A Conservative Growing Up in a Liberal World

I have heard it all. Working in an office for years surrounded by mostly liberal Democrats, growing up in a family almost exclusively Democratic, I have heard it all. I began hearing it from my youthful days when I asked the magic question of my father, a die-hard liberal Democrat. I heard it all through my college days from colleagues and friends, letting me know just how they felt about government and politics. I am still hearing it today, although it is coming from different people and in different places. I find myself most of the time scratching my head and keeping my mouth shut, mostly for the sake of staying at peace and at calm with myself and those around me. I will probably keep hearing it for the remainder of my life. Although I don't have all the answers (no one does), I know in my mind and in my heart that it is almost entirely rhetoric, some of which is being spit out daily by candidates and political pundits alike. It makes me sick and sometimes wanting to ignore everything in the real world, but I know I can't. I have to keep trying to make some sense of it all.

I grew up in one of those households where the work ethic is not questioned, arguments are kept to a minimum (because the parents are always right), and where politics is a closed subject. My father and mother worked hard all their lives giving us the best possible chance for survival and hoping that my sister and I would eventually come to live better lives. For a while my father worked in a union job, doing pretty well after previously having been employed in the hard labor world scratching for every penny he could earn. Although he saw the good with the bad in his workplace, he never changed his views on things, especially when it came to what he had been taught. You see, he taught us what he had been taught. I remember asking him that question the first time, when I was in junior high and was beginning to learn about politics. I asked him: what is the difference between Democrats and Republicans? I asked him knowing that he was a registered Democrat, and that most of our family simply accepted being a Democrat much like many accept being born a boy or a girl. He told me those traditional words, beliefs handed down from generation to generation, repeating the phrases that now seem surreal. He told me that the Democrats are for the working American, the middle class struggling people, and the poor and downtrodden. He told me that Republicans were for the rich, the well-off, the business owners and those born into better situations. I accepted his answer as members of most family do. I had no reason to question his words, and it had been taught to me that I shouldn't. I graduated from high school accepting that I, too, would be a Democrat and that I would have no reason to be any different.

As I began taking college classes I began to question the things around me. I began to question only parts of what my father had told me. My first paycheck was an eye opener, since I finally saw how taxes were done and how I had worked so hard to get so little. I wondered why suddenly, at the commencement of my work life, I was to basically work so hard for the government so they could take so much from me. Where was that money going, and who was using it? The answers were not easy to find or accept because my father and mother had worked hard and had accepted the same principle, of paying taxes and not asking where it was being spent. I heard answers like; it is going to help those in need, it is helping the poor, the aged, the children who are hungry and don't have as much, it is going to the sick and the dying. It all seemed noble and justified. But when I was asked to pay even more, even though I wasn't making that much more, I began to wonder. How MUCH is this money going to all of those noble and just causes? Then I took my first economics class, and my eyes and ears began to open wide. I began to ask myself many questions as well.

You see, I began to see that not everything is what it appears to be. Many of my liberal friends would constantly comment, not knowing whether I was on their side, on how Republicans, and basically conservative Republicans, do not think for themselves, and that they are told what to think and how to think. I always have scratched my head on that, and on other strangely opposite beliefs of those around me who were simply raised to believe pretty much the same things I was raised to believe. Even today households everywhere are doing the same thing, indoctrinating young people in the philosophies of the two party, naturally biased system that we have. Only later would I tell them whether or not I was a Democrat or a Republican. It always seemed better that way.

Here is the dilemma I faced. What I had been taught did not make sense. It didn't make sense because everything else I had experienced and been taught in both college classes and at work told me differently. For instance, if liberal policies were working, then why did it not seem that our poverty levels were not going down. I was told at one time in the 1990s that the Democratic Party had been in control (by majority) of both parts of Congress for forty years, and yet poverty had not disappeared. In fact, it seemed that it was increasing. It was being replaced or reinforced by welfare, a system of government entitlements that were being increased and were becoming more and more expensive. I began to see where the actual money was going, but that wasn't all of it. I noticed that politicians who were talking about abolishing poverty were getting richer and richer. I noticed also that they were constantly asking for more money! And guess from who? You got it, everyone who made money, including the hardworking American middle class. So if all of this helping the poor was getting anywhere, then why were more and more people needing it, and why was it getting more expensive. It is at this point that I came to a realization: that if you keep giving and giving to people so that they don't have a reason to work, then they won't. Also, if you keeping taking more and more from taxpaying Americans, especially middle class Americans, than those Americans will have less and less for themselves. They will eventually come to a point where they will question their own work efforts and begin to despise government. I still scratch my head on how obvious it all is.

Here is the dilemma within the dilemma, though. Growing up in a liberal Democratic household, I heard the excuse that it would be better to spend money, more or less wasting it, on trying to do something than it would be to find a real solution. Imagine that, if you will. It is still accepted by most in this country that if you pay taxes, and those taxes are spent on programs that are for helping people in need, even though the programs are basically NOT WORKING, at least you can feel good about having done something. Where is the logic in all of that? Imagine having someone fix your car, and after finding out that your car still does not work, you give those same mechanics MORE money to fix it again, or some more! That is the failed logic, although we are not willing to admit it.

My liberal friends have told me many times that Republicans, or conservatives in general, are heartless, unforgiving souls who only wish to make and keep money. Remember, the Democrats are for the working and poor classes where the Republicans are for the rich, correct? I never could figure out that if Democratic politicians are rich, than why are they Democrats? Where and how did they make their money? Failed reasoning is hard to accept in any form. The truth is I have both Democratic and Republican friends, and none of them are rich or heartless and unforgiving. In fact, I don't know any Americans who wish to steal from the elderly, starve the children and give to the filthy rich, including Republicans, and yet that is what I hear all the time from Democrats. I wonder where they get all this misinformation. Just because a conservative Republican does not want to waste more of his or her money on failed or failing programs doesn't mean that they don't care, or that they don't have a heart. It just may be that they want to spend their money on things that work rather than things that do not. I know I do.

This is a fact: the more taxes you pay government, the more they will spend. The more government spends, the bigger it gets. And the bigger government gets the more you will have to give them, not just money but rights and other things. Freedom does not go cheaply when huge government gets involved. It is said that no nation has ever been taxed into any kind of prosperity, and never will. I forget who said that, but I tried to change the wording a bit so as to not steal their thunder. But think about it. And guess what? A tax "surplus" is not something that is positive; it is something that comes about from 'over-taxation". A surplus of money also means that it will be spent on something, whether it be good or bad. That is basic economics.

So, what will it be? Should w continue teaching our children the old-fashioned differences between Democrat and Republican? Or should we tell the truth. The truth is that neither side has many answers. The truth is that Democrats have noble ideas, the ones about helping those in need. They want to "change" government, whatever that means. What they wish to do is wonderful, but I am sorry to say, it hasn't worked, and I don't believe it will work. You don't keep sinking more and more tax money into things in the hopes that suddenly one day every problem will be solved and things will work out. Nor should you ignore the problems. The biggest flaw, I guess, In being Republican is that free enterprise and small government means that people will do whatever they can to reach for the American dream, even if it means being greedy. Greed, I believe, is the biggest sin of the human race, and we don't seem to be able to help ourselves when it hits. We should not, however, think that being Republican means that we don't want to help make things better. Constantly raising taxes and overspending is not ever going to work. Fiscal responsibility is a duty we all have to contribute to, no matter who or what we are. Nor do I believe that the Republican Party is better than the Democratic Party. It is just that the philosophy of how things work is more positive and constructive through more conservative approaches than it is through liberal ones. That is simply how it works and does not work. If you keep giving your hard earned money to your "elected officials" they will keep spending it, no matter if it is being spent wisely or not. A friend once said to me that if you are not contributing to the solution then you are contributing to the problem. If you oil a squeaky door and it still keeps squeaking, you don't go out and buy more oil to drown the door; you may even have to change the door.

I once pondered on where the terms 'conservative" and "liberal" came from. Most would be surprise by what I found. The two terms do not represent the initial definitions that were given to them years ago. The term "conservative" was given early on in our country's history to the core beliefs of those who felt that government, even a democratic one, was better in the hands of the elite, those who had the ability and knowledge to run government. This came from the idea that the class control of the machine governing the nation was to be "conserved" or saved. Keep the status quo, in other words, because the nation could not be run by individuals who did not know how to run it. The term "liberal" came from the idea that government was meant to "liberate" or free the citizens it ruled, and give them the basic freedoms to choose and do what they basically wanted. We all know that those definitions have been lost or altered in ways we can't even appreciate, and when for instance could freedom be kept if you give more and more power to that very same government? Can our freedoms be saved if we let our government do what they will? Is government supposed to "take care" of its citizens as if they are helpless and unable to function? Or is it the right of the individuals to help government rule, even when sometimes it does not have every citizen in mind? The word 'disenfranchised" comes into mind when suggesting that some citizens are so taken care of that they are never encouraged or even permitted to try something on their own. Human nature tells us that motivation occurs from within as well as without, but that a human being will not even try if he or she is not encouraged to do so. Will a child ever grow up if it feels that it is more comfortable to stay in the home of his or her parents forever? Do we not tell even young adults that if they stay under our roof then they have to accept our terms? Thus the government takes care of so many and tells them they will do as they are told to continue to be taken care of, including voting for those who will supposedly serve but in reality we serve. The vicious circle may never end.

I write all of this in the hope that anyone reading it will begin to open their mind to the fact that things are not always what we are told, or taught. I still question the wisdom of believing, like many Democrats, that their politicians are so much better than the others'. It is not that they are any more honest, or any more able; it is simply because they believe in doing something that works better. Again, forty years of liberal Democratic control of Congress did not abolish poverty, or make government more efficient, or even make us better Americans. In the long run, we are the only ones that can do that. To get something done we are going to have to get over the traditional stigmas we have been raised on and start working truly together. The only way we are ever going to do that is to accept the truth, even when it hurts.

It brings to mind, if you still don't believe what I have said here, a situation that completely models this undying and unquestioning faith that Democrats have in their party, no matter what. It exists here in the city of Pittsburgh, Pa. Everyone here knows that the Democratic Party rules supreme: there has been no Republican in control of the city forever (or so it seems to us). The city also is in bankruptcy, has been losing population for years, and is trying to shake the doldrums that years of dropping tax revenues have created. It is simple why tax revenues have decreased: when you lose taxpaying citizens who move away you lose tax revenue. And yet, it is a statistical fact that although the population of the city has decreased for years, the number of government-paid workers has increased. We have overspent on just about every single program we can imagine. We have increased the number of police and firemen, we have kept increasing the salaries of most of those working for the government here, and yet the population does not warrant the reason for it. With decreased population and therefore decreased tax revenues, the only thing that the elected officials have come up with is, you got it, increasing taxes. Every tax imaginable can be increased, and many people even now avoid working and visiting the city simply because they save money going somewhere else. But, you can't tell the city's citizens that something must change because the only thing that can change is forbidden to even suggest. That would be to try some Republican plans for the city. Oh, no, there I said it. If Democratic policies have failed to bring Pittsburgh back, could it be that perhaps those policies should be replaced? But it will not happen because the Democratic Party here is so deeply entrenched that the Republicans have virtually given up hope. We reap what we so, don't you think? So the beat goes on and on and on. And Pittsburgh struggles to survive.

If you want to be part of the solution, sometimes you have to let go of things you have held on to all your life and put faith in something else. It is definite that if you wish to continue to trust your politicians, know matter what party they belong to, you will be taken advantage of and "duped". I believe that the founding fathers created our system of government so that people could be elected to serve, but we are now electing them so we can "serve" them. It will continue unless we change the way we think. Caring is half the battle. I only ask that you consider the past and look at the consequences. If something has been tried and tried again and again and it does not work, should it not be replaced? That, my friends, is why I am not a liberal Democrat. I don't simply believe that my party is all-knowing and omnipotent. We are only human. Think about these things as you vote.