Early Years
I come from Mid-Western stock. My parents modeled and tried to pass on to us beliefs in hard work, education and personal responsibility. They have been married for sixty years, raised three children and remain active in their church. My parents were the first members of their families to go to college. They held traditional jobs. My father worked for a defense contractor for thirty years before pursuing a second career in retirement. My mother was a teacher before I was born and returned to that profession after raising three boys. My parents were frugal to a fault. Our clothes were purchased at discount stores and our meals were home cooked. Vacations consisted of going to church camp or taking long car trips to educational destinations.
Despite this wealth of good examples, my initial political leanings came down to a single political ad during the race between Richard Nixon and George McGovern. The Nixon ad cleverly showed a bunch of toy soldiers being knocked off a board. The message was that if you voted for the peacenik McGovern, national defense and people who worked there would suffer. In my eleven year old mind, a win by McGovern meant my father would be unemployed. Then there was that whole conspiracy the liberal media called Watergate, but that's a story for another day.
High School
Fast forward seven years. I was working hard in school and making good grades once I was finally eligible to take advanced placement courses. I had a job sacking groceries beginning after my junior year. Because my parents had taught me that you should never expect anything from anyone else, about 80% of my earnings went into my college fund and I had the princely sum of $10 per week for personal stuff (although you could buy a ticket to a rock concert for $7.50 back then). While my co-workers all had cars, I walked to work until my parents got concerned about me walking home late and night and allowed to drive the family station wagon. I was a National Merit Scholar but schools were not beating the doors down to recruit me or offer me aid. My parents explained that because I was neither a minority or poor, I should not expect anything. Eventually I found a school that offered me $1,000 per year (about 25% of the total ride) as a National Merit Scholar. I had no thoughts of attending an Ivy League school because I knew we could not afford it and I was beginning to develop an attitude about the spoiled liberals on the East Coast.
College
I was a political science major and a co-founder of the College Republicans at my school. I was campus coordinator for George H.W. Bush who impressed me as having an impressive resume and being dedicated to good government. Ronald Reagan scared me as an anti-Communist fanatic who would likely drag us into World War III but I liked his line that government was the problem, not the solution. I would be working in a few years and did not want the government taking any more out of my paycheck than necessary. Like a good Republican, I supported Reagan when he got the nomination. I also supported our local Republican candidates who succeeded in ousting a handful of Democrats who were more conservative than they were. In my mind, they were good government Republicans.
During those days, I favored both personal freedom and limited government. My initial belief was that the government had no business telling a woman whether to have an abortion or not. However, I changed my mind after reading some feminist authors who argued that abortion was something forced on women by men who did not want to support their children. My original start as a pro-lifer was not strongly influenced by religion. I was a tepid Lutheran and we just didn't talk about nasty things like abortion. Instead, I was influenced more by a view of personal responsibility, that if a couple created a child, they should take responsibility for it rather than seeking the easy way out through an abortion. I'm not saying these beliefs were consistent. I had very little sympathy for Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority. They were mostly Baptists and their brand of religiously inspired politics struck me as a bit nutty. After all, they thought there was a religious mandate to abolish the Department of Education. What did religion have to do with education?
The George W Bush Years
After college and Law School, I remained active in Republican politics. I was asked to run for precinct chair by the religious conservatives. I was a delegate to several state conventions. I worked to get George W. Bush elected president. I thought W would be great. He had vanquished the foul-mouthed Ann Richards from the Governor's office and was going to go to Washington and talk some Texas common sense to the Eastern phonies. I thought that W demolished Al Gore in the debates.
I would become deeply disenchanted with the Republican Party during the years 2000-2008. First, the religious conservatives became obsessed with abortion as a litmus test. I witnessed U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison being booed at the Republican State Convention for being a "pro-bort" because she was only 90% pro-life. In 2003, we invaded Iraq. I initially thought it was necessary because Saddam's weapons of mass destruction posed a threat to the region. Instead, what we got were no weapons of mass destruction, Abu Ghraib and Sunni and Shiite militias fighting against the troops that had come to liberate them. In 2005, Congress passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act. It made bankruptcy much more complicated without offering any corresponding benefits. It created a whole class of people who were too broke to file bankruptcy and couldn't file on their own because of all the traps built into the legislation. Finally, throughout his terms, W tried to pass immigration reform only to be thwarted by his own party. Immigration reform was important to me because it aligned with both my view of this nation as a land of immigrants, my economic belief in the laws of supply and demand and my personal views of Christian charity. The recession of 2008 convinced me that Republicans were more interested in supporting big banks than helping the American people.
Two Election Cycles as an Independent
By 2008, I decided that I had had enough with the Republican Party and would consider myself an independent from that point on. I voted for John McCain in 2008 because a felt that a free-thinking Republican who had extensive knowledge of government and had served honorably in the military would be better than a young candidate with a great personal story but little experience who might turn out to have some really dangerous ideas. Four years later, I voted for Obama because bin Laden was dead and Chrysler and GM were alive and because he hadn't done most of the bad things I had feared that he might do. I also did not appreciate all of the BS lying about his citizenship and his religion. I don't like people who make up nasty slander and there was a lot of it going on. On top of that, Romney was an out of touch plutocrat who renounced all of his prior views to get the nomination.
Today
This year, I decided that I would no longer oppose gay marriage or first trimester abortions. On gay marriage, I decided that it did not hurt me if two people who were of the same sex received government sanction for their union. If it didn't hurt me and it made their lives better, then why not? Allowing civil gay marriage does not require any church to perform a gay marriage. Also, I seriously doubt that God is going to wreak vengeance on us for allowing gay marriage when He has not destroyed us for all the other nasty things that we do to hurt each other. When it comes to abortion, the videos that were released this summer purporting to show Planned Parenthood selling baby parts and the subsequent shooting of a Planned Parenthood clinic convinced me that the pro-life movement is insane. They profess so much concern about the unborn but they oppose any efforts to support those who are alive. They support unborn life but cheer enthusiastically when the criminal justice system executes the innocent or when police officers break the law to kill and abuse the citizenry. I will be happy to reconsider my position on first term abortions when the pro-life movement shows that they are capable of being honest and care about people after they are born.
Definition of Conservatism
That has been a long journey. Does it make a liberal, a conservative, none of the above? Let's look at what the terms mean. According to Merriam-Webster, conservative means:
1 : preservative
2
a : of or relating to a philosophy of conservatism
b capitalized : of or constituting a political party professing the principles of conservatism: as (1) : of or constituting a party of the United Kingdom advocating support of established institutions (2) : progressive conservative
3
a : tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions : traditional
b : marked by moderation or caution conservative
4: of, relating to, or practicing Conservative Judaism
Throwing out the last definition, which is not very helpful, conservatives tend to favor supporting existing institutions and acting with moderation or caution. To this, I would add favoring limited government and individual freedom.
Thus, a traditional conservative would support entities such as the church, the army, law enforcement, marriage and the traditional family and private business and would oppose expanding the role of government. A traditional conservative would support individual integrity and responsibility as well as a larger responsibility to society. A traditional conservative would also act with moderation and caution.
The biggest thing that I see lacking in modern conservativism is any sense of moderation and caution. That is what initially drew me to George H.W. Bush. The interesting thing about Ronald Reagan is that he built up national defense and confronted the Soviet Union but the only country he invaded was Grenada (and maybe Panama). He knew the importance of projecting international power as well as the importance of using it sparingly. George W. Bush, on the other hand, was all too ready to jump into two wars without having a well thought out plan. That was not conservative.
I also see today's Republicans as breaking with the narrative of supporting personal integrity and responsibility and the noblesse oblige to society at large. Today's Republican party focuses on a radical view of Christianity that is devoted almost entirely to enforcing a code of personal morality and has little love of neighbor. The willingness of Republicans to lie and to break the law is deeply unconservative. While Democrats, particularly in Chicago, are good at the corruption game, Texas has an Attorney General who is likely to go to jail for securities fraud. How conservative is that? Today's Republican party echoes Gordon Gekko in saying greed is good. They may talk a good game about saving the middle class but in practice all they ever propose is tax cuts that will never trickle down far enough.
Definition of Liberal
What is the meaning of liberal? According to Merriam-Webster:
1
a : of, relating to, or based on the liberal arts <liberal education>
b archaic : of or befitting a man of free birth
3 obsolete : lacking moral restraint : licentious
5: broad-minded; especially : not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional forms
6
a : of, favoring, or based upon the principles of liberalism
b capitalized : of or constituting a political party advocating or associated with the principles of political liberalism; especially :
of or constituting a political party in the United Kingdom associated
with ideals of individual especially economic freedom, greater
individual participation in government, and constitutional, political,
and administrative reforms designed to secure these objectives
This shows the dangers of relying on definitions. The parts they got right were generosity, particularly if government is the engine of generosity and not being bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy or traditional form. However, that is not the full picture. Liberals believe in change, they have less respect for traditional institutions and they believe in the power of government to achieve a greater equality of result, or to provide a minimum level of support for all people.
Liberals are not afraid of bold, transformative action, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Works Progress Administration and the Voting Rights Act. They have much less respect for tradition in values. Their biggest weakness is that their solution to nearly every problem is another government program. Bernie Sanders' promise of free public college for all is typical of the liberal view. My conservative friends are quite right that liberals are willing to bend the Constitution when it suits their needs, this being a subset of not being bound by tradition.
Who I Am? A Lutheran I Hope
I am not sure where I really fall these days, other than I know that I am not Republican. However, a lot of what I believe is influenced by my religion. I am a Lutheran which means that we originated as a reform movement. While we haven't done much that is radical in the last 500 years, it is still in our blood. I am strongly moved by the verses in the Bible which speak of love of neighbor. I do not see the Bible as imposing a personal code with regard to sex while taking a hands off approach to everything else that we do. I strongly believe that if you cannot love your neighbor who you have seen, you cannot love God whom you have not seen. The obligation to love your neighbor does not necessarily mean adopting a government program for every need. However, it certainly does not equate to social darwinism either. I may not be a very good Christian, but I do try to let it influence my thinking.
