UNSENT MAIL To Ma & Pa: Liberalism = A World View Founded in Love and Curiosity and supported by science, Conservatism Founded in Fear and Purposeful Ignorance

So, I haven't done an UNSENT MAIL in a while. I had an ongoing discussion with my folks a while back, about Universal Healthcare, and socialist policies in general. Needless to say, I was of a vastly different idea then they do, and I got so sick of this ongoing argument where they were treating me like they are incapable of understanding how I turned out so different from them. So I decided to try and explain to them what I had discovered about the ideology upon which I was raised, and how my own beliefs now contrasted theirs.

As polite and intellectually honest as I try to be in this email, it remained UNSENT precisely because I knew, when it was done, that my folks would have taken huge exception and found a way to be personally insulted by it, whether that would have been right or not. So here it is for the world to read, instead. This is at least a year old or more, BTW....I  have also edited out personal epithets like references to Mom and Dad, as well as any themes that were pertinent to news-item specifics from when I wrote it that seemed out of place now.

I know that there is some comfort in feeling that there is a side who is “right” and a side who is “wrong” on all things political and ideological. Everyone is guilty of aligning their thoughts on something that they haven’t personally done adequate research on, with the “Default” for most people being the same viewpoint held by others of similar ideology who may have had more time to research an issue…Meaning if you’re anti-tax, anti-abortion, and religious, and haven’t thought much about immigration, you’ll probably instinctively take on the same views on immigration as others who share your views on other things---at least until a point comes where you have done your own research and come to your own conclusions. The problem is when not enough people have done the research, and too many are just rattling around the same, empty, ignorant opinion because that’s the viewpoint of most other people in your corner.   

It turns out that for me personally, the reason I have not been able to help myself in sort of being the political black sheep of the family, (if I may call it like it is for a moment!,) is that I have always been very insistent on UNDERSTANDING all sides too a viewpoint, when I am trying to understand an issue in order to be better suited to debate my thoughts on it. I also came to realize that you don't grow as a person when your ideology determines what you can and can't learn and read and know and think about something, but rather you grow when the things you think and read and know and learn about something determines what your ideology relative to that topic is. When an opinion I end up forming is based in a sound grasp of the actual appropriate details one would need to feel justified in having an opinion, that opinion very, very frequently ended up being a different one then I had when all I knew were the right wing echo chamber soundbites I picked up to justify opinions, while very young.

This realization dawned on me once I was out of high school, (and prison,) and I started working with other people who were part of the larger world out there; It was clear that I hadn’t really been able to subject anything that I’d absorbed growing up in a (very) conservative household to the sort of scrutiny that would allow me to truly understand both sides any issue I thought I understood, and thought I held a validly created opinion on.

I was starting to be the clear loser in a lot of discussions about politi-centric topics. I was a very effective debater, even very young, but in my ability to think on my feet, and use intuition and an innate ability to out-debate most people even given very little substance to work with (at least whey they were all my age, and equally devoid of substance, as in school), but given a debate where somebody also has the benefit of having relevant, confident facts and a practiced argument and data to support it, who could calmly and effectively use those facts in a way that rendered my (planted, non-factually based Fox News-esque) overly simplified opinions seem pretty limp-wristed… 

Speaking as a former conservative, I can tell you that if you start with a blank slate, open mind, and do research on what side of an argument, you, as a citizen who is morally and ethically inclined towards fairness should come to on any of the topics that sort of define the antiquated stances people associate with tea party, focus on the family conservatism, you will almost invariably come to the opposite conclusion, assuming your heart is hate-free, that you have no corporatist agenda, and that you feel normal compassion for others when they are not as fortunate as you may be. Things that I used to be, per the default conservative mindset, and being indoctrinated to think this way, which it turns out that the exact opposite is how I actually feel about that topic (with the exception being the religions one. I don't feel the exact opposite. I feel anti-ALL organized religions, now):

Beliefs which were:

Anti-homosexuality, anti-environmentalist, anti-government, anti-abortion, anti-welfare, anti-tax, anti-department of education, anti-science, anti-gun-control (of any kind), anti-other-religions-(besides Christianity and Judaism), anti-universal-healthcare, anti-European, anti-intellectual, anti-immigration, anti-climate-change, anti-wikileaks,anti-occupy-wall-street, anti-union…..

……..and frequently also with viewpoints that are:

Pro-war-in-general (though I'd never been pro-war-on-drugs, like many neo-cons were, even when younger), pro-military spending, in favor of granting more and more rights to corporations, pro-Ayn Randian, pro-death-penalty, pro-integration-of-church-and-state, pro-Israel, pro-abstinence-only-sex-ed (this pretty much ended earlier then the rest, when I started having sex), highly nationalistic, pro-wealthy/1-percenter even when poor on my own (Lord knows why), as well as initial agreement with the almost universally conservative idea they tend to believe we are in the midst of a decades long, severe moral decaying as a species in general. 

Good riddance, now, 15 years and counting. But you need to understand, that I cannot HELP but believe what I do now, because I've become informed on these things. Information leads to progress, not regressive status-quo maintenance.

I found, in having made a transition from not knowing anything but these ways of thinking, to a person who thinks for himself, and had to thusly come to conclusions on all these and many more political topics for myself, because the one thing I seemed to continually notice as a theme when I actually delved into the research of any given topic: The stance I previously held, once balanced with the known facts was morally or logically UNTENABLE, or both. I learned that all too often, it was almost like the people around me growing up had all willfully and collectively agreed to simply maintain as ignorant a position as possible regarding the facts, science, writing, or modern viewpoints on things because even they were prone to switch their beliefs when they had learned too much on their own, by accident, to continue ignoring other people’s frustrated arguments and sticking with the side of an argument they now recognize as futile or wrong.

Therein lies the rub, though. The reason people say conservatism is close minded is because it IS. By nature it’s a static set of immutable, immovable, unalterable attempts to maintain beliefs held the past, which qualify now as regressive because enough people have moved past seeing these views as conservatives now do, by default. To maintain antiquated, often bigoted, religiously based beliefs in the information age, one must exist almost exclusively in an echo-chamber that simply does not allow new ideas inside, for fear they affect to many people in the echo chamber in a way that reduces the effectiveness of the single ideology rattling around in there.

This is how I discovered something else out, that I am finding, as I age, to be a universal truth. Contrary to the old adages that people are liberal while young, and conservative as they age, I am the opposite, and so are many people I know. Certainly the following is true: I almost NEVER find people who were once liberal just “turning” all super conservative at some point in their lives. Many, many, people are the opposite, though, like myself, who were conservative from the get-go, end up being very liberal later in life. These people, myself included, are the ones who are not so beholden to ideology-maintenance that don’t any longer have that desire to REALLY get at the core truth, or as close to what works for them as a core truth, by understanding a topic inside and out. When people are willing to become informed, educated, and well versed in factual information and/or science, it doesn’t matter what they started out as. They almost always end up as liberal. It’s the national intellectual home for curious minds who would prefer to rule the world with love, rather than fear.