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What’s Your Conservative Issue?
We sometimes talk here about “conservative converts”: people who were once liberal and were in some way or other “mugged by reality” such that they ended up conservative. For others of us who were mostly raised in a conservative mold, I find that there is usually at least one important issue that we feel on a particularly deep and visceral level, which has been defining of us as conservatives since before we even really understood what the implications were.
For some people it’s taxes. Or the right to bear arms. For some, respect for the military is a core defining principle. Some are raised with a deep and abiding respect for rugged individualism, and a core belief in our right to decide for ourselves what we believe and how we wish to live. Some were shaped from a very early age by a horror for the injustice of abortion and a yearning for a culture of life.
These are in no way mutually exclusive, but I suspect many or most of us, on reflection, can name some issue or other that shaped us as conservatives from a particularly young age. Many of these points end up feeding into each other as we mature, so it’s mostly one of those no-wrong-answer questions that’s just interesting to consider psychologically. And yet, sometimes when disagreements divide us or when political coalitions start to break down, we do discover where our deepest “principled” allegiances lie.
I have an answer that I’m willing to explain, but I’d first love to hear other people’s. What’s your “original” conservative issue?
Published in General
I first became politically aware in 8th grade with the watergate hearings. Prior to that, my exposure was basically the apollo flights which were science, but within which Americans were the Hero.
Nixon’s crimes were my political loss of innocence. That the President could be a crook was shocking, dis-heartening, and deeply disturbing to my understanding of the American Dream. Gerald Ford was clearly honest, as was Jimmy Carter. But Carter’s obvious lack of even a single clue and his fleck deficiency pointed out another danger internationally. In the same time period, we got to live through Stagflation. I was then at college and was impressed by the science (and results) behind the theories of this radical named Friedman.
Long story short, I was (and am) concerned about political corruption, appeasement, and the diminishing of economic freedom.
This is why I am a conservative :-)
If the people cannot rely on the rule of law and an independent judiciary, there will be unrest. No ham sandwich indictments, here please. No political prosecutions of political differences would be another. Please remove yourself to your home country (or the country of your parents birth) if you wish us ill.
In 1970, I was too young to buy alcohol, but old enough to get shot at. I had been a reflexive Democrat, as a archetypical Catholic good boy, forever. Even campaigned for LBJ! But at this juncture, I suspected that the game was rigged. I left the military eight years later when befuddled Carter took over, because we had no fuel or parts to fly much anymore. Common sense, and Reagan, finally changed the arc of my beliefs for perpetuity.
Sixty-some years too late?
I became interested in politics around the beginning of high school. I grew up in northern VA, and it seemed most of my peers were fairly reflexively liberal, which I think helped influence my conservatism. Also somehow it just always seemed apparent to me from a young age that democrats played fast and loose with the truth (yes, mild I know).
But to answer the question, I think my most passionate issues were the 2nd amendment (I gave an oral presentation on the meaning of the ‘well-regulated’ clause) and rule of law issues.
Rachel,
Conservative issues? Change, the idea that conservatives detest change. I’ve nothing against change, but I like to think about it. Is something a change for the better or a change for the sake of change? I often think that the other side is much more afraid of change than we conservatives are because they have not thought about the consequences of change for changes sake. Our old nemesis Murphy always applies the Law.
Ned
Two related issues: the Cold War and 9/11
I grew up in a Democrat family. In 1988 I was assigned to the GOP side in a class Bush vs. Dukakis mock debate. I remember the one issue that really stood out was the Republican “peace through strength” position, this made sense and seemed wholly vindicated a few years later when the Berlin Wall came down w/o firing a shot.
After that I drifted politically and became a “both parties are corrupt” independent. In college I joined the Libertarian Party and cast my first Presidential ballot for Harry Browne. At that point I bought into the “end of history” argument that after the fall of Communism we should bring all our overseas troops home, cash in the “peace dividend,” and become strictly isolationist.
That all changed on 9/11. I had watched the whole Florida “hanging chads” debacle with detached amusement not much caring about the final outcome, but President Bush quickly won me over with his administration’s overall response to 9/11 in launching the Global War on Terror. I joined the Republican Party to express my support and voted for him in 2004.
I realize now this also makes me unusual among the Ricocheti in that I still admire W. and still in hindsight support most of his administration’s policies. I’m still inspired by his Second Inaugural Address and think it should be the cornerstone of our foreign policy.
June 5th, 1989.
Shame at the prospect of inflicting the despotism of my own heart on others.
Knowing how little I deserved to be trusted with power over others – because I am human; because humans cannot presume to know others as thoroughly as they must know themselves.
1. The presidency of Jimmy Carter
2. The politicization of EVERYTHING
The size and scope of the Federal Government.
This critical issue is reflected in the disrespect for the individual, loss of control for rights of property, and the fundamental assumption that what we have is granted by the government and not that we grant a limited amount of treasure and rights to the government for its essential services.
This is ultimately a tyranny, and can only be cured by shrinking the Federal Government by at least 2/3 preferably by 5/6ths and restrain it to the original 18 enumerated powers, leaving the rest to the states or the individual person as promised in the 10th amendment to the constitution.
I tend to think this growth is caused by a progressive idea, that it is the responsibility of the government to “take care of its subjects”, that is a set of positive rights from the government to healthcare, shelter, work, rather that viewing the individual as responsible for all of these, and thus ignoring or distorting the meaning of documents written to limit the power of the government, to ones limiting the power of the individual. This desire for a better world, leads to expecting government to provide it, leading to attempts to create a utopia, which because by it nature must the best thing, to a need to forcibly suppress all who would disagree. A government enforced utopia must always more closely resemble Hell, than Heaven, because it makes our existence dependent upon the whims of men, rather than the providence of God.
To achieve this, they must pervert Christian charity from a responsibility of the individual to the duty of government, while claiming to represent the best in us, while in practice destroying our faith ,as so much else, at the point of a (still mostly metaphoric) gun.
Attending a Quaker college and discovering how important PC was to the Left and how utterly humorless they were about it all.
Oh yeah, plus the belief that having the proper political intentions regarding a problem was far more important than whether those policies actually alleviated that problem or even made it worse.
I agree with everything Charlotte said, except 25% is not enough. I feel 50-75% would be better. Reduce the Federal Government back to the enumerated powers it was granted in the Constitution. Let the States deal with the rest.
Thanks, Pony…if you re-read my comment, you’ll see that we are in complete agreement. :-)
Clinton Tax increase.
I was raised in a very conservative household, and my dad took every chance he had to drill it into us. I can’t count the number of weekly family nights we spent with dad reading an e-mail or essay from one of his preferred conservative group while we sat, mouths agape in boredom, waiting for it to end so we could go back and play video games. It must have sunk in though, because all of his children have very conservative instincts, both temperamentally and politically.
As far as my “conservative issue”, I’d say that social issues brought me to conservatism (via dad and church primarily), but it’s the free market/economic issues that keep me here. Working in the refining industry provides ample opportunity to see how boneheaded our economic policy can be.
-E
Really fascinating the number of people who name taxes/overregulation/size of government as their formative conservative issue. I mean, it makes sense; obviously those are central to small government conservatism. Not something we talked very much about in my home growing up though.
I’m one of those former liberals, born in the 50s. For me it was foreign policy as liberalism went from having a strong faction that was anti-communist to a party that was overwhelmingly anti-anti-communist and trusted the Soviets more than it did its fellow Americans. Jimmy Carter was the breaking point. Many other issues subsequently added to prompting my change but this was the initial starting point.
Amen. Preach it, sister.
Another thing that interests me: the “converts” are particularly likely to cite defense issues as the thing that brought them around. Not as many “cradle conservatives” seem to have mentioned that. Not necessarily what I would have expected.
I guess, down deep, I was a libertarian long before I knew what a libertarian was. I base that on my childhood memories of enjoying Robert Heinlein’s children’s books, which I now recognize are among the most subversive and libertarian tomes in the history of literature.
But, growing up in a Democratic, FDR-worshipping family in California, I would have called myself a liberal. And it was not a particular issue that caused the scales to fall from my eyes. It was the Carter Administration. Living under that obscene regime at the time I graduated from college, I was convinced that the future was glum – for America and for me personally. And, of course, I heard all the predictions of the horrors to come if Reagan was elected. And I believed them.
And then Reagan was elected. No horrors. Inflation dropped from 20% to 3%. Unemployment virtually disappeared. America was strong again, and I had hope again. And yet, I noticed, the left was still bemoaning the horrors of Reagan. At which point, I thought to myself, “these people are crazy.” They’re delusional. Everything they told me was wrong, and even when it has been proven to be wrong, they can’t see it.
I voted a straight Republican ticket in the next election, and every election since. Nothing that has happened since that time has in any way conflicted with my epiphany that lefties were crazy and delusional.
I’m with those who have already eloquently voice “size & scope of government” as my main issue. Fix that and a lot of other things will either get fixed in the doing, or will begin to sort themselves out. The size of the federal government is crippling this country.
Jimmy broke a lot of us, yes.
Also interesting that for many of us older types how Jimmy Carter was the turning point (I voted for him in ’76, not in ’80).
Thinking back, it was important for one particular issue to trigger my rethinking because once that started you began questioning many other things.
But he was such a nice guy! And he bought his suits off the rack! Look at that winning smile!
And what fun interest rates he brought us!
Maybe this is so simple as to be simpleminded, but here we go:
I am a conservative because I think the American idea is one of the best things anyone has ever come up with. Period. Full stop.
The challenge is that the success of the idea became so familiar that we have lost a sense of its uniqueness and ingenuity. Most Americans (regardless of politics) tend to think of our circumstances as the natural state of things, and that is why the American idea is being devalued.
The left, whatever they may say, hates the American idea chiefly because they instinctively recognize that the American idea is ultimately incompatible with leftism.
The funny thing is that Carter was not even in the left wing of the party at that time – Teddy Kennedy led that wing but Jimmy was the leader of the “inept wing” of the party.
I attended a primary debate in ’76 at a local high school and yes, Carter had a dazzling smile in person, which he used in a very calculated manner.
I wonder how many people will cite Obama in a similar way in ten years. Or will the country’s values have changed too much?