Andrew Klavan: My Way Into and Out of the Left

Frontpage ^ | Dec 10th, 2009 | Jamie Glazov

[Brugmansian]

FP: Andrew Klavan, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

I’d like to talk to you today about your journey into and out of the Left.

How did you at first become a member of the political faith? Tell us about the beginnings of your intellectual journey.

Klavan: Well, I was always a dissatisfied liberal. I just never knew there was anything else to be. I was born Jewish to a mother who worshipped FDR and a father who thought that any Republican victory prefigured the return of Adolf Hitler. That’s not an exaggeration: he thought Republicans were all just Hitler in disguise . . .

FP: So how did your second thoughts begin? Tell us about your journey out of the Left.

Klavan: It was an experience that very much mirrored the pattern of the famous paradigm shift described in Thomas Kuhn’s “Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” Anomalies started to occur, things that didn’t fit into what I thought of as a “liberal” world view. The Bakke case, in which the Supreme Court supported affirmative action – that was a big one: I thought it was a clear sign that the left – my side – had signed on to racism. Feminism, political correctness, the disaster of welfare, the appeasement of the Soviet Union – I kept saying, “Well, that’s no good,” but I thought they were anomalies. I still didn’t realize there was an alternative philosophy that described the world more accurately. Then the Berlin Wall fell down – everything Reagan predicted – stupid Reagan, cowboy Reagan, dumb old movie actor Reagan – every single thing he said would happen, happened. And it finally began to dawn on me, “Oh, I get it: it’s not this and this and this that’s wrong. It’s ALL wrong.” And I started the long, difficult process of changing my mind . . .

[Liberty Valance]

Andrew Klavan

Author of such internationally bestselling crime novels as True Crime, filmed by Clint Eastwood, and Don’t Say A Word, filmed starring Michael Douglas. He has been nominated for the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award five times and has won twice. His last novel for adults, Empire of Lies, topped Amazon.com’s thriller list. His new novel series for young adults continues in February with The Long Way Home.

Andrew is a contributing editor to City Journal, the magazine of the Manhattan Institute. His essays on politics, religion, movies and literature have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, The Washington Post, the LA Times, and elsewhere. As a screenwriter, he wrote the screenplays for 1990’s A Shock to the System, starring Michael Caine.

[VicVega]

"Academics, entertainers, wealthy elites like Michael Moore who think Islamists are going to like them, spare them and their limousines and their millions, because they’re such ever-so-good people… well, they’re like the intellectuals who lined the streets of Vienna to welcome Hitler. The next day, they were gone."

True words.

[warsaw44]

A friend of mine for about 20 years has ever so slowly begun asking himself hard questions about his liberal faith. Whenever we get together for dinner or drinks, he'll bring up questions about certain subjects and I tread lightly but with facts. I've no intention of rubbing his nose in it with “ told you so “ or any other such boorish behavior.

But really, once one segment of lib thought is realized to be nonsense the whole thing falls apart. If these people used fact and rational thought to analyze questions they'd not be libs.

[marron]

Excellent piece, worth reading all the way through.

[Liberty Valance]

*ping*

[supremedoctrine]

Klavan does great filmed bits on Pajamas TV, also.

[skr]

It’s difficult to not want to straighten someone out all at once; if he’s asking questions, he’s still capable of rational thought, and you’re handling it the right way.

[skr]

I should add IMHO! Didn’t mean to sound pompous! Facts can be questioned, challenged and ignored but they don’t change. One never knows what the trigger will be that encourages someone to check a fact.

[Windflier]

Loved this part of the interview. I have the exact same experiential track with coming out of "leftism" as Andrew Klavan in this regard:

Klavan:
"It’s a lot like the Matrix, you know: once you take the red pill, once you see that leftist virtue is an illusion created by an ideologically driven media and academy, once you see what leftist policies have really done to black people in this country, how they’ve appeased and encouraged tyranny, destroyed cities, ruined economies, blasted cultures it’s just impossible to re-submerge yourself in the left’s self-righteous illusion.

Was it difficult to have people I liked or even loved reel back in moral horror and disgust when they learned I was a conservative? Sometimes, I guess. But I’m a hard guy about stuff like that.

There’s so much true love in my life – the love of God, my wife, my kids, my friends – it’s an embarrassment of riches. That hasn’t changed."

[1010RD]

Smart. That’s how you do it.

They want a way out.

[denydenydeny]

"Academics, entertainers, wealthy elites like Michael Moore who think Islamists are going to like them, spare them and their limousines and their millions, because they’re such ever-so-good people… well, they’re like the intellectuals who lined the streets of Vienna to welcome Hitler. The next day, they were gone."

I wish this could fit on a tagline.

[denydenydeny]

Shame and guilt and self-hatred are universal. Whether you chalk it up to original sin or to Oedipus or call it Jewish guilt or Catholic guilt or white guilt or black guilt, every single one of us knows he is not the person he was made to be. There are honest ways to confront that. You can kneel before God and pray for forgiveness and live in the joy of his love. Or you can drink heavily and make sardonic remarks until you destroy everyone you care about and then keel over dead – that’s honest too. But what a lot of people do is try to escape their sense of shame dishonestly by constructing elaborate moral frameworks that allow them to parade their virtue and their lavish repentance without any real inconvenience to themselves while simultaneously indulging in self-righteousness by condemning others for their impenitent evil. That’s the bad version of religion – the sort of religion Jesus came to dismantle. And that’s exactly the sort of religion leftism is: an elaborate system for hiding shame behind a cheap mask of virtue. That’s why they demonize any opposition. To them, we’re not just disagreeing with them, we’re threatening to tear off the mask of their virtue and reveal them to themselves. Which, without God or sufficient whiskey, would be unbearable.

I love this guy.

[Brugmansian]

Pretty good description of Bill Maher, isn’t it?

[PA Engineer]

Thanks for the post. I was unaware of him. Great read and introduction. I believe this following quote is the essence of true conservatism and the path away from liberalism.

The atheists preen themselves on their realism and accuse the faithful of wishful thinking, but for me, God freed me to develop a full, honorable and tragic sense of life, to perceive both the nobility and the sinfulness of every individual, and to understand why no system will make us good or fair but that there are systems that can keep us free so that we can choose whether or not to be good or fair.

[Brugmansian]

I only knew him from You Tube. Funny guy.

President Obama: Talking Crap

'Is Barack Obama Jesus Christ?

[Marie2]

“The long difficult process of changing my mind. . .”

Well said.

[VicVega]

LOL, would make for a great tagline. Mine is worn out. Need a new one.

[x_plus_one]

Rush has said that he thinks the left is a genetic defect - that they will need to die out before we are safe.

[x_plus_one]

Rush has said that he thinks the left is a genetic defect - that they will need to die out before we are safe.

Fixed tagline...