike Rand when she’s plainly at least mostly on target and the fools who’ve been running things for the past few decades are so much worse.
Most lefties are a mugging away from a designated government victim group from becoming a conservative.
The Carter-Reagan election was my epiphany. Born and raised in a staunchly Democratic, pro-Union family, I tooled along in a military career believing all of the happy progressive horsecrap, even voting for Carter’s first term. When Reagan ran against Carter I suddenly realized that Ronaldo Magnus was voicing the things I truly believed. I haven’t looked left since.
My uncle was a dope smoking, anti war lefty,hippy in the 60’s.
He readily admits that the whole 60’s thing was a giant charade.
Today, he is a pro-military, capitalist, conservative who dabbles in Hinduism.
If they’re delusional, there’s hope. If they’re just plain stupid, there isn’t.
My parents were Republicans, and I voted Democrat out of some vague desire to “rebel,” and because everyone I knew in college was doing the same. I was an atheist, feminist Democrat until I received my first paycheck and was outraged by the amount the govt was stealing from me. I became a Republican that day, but I remained atheist and feminist until my early 40s, when I had the good fortune to work with some highly intelligent men who encouraged me to identify my principals and defend them logically. They were endlessly kind and patient with me; I’d come at them with some pet theory and they’d ask me questions that sent me back to my desk fuming over my inability to answer them. Eventually I began to find my true principles, and they were conservative. At the same time I’d begun to want something larger than myself in my life, and was groping slowly toward a belief in God. I succeeded, was baptized in April 1998, and am now a traditional (anti-feminist), conservative Christian.
I remember clearly what it was like to fear death, to believe that my earthly life was all there is, and to be unthinking. I’m so glad I evolved into a richer, more responsible, and freer life.
My first vote in a presidential election was for Carter.
The second was for Ronald Reagan. IMO the Carter-Reagan nexus brought a great number of us to the light. We are approaching another similar scenario. Let’s hope this one will bring the rest to the light.
I was an unabashed college-campus leftist in the 60’s. While studying I encountered an econ professor who had fled Cuba. He argued eloquently and convincingly for capitalism. I wasn’t convinced until I got a job in the private sector and found everything he had told me was true. I’ve been a right-winger ever since. ‘Lost all my friends from college days. Made new ones.
It's an unfortunate fact that a stiff, teen aged ___ has no conscience. College was a real test, but used car salesmen were more truthful. It was an education on the reality of Liberal Thought, or the lack thereof.
I was raised a strict atheist and liberal. Liberal through college, and beyond. In grad school people tell me (later) I was deep-down a conservative, but I was still voting and arguing liberal.
Then a smart friend told me about a science author names Michael Fumento, who wrote about bogus environmental issues, and AIDS.
His book “Science Under Siege” showed me (using the kind of irrefutable scientific evidence and logic process I was raised and trained on) that the liberal politicians and the media had been lying to me all along.
I learned to think critically, and to trust the media no more. Which inevitably leads to conservatism.
(I have shared this with Fumento, who I believe has been an occasional Freeper.)
I used to be a radical leftist back in college in 2004. I was very egotistic and self-centered although not particularly hateful of others. Also, naive and exceedingly idealistic. I believed that human beings were naturally good and that evil didn’t matter anyway because in my new age religion “the energy would return to the universe”.
I converted to conservatism very rapidly when I started studying the news. I discovered very quickly that evil was not an anomaly and that it was the default tendency of human beings. I also started for the first time in my life to internalize these events and to view the suffering and deceased as real living beings and not some theoretical abstraction to be created and sacrificed for the “greater good”.
Liberalism is at its core anti-life. A person meant nothing to me. Only ideas and feelings had value. There is no need to talk about the economics because everything revolves around the value of a person. Freedom and rights cannot exist unless a person is a real thing and not an abstraction to be manipulated by academics and politicians.
Fortunately the seed of conservatism was always there to facilitate this rapid conversion. I had never been fond of the hedonist world, not even as a child. Therefore, I became the type of college student who was far more interested in studying the realities of the world instead of spending all my free time partying and raping women.
I am an anomaly. The majority of leftists are fully satisfied with their evil ways. They are completely devoid of inner life and exist as diabolical monsters. Don’t bother holding out hope for their conversion.
...oh, and to complete the story, I was baptized not too long ago, and am active in my church. See you there this afternoon.
I have a general theory of political thought, and wrote a book about it. The theory is that Liberalism is an advanced version of a Darwinian strategy seen in nature, and adopted to avoid the risk of free competition, be it for resources, mates, whatever.
If the theory is correct, the true Liberal adopts their worldview in childhood, and their brain becomes averse to the fear of uncertainty in their future (due to amygdala dysfunction). The only way to curtail their noxious pursuit of everyone’s oppression is to make pursuit of it create uncertainty in their future. ie, if they think everyone is going to be against them, and they are going to be ostracized, they will retreat.
There is a second type of Liberal, which I refer to as the Lemming. They are only Liberal because they think everyone else is, and they go with the flow. They have to be convinced that Liberals are losers, and they shouldn’t associate with the Liberal, because it makes them look bad.
I know you’re looking for that killer factual argument, which will bring the Liberal to our side, but that argument has been devised and disseminated thousands of times by the most brilliant minds in the world, for centuries now, and it has gotten us nowhere.
What is at work here is actually more primal. Liberals genuinely don’t want freedom, and fear uncertainty. You can see this when you find the psychology in other more primitive organisms. It isn’t logic based. No matter what you say, unless it favors the uniform oppression of all men, and rampant promiscuity to eliminate the competition for mates (just as you see in nature, where this psychology shows up), Liberals will tune you out.
We need to grasp that true Liberals don’t think like us, don’t care for facts, and will always want everyone oppressed. Lemmings, don’t look at facts, they look at what they think is “cool.”
If we grasp that, then we just shame Liberals over their cowardice and oppressiveness. True Liberals will retreat and hide, and Lemmings will join our side, as it will then be seen as “cool.”
Reagan showed us this 30 years ago, but nobody got the lesson. Make Liberals afraid to be known as Liberal, and everything else will work out.
I was a moderate Republican until I was 21. Then I became more conservative.
It was after Sept. 11, 2001 when I began listening to Rush devoutly, while at the same time reading The Washington Post every day. I realized that the alleged "media bias" was not only true, but far worse than advertised by even the hardest core "right-winger". I started paying attention, and recognizing liberal lies for what they were. Within about 2 to 3 years I realized that everything that I had thought America was ... everything it was founded to be ... had been being intentionally undermined for nearly a century already by American "liberals" who could only be defined as communists (whether they knew it or not).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.