Confessions of a Low-Information Voter

 

Obamacare’s regulations run to about 11,000 pages. I don’t even want to read the first page. I’ve heard that F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom is a wonderful book that conservatives should read. I don’t want to. If you’ve read it, I’ll take your word that it’s a seminal work.

Obviously, I didn’t think my way to conservatism. My heart led me.

I don’t like bullies. In fact, I beat one of them up when I was about 11 years old. Oh yeah, I beat the hell out of Rusty on the school grounds of Mark Keppel Grammar School in 1949 and left him crying in the dirt around second base. Rusty was a mean bully who threw the first punch. Ask anyone who was there.

Rusty the schoolyard bully is the equivalent of the hard Left today. They’ve used the IRS to harrass conservative non-profit groups. In California, they keyed the cars and intimidated businesses who dared to support Proposition 8 (which banned same-sex marriage). That is, they don’t merely stop patronizing offending businesses; they try to shut them down. And violent mobs show up on college campuses to intimidate conservative speakers like Ann Coulter and Charles Murray.

I’m on the Right partly because it’s the Left who are the bullies these days.

I like America and I’m thankful for its opportunities. Perhaps all of those patriotic songs and military jet flyovers before NFL games had an effect on me. When I was a young man, my wife and I took a motorcycle trip around Europe, camping along the way. At the time, I was still, well, liberalish. One day we were standing in line for tickets to a Shakespearean play in Stratford-on-Avon. A hippily dressed American guy in front of us was telling the Brits around him how terrible America was. That wasn’t the only time on that trip that I heard an anti-American blowhard trashing his country.

Whenever the Left gets the chance, they always seem to compare America unfavorably to, well, almost any other nation, especially the Scandinavian countries. And when a bunch of ungrateful football players claim that America is a cesspool, leftists nod approvingly. I don’t particularly care for people or ideologies who find much to admire in dictatorships in Cuba and Venezuela but can’t find much to admire in their own country.

I like fairness. I was the kid who insisted we all follow the rules in sandlot ball games and Monopoly. And no fudging at the starting line of foot races either, not even a single toe.

It’s the Left who want to move some ahead of others, largely based on race and gender—and then dole out advantages to those it deems more deserving (and the “deserving,” coincidentally, usually happens to be their core constituents). Affirmative Action, heartily endorsed by the Left, only seems to be fair. At its heart, it’s a terribly flawed and unfair program that has embedded discrimination into the law.

Let’s say you’re a dirt-poor white or Asian kid living next door to a mansion in which lives a young black lad, the son of a lawyer and a professor. Who gets preferential treatment in college admissions? Based entirely on the color of his skin, the rich black kid does. Treat everyone the same, MLK said. I liked that idea then, and I like it now.

When I was a kid, I roamed the streets of Compton like a stray dog. I liked that feeling of freedom. In these, my latter days, I hate guided tours and prepackaged vacations. I like to go to a city and roam around and discover things. At home, I would never buy a house in an area overseen by a home owners’ association. I want to be able to paint my house pink, erect ugly statues in the front yard, and fly the American flag—even upside down if that suits my fancy. And I want my neighbor to have that same freedom.

The Left hates freedom. What they love is a powerful State that can boss people around through the multiplication and enforcement of the elephant-eye-high stacks of regulations, each of which, no matter how benign, subtracts a tiny bit from the sum total of freedom. (By the way, I’m not an anarchist. I just want fewer regulations; the Left wants more and more.)

Obviously, I didn’t come to conservatism through the doorway of logic and reason. I was driven through by ideas formed, piece by piece, in my youthful heart—and without much consciousness or self knowledge on my part. “The heart has reasons,” so said Pascal, “that Reason itself does not know.” I believe that to be true.

Postscript: OK, I’ve read a few books, mostly 18th-century stuff, but my heart has been the driver in my journey toward conservatism. Swift, Johnson, Burke, and Chesterfield, et al., have been my conversational companions in the back seat. (We’re crowded back there.)

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  1. Fake John/Jane Galt Coolidge
    Fake John/Jane Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    OkieSailor (View Comment):
    The Founders had no Left or Right.

    That is because they either killed or ran their political opponents from the field.

    • #31
  2. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Fake John/Jane Galt (View Comment):

    OkieSailor (View Comment):
    The Founders had no Left or Right.

    That is because they either killed or ran their political opponents from the field.

    And it worked pretty well, too.

    • #32
  3. KentForrester Coolidge
    KentForrester
    @KentForrester

    Arahant (View Comment):

    KentForrester: (We’re crowded back there.)

    Should add a bit of that young fellow George William Frederick Guelph. He had some very interesting things to say in his writings.

    George III?

    • #33
  4. KentForrester Coolidge
    KentForrester
    @KentForrester

    RightAngles (View Comment):
    What a perfect description of my own road to the Right. You expressed it better than I could.

    Miss RightAngles, I doubt it.

    • #34
  5. KentForrester Coolidge
    KentForrester
    @KentForrester

    Dr. Bastiat (View Comment):

    KentForrester: Obviously, I didn’t think my way to conservatism. My heart led me.

    Amen. I hate progressivism because it is heartless. It leads to heartless bureaucracies (or much worse) wherever it is tried.

    Indeed, Dr. Bastia.  Now may I ask a technical question of you.  I don’t know where else to go.

    When I finish this comment on your comment and press the blue box labeled “Comment,” the whole thing is thrown to the very end of the comment section.  How do I keep it with your original comment?  I’m using an iPad.  Thanks in advance.

    Kent

    • #35
  6. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    KentForrester (View Comment):

    Arahant (View Comment):

    KentForrester: (We’re crowded back there.)

    Should add a bit of that young fellow George William Frederick Guelph. He had some very interesting things to say in his writings.

    George III?

    That’s the fellow. They recently released and digitized a huge archive from the Georgian period.

    • #36
  7. Mike H Inactive
    Mike H
    @MikeH

    KentForrester: Obviously, I didn’t think my way to conservatism. My heart led me.

    KentForrester: When I was a young man, my wife and I took a motorcycle trip around Europe, camping along the way. At the time, I was still, well, liberalish.

    You realize you completely contradicted yourself here, right? You admitted to being a liberal when younger, but you also claimed that your heart let you to conservatism. You don’t go from one set of beliefs to another by hearting your way to them.

    • #37
  8. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    KentForrester (View Comment):
    How do I keep it with your original comment?

    You don’t. Ricochet and the early members made a very conscious decision not to use nesting, since it made it harder to find new comments. So, it is all time stream, but the quoted part has the link (in clue above), so it is easy to trace back.

    • #38
  9. KentForrester Coolidge
    KentForrester
    @KentForrester

    Arahant (View Comment):

    KentForrester (View Comment):
    How do I keep it with your original comment?

    You don’t. Ricochet and the early members made a very conscious decision not to use nesting, since it made it harder to find new comments. So, it is all time stream, but the quoted part has the link (in clue above), so it is easy to trace back.

    Ah.  Thank you Mr. Arahant.  I thought I was doing something wrong.    Kent

    • #39
  10. KentForrester Coolidge
    KentForrester
    @KentForrester

    Mike H (View Comment):

    KentForrester: Obviously, I didn’t think my way to conservatism. My heart led me.

    KentForrester: When I was a young man, my wife and I took a motorcycle trip around Europe, camping along the way. At the time, I was still, well, liberalish.

    You realize you completely contradicted yourself here, right? You admitted to being a liberal when younger, but you also claimed that your heart let you to conservatism. You don’t go from one set of beliefs to another by hearting your way to them.

    Mike, I didn’t write well enough.  I should have inserted somewhere that when I became a conservative, I was returning to more close-to-the-bone, heartfelt beliefs.  My liberalism lasted from the age of, oh, about 16 to the age of 26.  My return to conservatism, I think now, was more a matter of following my heart rather than my intellect.  I reacted to events.   It could be that others arrive at conservatism through the process of rationation.  I didn’t.

    • #40
  11. OkieSailor Member
    OkieSailor
    @OkieSailor

    KentForrester (View Comment):

    OkieSailor (View Comment):
    The Founders had no Left or Right. I like their perspective. They sought to establish Liberty and believed that Liberty is best protected on a scale defined with Tyranny at one end and Anarchy at the other (Tyranny is absolute power in the hands of a very few, Anarchy is absence of government). They believed that Liberty is found somewhere in the middle, closer to Anarchy (limited government) than to Tyranny. I heartily concur. I like Liberty because it suits my natural bent but also because it works out to provide the greatest well-being for the greatest number of common folks like me. When people are freer to enjoy the fruits of their own labor they tend to work harder, be more productive and be more inventive. As those fruits of their labors are taken from them they become progressively less so. (Is that why it is called Progressiveism???)
    It is no secret why Dictatorships and Bureaucratic Nightmarish regimes all have falling standards of living while the countries with the most Liberty have rising standards of living over time. And it doesn’t matter whether the ‘Rulers’ are designated Left or Right, if they constrain people’s Liberty too much the track is ever downward. That is why Reagan could confidently predict that the Soviet Union would end up on the Ash Heap of History, he knew that outcome was inevitable (he did help it along though).

    OakieSailor, this is a fine description of the virtues and benefits of freedom much better than I can do. You seem to have given a lot of thought to the matter. Kent

    Oddly enough the first thing that started my thoughts along this line was a TV movie about a man and wife going west during the frontier days. He takes an axe, clears some trees, builds a cabin, plants a field and so on. His wife muses, “I’ve never seen a man work so hard!” And I thought, yeah, he knows he will get all the fruits of his labor so he works with all he’s got. It’s that attitude carried forward by his progeny and our ancestors that has built the prosperity we enjoy today. But when too much is taken from our paychecks it’s a  disincentive for doing anything extra. I’ve known men at the tire plant who were so discouraged at what overtime did to their withholding they wouldn’t work it anymore. Sometimes they seemed to make less per hour for the overtime. That is a problem not just for them but for the economy as a whole.
    That is the real main problem with Socialism, reward for work is diluted so much that people don’t see any sense in even doing a good job let alone doing more than is required. So productivity declines steadily until everything collapses.
    Freedom works in every way. Also, it’s the right thing to do.

    • #41
  12. Mike H Inactive
    Mike H
    @MikeH

    KentForrester (View Comment):

    Mike H (View Comment):

    KentForrester: Obviously, I didn’t think my way to conservatism. My heart led me.

    KentForrester: When I was a young man, my wife and I took a motorcycle trip around Europe, camping along the way. At the time, I was still, well, liberalish.

    You realize you completely contradicted yourself here, right? You admitted to being a liberal when younger, but you also claimed that your heart let you to conservatism. You don’t go from one set of beliefs to another by hearting your way to them.

    Mike, I didn’t write well enough. I should have inserted somewhere that when I became a conservative, I was returning to more close-to-the-bone, heartfelt beliefs. My liberalism lasted from the age of, oh, about 16 to the age of 26. My return to conservatism, I think now, was more a matter of following my heart rather than my intellect. I reacted to events. It could be that others arrive at conservatism through the process of rationation. I didn’t.

    Do you think your lack of reasoning makes you more or less likely to have the right positions? How would you know if you are correct?

    • #42
  13. JcTPatriot Member
    JcTPatriot
    @

    OkieSailor (View Comment):
    It’s that attitude carried forward by his progeny and our ancestors that has built the prosperity we enjoy today. But when too much is taken from our paychecks it’s a disincentive for doing anything extra.

    At my company, they had the great idea of saving money by cutting our bonus from 7% to 3% (of our yearly salary) in a single cut. So to use a nice round number, a guy making $100,000 a year saw his bonus go from 7k to 3k.

    $3,000 after Income and Payroll taxes get done with it isn’t even an extra paycheck. Do I have any incentive to go “above and beyond” this year? No I do not. I will work the amount I am paid to work. If they want to keep my bonus, they certainly may, and they may go pound sand with it.

    • #43
  14. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Mike H (View Comment):

    KentForrester: Obviously, I didn’t think my way to conservatism. My heart led me.

    KentForrester: When I was a young man, my wife and I took a motorcycle trip around Europe, camping along the way. At the time, I was still, well, liberalish.

    You realize you completely contradicted yourself here, right? You admitted to being a liberal when younger, but you also claimed that your heart let you to conservatism. You don’t go from one set of beliefs to another by hearting your way to them.

    You don’t?  What other ways are there?

    • #44
  15. OkieSailor Member
    OkieSailor
    @OkieSailor

    JcTPatriot (View Comment):

    OkieSailor (View Comment):
    It’s that attitude carried forward by his progeny and our ancestors that has built the prosperity we enjoy today. But when too much is taken from our paychecks it’s a disincentive for doing anything extra.

    At my company, they had the great idea of saving money by cutting our bonus from 7% to 3% (of our yearly salary) in a single cut. So to use a nice round number, a guy making $100,000 a year saw his bonus go from 7k to 3k.

    $3,000 after Income and Payroll taxes get done with it isn’t even an extra paycheck. Do I have any incentive to go “above and beyond” this year? No I do not. I will work the amount I am paid to work. If they want to keep my bonus, they certainly may, and they may go pound sand with it.

    Similarly when I started at the Dayton Tire plant in OKC in 1971 tire builders (assembly) earned an incentive bonus based on their individual production. If a man (they were all men then) produced 150% of the established rate he got  150% of his base pay for that day. Over the years management diluted this formula (too simple for them to understand?) until if a man (or the two women who became successful at tire building) produced 150% of the rate he would get 107% of his base pay for that day. And several middle managers had the gall to ask me why no one wanted to produce any more. I simply told them there is a reason it’s called, “Incentive pay.”
    So that ‘cost cutting’ idea backfired. Bigly.

    • #45
  16. Mike H Inactive
    Mike H
    @MikeH

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Mike H (View Comment):

    KentForrester: Obviously, I didn’t think my way to conservatism. My heart led me.

    KentForrester: When I was a young man, my wife and I took a motorcycle trip around Europe, camping along the way. At the time, I was still, well, liberalish.

    You realize you completely contradicted yourself here, right? You admitted to being a liberal when younger, but you also claimed that your heart let you to conservatism. You don’t go from one set of beliefs to another by hearting your way to them.

    You don’t? What other ways are there?

    If you only follow your heart instead of using your intuition as a starting point from which to discover truth through observation and reason, how do you verify you’ve come to the right conclusions? Something may feel right but be demonstrably wrong.

    • #46
  17. JosePluma Coolidge
    JosePluma
    @JosePluma

    KentForrester: I’ve heard that F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom is a wonderful book that conservatives should read. I don’t want to. If you’ve read it, I’ll take your word that it’s a seminal work.

    I tried, I really tried, but I couldn’t make it past the first chapter.  However, there is an excellent summary here.

    • #47
  18. JosePluma Coolidge
    JosePluma
    @JosePluma

    KentForrester: I’m on the Right partly because it’s the Left who are the bullies these days.

    It was the same with me, and it isn’t just “these days.”  I was disgusted as a teenager and young adult how the “compassionate and accepting” left ignored or even encouraged violent bullies on their side.  The Black Panthers, the SDS, Abby Hoffman and his ilk, union thugs:  All were embraced by liberals.  It’s one of the reasons I didn’t support Donald Trump–bullying and thuggery is a Democrat trait.  Of course, since he was a Democrat until very recently . . .

    • #48
  19. Vectorman Inactive
    Vectorman
    @Vectorman

    JosePluma (View Comment):

    KentForrester: I’ve heard that F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom is a wonderful book that conservatives should read. I don’t want to. If you’ve read it, I’ll take your word that it’s a seminal work.

    I tried, I really tried, but I couldn’t make it past the first chapter. However, there is an excellent summary here.

    YES! You found it! And the Readers Digest’s digest version was about 30 pages long.

    Vectorman (View Comment):

    I saw a Reader’s Digest version that IIRC read in about 1 hour. About 30 pages, but I can’t find it right now. That version wasn’t too bad.

    • #49
  20. contrarian Inactive
    contrarian
    @Contrarian

    Postscript: OK, I’ve read a few books, mostly 18th-century stuff, but my heart has been the driver in my journey toward conservatism. Swift, Johnson, Burke, and Chesterfield, et al., have been my conversational companions in the back seat. (We’re crowded back there.)

    I’m still making my mind up about conservatism. Finding out about Burke was an important moment for me. I’d never heard of him and I was watching a press conference in ’08 where McCain started talking about him. He was never assigned in school, which I now find odd because of how many other figures of comparable or lesser significance were.

    Swift, must be Jonathan Swift and I assume Johnson is Samuel Johnson.

    Who is Chesterfield?

    PS: That’s a handsome dog. What’s its name?

    • #50
  21. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    contrarian (View Comment):
    Who is Chesterfield?

    Old Phil Stanhope is the one usually known by the title.

    • #51
  22. KentForrester Coolidge
    KentForrester
    @KentForrester

    contrarian (View Comment):
     

    Who is Chesterfield?

    PS: That’s a handsome dog. What’s its name?

    Mr. Contrarian, his name is Bob.  He’s the first dog, after about 15 cats, that my wife and I have ever owned.  We love him, and he loves us. We walk him twice a day.

    Kent

    • #52
  23. KentForrester Coolidge
    KentForrester
    @KentForrester

    JosePluma (View Comment):

    KentForrester: I’m on the Right partly because it’s the Left who are the bullies these days.

    It was the same with me, and it isn’t just “these days.” I was disgusted as a teenager and young adult how the “compassionate and accepting” left ignored or even encouraged violent bullies on their side. The Black Panthers, the SDS, Abby Hoffman and his ilk, union thugs: All were embraced by liberals. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t support Donald Trump–bullying and thuggery is a Democrat trait. Of course, since he was a Democrat until very recently . . .

    Mr. Plums, you’re right.  They were bullies. if I had thought of of Hoffman, et al., while I was writing my essay, I would have mentioned them.  Thanks for reminding me of those bad old days.

    Kent

    • #53
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