Our Political Sensibilities Change Over Time — And That’s OK
Here’s a conversation with a friend that readers may find interesting.
Friend: I was initially conservative in my youth, but watching what happened in Reagan’s second term contributed to my rejection of the GOP.
Craig: I didn’t get involved in politics until I was about 15, at which point I became a progressive. But of course I had the influence of going to a Quaker (pacifist) school.
Friend: I was deluded enough to cast my very first vote against Carter in 1980 because of inflation and the oil crisis. I then voted against Reagan in ’84.
Craig: I never voted for a Republican, but there was a short period of time in which I was a libertarian; I had just read a book on the subject that impressed me. In the 1996 election when Jake (my son, see pic) was just under four years old, I was carrying him on my shoulders into polling place and on into the voting booth, when he hollered out as I checked the boxes, “Libertarian! Libertarian! Libertarian!” I admired his instinctive love of democracy, but of course I had to “shush” him.
Soon thereafter I realized that, yes, the government is bloated and will never act with the efficiency of the private sector, but wealthy people and their corporations were (and have always been) simply getting richer, normally by harming the rest of us. Many were polluting the planet and using our skies and waterways as their own private sewers, and I could see that without the regulation that libertarianism negated, this was only going to get worse. I’ve been a Green, voting with the Democrats when the tide of the election seems close, ever since.
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