"History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are."
-- David McCullough
Reflecting on the time I've spent on Daily Kos since September 2008, one of the more self-evident truths I've come to appreciate about those who participate here is that we are a complex group. We each come from a unique set of backgrounds, circumstances, families, geographies, cultures, and experiences. We are a diverse collection of individuals with similar and contrasting perspectives. We have made our fair share of mistakes, and have accomplished a variety of worthy deeds. In other words, we're all human -- even if we appear to be mere pixels on a screen.
We each have a story to share. I'm a strong believer that if perhaps we took the time to better understand our personal histories and how we have come to take the political positions that we do, we would have much more constructive and civil debate with one another. So with that in mind, I'd like to share a brief story about myself.
I grew up in a suburb of Chicago during the 80's and 90's. My parents -- two physicians -- raised a family of three boys who enjoyed a variety of different activities: Reading, writing, music, theatre, movies, and sports. As I have written in previous diaries, I am an atheist, an avid musician and classical music lover, and a diehard fan of basketball and the Chicago Bulls. As should be apparent from my username, watching the Bears play football each week was a pastime at our house.
Politics is a subject that I had loosely followed even as a kid. During the night of the 1992 election, I recall delivering an index card to my Mother which had the name "Clinton" circled on it once it was determined that Bill Clinton had won the Presidency. During adolescence, I began to read about political affairs more closely in the newspaper and, soon, the internet, though it wasn't until later that I could understand how I formed my individual positions on the issues. My political philosophy -- like all things in life -- is something that evolved from earlier roots.
The reason that I self-identify as liberal is because I believe there are disparities in equality and justice that need to be addressed and fixed by those with the power to fix them. Furthermore, liberalism always meant to me that government has the necessary obligation to provide for the common welfare and equal opportunity. All of that stands in contrast to what I saw as the politically conservative philosophy that stated that inequality is primarily a function of individual responsibility, and is an acceptable outcome that should not be addressed by the state.
Liberalism is, of course, a term that has varying definitions for different people, even among those who would claim it as their underlying philosophy. But as Regis University Professor Jim L. Riley wrote twenty years ago, "Whereas liberalism embraces societal and governmental change as both necessary and desirable, conservatism does indeed adopt a much more doubtful view of the desirability of altering proven institutions and societal values." Liberalism as I came to understand it as a political perspective was not something I adopted at any one specific moment during my coming-of-age, but something that I grew to accept as a better and more accurate way to look at the world and apply my actions than conservatism.
My parents believed that, too. Though they raised me in financially well-off circumstances, my Mother and Father grew up in poor families during their youth, and as such remained in adult life empathetic to a progressive vision to aid and care for those less fortunate. My Mother was forced to take a separate job while going through nursing school, and today, her work often involves caring for children whose parents were quite poor and didn't have the resources to pay for medical services. She and my father worked hard for many years paying off their student loan debts accumulated from medical school. That my parents were eventually able to provide a solid financial future for their sons is perhaps the greatest gift they could have given us. To this day I am extremely grateful for it.
I was very, very fortunate in my childhood. There are socioeconomic opportunities that I was provided during my youth that many children and families in this country (and elsewhere around the world) never have. Many of them have faced a variety of obstacles: Poverty, unemployment, crippling financial debt, poor schools, discrimination, cultural stigma, crime in the community, and lack of access to health care, among a few. None of these things are new, but they are things of which I remind myself every day. They also serve as a reminder for why I think one of conservatism's core tenets is fundamentally flawed. Many families struggle for years and years trying to provide a safe, financial future for their children, and it isn't necessarily for lack of trying or a failure of "personal responsibility" -- sometimes those aforementioned external forces stand in the way and produce devastating consequences.
I haven't yet spoken about a position on a specific political issue, so I'll provide two examples. I've written many times about my opposition to war. That too is something that has roots in my family. My Father was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War and, on November 16, 1969, attended what is considered to be the largest single-day anti-war protest in American history. That was a period of time where, as he told me, waking up every day was just another day that one had to accept that we were a nation at war, for reasons that he could never fully understand; and that when it was over, it just "faded away."
Much like my Mother's experiences with socioeconomic problems, I suspect that my Father's background is something that helped shaped my perspective of war and national security. His sober assessment of Vietnam is something that I share about both Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite the differences that exist between each conflict, the players involved, and separate eras of American history, I've long held that the costs of remaining and escalating in the Middle East -- both the financial and human toll -- outweigh the benefits to be gained from the mission. My maternal Grandfather -- a sharp and well-read veteran of World War II -- made the same observation about the Iraq War back in 2007, when he simply uttered the words, "I don't know what we're doing there."
On some issues, I came to take a position not necessarily because of my parents' experiences, but rather as a result of my friends' experiences, or my own search for knowledge. Back in my junior high days, I used to advocate that marijuana remain an illegal substance -- a belief that was borne from the fear that pot-smoking was an activity only done by irresponsible, "bad students." To this day, I have never smoked up. But over time, many factors would contribute to my complete reversal of opinion about marijuana legislation, such as:
- Reading books on the history of brutal policies and imprisonment of pot users in this country, particularly minorities.
- Reading scientific articles on marijuana's medical benefits and adverse effects.
- Reading newspaper articles on the costs of the War on Drugs, and worrying that marijuana prohibition was causing more problems than it was solving.
- Seeing peers from college get busted and thrown in jail for possession, wondering how pot could be criminalized and not alcohol when pot isn't nearly as addicting nor toxic, according to the scientific evidence I had seen.
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These are but a few reasons explaining how my political philosophy evolved into what it is today. I admit that it is probably not the most remarkable story you've ever read -- I imagine there are several others here who have more compelling personal backgrounds than I do. I also acknowledge that others have made their own personal journeys and reflections on specific political matters, and may have come to very different conclusions than mine. That is something that I try to keep in mind when debating others who fall on the opposite side of the political spectrum, including extended family members. Again, I write this as a way of illustrating the fact that we are the products of our history, our culture, and our experience. Perhaps if we occasionally took the time to share that history, we might be able to better understand the roots of our disagreements.
As a final note, I would also argue that despite whatever differences might exist between our personal experiences, pretty much all of us who regularly contribute on Daily Kos want Barack Obama to succeed -- we just have separate ideas for which policies we would like to see enacted, and which ones will make his Presidency successful. In the heat of passionate discussion over whether or not we support certain policies of the President, I think we tend to forget that from time to time.