nonesense should be nonsense.

I can't wait until this guy comes to our Vast Right Wing Conspiracy meeting so we can kick the living shit out of him. For past misdeeds, of course.

I was a teen in the old south -- what formed my politics was watching the likes of George Wallace block black kids from going to school, full on segregation, and members of the KKK-Democrat party coming to our door before elections to make sure my parents voted the right way.

When I grew up I knew I wanted no part of Democrats.

Here is the money quote, imo:

"A certain misplaced loyalty kept me from grasping that a view of individuals as morally capable of and responsible for making the principle decisions that shape their lives is decisively at odds with the contemporary left's entrance-level view of people as passive and helpless victims of powerful external forces, hence political wards who require the continuous shepherding of caretaker elites."

The individual simply doesn't matter to liberals; your identity is subsumed in some larger group like the UAW or the NAACP or the NOW.

I suppose you could argue this is what is happening to John Cole in the reverse.

Yeah, but that doesn't explain a wholesale embrace of right wing ideology; this guy isn't lining up to defend Jerry Falwell.

The leftists reject everything noble attempted or achieved by right wingers because their dislike of other portions of the right wing agenda have created and solidified their "team affiliation." A staunch pro-choicer, environementalist or proponent of entitlements and progressive taxation will tend to root for failure in Iraq because it's Bush's war, nevermind "progressive ideals."

But that cuts both ways. How could one be tilted towards "progressive ideals," get fed up with the hypocricy, and then turn to embrace pretty much EVERYTHING the right wing stands for, even tolerating the religious zealouts that try and grab the national stage, and/or the social engineers of the right - people that want their own nanny state, governing who we pork and what we see on TV?

Of course, I lean right, thus my tolerance for rightwing idiots is greater than it is for the worst of the left, just because the far left's goals coincide with the destruction of the US, compared with far right goals that would reflect a country that I wouldn't like nearly as much.

But the wholesale conversion thing mystifies me; It's certainly possible that such a conversion comes from carefully considering every single issue, but just as likely it's just a wholesale switch of team affiliation. I mean, just my bullshit "centrist" opinion.

BrewFan:

The individual simply doesn't matter to liberals; your identity is subsumed in some larger group like the UAW or the NAACP or the NOW.

You can see this kind of demtia on display in many ways. If there's a story about how a black girl is raped and beaten bya white man, the Liberal Creed demands a story about a "hate crime", and "white on black violence". It never occurs to them to tell the story about poor Mikela Washington who was attacked by some lowlife on the way home from nightschool: this spin just doesn't occur to them. If you reverse the scenario where a black man rapes a white woman, then you get lots of stories about "class rage" and lots of stuff on how the rapist was ignored as a child, was mistreated by "society", and should be given every leniency by the court. You do not hear about the pain and suffering of Christina Smith, who was brutalized in front of her children. (Just examples, but I'm sure there are plenty of real crimes with these exact same scenarios.)

A true believer in the Liberal Creed will tell you that justice only has meaning when applied to the group, and therefore "equality" is not just an end-state for society, but the end-state. An individual's special talents, abilities, wishes, dreams, and frailties simply don't come into it. The Liberal Creed seems to wish for a world that is as bland and grey and washed-out as newspaper left out in the rain -- no one succeeding, no one failing, no one achieving. There is only a bland, formless, aimless equality that crushes everything beneath it.

Before I make any decision wrt politics I always ask myself

What would Bill from INDC do

I thank God you are here to guide us Bill. Oops, didn't mean to say G_d.

Bill, I think a lot of wholesale conversions happen when people are locked into one side for so long that they only ever have heard one point of view on virtually every issue. When that crack opens, usually due to one specific issue, and they took a look at the other side, they're often astounded by all the new arguments on many they're hearing for the first time. From there an "I've seen the light" mentality can develop, and next thing you know they're doing a 180 on seemingly everything.

I personally wouldn't be too judgmental of those that have the zeal of the newly converted. It's a natural but temporary phase for many people. Many people like that will eventually be able to see different sides of issues, will actively seek out differing viewpoints, and will have a worldview that isn't just a prepackaged ideology.

Golly dood, and here I thought that I was just offering an opinion.

Now I realize that you depend on me for political guidance.

Whoa.

Here's order number one: dont' be such a colossal cockface.

(And you can go ahead and spell "god,' just don't capitalize it)

And Bob, that was a very good point.

Bill from INDC -

I didn't catch the wholesale conversion aspect from reading Keith Thompson's piece. Just grievances that moved him away from the Left. Is he now a Centrist Democrat, a libertarian, a Tom DeLay corporate crony Republican?

The extent of his affiliations and conversion is open to debate.

Now, one thing I believe is the Left achieved such dominance in academia and the media that they screwed themselves. Meaning they became shielded from having to defend both their solid and goofy ideas. Their goals and programs were proclaimed above any questioning. And, in the limited venues of academia and the media, they had the power to enforce those proclaimations. In the Democratic Party, their grip on grassroots and primary volunteers and money have blocked most centrist Democrats...it was only because Bill Clinton wasn't at first taken seriously that he was allowed to rise without challenge.

So they went into a stasis. If any question of the Left's love of welfare state programs came up, questioners were threatened as "racists", feminists defended partial birth abortions as a right, drunken college sluts as sexual victims of straight male predators, the gay agenda as pure and noble to all but homophobes, and so on. And tried Stalinist PC tactics to enforce silence on matters like high minority crime rates and the solid evidence from Russia after the Soviet Union fell of documented Communist Democides.

Without the the crucible of open debate and dialogue, the Left has perpetuated their cozy little world of thoughts and values - but at great expense to their legitimate political power as time has moved on.

In a way, conservatives have fallen into the same trap, and striven to enforce their own orthodoxy and agenda of sometimes dubious programs.

1. All social safety nets should be shredded.
2. You can dislike other countries - even most of them - even groups, even whole sections of America - like San Francisco, the blue states, but don't ever question the One Country Above All Criticism....because love for all Israel does is now a core conservative value.
3. Concentration of wealth in the hands of a few is good.
4. All conservatives must take their cue from the Religious Right.
5. Globalization and Open Borders are Good. The more the better.
6. Big government and huge deficits are abhorrent unless a Republican is doing it.
7. We can have a major war without asking the American public to sacrifice much of anything. No war taxes, no volunteerism except for those that go in the military and really sacrifice.....so much so that the Reserves are burning out and recruitment is in serious trouble..
8. Dear Leader Bush is always right. Therefore we must go to Syria to find the missing WMD, we must believe in all Holy Rumsfeld does, Islam really must be the Religion of Peace, borrowing from China to fund tax cuts for the wealthy makes perfect sense, and a 600 billion dollar program that refuses to negotiate discounts for high drug prices is not corporate welfare, but compassionate conservatism in action.

Challenge any item of what the Right deems good and true....and they respond just like the Lefties do.

Good comment Monty. Unfortunately the thread-killers have been here so further rational conversation is now impossible.

Wow, people are pretty touchy when someone decides to start batting for the other side. Here's my two cents. Feel free to piss all over it without expecting me to respond.

People join or align themselves with a group philosophically over time and through familiarization. We come to that identification slowly before we unconsciously let our guard down and begin to accept anything said by "our side" at face value and vice versa for our opponents.

It is more of a coping mechanism than a kind of intellecitual laziness (the same way we automatically tune out that buzzing light fixture above our cube). We are just not built to continually challenge the truth of everything from all sides all the time. If we did, we would be diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and medicated. It is the same reason that women don't leave abusive relationships and frogs don't jump out of slowly heating water. Unless something tirggers our attention or doubt, we accept what is said or done more or less as things sould be until we don't. Then we leave the abusive or co-dependant relationship and realize after the fact how smothered we once were.

Welcome to the VRWC. Come on in. The water's fine.

Former McGovern Campaign paid staffer here. Now GOP 72-hour vol & GOP $$ contributor. It's a gradual process:

1) First, you get a real job. You don't relate well to drifters & 30-something grad students (getting that third Masters!) any longer.

2) You get married & have kids. The MTV ethos starts to look more like a threat, and less like a harmless diversion.

3) Ronald Reagan starts looking REAL good to you all of a sudden. Real real good. SCREW the USSR & all its works. The damn thing WAS evil!

4) Then you say hello to... Wm J. Clinton. From day one, the guy seems so tawdry, so vulgar, such an obvious con man. Distasteful.

5) Now it's 9/11. And we have a REAL president, for once. Thank God. And I'm down there making calls for W.

That's how it happened for me.

For me it was 9-11. Before then, I was a pretty partisan Lefty and let my sexuality dictate an awful lot of my politics. "The religious right is the most evil organization on planet earth, etc. etc." It didn't help most of my friends were gay and uber-lefties as well. Then 9-11 came along, and I got a good, long look at true evil and a religion that actually persecutes homosexuals. In comparison, the RR looked almost quaint to me.

As soon as I stopped seeing the world through that prism, everything started falling into place. Not only that, but the full on hatred for America, the noises that we deserved the attack, that we should apologize, that Afghanistan was Vietnam within two weeks of invading it. It was so unhinged, so out there, so . . . insane, I just couldn't listen to it anymore. Perhaps it was a combination of everything, but I realized there's this poisonous self-loathing going on with the Left that had me disgusted. They hate being American citizens more than they hate Islamic militants. And all because they didn't like Bush.

It was all emotionalism. And then I realized, a lot of my beliefs were grounded in emotionalism as well. So I started, you know, thinking and, uh, reading. So here I am, right of center. I still have my liberalish tendencies, but at least now I can honestly say I believe in them because I've thought them through.

Don't get me wrong -- I completely support this *awakening*, but cheeze on a stick, fella take the tortured prose down a notch. Here in the RW, purple ain't necessarily a sign of depth, 'k?

And I agree with Bob; coming from a B/W, binary world view, [like the one Cedarford described] it takes a while for someone to learn to appreciate shades of grey.

...and puce.

Too bad Dacotti didn't stick around to hear what you said, Rob. Guess he had more important frying pans to soak in...

First of all, thanks for posting this piece. For a lot of people, the left/right transition is a very difficult one. There's often a lot of family pressure, peer pressure, professor pressure, etc. A lot of others have written about this sort of thing, most notably David Horowitz and Ron Radosh.

My grandfather was a 1930s era communist. When he died, we found that he had saved his CPUSA membership cards (from the 30s) for all these years, his name changed on the cards. My father told me how he was raised to be a good little leftist, but then the Soviets invaded Hungary, and Ayn Rand published Atlas Shrugged. He started to work for the U.S. Navy, and while he didn't become "Republican" right away, he became alienated from the more extreme left wing of the Democratic Party. Even as a Democrat, he was called all kinds of names, especially by our co-religionists, for being supportive of the Vietnam War and being anti-Communist.

In my own case, I saw the "Scoop" Jackson candidacy melt away in the mid-1970s, and the pathetic state of this country under Jimmy Carter. I figured the Democratic Party was dead, and I actually became the first in my family to register Republican (though my father followed soon after). It's amazing that after all these years how much the old lefties still won't let go, yelling "fascist!" at every turn, yet not understanding the exact, logical consequences of everything they have advocated.

Well, you know the old joke: A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.

Look, it's tough for people like this Thompson character, and his journey has taken a long time. It may not yet be over. I know I sound like a liberal softie myself, but give him time, and welcome him into the big tent.