28 Comments

1. Mark in Mexico:

You’re right, it is long. It’s too late tonight. I’ll finish it in the morning.

Sep 5, 2004 - 9:49 pm 2. lindenen:

Someone needs to create an anthology of essays by former Leftists who’ve moved to the right. Maybe someone like Horowitz, Kristol, etc could write the introduction.

Btw that was a wonderful essay.

Sep 5, 2004 - 10:04 pm 3. holdfast:

Sorry – OT – just came across this, presumably pro-Bush 527 ad site. I say presumably because the first of the ads is so over the top that I would imagine Karl Rove would order the slow death of anyone who would air this. The second is also pretty low, but I kind of like it, only because I despise Sharpton, and have been waiting years for the slime that he oozes to stick on the Dems who emrace him.

http://moveonforamerica.org

Sep 5, 2004 - 10:29 pm 4. TmjUtah:

Benjamin writes like….shucks, don’t know exactly who, but I know the style.

Right about the middle, he says:

“It claimed to oppose concentrated, monopoly power but proposed to concentrate it to a degree unprecedented in American history. There seemed no connection whatever between these ambitions, and I began to suspect that the entire formulation was ultimately nothing more than an expression of the will to power; that the first had been concocted merely to enable the second.”

I agree. It took the ‘92 elections for me to see the whole picture. Before then, I had gone on my dad’s political dicta: “Republicans want you to work well and keep your money. Democrats want you just to work, and give part of your money to people that don’t or won’t.” Hey, it was 1974, and I was in ninth grade, o.k.

If change is the clarion and redress of ancient crimes via fervent contemporary guilt the ties that bind, where does the utopic dream of ‘all people brothers’ happen? When there are’nt any more rich people left to hate? No more religious beliefs to ridicule? And just who will declare the mission accomplished?

Is there any more a classic liberal agenda that can manifest itself within a system defined by the sovereignty of the citizenry? Will the most progressive (by self acclimation of credentials, of course, loud and proud) believers assert the right to vote twice? Just to ensure the right change happens? Even mobs have status, you know.

Before I turned thrity I knew that to me “Left” politics were more a spectator sport than any agenda I might embrace. I just went to work, grumbled about taxes, and hoped that I had decent candidates to vote for when the time came. That’s important, you know, that voting FOR thing. If you allow your political arena to become stuffed with losers who serve by default you not only get nothing…but by the by the losers who won show up and happily make you a part of the solution…Uh, yes, the amount is written right there, just sign here. THanks! You are helping us CHANGE the community. Smile big now!….this was in California, of course.

Last time that exact thing happened, I at least got to fight back, and almost won. A mugging is a mugging whether it happens on a sidewalk or at the hands of state employees wearing suits.

We live in the most gracious, compassionate, moral, and openhanded society on the planet. There are those among us who discount all the above in exchange for instead a burning desire to change things for the better. For things to get a lot better…well, maybe just knocking back the ‘now’ is an unconscious act. Why does it take tens of millions of dollar’s worth of political ads, signs, mailings, and punditry to convince people just how BAD things are? I mean, people eating out of the dumpster at MacDonalds would be as effective, right? What’s that? That only happens in less than one out of ten thousand McD’s, and not on any given day?

Hey…hey, how about you take your millions of dollars, and help that dumpster diver yourself?

Ooooooooh OUCH. Sorry…I forgot for a moment. Society has put him there, so government must act. You wan’t how much? From where? Me??? How will you spend it? I don’t care if you’ve got a warrant, you can’t have it….

Sep 5, 2004 - 10:32 pm 5. Samuel:

“My Road to Damascus” how very interesting since I refered to the very same analogy a couple threads ago to Terrye and DTP. (an example thrust upon me by someone else) I had always called it an epiphany but the are both christian references, so take your pick.

Roger this kind of post is music to my ears obviously, though I was always sane enough to avoid Chomsky but when he says…

I suppose, in my mistrust of change for its own sake, my skepticism of revolution, and my aggrandizement of the sanctity of the individual over the collective, one would have to term me a conservative; but I do not feel so…

I have said this over and over, I feel more progressive then ever. The conservarive label (along with neo-con) was penned on me for being a traitor by those that cast me out. I have jokingly said I prefer “Liberal Republican” over “Conservative Democrat” because that way I stay liberal. As I said before, in truth a liberal Republican that happens to be Jewish in fact is classified the most dangerous conservative of them all… a NEO-CON!

Great post Roger, keep the conversion stories coming, I need them.

Sep 5, 2004 - 10:48 pm 6. bkw:

re: religious allusions. I was thinking today about how apt they are — somewhat ironically so — as applied to Today’s Left(tm).

Someone the other day remarked on the “Cult of the Left” — I think a case can defintely be made.

The screeching in some quarters makes me think of characters created by Arthur Miller … the blaming of anything bad that happens on Karl Rove, the way some ignorant fundamentalists would blame everything on … SATAN?! (/church lady)

The blind faith people have that they are right and that Repugnants are evil.

The religious fervor with which they condemn and attack anyone that dares to question their dogma.

And so on and so forth.

Someone once wrote that Religion is part of the Human Condition. People are just wired that way: with a need to believe in something greater than themselves (or elevating rationality into a Religion, etc).

If you have some group that ostensibly eschews all religion … should it be any surprise that they’ve gone and made their own?

And somewhat OT : does anyone have a link to the video from the GOP convention introducing GWB? I can’t believe they don’t have it on the website … I haven’t seen the video, and would like to.

Sep 6, 2004 - 12:30 am 7. Yehudit:

“does anyone have a link to the video from the GOP convention introducing GWB?”

I saw it on the Fox website. Also C-SPAN has it archived I think.

Sep 6, 2004 - 1:40 am 8. Samuel:

bkw and whoever

There were two moments when I admit to being emotional. One was at the beginning of the convention when they had some surviving spouses of those lost on 911 paying tribute and leading a moment of silent prayer, when Danny Rodriguez chimed in with Amazing Grace I fell apart. The other time was when they played that video introduction for Dubya narrated by the great pipes of Fred Thompson (some southern accents are just wonderful for this, others I guess are good for displays of downright indignation like Zell Millers). Anyway when they showed Dubya come out 50+ years old with a damn big ass bullet proof vest having been taunted by Derek Jeter to “throw it from where Yankee men do”. He just walked right up and threw a ball right down the damn gut middle of the plate alittle above the knees. This to me just says everything about Dubya. I again got emotional.

People can bitch and moan about how he has screwed things up all they want, I couldn’t imagine any one else making fewer mistakes under the circumstances. I suppose they could have accomplished fewer mistakes by seeling out and kicking the can even further down the road of inaction for yet worse repercussions tomorrow. Bush takes on the task up front and what thanks does he get? This is why Zell is so miffed at the Democrats. It does add to my disgust as well. Some thanks Bush gets for putting his ass on the line let me tell you, he must have some damn broad shoulders to put up with it. I’d like to see Kerry gut one down the middle like Dubys did under such circumstances, believe me, I played ball in school with a couple of no hitters under my belt so I know better. The throw I saw Kerry heave the other day went straight into the dirt, Swartzenegger would have called hi a “Girly Man” for sure. For me it was a very bad omen. Also significant is the fact when Dubya threw this pitch I was not yet converted to neoconism by a mile, some bad days ahead indeed. But I did like and appreciate this at the time. The reason I think it really got to me the other night was because I felt the way I should have the first time and was blindsided by the strong inner reaction.

I want to remind people another thing, Bush’s current poll numbers are close to where Reagan?s were in 1984. I remember that Reagan polled poorly on the issues, especially domestic ones much like Dubya. Like Bush he polled well on leadership, likeability and being taken face value for his word. Like Reagan he did unpopular things for what he thought was for our better good. People complained yet they trusted him more because he did, a dynamic very lost on the Dems these days. Further to many people Reagan carried somewhat a hero status for the way he handled his assassination attempt and other adversities thrown at him. Whether we realize it or not, I believe the same holds true of Dubya today. The MSM is missing it just as horribly today, mark my words it is true. Andrea Mitchell admitted that “Reagan the Hero” went right over the collective MSM’s heads. It is happening again with Dubya.

The fact is Kerry is getting booed and dissed in many blue collar Democratic strongholds of the Mid-West. This is Reagan Democrat Country and if they bolt they will probably bolt to the GOP in bunches. Can Dubya get just under 60% and carry 49 states like Reagan? I doubt it, (at least the 49 states part) but I bet he will actually strategically outdo Reagan on the calculations of how he can affect the Gubernatorial, Senate and Congressional races plotting to turn them to his favor. Reagan was an ideologue, propably the most ideological President ever elected. The most underestimated genius of Bush is his raw political mind, he is as good as any in his ability to affect events and not just to his favor but his supporters in politics as well. Dubya will never have to hide like Clinton that is for sure, I can’t imagine another President in my life affecting me more personally. Further being a Jewish Guy from the Nations Capital, I never would have imagined some dude from Texas who speaks poor English and one who displays questionable intellectual curiosity could have done what he has yet he has. He has moved me politically further than 911 on its own ever could have, that also says much. Good night.

Sep 6, 2004 - 1:44 am 9. HA:

Roger,

As a lifelong centrist* and registered Democrat, my journey to Damascus was a shorter one. It began on 9/11 and ended with the vote for the $87 billion funding of the Iraq war, the rise and fall of Howard Dean, and the nomination of John Kerry.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I was appalled by the anti-American outbursts from the likes of Susan Sonntag. But I wrote these views off as voices from the fringe.

As recently as the fall of ‘02, I still viewed the Democrats as a responsible party on national security. Democrats were roughly split about authorizing war against Iraq. Although I saw the case for war against Iraq as a “slam dunk” (channelling Tenet here), I could see how reasonable people might might make the wrong decision. In hindsight, I know now that this belief was an illusion. The apparent responsibility of the Democrats was not something motivated from within, but was the result of a discipline imposed by the upcoming ‘02 election.

But the simultaneous vote on funding the war and the rise of Howard Dean finally revealed to me that something was terribly wrong in the Democratic party. How could a party that was evenly split on going to war become nearly unanimous in opposing the funding of that war? To me, this vote was shocking. The Democrats largely voted to go to war, and then voted to lose that war.

The time to oppose a war is BEFORE the decision has been made to go to war. During the debate on the Iraq war, the Democrats were largely silent. The debate was conducted between the neocons and the Scowcroft wings of the Republican party. There is not necessarily anything wrong in opposing the war, but once our nation has expressed its will through the democratic process to go to war, even those opposed to the war have a moral duty as loyal citizens to support the successful prosecution of that war. Instead, this Democratic party did the exact opposite. It is only AFTER we had voted to go to war that the Democrats became the anti-war party with the most virulent rhetoric. This is disgraceful and in my view approaches sedition.

And then I looked at the primary campaign. The price of admission was opposition to the war. Responsible candidates like Lieberman and Gephardt were marginalized. The contenders were Dean who opposed the war (from the beginning to his credit), and Kerry and Edwards who stuck their fingers in the wind and changed direction with the funding vote.

From this point on, the nature of the contemporary Democratic party began to become clear to me. In order to gain the nomination, Democrats had to appeal to the hard-core, anti-American socialist left. The Democrats had been hijacked. The party of FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, Scoop Jackson and Sam Nunn had become the party of Chomsky, Zinn, Sharpton, Daschle, Pelosi, McDermott, Bonior, McAuliffe, Kennedy and Kerry. The DLC wing of the party is dead.

The moral and intellecutal corruption of the Democratic party is now complete. The direction of the party is being determined by socialist true-believers and cynical leaders like Kerry who exploit the utopian fantasies of the majority of rank and file in order to gain and hold power. The contemporary Democratic party no longer has any ideological cohesion. Rather, it has become a coalition of hate-based interest groups who tolerate each other’s hatred in order to advance their own. They either hate Christians, Jews, males, capitalism, whites or America itself.

I believe the Democratic party is in danger of travelling the “Road to Serfdom” and becoming an authentic totalitarian movement. They are so convinced of their intellectual and moral superiority that they are willing to pursue their agenda by any means necessary. You can see this streak in the speech codes on college campuses, McCain-Feingold which repeals the First Amendment guaratees of freedom of speech and association, their assault on federalism as evidenced by their desire to abandon the electoral college, their desire to subordinate our sovereignty to the UN, the appointment of activist judges, the increased abuse of eminant domain, etc., etc., etc.

*based on Presidential voting record:

84 – Reagan

88 – Bush

92 – Clinton

96 – Clinton

00 – Gore (wish I could take this one back!)

Sep 6, 2004 - 6:08 am 10. ricpic:

What I take from Kerstein’s essay is that a healthy human being can only bathe in the liberal ideology of self-hatred for so long.

At a certain point something in him says: “Enough!”

Sep 6, 2004 - 6:41 am 11. Ric Locke:

Note: the site has been hacked — starting somewhere in the early parts, the lines have been reversed letter-by-letter, making it hard to read.

No doubt the hacker is very pleased by his contribution to the dialogue.

Regards,

Ric Locke

Sep 6, 2004 - 7:12 am 12. Cap'n Billy:

I forced myself to read that long dissertation, and I’m glad I did. It, and various converts in this forum, gives me cause for cautious optimism (a triumph of hope over experience?). I must confess that for the past 20 or 30 years it has looked to me as if we have been declining as a nation because of the socialism and pacifism that has become part and parcel of our society. This current emergency seems to me even more serious than the two wars in which I participated (Korean & Vietnam) in terms of the consequences for the US, and we’ll need all the converts we can get if we have a chance of avoiding the worst calamity in our history. I believe a decisive Bush victory, with substantial gains in both houses of Congress, will go a long ways toward avoiding that calamity.

Sep 6, 2004 - 7:22 am 13. richard mcenroe:

James Lileks kicks major ass this morning, and goes right to the heart of this question.

Sep 6, 2004 - 7:40 am 14. Jamie Irons:

I, too, enjoyed the essay.

This piece and several others, and a number of posts on this site, have helped me to understand why my politics has changed so radically since 9/11.

In the eighties and nineties, living in the North Bay area (northern California) I often listened to KPFA, the local FM Pacifica station. Being a leftie myself, I felt it was the only “true” alternative. (Believe it or not, I regarded the local NPR station, KQED, as almost “right wing.” Heh.)

But the first elements of cognitive dissonnance began to rattle my cage when I noticed that KQED inevitably described eveything the “Palestinian people” did as a “noble struggle,” and every act of the Israelis as yet another outrageous feature of an “oppressive” “occupation.”

But it still took me a long time to begin to appreciate that the entire left wing program was a tissue of lies.

And 9/11 brought the whole house of cards (may as well be liberal with my metphors, at least) crashing down. (”Do houses of cards really ‘crash down?’” I guess not. Well, you get the idea.)

Jamie Irons

Sep 6, 2004 - 7:46 am 15. Rick Ballard:

Capn Billy,

Until control of the Gramscian liberal madrassas is in the hands of realists rathe than utopians there will be no reason for even cautious optimism. The fact that a few notice and comment that the left has never been clothed in other than imaginary finery does not replace the thousands of administrators within the re-education camps who select the appropriate propagandist tracts to continue the inculcation of a lack of values in our children.

Benjamin wrote a fine essay and does an excellent job within it in identifying the idiocy that underpins utopianism. Unfortuantely, you won’t be able to refer to the essay as having been published in a major popular periodical.

Sep 6, 2004 - 8:10 am 16. ricpic:

richard mcenroe – Thanks for the Lileks heads-up.

I have only one word for the “suffering” of the left: obscene.

Sep 6, 2004 - 9:08 am 17. richard mcenroe:

BTW ó The hack appears to have been fixed.

Sep 6, 2004 - 10:03 am 18. flenser:

Samuel

Excerpted from Kerstein;

“To see history as the tale of a humanity in constant forward movement, as a “progression”, was to belabor under what essentially amounted to madness; for it was to percieve reality as governed by unalterable active factors which, in fact, did not exist. It was thus that, for me at least, the God of liberalism met his end.

Ultimately it was the idea of universalism, of totalism; the idea which Judaism so rightfully, I now realized, rejected; that disturbed me the most. The demand for an absolute uniformity of thought and opinion; which I had experianced firsthand in the liberal surroundings in which I grew up and to which I had, at one point, wholeheartedly consented; struck me then, as it strikes me now, as little more than petty tyranny at best, and the wholesale annihilation of the human soul at worst.”

This is conservatism. Pure, unadorned, conservatism.

There are some very odd notions floating around as to what conservatives believe. Let me recommend Russell Kirk’s “The Portable Conservative Reader” as a valuable guide to anyone with curiosity on the topic. It reads best from back to front; i.e. from present to past.

Rick Ballard

“..the Gramscian liberal madrassas..”

Love that line.

Sep 6, 2004 - 10:52 am 19. bkw:

I have only one word for the “suffering” of the left: obscene.

The narcissism on the Left is obscene.

Hey, do you remember those idiots that snuck into the Democratic National Convention with the purpose of disrupting Kerry’s speech and make a scene so they could make some incoherent point?

No?

Oh yeah. Didn’t happen.

And yet there were three protestors that snuck into the GOP convention.

I don’t blame Bush for looking a little rattled. I’m sure he expected to be shot. Heck, so did I. I think the fact that he wasn’t says more about the competence of security, than of the other side’s desires.

Sep 6, 2004 - 11:40 am 20. bkw:

(BTW, the Bush Intro video is on this page

under the “Republican National Convention: Day 4, Part 2″ link. You’ll need either Real Player, or the Real Player Alternative codec installed.)

Thanks for the pointer Yehudit.

Sep 6, 2004 - 12:25 pm 21. Terrye:

HA:

We are fellow travellers.

I think my conversion was made complete by Michael Moore. I thought, My God is that what I sound like? and recoiled with horror.

Samuel:

It is simple my dear, extremes meet. And the Democrats have become every bit as extreme as the Aryan Brotherhood. In fact thay have a lot in common.

Sep 6, 2004 - 12:27 pm 22. Syl:

Terrye, Samuel, HA

Oh my. All I can say is parallel journey for this citizen as well.

The basic shape and form of the change is similar, just the blips on the graph may differ.

The completion of my journey came when I became acutely aware of the Bush bashing. How can anyone, in the face of a true enemy, turn their rage on their own people instead?

Sep 6, 2004 - 2:01 pm 23. Occam's Beard:

My epiphany occurred a long long time ago (1971), when I showed up at Berkeley for grad school. I was a fashionably left college student, but with doubts beginning, when I arrived.

A couple of months in the Vatican of Leftism, in the belly of the beast as it were (actually at the distal end of its GI tract), vaccinated me against its nonsense for life.

Sep 6, 2004 - 5:10 pm 24. Catherine:

everyone

A few threads back I suddenly hit on an answer to the question Roger posed when I first joined this blog:

Did they change, or did I?

Did the Democrats change, or did I change?

And if I changed, how come they didn’t?

My answer was sparked by something Samuel said about the country shifting 5 points to the right.

It suddenly struck me that I had experienced the political equivalent of “bracket creep.”

I had been center-left, and a 5-point shift rightward meant I was now center-right.

I didn’t plan to leave the Democratic Party, or to stop being a liberal; I didn’t renounce my past, or convert to my future.

I just moved 5 points to the right, a process that took almost as many years, and then found I’d crossed a border I hadn’t realized was there.

I wanted to “sit with” this idea for a while, to see if it still felt right after a week or so.

It does.

I also have the answer to the second part of the question: why did I change while “they” didn’t?

The answer is that they did change.

The country as a whole has shifted 5 points to the right, I think. Or may have done so.

Certainly in my own house I now see that while I was shifting righward my husband was shifting rightward, too. But neither of us noticed.

It was easy to miss because my husband was always so much further to the left of me that a shift right still leaves him well inside the liberal camp.

Here’s something semi-interesting: I finally asked him how he thinks of himself.

He said, “I always thought of myself as ‘left-liberal.’”

I don’t know what left-liberal is, apart from the fact that it means he was neither a Marxist nor a socialist . . . but what’s interesting is that he spoke of this definition as if it were no longer operational.

I think that while I was moving from center-left to center-right, he was moving from left-liberal to liberal.

I’ve been seeing the signs of this ever since 9-11.

I mentioned he spends every night reading histories of WWII & its leaders; now he’s reading a diplomatic history of the Algerian war that is highly sympathetic to the complexities facing American and French leaders involved in that situation.

Meanwhile he’s become a devoted baseball fan and an avid rooter-for-the-U.S.-teams at the Olympics,

He’s a secular guy who’s gone back to church, only in his case the church is the Church of America.

It’s not that he wasn’t interested in baseball & the Olympics in the past; he was. But there’s an emotion now that wasn’t there before. I still remember him pulling for the Yankees to win the series just after 9-11, and he doesn’t even like the Yankees. He felt so bad for the team when they didn’t make it.

I could give more examples. Lots more.

Maybe it’s still too early to decide that this is the “answer,” so I’ll see what’s what over the next weeks.

But I’m pretty sure it is the answer, and I’m intensely grateful to Roger & to the commenters here for helping me figure it out.

Now I’m going to start looking for signs that other Americans have moved the same 5 points.

In the meantime, thanks, guys!

Love you!

Sep 6, 2004 - 6:28 pm 25. Catherine:

Syl

The completion of my journey came when I became acutely aware of the Bush bashing. How can anyone, in the face of a true enemy, turn their rage on their own people instead?

I could have written exactly that line, except that I confronted Bush bashing in myself.

For about 6 weeks after the attacks I found myself furiously angry with George Bush. I didn’t remotely blame him for the attacks. Instead I hated being lectured on “if we’re afraid the terrorists will win” and being told that if we didn’t get back on an airplane right away “the terrorists will win” (I was avidly following Mary Schiavo at the point, so I sure as hell didn’t want to be told my patriotism depended on handing my life over to United Airlines.)

I knew it was crazy. I kept saying to myself, “What is the matter with you?”

“Why are you angry at George Bush, the person who is trying to keep you alive?”

“Why aren’t you angry at Osama Bin Laden, the person who is trying to kill you?”

(Um . . . apparently I spent a lot of time addressing myself in the second person, which is probably One More Sign of what a wreck I was.)

All of this was conscious. I knew my anger at George Bush was a defense against the anguish and terror of 9-11.

Then one day my emotions righted themselves. My rage turned to Bin Laden, and my appreciation went to President Bush.

That’s the way it’s been ever since.

Sep 6, 2004 - 6:44 pm 26. Ben:

Two things that are most striking to me about today’s Leftists: (1) their intolerance to opposing viewpoints (is this because of a lack of confidence in their own views?); (2) the almost religious character of their ideology; and (3) their absolute certainty that the world will come to an end if they don’t win an election. This essay illustrates those points well.

Sep 6, 2004 - 7:14 pm 27. Ben:

Damn. I added number three without checking the beginning of the post. “Three things that are most striking to me about today’s Leftists. . . .” Isn’t that why we have “Preview?”

Sep 6, 2004 - 7:15 pm 28. Terrye:

Catherine and Syl:

I was so angry on 9/11 when I saw the buildings fall and all those people die. I was angry at the people who did it.

I still had faith in my party but at that time I honestly believed we were in this thing together.

They left me. I wanted to protect my family and the people I love and the Demcorats wanted to get rid of Bush. Their partisan rancor mattered more to them then we did. Their increasing craziness about Bush, the personal attacks and the bad behavior shamed me.

I wanted my party to be the party that came to the rescue, instead it was the party that flocked to see F911 and it was left to Bush to do what they lacked the courage to do.

They left a lot us and as far as I am concerned they can stay gone. I will never forgive the Democratic party.

Now we have the folks at the Democratic Underground slobbering all over themselves for the new book by Kitty what’s her face. Hundreds of children lay dead in Russia and all these idiots care about is whether Bush did drugs once upon a time and if they can use that or something else to destroy him.

Pathetic. I have lost all respect for them.

Sep 6, 2004 - 7:47 pm

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