Why I Flipped from Right to Left
In a word, hypocrisy
You may have heard the joke, “If you’re young and not liberal, you don’t have a heart. If you’re older and not conservative, you don’t have a brain.”
For me, the opposite was true. I was staunchly conservative in my teens and early twenties, but then I gradually shifted to moderate, then liberal, and now “open-to-socialism” in my 30s (Democratic Socialism, not the Fox News caricature).
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, at least part of my political evolution resulted from feeling left by the Republican party, as opposed to me leaving them. As I learned about different perspectives and had new experiences, I could ignore only so much hypocrisy from the right before I began turning left.
A Right-Wing Teen
I was raised in a rural, conservative area and taught conservative values. I learned the values of small government, fiscal responsibility, personal responsibility, hard work, kicking “lazy” people off welfare, and moral political leaders. I was pro-military, pro-gun, and pro-life because everyone else seemed to be.
I liked George W. Bush’s image as a devout, down-to-earth Texan. I viewed his leadership after 9/11 as strong and decisive. The gospel of trickle down economics seduced me. Colin Powell convinced me that Iraq…
