Converts

It occurred to me the other day as I was listening to an interview/book promo on the TV with Bernard Goldberg. He’s the former CBS reporter who wrote Bias which “exposed” the rampant liberal bias amongst the media elite. I put quotes around exposed because it’s not like we didn’t know it was there all along. Sort of like saying Balboa “discovered” the Pacific Ocean. What, nobody knew it was there before? But I digress.

Goldberg is one of those who lived his life believing that liberalism was the enlightened point of view to which all intelligent people subscribed. All his friends and colleagues were liberals and therefore, he received a lot of positive reinforcement for his views. But then he had an epiphany. I don’t know what particular experience triggered his conversion to conservatism, I didn’t read his book. But there are others. Dennis Miller, Ron Silver and Evan Sayet come to mind, mainly because they are celebrities. (Sayet is a writer who ironically used to write comedy for leftist Bill Maher.) And their conversions were directly related to 9/11. But ask any conservative and he’ll probably be able to tell you of someone he knows who is a conservative convert. I consider myself one. Growing up in Texas in the 60’s and 70’s, being liberal was a natural, rebellious position to adopt. It wasn’t until I got serious about getting my college degree and entering the workforce that I began to question liberalism. Then I moved to Madison and found out what liberals were really like. John Wayne had a good line about it. He said “Sure, I was a socialist....when I was a sophomore in college.” The Great Communicator himself, Ronald Reagan, began as a Democrat, as did one of his great cabinet appointments, Jeanne Kirkpatrick.

So what was it that occurred to me? Where are the conservatives who converted to liberalism? The only one I could think of was writer David Brock, and I’m not so sure he actually qualifies as a convert. Brock wrote the hit piece, The Real Anita Hill (a bit nutty, and a bit slutty) when he was writing for the American Spectator. It was a reaction to her testimony that tried to sink Clarence Thomas in his bid to get on the Supreme Court. But Brock’s sudden about face may have had as much to do with him coming out of the closet as a gay man as it did about his politics. And even then, he didn’t reject all of his previous writings. He merely said he was “blinded” and mislead by right wing partisans.

Regardless, liberals convert to conservatism due to either a sudden epiphany or a slow realization that you could dub maturity. In other words, either they were mugged or they grew up. But maturity doesn’t ever seem to turn conservatives into liberals and I can’t think of any event or trauma that causes folks to go liberal.