How Did You Become Conservative?
Richard Fulmer ·
July 27, 2012 at 2:01am
When I was a kid, it was common wisdom that conservatives were stupid. But I grew up watching Firing Line with my father, so I knew that there were two intelligent conservatives in the world: William F. Buckley, Jr. and my dad. My one ambition in life was to grow up to become the world's third intelligent conservative. Of course, when I grew up, I found that the position had already been filled (along with the next several million positions).
What's your story?
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Sep '11
Re: How Did You Become Conservative?
I fell deeply, profoundly, desperately in love in 9th grade, during a year I attended public school in Washington, DC.
Right before the start of 10th grade, my mother and (new) stepfather moved us to the North Shore suburbs of Chicago. From the (literal) cesspool of DC schools to large, lavish, luxe education.
Right before Thanksgiving my girlfriend came to visit--I proudly showed off the school. Michelle grew more and more despondent--when we got the planetarium she burst into tears. It...was...unfair!
But--these people are paying unbelievable property taxes precisely so their kids can have this, right? Isn't that their choice?
Three weeks later, I got the Dear John letter, and my heart was forever broken.
That didn't make me a conservative.
What made me a conservative was learning, a few years later, that in 1974, per-pupil expenditure in the Washington, DC schools was roughly double what it was in Evanston. DC had (and has) the highest per-pupil expenditure in the nation.
But its all consumed by the bureaucracy. A system of the staff, by the staff, for the staff. And the kids be damned.
That's what made me a conservative.
Mar '12
Re: How Did You Become Conservative?
For me, the ideological change followed the political change at each step.
Born and raised a Democrat, my ears were blocked to any alternative line of thinking. Growing disgruntled with Clinton in ’08 opened my eyes to Democrat hypocrisy. Watching Gore and Co. try to steal an election by any means necessary (after having voted for Bush) galvanized me quite a bit. It’s the moment I truly felt like an ex-Democrat – looking in from the outside in disgust. Then the new media – talk radio, the internet, FoxNews commentators – appeared and for the first time I listened, and thought it through. I started my own blog in 2005 and joined a group site in 2007 – the thinking turned into writing.
It was like a light bulb clicked on. Of course, it also came at a time when I was hitting my thirties with all the responsibility trimmings – wife, kids, home ownership, paying higher taxes, etc. There was no going back.
Aug '10
Re: How Did You Become Conservative?
After soaking in collegiate radicalism in the early 70s, I started working in the family business. Making payrolls, dealing with customers and vendors, and competing all focus the mind on the importance of the people you hire, the disciplines you learn, and the heavy weight of government regulation. When I saw the fifty page manual from OSHA instructing us how to make exit signs for our warehouses, the jig was up.
May '12
Re: How Did You Become Conservative?
A long time ago, I was very depressed, so I read all 3 volumes of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. The Federalist Papers followed some years later.
I started then learning just how privileged a life I have led, and how many people fought and worked to give me that life, and that it cannot be taken for granted.
Sep '11
Re: How Did You Become Conservative?
My parents were conservative and they were wonderful parents so I was conservative too. Attending college in the late sixties meant for me that I spent many years in a state of intellectual confusion, calling myself a "fiscal conservative and a social liberal", to indicate that I wasn't racist. The puzzling part (to me) is that since my parents were not racist, nor were any of their friends, I don't know why I thought conservatives were racist. It is an indication of the extent to which I had been subtly indoctrinated: I believed the media fiction rather than my own experience.
I always cared deeply about the plight of black Americans and thought that if I were black I would detest affirmative action, as it would rob me of credit for any accomplishments I might have. I never saw this opinion expressed anywhere and really began to think there was something wrong with me, until some time in the 1990s I accidentally bumped into a Thomas Sowell book in the public library.
It was around then that I started reading and learning why I was conservative.
Jun '12
Re: How Did You Become Conservative?
I was an instinctinve conservative in my youth. I loved being an American, loved Ronald Reagan. But I didn't really have any intellectual backing for my feelings about it. My folks weren't politically conversant and as neither went to college, they were adamant that I go. So at college I soon discovered from faculty and the hip students that liking Ronald Reagan was about the most uncool thing that one could profess in college. So I drank in the leftist academy's Kool-Aid, and continued to do so through law school. After law school, my first real job took me into the heart of central Appalachia. There I continued to bump up against the dependent class created by the Great Society programs of the 60s. I was horrified to learn that boutique law firms specialized in helping kids fail the right tests to qualify for SS disability. I had been taught by the academy that conservative critiques of welfare policies were just covers for a lack of concern about their fellow man. But reality, thankfully, slapped me in the face and I began to think about the consequences of statist programs on personal responsibility. Truth unleashed....
Edited on July 27, 2012 at 4:37amApr '12
Re: How Did You Become Conservative?
Turns out I was always conservative but didn't know it. I was appalled by the student riots at my university in 1971. I couldn't understand why anyone, least of all it's supposed beneficiaries, could support affirmative action and didn't see how wrong it was. I was easily persuaded that gun control was a bad idea the first time I heard an argument against it, at the age of 30. Still, I didn't vote for a Republican until I was 54.
But it took a couple of important books which I was assigned to read to convince me to accept conservatism as an identity:
Apr '11
Re: How Did You Become Conservative?
I was pretty fiscally liberal for a long time, up through my first few college years. I was convinced that the rich had to be taxed, that America was fundamentally unfair, that Reagan was awful, and that Socialism might work in the right circumstances. I was, however, socially conservative, clinging to my faith as mine.
Two years at the University of Oregon cured me of liberalism, oddly.enough. Despite it being a very bastion of liberalism, I got to see liberal intolerance up close and personal. My first exposure was in health class. Our professor scheduled two speakers on abortion: one from Planned Parenthood, the other from a local Pro-Life group. The entire class showed up for the first, I was one of five who actually came to class for the second. That taught me that liberals don't even want to discuss the issues.
My conservative values were constantly denegrated, but being the stubborn cus I am, I just clung tighter to my values. Over time, it was the sheer and utter intolerance of the left that got me looking at conservative economic policy as well. Thanks, Rush Limbaugh and Walter E. Williams!
Edited on July 26, 2012 at 11:39pmMay '11
Re: How Did You Become Conservative?
Over time, with much thought, debate and observation I evolved into becoming a conservative. Or do you regress into conservatism? ;>
I consider myself a pragmatist at heart. I just don't think our country can withstand the statism that the left has set up for us.
Dec '11
Re: How Did You Become Conservative?
The first time I looked at the withholding on my paycheck (age 16).
Jun '10
Re: How Did You Become Conservative?
I fear it's in my DNA. My father was not well-educated but was a thoughtful conservative.
Even though I began college in 1969, I never wavered. But it wasn't until the 1980s that I began to read more deeply and think it all through. My inclination was in that direction, but Hayek, Buckley, and many others gave me a principled foundation in conservatism.
The older I get the more conservative I get, and the nice thing is that our stable of thoughtful conservative pundits is so much better than anything the liberals can put forward.
Based on what I've seen and read, conservatives pretty much accept the undeniable belief that not all human ills can be solved: it's a fundamental premise that adds common sense to the human experience. The "hysterical optimism" (Richard Weaver's term) of the liberal mind always strikes me as, well, stupid.
Mar '11
Re: How Did You Become Conservative?
Growing up the child of my parents would make anyone of average intelligence or better a conservative.
It took me a little longer.
The Gulag Archipelago was my beach book one summer (strange boy). That pretty much put the final rib-kicks into being a Commie. I was in college in 1980, and getting the typical liberal brainwashing, but it was apparent that Carter wasn't up to the job, so I voted for Anderson and called myself a libertarian. Actually attending Libertarian Party functions convinced me that being the sanest person in the room was a sub-optimal survival strategy.
The biggest thing was ethics class, and my picking a fight with people whom I agreed with because they wouldn't leave the mousy little girl who was opposed to abortion alone. She wasn't very eloquent and they made great sport of beating her up intellectually.
I didn't like it. They should pick on someone else, I thought. Somebody who can argue back and pull on the edges of their arguments.
So I gave them a more worthwhile target. And I discovered that their arguments weren't very good. I convinced myself they were wrong.
Edited on July 26, 2012 at 11:54pmNov '10
Re: How Did You Become Conservative?
I came to conservatism in a backhanded way, through the OJ Simpson trial. While it wasn't exactly a showcase of conservative vs. liberal thought, it did hit the race button hard, and forced me to think through some of the other sacraments of liberaldom. Looking back, I can see other flashes of clarity, such as my vote for Bruce Hershenson against Madam Senator, but for all that, it took until 2004 for me to vote Republican in a presidential race. Some wheels just take a long time to rotate completely.
Jul '12
Re: How Did You Become Conservative?
I realized my life and that of everyone around me was demonstrably better in 1989 than in 1979, and set about to understand why.
Re: How Did You Become Conservative?
Crizzy, consider this one an entry on the 'credit' side of your ledger for all eternity. Bruce Herschensohn is a close friend of mine (a mentor, really) and one of the few genuinely decent, thoughtful, and principled men ever to run for such high office in the modern era. You were on the right track.
Apr '12
Re: How Did You Become Conservative?
Intelligent fathers seem to feature in several of these. I had (have!) one of those. He's a law professor, so, he had to be a bit of a contrarian to be happy a conservative in that environment. I kind of inherited that quality, and it carried me through Boulder Valley Public Schools, college, the Peace Corps (yes, I was in the Peace Corps, but only because I wanted to see the world) and my own academic training.
May '11
Re: How Did You Become Conservative?
For the first 30 years of my life I was a blithering liberal idiot and then somehow I stumbled on to the PBS series Free To Choose and soon became a blithering conservative. That didn't change my intellectual development as much as when I read Old Yeller at age 8 but it was close.
Sep '10
Re: How Did You Become Conservative?
As a junior high student I was a restless reader. I managed to read everything John Kenneth Galbraith wrote. My dad remained calm, and passed along an article written by some guy I'd never heard of: George Gilder, which caused the first cracks in the facade.
At my local public library, I found a thin, circumspect volume entitled Friedman on Galbraith, published by the Fraser Institute. I read it in one sitting and watched a diminutive bespectacled, balding man with a funny last name knock a 6'7" giant down with strike after resounding strike.
I never forgot the lesson: the crowd is almost always wrong.
Mar '12
Re: How Did You Become Conservative?
I voted for Carter who was revolting as president. That caused me to look at the Democrats and, being pro-life, I determined that I was no longer Democrat.
Liberalism is a religion. It took me about three months to disengage myself from it. I haven't looked back.
Mar '11
Re: How Did You Become Conservative?
I came of age politically (no thanks to an apolitical mother and an ideologically inconsistent father) in the 90s as an old school New Deal Democrat. The worm turned after 9/11 when most of the local Dems I respected, at least on fiscal issues, spouted the blame America first nonsense that always made me feel uneasy being associated with. I found alternative voices in the conservative community and media who were hugely influential in my shift rightward.