As I am sure like many of us here, I too have my own history of Republicanism in my closet. In my case, it was pre-ordained that I would grow up as a Republican. I was raised in the middle-class bedroom community of Huntington Beach, CA, in Conservative Orange County. I was indoctrinated with Randianism and Trickle-Down Economics Monday through Saturdays, and with Protestant Christianity on Sundays. So it is no surprise that in my first election as I left High School that I would be voting for Ronald Reagan’s second term.
But looking back, there were always signs that the teachings of Republicanism weren’t finding as fertile ground with me as it still does today for all too many people. One failed “lesson” in particular stands out: Back in the early 70’s, our housing tract was surrounded by farms, typically growing cauliflower and lettuce and such, and they were always being worked by Hispanic farm workers, or “illegals” in the disparaging vernacular of today. But they were totally cool people, and always had a pleasant word in broken English for a couple snot-nosed kids watching them from the top of our fence, and would frequently throw some extra of the crop to us. Then one year, our family took a cruise from Los Angeles down to Acapulco for vacation. All I remember from the cruise was two things...those crazy cliff-divers seeming to laugh at the risks they took for our enjoyment, and the huge amount of poverty I saw at every port of call. It was my first exposure to poverty on this kind of scale, especially the economic disparity of masses of poor living in tin-roof shanties right next to expensive sea-side condo towers, and it shook even a sheltered Orange County bubble-dweller like me to my core. I remember asking my Dad why so many people were living like that, and his response was “because they are lazy and would rather live like that than work harder to live better”. I didn’t reply, but I recall looking out at all those shacks, and thinking that this explanation just didn’t make any sense. All those people couldn’t just be “lazy”, especially when they were basically the same people who I saw every day sweating in the hot sun on the other side of our fence working those farms and not getting rich doing it! Even a 10 year old could see something just wasn’t right in the narrative I was being fed. Time went on, I was exposed to further Republican teachings, like “Welfare Queens” and “Anchor Babies”... and to my shame today I admit to trying to fit those teachings into my world view. But they increasingly sat worse and worse with me, like swallowing some leftovers that have been in the refrigerator too long, I just couldn’t digest them and relief could only come by purging them from my system.
And that purge did come once I left that Orange County bubble and struck out on my own for college. Yes, you might argue, college is in its own way a “shelter” from reality for a Middle-Class kid. But I’d say that college is what you make of it, and I used that time to challenge what I had been taught, to learn new ways of seeing the world, and to interact more with people and cultures different than the monochromatic world of my youth. I quickly came to see the racism and biases that the “Welfare Queens” and “the poor are lazy” memes were built on. I came to understand that how hard one works in America all too often has little correlation to the amount of income one gets for that work. And ultimately, I came to realize that the country I wanted to live in was not one where we disparaged the poor as “lazy” or “moochers” as a rationale for us who are more fortunate to hoard our wealth. I wanted to live in an America where we all worked together as a society to lift everyone up, even those who could not lift themselves. I rejected the racism and “otherism” that was so endemic in Republicanism. At the end of the day, I wanted to have my time I am granted on Earth to be one where I advocated and worked for making the world a better place, instead of spending it in narcissistic self-absorption and hating and fearing “the other”.
But even today, even as a proud Progressive, I still carry some leftovers from that Conservative upbringing. I am a strong proponent of “fiscal discipline”, but unlike Conservatives today, I believe that fiscal discipline doesn’t mean we should cut or end our vital social insurance spending or investments, and instead that we should simply pay for them by a strong Progressive tax structure. I believe in “Personal Responsibility”, but unlike Conservatives today, personal responsibility doesn’t mean to me ignoring the plight of those who can’t or won’t take care of themselves, just that those of us who do have the intelligence, luck, and work ethic endeavor to take that personal responsibility to better ourselves and our country. And while I am now an agnostic and no longer believe in a Judeo-Christian anthropomorphic deity, I still do believe that the teachings of Christ with respect to our duties with regards to treatment of “the least among us” is a Truth that should be heeded. Ultimately, like an “a la carte buffet”, I took what I wanted from my Conservative upbringing and adopted it to fit into a more healthy world view, moving Forward and throwing away all the hate, fear, and bigotry that much of the Conservative world view revolves around.