Ex-Liberal Gives Self-Deprogramming Tips

Robin of Berkeley tells us more about "How to Deprogram a Liberal":

So maybe you get now how hard it was, how disorienting and destabilizing and crazy making it was, when I realized about 1 1/2 years ago that I no longer believed in liberalism. ... I walked around in a confused state for weeks. Being a Democrat, a liberal, a far left radical from Berkeley was a big part of my identity. So who the heck was I if I weren't a leftist? ...

After weeks of shuffling around like a zombie, it was time to do something about it. The first step, I decided, was deprogramming myself from decades of liberal propaganda. Out went books by Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, and various 9/11 conspiracy books. In came Mark Levin, Ben Stein, Ron Paul, and Ayn Rand. ....

To my disbelief, the more I listened and read, the more these folks made sense. For instance, at first I couldn't understand why so many conservatives expressed concern about morality issues, like gay marriage. Berkeley is Lesbian Central, and I know many good hearted gay people. But the more I learned, the more I started getting the larger picture; that conservatives were not necessarily impugning the character of gay people, but they were alarmed at the breakdown of traditional values. If the basic structure of society goes, e.g., traditional marriage, religion, patriotism, common language, what remains? If everything becomes fluid, what is there to hold onto? Without any moral structure and traditions, a society descends into anarchy and mob rule, as it is clearly doing today.

As I educated myself, I started thinking and rethinking. I'd wake up in the middle of the night with the sudden realization that deeply held beliefs made no sense. Take the anti war stance of the left. Noble and sanctimonious and all that. But how easy it is to sit back and preach peace when you have an army defending you; to rail against the U.S. when you are protected by free speech laws; to demonize Israel, when you've never lived through the murderous pogroms of Tsarist Russia or the Holocaust. How hypocritical to lambast Big Business while you are making money from their stocks in your mutual fund portfolio (that is, until Obama took over). And how ludicrous to admire Chavez, Castro and all things socialist, when the closest experience you've had to standing on a bread line is queuing up for goat cheese/arugula pizza at Whole Foods ...

Though exhausted from lack of sleep, I also started waking up. I realized, to my utter incredulity, that conservatives made sense, and that I was one of them. I recalled Mark Twain's quip about his father: When Twain was a teenager, he thought his father was the stupidest man in the world; but when he became a young man in his 20's, his father had many intelligent things to say. Twain couldn't believe how much his father had learned in those years! Like Twain, I grew up and saw the world as it is. Yes it would be nice to save the planet, to eliminate hunger, and to make everyone good and righteous. But humans don't have the power to do that. To walk around, as I did, with utopian images that didn't match reality was to view life through the eyes of a child. An adult understands that civility matters, people need to be held accountable for their behavior, and protecting yourself and your country are moral imperatives.