Doubtful Conversions
Subtitled: Babs Amiel Redux
I'm sure by now we've all heard a hardline Conservative or two refer to a foolish time in their youth when they were socialists - before they "woke up and smelled the coffee", or, in the case of Christopher Hitchens, 9/11 happened and they believed the likes of Dubyah and Rummy who told them that the world had changed forever and therefore it was necessary for the United States to do what it always did whether it was a time of crisis or not and invade a sovereign country halfway across the world with no plan beyond the indiscriminate killing of American soldiers and foreign citizens.
Well, I've always been curious about these conversions because I've never had one of my own. My political beliefs are based on who I am - where I come from, my experiences in life, memories, and an awareness that, while all men may be created equal, a lot depends on where they were created. So I don't know how people can hold political beliefs in their early years, convert to a set of opposite beliefs later on in life after witnessing that reality over and over and over, and assume this conversion is something with which the rest of us should be mightily impressed. Chastened by, even.
If anything, my liberal leanings lean ever more liberal the older I get. Having children has taught me that levelling the playing field, which actually (in real flesh and blood life) translates to removing barriers, is the opposite of catering to the lowest common denominator, which is how Conservatives so often put it.
Which brings me to my point - I think Conservatives who say they used to be socialists but then "woke up and smelled the coffee" are either deliberately lying or randomly making stuff up. Or, and here's the third possibility, they've suffered a grievous brain injury between then and now which has rendered them incapable of understanding what they are saying and why the rest of us find them so hilariously irrelevant.
To people who have always held Conservative beliefs, I suppose there's not much more to say than, "good for you". And I mean that. Both sIncerely and literally.
