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I Was
Once a Right-Winger
August 9, 2001
by
Kevin Wetherington
Until now I have never voted Democratic. At one time my heroes
were Rush Limbaugh, Ronald Reagan, Dick Armey and the usual
cast of characters. However, over the past year I started
to look a little closer at my life in that meaning became
more important than material things. And for some strange
reason I started to try to look at what this country was all
about, what was happening and who it was happening to.
Even in my right-wing heydey I always pandered to blacks
and gays by saying "our philosophy" works for you, etc. And
one issue on which I have always been a black sheep of the
right-wing was the environment. My response to that was to
either ignore the destruction so as not to indict my deity
(corporations and capitalism) or to actively promote the insidious
notion that private property was actually the panacea for
environmental degradation (can you believe that?).
Sadly, the same outrage (anti-government paranoia) that fueled
the death of 168 men, women and children (all INNOCENT) in
Okie City was burning inside me. While I didn't condone this
act, in my mind I "understood" why it was done.
Looking back at this evil thinking makes me sick. Over the
years I have started to look objectively at the world. Why
did I promote rage in concern to incidents in Waco and Ruby
Ridge, but you would hear nary a word about the same type
of atrocities committed against black people by thug police
departments? Where is the right-wing rage there?
I was sympathetic to militias. And keep in mind I am not
and have never been a neo-nazi, gun toting, skin head who
didn't think the holocaust happened. Yet, here I was, an educated,
reasonably intelligent hard working American actually paying
the modicum of respect to the militant right-wing.
In my transition from right to left I only recently faced
the stark truth, which was that I no longer respected or believed
in the ideals of the conservative movement. In fact, I now
held those in contempt. However, where to turn? After dabbling
around with libertarian "theology" I slowly drifted
away from that too.
Initially, I - like most on the right wing - thought any
form of Government regulation of the private economy was a
evil plot to foster Marxism on the country. However, after
an objective, concerted effort to find the roots of the many
labor, human, and environmental regulations I realized many
of these "restrictions" of economic freedom were
grass roots movements of liberal populism. These people had
stood up for protections: Protections from rotten meat, shoddy
dangerous products, monopolies, human rights exploitation,
environmental degradation, racism, sexism, equal rights infringement
and so on.
Here I was rejecting everything I stood for since the time
I was old enough to utter those words complete with drool
off my chin, "Dada…Im a rightist."
I was never as openly anti-gay, anti-black, anti-this or
anti-that than my fellow neo-nazis (er…conservatives), but
laughed at gays, played race fear against blacks and called
anyone who didn't kowtow to my archaic pablum a communist.
Even when a liberal said they were in favor of the minimum
wage I would yell "socialist," all the while knowing
that socialism was simply a state where government owned the
large factors of production. Minimum wage didn't and doesn't
instruct government to buy up large industry and run them,
it only sets a puny-assed minimum for people who bust their
humps making others rich.
Even though I had moved from the right I still had it in
mind that there was no way I was a liberal. You know how hard
it is to finally come to grips in agreeing with a philosophy
you have held in contempt - even hatred - for two decades?
On social programs, etc. I looked at liberals who were actually
trying to help people and make this country "a more perfect
union" and castigated them as selfish leftists. However,
I looked around for conservative alternatives to the welfare
state, affirmative action, equal rights, human rights, environmental
respect/protection and found the movement void of any idea.
Hell, the right-wing doesn't even pay lip-service to these
issues.
A true axiom of the right-wing is "fuckem." Even
worse than just a patent disregard for that which has no power
and that which has no voice, the right-wing seeks to entrench
and exploit all in the name of freedom. No matter how tightly
you wrap hate in clichés such as "freedom," it is
still perverse hatred.
Additionally, the right-wing holds the Constitution up on
a pedestal as "their" ideals. In studying the Constitution
I find their claims to be ludicrous and self-serving. Their
arrogance is a direct rebuttal to an open mind. When Rush
Limbaugh makes inaccurate statements that are then mimicked
by his hapless followers, I find myself sinking in a sea of
conservative idiocy. And all along, I was right there with
them goose-stepping to the beat of an ideology that has a
lot of followers but no center. No real ideas. No real solutions.
On one hand they whine about government, then load their
districts up with pork, build and use roads paid for by government,
accept cancer treatment supported by government, use the GI
bill, support the military, use police and fire protection,
attend public universities, use public lands for grazing,
hunting and fishing, drive a Harley-Davidson (government saved
this company), accept matching campaign funds, build jails,
etc., etc., ad nauseum.
Their hypocrisy doesn't stop at politics. It continues right
through their seedy morality. Most Republicans now positively
disgust me and their greedy, selfish diatribes are hard to
even listen to without growing very angry. But, have I become
a liberal Democrat? Or even a progressive liberal? I now find
myself relating to, agreeing with and supporting Ron Wyden,
Paul Wellstone, Dick Durbin, Mark Udall, John Kerry and even
Bernie Sanders - all the while believing clowns like Tom DeLay,
Don Young, Larry Craig, Helen Chenowith and Rush Limbaugh
are a bunch of jack-booted psychopathic thugs.
So I guess it is time that I proudly pronounce myself as
the newest convert to liberalism in America, and forever renounce
the right-wing of this country. I am proud of this. I am free
and believe in my heart and mind the only party than can actually
save us from what can only be called the evil hypocrisy of
the right-wing is the Democratic Party. Now is the time to
stand up and fight. I'm with you.
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