My Comments:  This is perhaps a long read but given the dramatically different values expressed by those on the political right vs those on the political left, these words helped me better understand the dichotomy. The message from Eric Sentell gives me a little more hope for my children and grandchildren.

When I first registered to vote, I chose the Democrat party. This was not because I leaned to the left politically, but because in Florida in the 1960’s, the Democratic Primary effectively determined who was going to be the Governor, etc. If I wanted to express a choice, I had to participate in that primary. I’ve never regretted my decision.

By Eric Sentell / 16 AUG 2020 / https://tinyurl.com/2p9w9jhm

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 possessed WMDs. When they weren’t found, I figured they were hidden in the desert somewhere. While in college, I voted enthusiastically for Bush’s reelection and interned for multiple Congressional Republicans.

Exposure to Different Perspectives

Starting in college, I became exposed to a wider range of ideas and perspectives. College doesn’t indoctrinate students into any political ideology (unless, arguably and ironically, we’re talking about a parochial school like Liberty University), but it does force people to learn and think about more than one way of viewing the world.

College presents and encourages consideration of, complex realities and nuances regardless of whether they fit your existing views. Gifted this, I confronted some inconvenient facts during my college years.

The Iraq War became an undeniable mess, clearly due to poor planning and decision-making by the Bush Administration. Still, no WMDs were dug out of the desert.

Hurricane Katrina became another example of inept government, exacerbated by the FEMA director appointed by Bush and approved by a GOP congress being completely unqualified. Michael Brown’s previous job had been supervising horse judges.

I kept hearing how much the Bush tax cut disproportionately benefited the wealthy, and I didn’t see much money trickling down. The government didn’t seem any smaller. The deficit and debt ballooned.

The “change candidate,” Barack Obama, wooed me in 2008 while I was still only 23. When the financial crisis hit in October, John McCain’s erratic response suggested to me that Obama would do a slightly better job of competent governing — something I craved.

Confronting Hypocrisies

Early in the recovery from the Great Recession, I saw a graph on Facebook showing job creation under Obama and asserting that he deserved credit for helping the economy turn around. I thought, “Meh, probably,” and shared it.

From the backlash in the comments, you would’ve thought I had promoted child sacrifice at the altar of Obama.

The attacks caused me to double down, to harden my positions. I began thinking harder and differently about conservatives’ way of saying one thing and doing another.

The way cutting taxes ballooned the budget deficit and the national debt, the very opposite of fiscal responsibility.

The way deficit and debt hadn’t been an issue during the Bush years but were suddenly, terrifyingly urgent, a betrayal of America’s future, under Obama.

(The national debt didn’t stop Trump and the GOP congress from slashing taxes for the wealthy and corporations, and few, if any, conservatives and Tea Partiers batted an eye.)

The way so many conservatives in my rural community ridiculed “lazy, entitled” welfare recipients while also gladly accepting government agriculture subsidies, WIC, Medicaid, and similar programs.

The way that the conservative Heritage Foundation’s plan for healthcare reform, implemented by Governor Mitt Romney in Massachusetts, became a pejorative unto itself — Obamacare — when a Black Democratic president proposed it.

The way conservatives said they were “pro-life” but opposed universal healthcare and covering contraception while championing other policies that diminish the quality of life for people outside the womb.

The way conservatives said they were for small government but then wanted to tell consenting adults who they could and could not marry.

Government should leave people alone to live their lives, right? Right?

New, Challenging Experiences

After graduating with my MA in English, I struggled to get a job even though I had done everything right. I’d gone to college, worked hard, gotten great grades, completed internships, and worked part-time jobs. I put out over a hundred applications.

That’s when I learned that some people are not poor through some fault of their own, laziness, entitlement, lack of skill or education. I discovered the myth of “lazy bums on welfare.”

After Sandy Hook, I decided people didn’t need rifles and handguns designed for the sole purpose of killing as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, that we could have reasonable gun regulations and respect gun owners’ rights. I mean, shouldn’t “responsible gun owners” want regulations that minimize the harm of guns?

About the same time, my wife developed a chronic illness that made pregnancy a potentially life-threatening condition. And I thought, “I wouldn’t want the government adjudicating whether she could have an abortion if necessary. No one should tell us whose life matters more.”

Considering the well-established difficulty of reporting, investigating, and prosecuting rape crimes, I also wouldn’t want the government telling rape and incest victims, people whose choice had been stolen from them as part of their horrific violation, whether they had to carry babies.

The best government governs the least, right? Right?

I still hold some of my old conservative values, but I’ve learned their limits as well as the fact that modern progressivism actually represents many of them far better.

The Hollowing of Conservative Ideology

Throughout this period of my mid to late 20s, I also noticed the hollowing out of conservative intellectualism, creativity, and problem-solving.

Conservative intellectuals like George Will, William Kristol, and David Frum once provided the intellectual center of conservatism. Over the last decade-plus, they (and many other Establishment conservatives) have been sidelined by the hard right turn of the Republican party.

As a result, conservative ideology has lost its intellectual center and can’t provide decent policy solutions to most issues today.

The Republican plan for economic growth always consists of cutting taxes and regulations even though neither tactic significantly helps the vast majority who live paycheck to paycheck.

Republicans voted dozens of times to overturn Obamacare even though they had nothing to replace it. When they gained control over Congress and the White House, they still couldn’t come up with a better alternative.

After every mass shooting, Republicans insist that gun laws won’t prevent gun violence since criminals don’t follow laws — as if that logic ever stopped them from supporting laws against other crimes. They say gun crime is a mental health issue without offering any ideas for improving mental health services.

For the GOP, illegal immigration is very, very bad, except for all the cheap labor it provides for businesses. Republicans in Congress have always known we don’t need a border wall; that’s why they didn’t fund one sometime from 2016–2018. But since Trump really wanted one, they fought Democrats for it.

Climate change isn’t real to much of the GOP. If it is real, then it’s probably not caused by human activity. Nothing to see here.

Conservative responses to police brutality boil down to, “It’s just a few bad apples,” but never get around to suggesting how to hold those apples accountable. Of course, criminals don’t follow laws anyway, right?

The 2020 RNC decided to stick with the same party platform as 2016. Conservatives literally can’t come up with new ideas anymore.

As recently as the George W. Bush years, conservatives offered reasonable solutions to pressing problems. The proposals might be flawed, but you could at least have a legitimate debate about their merits. That’s not true anymore.

Lessons Learned

Looking back, I attribute my shift from right to left to four things:

• Exposure to different perspectives during college
• Confronting obvious hypocrisies in conservatism
• Life experiences that challenged existing views
• Recognizing the hollowing of conservative ideology

What can be generalized from my experience?

First, change is possible!

Second, it’s important to champion our perspectives without attacking other viewpoints in ways that entrench them.

We can point out contradictions, hypocrisies, and hollow ideologies, but it’s even better when people can recognize them for themselves. Highlighting their experiences may nudge them in that direction.

For hardcore conservatives in an echo chamber of Facebook memes, it may be next-to-impossible to confront contradictions in their leaders or beliefs.

However, the majority who don’t pay much attention to politics may be persuaded by examples that connect with their lived experience and social identities.