What happened Iain, did you get burned off by a female lefty and now you just hate lefties full stop?
Ray Dixon
A few things over time Ray, it is a long story so I will try to give you the “Readers Digest” version
I come from a working class background and it was only natural that I should have been a Labor voter. I sung “It’s time” in ‘72 in fact my first vote ever was for Gough, my dad was secretary of the local ALP branch. One of the best times in my life was the many hours we spent playing chess and trying to solve the problems of the world. I hated Kerr and Frazer just like a true believer should, heck I even marched with the International Socialists one year. But Then I went to Uni and my disillusionment with the left really began to set in. I discovered that the most rabid leftists were the silvertails, you find them everywhere, those kids from the middle and upper classes who have discovered far left politics and who preach as only the newly converted can but it is easy to do that when you have mummy and daddy providing financial backup. They talk the talk but they never walk the walk. Even so I was still a committed Labor voter, and I celebrated the Hawke and Keating years with the rest, heck I even partook of the expected “hating Howard” sessions with my mates in the early years of that government. Like so many Labor voters of that time I was almost distraught with the way the party seemed to defeat itself with it’s unending squabbles and very poor leadership choices. I still voted for them though, but It was very much on the “chose the lesser of the evils” principle. The turning point for me came when I watched the towers fall on that fateful day in September 2001, not so much watching the towers fall but the reaction of the left to that atrocity, the excuse making and denials from the left of the magnitude of this act of war. Like Nick Cohen I began to really see they hypocrisy in many of the left’s positions on the conflicts around the globe where they preach peace but do not stand against despots, especially if those despots are aligned against the USA or Israel.
So the reality is that my transformation to a more conservative political stance was a gradual one and like many people my views do not fit comfortably with a board stereotype of a “conservative”. We are all individuals and we take what we learn from the experience of our lives and fashion our personal philosophy but when it comes to choosing who we are willing to vote for we often have to chose the lesser of two evils. during the last term of the the Howard government I saw them as being like the curates egg, good in parts. On industrial relations I thought the “work Choices” regime was terrible, stupid and unnecessary, But on security and defence they had the right idea, on social issues like the northern territory intervention I think they did the right thing , but took too long to find the courage to act. On the issue of Climate change I agreed with their scepticism and I could see that acts such as signing the Kyoto protocol was pointless and actually contrary to our own interests.
So there you have it, I am conservative on, the virtues of personal effort and small business, law and order and a believer that the only way to address terrorism is by being willing to take decisive action, liberal on personal liberty and sexual morality, sceptical on AGW but an environmentalist at heart. I used to believe in a collectivist approach to life until I lived in share houses and had to endure too many tedious house meetings where “consensus” may have been achieved but the dunny still did not get cleaned by the person who’s turn it was to do it.
This morning I set out to answer your question Ray, but defining why we change what we believe in is never simple and every point seems to throw up new things that really require exposition and I have to start thinking about making dinner for my family (rainbow trout from down your way, and baked rosemary potatoes tonight) which brings me to my final point and that is that I am a family man these days and that certainly makes you think about the world differently. It is like you are more truly invested in the future than the time B.C. (before children). I just hope that this makes my view of life just a little clearer, and explains why I have given up on the politics of the left, but then again, trying to explain that is what this blog is really all about and that is, as they say, a work in progress…
Cheers Comrade Ray
Filed under: AGW and climate change, Australian Politics, Blogging, Federal politics, Indigenous Issues, Political Correctness, The War On Terror, World Events, international politics, the Law | Tagged: Why I blog, becoming a conservative
So my theory’s out the window then Iain?
PS: That was well explained and we are indeed “a work in progress”. Gee, I even found myself yelling “fuck off” at the TV when that old preservation society bag stopped Kerry A. from demolishing her old dump of a house (er, refer ABC “Bed of Roses” – it’s based on this area!)
‘Fraid so mate
Sorry but I missed “A bed of roses” but one of the reasons that I appreciate your blog is that we face the same sort of development issues that you write about in your blog. In the eight years I have lived on this mountain development has gone bonkers and there is an eternal conflict between those who want to preserve the reasons that people want to live and visit here and those who want to turn the hillsides into something like the suburbs on steroids.
Then you’ve got those who want to turn the clock back. It’s hard to find the right balance but the most important thing is to protect the environment especially the mountains and the hills. We’re fortunate that ALL our hills and mountains are State or National forest so the only development that can take place is on the valley floors (well except at the ski resorts and that’s a bloody disgrace up there). Even then you’ve got those who want to put a full stop to Bright’s growth and that’s pretty dumb in a town that’s as good as 100% dependent on the tourism and building industries.
The turning point for me came when I watched the towers fall on that fateful day in September 2001…
So the reality is that my transformation to a more conservative political stance was a gradual one…
Kind of paradoxical, Iain. Sounds like you heard of 9/11, pooed your pants and jumped ship to the Right. At the time I knew that 9/11 would change the world but I also knew that it would be used and misused to change people’s minds. I don’t know anyone of ‘the Left’ who has actively supported 9/11, but I do know many of ‘the Right’ who have used the emotion of it to silence debate. And to me that dishonours the 9/11 dead as much as any other rhetoric.
Mark,
read my piece again because you just don’t get it at all if that is your interpretation. I am talking about how I saw it and not the way that others view those events.
No, but what you did say was that you were remarkably ‘transformed’ by the “excuse making and denials from the left of the magnitude of this act of war.” Well, I’ve seen just as much of that from the Right as from the Left.
The right’s reaction was to invade Iraq (who had nothing to do with 9/11) and create more havoc. Arguably that has kept terrorism focused on one country but it’s also reinforced the hatred and spurred other cells to develop. In the end you have to engage the enemy not agitate them. It’s just smarter.
Mark
My piece is about what moved me, not what moved “the right” who at the very least recognise that the problem is all about the Islamic extremist’s inability to come to terms with modernity and a notion of a secular society.
Ray
The war in Iraq did actually come sometime after 9/11 but I think you make the mistake of thinking that the Islamists are amenable to negotiation or reason, for them it is their way or no way. In fact what we see as reasonable compromise is very often viewed as weakness.