Leftist might be a stretch, but I was a moderate Democrat. I have voted for Democratic presidential candidates in every election since I was old enough to vote (1976). Now I consider myself an independent and will be voting for my first Republican in November. What changed? 9/11 was my wake up call. It is clear to me that when it comes to terrorists, it is either kill or be killed. Any person who would consent to place our sovreignty and security in the hands of the hapless UN or would give the world's weasels veto power over our nation's security has forfieted any chance of getting my vote.

Seeing what happened in Vietnam and Cambodia after the glorious revolutionary forces were triumphant.

Also, I used to be a leftist history major - my hero was Eugene Genovese, who explained that slavery was on the verge of collapsing in the 1860s, so the only reason for the Civil War was so that the evil Northern capitalists could dominate the evil Southern planters. (Sample argument - since the price of slaves was at their highest level in the late 1850's, this indicated that slavery was going to collapse, since nobody could afford slaves.)

I then read Fogel and Engerman, and discovered that Genovese's arguments were hooey (normally, rising prices for something is a sign of economic vigor, not collapse). I decided that if leftists were wrong about slavery, they were likely wrong about many other things. So I became a right-wing economist. (Fogel was very left-wing in his youth, BTW.)

The Vietnamese boat people and Cambodia did it for me as well.

What happened though is that I did not give up my ideals. Just changed my methods.

My question for the left is: would you put a gun to some one's head to get the world you want?

My follow up question is then: why does using government guns change the moral calculus?

I might add that the lefties at this point prefer to change the subject.

Moderate democrat here - I strongly supported Clinton in '92 (a decision I would later learn was largely based on the dominant media's lies about both Bush and Clinton) and even volunteered for the WH email project.

My epiphany came when I was an MIT student and attended an anti-war rally. This was about 1980: recent outrage over Vietnam, current outrage over Contras, Reagan was president, and so on.

Speaker after speaker stood up decrying American crimes around the world. One man kept heckling from the audience, until the organizers finally invited him to either come speak from the platform, or shut up entirely.

He took the platform, and castigated the crowd for focusing only the real mistakes and venalities of Americans, while ignoring the massive outrages of the Soviets - who were shredding Afghanistan. Why were they so sympathetic to rich, powerful, leftist dictators resisting American meddling, but totally indifferent to poor weak farmers fighting to rid their homeland of a brutal invader in Afghanistan?

The speakers did not argue back, but were so outraged that they physically attacked him on the stage, and he was only saved from a public pummelling by the rush of cooler heads between them.

Then it struck me like a lightening bolt: those people do not care one bit about their professed goals. They do not care about defending the weak against the powerful - unless the powerful are American. They do not care about protecting or extending liberty - unless they can hurt America by doing so.

For me, it was living in Germany.

That place is a left-wing heaven: every Democratic initiative of the last half-century, magnified as though the Dems had been controlling all three branches. Plus, PCism from hell, endorsed by both Right and Left!

I loved it there, but I wouldn't want to live there permanently.

It's best to have divided executive and legislative branches of government; that way nothing gets done unless it makes sense or is really important. Bill Clinton was an effective president because of this phenomenon. Unfortunately, we have this terrorism problem, so I will tend to be a one issue voter in the next election.

If a liberal is angry at the government, then be in favor of smaller and more local government. Demand accountability from charities, and then maybe the private sector NGOs will be more effective in addressing social problems. Go with what works and abandon beauracracies that waste money, whether they are federal, state or private.

Before grad school I was a canvasser for Citizen Action, so by the measure of overt political action I was about as far left as one could get. The problem is that my commitments weren't really captured by a left/right paradigm. And, in general, that's true of most Americans. (There is no consistent relationship, for instance, between issue positions and self-assessed left/right orientation on polls taken in the US. Americans act as though they don't really know what the terms left and right actually mean, and they probably don't know.)

I was definitely opposed to the system of capitalism in which 5% of the population owns 95% of the productive capital, but I don't tend to call such a system "capitalism." It really has more in common with the old-world royalists. And I always felt that the "cure" must be broad-based private control of capital. I envision a system where income from labor is ancillary, and most people earn most of their income directly from capital ownership. That almost certainly requires reforming the finance system.

I also wonder why practically no one ever talks about the royalist tendencies of our so-called "capitalist" system of finance. If it doesn't promote broad-based private capital ownership, how is it "capitalist?"

I probably identified more with the programs of the left even though they were mainly ameliorative band aids, until I met and worked with two rather notable fellows: S.M. Lipset and David J. Armor. These are both people who have, themselves, undergone something of a conversion (especially Armor, who launched SLATE as a student at UC Berkeley, was one of the founders of the free-speech movement, and served on the Coleman Commission). But Lipset gave me a deeper sense of appreciation and understanding for my own country, so I began to identify somewhat less with the European ideological orientation. I don't think it's so much that Americans don't understand the left/right dichotomy, but that it simply doesn't make that much sense as applied to the "American Ideology." For instance, look what has happened to the term "liberalism." It now has two diametrically opposed meanings.

9/11 was sort of the final straw. Although I still mistrust "big" private enterprise, especially when it lobbies to get control of the "commanding heights" of the economy, I can see that there are much greater evils. So, if you ask me whether I've been a convert to either the indulgents or the enrages I'd have to say that I'm not on that scale. I see that whole dimension as corrupt, contributing to the repeated re-emergence of totalitarian/terrorist ideologies.

I've also recently changed my mind about gay marriage, not so much as a result of the arguments I've heard, but as a result of my own engagement in the issue. Well, I still think it's possible that gay marriage might be OK, or even beneficial, but I just don't see how we could have the luxury of running isolated social experiments to get more purchase on those questions if it's regarded as a "right." I see Andrew's position as internally inconsistent in that regard. And I no longer agree that federalism could provide the context of social experimentation, because I think the press would be on to make the "right" universal. That's what recent events in San Francisco tell me.

My impression is that if gays backed off the demand for marriage, and concentrated on "civil union" we'd have a system of social experimentation that could provide some answers to critical questions about the effect on family and child-rearing (or, in other words, the effect of gay marriage on heterosexual marriage). I doubt that a marriage amendment would pass if such a strategy were adopted, either. Will that happen? I doubt it.

Anyway, if anyone is to blame for my "conversion" it would probably be Lipset and Armor, although I think I was well on the way before I met them.

I admit it - my shift to the right began out of pure self-interest. It was the tenth grade, I was starting to look at colleges, and evaluating what I needed to do to get into different schools.

I'm Chinese.

That was just the beginning - once I got over the "CONSERVATIVE = EVIL" hurdle (no mean feat for a teenager growing up in NY), I found most of my other lefty assumptions crumbling into dust. I've been on the dark side ever since.

I left the right.

I used to be reflexively right in a congenitally conservative kind of way. I was a bring on the flat tax, burn the social safety net, bring back the noose or put them in a gulag, everything about capitalism is good, greens are lunatics the poor are lazy kinda guy.

I'm not that anymore.

I did everything a good son of Alberta would do. I went to University, I worked the 80 hour weeks for 20 years, I made lots of money, I got the corner offices, I supported any conservative movement.

Yet, despite all the material success there was a nagging dissonance. A persistent sub-vocal questioning that I can only attribute to a conscience.

The turning point was a simple question posed by a Liberal aquantance: what kind of world do you want to leave for your children. It is a deceptively simple question.

When I looked at that question it seemed to me that reducing international conflict, reducing environmental damage, and reducing inequity were the things I should work towards.

Obviously 'left vs right' is too narrow a conceptual framework to hold the discussion of how you achieve those goals but, in general most people characterize the tactics I support as leftist.

My sister has a theory that it's best that you have conservative parents, because if your parents are "anything goes" liberals, you'll have to be outrageous to a possibly life-threatening degree in order to rebel when you're a teenager...

Dar, what would probably be best would be conservative and liberal parent. Give you some balance, make you think more. At least, that is what I think.

I work at 111 Broadway in Manhattan. It was 9/11.

I have voted in every election since 76, and realized I had never voted for a winning president until this past election.
It was a toss up between lesser evils, and Colin Powell , whom I got a chance to see speak in person was my tipping point.
On the evening of 9/11, as I sat their watching the days events with my teenager, as my wife was stranded in California, I decided I had made a good election decision...
Now my conumdrum is that I have bullyed my 2 daughters into registering to vote, and I think they will have a long march until they see the light. The kids can't vote the same way as Dad..."He's retarded!" (no offense meant to those with special needs... I am also funding grad school for my daughter who insists she wants to teach special needs kids..the hardest part for me has been supporting her...I'd have prefered business school for her, and have threatened her that she will have to vote the way the NEA tells her to!

I was a moderate democrate as was most of my home state of Ga. I began to question the democratic party after the first terrorist attack on the world trade center went un answered by Clinton, and then the pull out of Mogidishu after they drew blood. when the U. S. S. Cole was attacked I felt that Clinton's response was weak. so I voted, as did a lot of Ga. folks did for Bush.
There is no way I would vote for kerry. being what he is in a war is suicide!

I was a complete liberal until my my sophomore year in college, but contact with reality (both at school and especially afterwards) changed my mind bit by bit, issue by issue. I think my goals are the same, it's just my methods and "victory conditions" that have changed.
I'm content to make things better step by step rather than demand perfection immediately.

Scot, "I always felt that the "cure" must be broad-based private control of capital. I envision a system where income from labor is ancillary, and most people earn most of their income directly from capital ownership."
In capitalism this is called stock ownership, those people are share holders. Your worker's utopia is actually right here, in the United States of America, where more and more people, thru mutual funds, own bits and pieces of the evil corporations. How many people do you think own GE? They have 10 billion shares outstanding. I'm 100% sure the owners are not all rich. One thing I don't understand about the left is their attack on big corporations, we (workers) vs them (corporations). Where do they think their workers earn their livings from without those corporations. I've never been a leftist because I can't figure out the leftists' logic. And I'm very annoyed about their ridicule of "special interests". For me, I'm "special interest", my interest is to retain more of my money, i.e. less tax, so that the politicians cannot take my money to pay off their "special interests".

I used to be a lefty because they used all the right words about helping the disadvantaged and many other priorities I agreed with.

Then I started reading stuff on economics and began to realize that while the goals of many lefty friends of mine may be just, their means will do nothing but hinder achievement of their goals.

Also, my wife also spent quite a bit of time working with the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (welfare) and saw how horrible the system was and how much dependency it created.

So I am now a conservative with liberal goals.

I used to be a lefty because they used all the right words about helping the disadvantaged and many other priorities I agreed with.

Then I started reading stuff on economics and began to realize that while the goals of many lefty friends of mine may be just, their means will do nothing but hinder achievement of their goals.

Also, my wife also spent quite a bit of time working with the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (welfare) and saw how horrible the system was and how much dependency it created.

So I am now a conservative with liberal goals.

Mark Mason: welcome to the Grand Neocon Conspiracy.

Question for KevinG:

You endorese in your posting what I think we all want: a better world for our children (less war, cleaner environment, more social justice, etc.).

Then you say that most people support leftish tactics, implying by proximity that desire for a better world logically leads to leftish tactics.

Is this meant to imply that support for a better world implies leftism? If you believe that "p -> q" is the same as "~q -> ~p", (basic logic upon which everyone since Aristotle has agreed), then the inescapable logical equivalence is that rightism is necessarily aiming at goals harmful to peace, environment, and justice. If so, isn't this just the old "Right = Evil" prejudice, stated gently and indirectly?

"The turning point was a simple question posed by a Liberal aquantance: what kind of world do you want to leave for your children. It is a deceptively simple question."

A wealthy, technologically advanced world. One with flying cars, spacecraft that's not reserved for the government elite, and anti-aging treatments. One where you don't have to have two people working overtime to afford a home where you won't get shot at.

The left ain't going to get you there.

"When I looked at that question it seemed to me that reducing international conflict, reducing environmental damage, and reducing inequity were the things I should work towards."

International conflict has been on a downward trend lately, and it's not the left that causing that. Inequity is a non-issue - if the masses are as well off as they are today, but the rich are wealthy enough to afford spaceships, we're better off, not worse off.

I would prefer that my conversion from a Leftist to my current Neo-Con leanings began with something more substantive than this, but it didn't. When I was about 19 or so (circa 1980), I went to a party which was sponsored by the local intelligentsia (60's radicals, leftist academics, et al). It turned into an epiphany of sorts. What I saw before me were not people of high ideals, vision, or substance, who up until this point I had idealized and emulated. They instead seemed to me just a bunch of self-absorbed, narcissistic, pompous, and pretentious egoists. It caused me to question my own motivations and purpose. Was I championing all of the trendy Leftist causes out of a real conviction, or was it merely an attempt on my part to shock my parents and mainstream society in order to garner attention? One of the mantras at that time was "Question Authority". I decided to take this a few degrees further to not only question authority, but to also question everything and everyone, including my own beliefs. Thus began the systematic destruction and deconstruction of everything that I had held to be the truth to that point, and my own arduous 20-odd year journey to the Right.

VBC-

Actually, I said "most people characterize the tactics I support as leftist", not "that most people support leftish tactics".

I think you may have misread the comment.

I went through a brief "radical" period when I was a teenager. Essentially, I was an ignorant kid with dumb ideas about what was "hip" and "cool" which I mostly got from television. In addition, my leftiness was a way of shocking my reactionary parents and hometown (I was raised in a small Southern town). My journey to the right began with the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979. To this day, I believe we should have turned Tehran into a parking lot. Had we done so, September 11 would just be another block on the calendar.

I voted Socialist (in the USA) in the 2000 election. I've always considered myself a leftist, or at least a liberal. But my liberal convictions prompted me to support the war in Iraq, and the general push to democratize the Mid East, North Korea, and Cuba. I'm not a conservative, but I've rediscovered my classical liberal roots, which emphasize individual rights against state collective action and the defense of liberalism against barbarism & Islamofascism.

I know this post is too long, but it's really more of a confession and plea for forgiveness. I supported Clinton. After the 93 bombing and subsequent terrorist attacks overseas, I still trusted that Clinton was handling critical issues quietly behind the scenes and using force when necessary. After all, North Korea agreed to a nuclear weapons ban, and he took military action in Yugoslavia.

How ironic now, North Korea is a nuclear power, Milo's getting his 3 year trial in the Hague (but Hussein wasn't bloody enough for the left?!?), and the most horrific day I hope I ever see in my lifetime. 3000 innocent dead countrymen and a gaping wound where I used to go to business meetings in the middle of one of my favorite cities. The Pentagon crushed. Prospects of a commercial airliner diving into the White House or Capitol Hill.

Since witnessing the complete moral depravity of 9/11, I have re-examined my every thought. About myself, my country, government, history, allies, enemies, religion, economics, society, morality. Hell, absolutely everything. And, I didn't just soul-search, I did a lot of research and re-checked all my "facts". I've probably read every on-line newspaper on the planet with an available version in English at least once. I even researched many of the authors of key pieces, and "experts" that were widely referenced (probably the most revealing aspect of my journey).

My shocking conclusion? Communist (socialist, democratic, liberal--put whatever pretty label on it you like) philosophy is still an organized force in the world, and is still eating this planet alive leaving bloody, oppressed and starving corpses falling everyday to prove it. A lot of my former fellow democrats are essentially communists whether they know it or not.

The culmination of my journey? I still am struggling to forgive myself for my ignorant support of Clinton and "left" thinking. I cannot forsee any possibility of my voting for another democrat as long as I live.

Hi.

Comparing my own journey to that of others, I seen to see these common (but not universal) elements:
(1) Having a moral limit beyond which you will not go.
(2) Believing your BS enough to make predictions based on it and be shocked rather than make excuses when the predictions turn out to be dead wrong.
(3) Some historical event, either big and obvious to all, or close enough to you so that you could get a real good look at it, that was totally outside your script.
(4) Negative personal encounters with the dogmatic Left in full persecuting mode and/or demonstrating utter hypocrisy.
(5) Going back to check the sources of the beliefs that failed you, and finding them wanting.
(6) Establishing new dogmas, probably very simple at first, e.g.: "We did not deserve 9/11, and I'm not prepared to listen any more to implications that we did."
(7) Seeking new information sources and people to talk to to test, consolidate and elaborate the new seeds of your personal ideology, if I can call it that.
(8) Sex appeal, self-esteem and coolness. The holy aura of leftism falls away, and you go "what's cool, or sexy, or noble (or whatever appeals to you) about that?" Other things appeal more.

If you don't have a genuine moral no-go line, if you avoid falsifiable predictions in favor of explaining whatever just happened away (or denying it), if your dogma dominates your view of things to the extent that brute reality can no longer overwhelm you (except perhaps if it's happening to you, live and in person), if your authorities remain paper gods rather than people you've seen behaving badly or sources you've checked out sceptically, if you respond go new information by pausing till the shock passes and then going back to exactly what you were doing and saying, and if the rewards our your social network and ideological self-image still satisfy you even though you may have to shovel some facts under the carpet to keep them, then you're not going to change. (OK: "Duh!")

I think the worst thing is to be a phony. If you're totally, genuinely wrong, you can find that out and start to correct your ideas. But if you want to be in with a certain in-crowd, or you have an image to maintain, or you find certain tactics (like race-baiting) work so well for you that you would never give them up, and you'll buy into conspiracy theories, ignore your alleged moral bottom lines, or do whatever else it may take so you can keep getting those rewards, then there's no hope.

Does that add up to other people?

KevinG:

You're right: I read too quickly. Point taken.

David Blue,

Yup. What else can I say?