How I Became a Conservative, Part I

Hi folks! A lot has happened since we last updated. The new Obama administration has taken office and within only two weeks, so many momentous events have sprung up in the world of politics that they necessitated the end to our blogging hiatus.

So, if you have been keeping up with the news, you will have observed that the Obama administration has begun its plan of taking this nation toward a significantly different political and ideological path from the last presidency. In our previous posts, we never explained why we opposed a far-left Democrat president, as Obama is indeed turning out to be. So it is with great tardiness that I present you this next post, devoted to how I, Lisa Smiley, became a political conservative.

Co-writer of this blog, my brother, Aaron, and I grew up in the little islands near Australia and Antarctica, formally known as New Zealand. New Zealand is a beautiful little country, just as good-looking as what you see in the thrilling movie trilogy of The Lord of the Rings.

Anyhow, New Zealand’s government is a bit more socialist in comparison to what we have here in America. For example, government mandates comprehensive social security, unemployment benefits, child support benefits, and socialized healthcare. But all of this, I was totally unconscious of throughout my juvenile years, being the typical youth.

So my eighteenth birthday came around, and what do you know? It was election year! So off I went to vote for my favored party and I voted proudly for the Labour Party! Our equivalent to the Democrat Party here. Well, that was kind of a no brainer – I was young and the rightist National Party was just too uncool for a high schooler like me to vote for. Moreover, those Labour people stood for values like helping the poor, making sure the rich don’t get too greedy, and giving money to students like me to go to college. The opposing National Party, I heard, was just all about businesses getting their way… or something like that.

You see, New Zealand in general is pretty socialist and liberal. Religion there holds hardly a place in the public or political arena. When I became a born-again Christian at the age of 16, I could count about three other believers in the whole grade of around 150 students. Furthermore, I did my share of America-bashing. Americans were sooo stupid! And everyone but the celebrities was overweight. When Bush won the U.S. presidential election in 2000, I remember thinking, “that’s the end of America!” I prayed to God He’d have mercy on that nation.

Funnily enough, my family decided to move over here right after I finished high school. When I arrived I was still the typical liberal young person. In moral matters, however, I was a pro-life, pro-one-man-one-woman-marriage advocate due to my Christian faith, but that had nothing to do with politics.

2004 came around and it was election year again in the Americas. Having caught up a bit on politics at church, I realized one party was for abortion and the other was against. One party wanted to redefine marriage and the other wanted to leave it that way. I never thought these moral issues were so political, but I guessed I was wrong. So I decided to root for those Republicans that year instead. Not that I could vote, but I showed my support by telling everyone else to.

However, being a two-issue voter was kind of a blow. When someone would bring up economics, I was scrambling to make something intelligible up. One person brought up how Bill Clinton was such a great Democrat president since he had gotten rid of the whole national debt! Wow, I thought, Republicans couldn’t beat that. And all along, not knowing that I had been duped by a liberal Clintononian lie.

So I retreated into inner contemplation. I was a Republican-supporting dummy with no good answers to give to anyone except that Republicans liked babies and wanted marriage to stay the same. Everywhere around me I was being closed in on. The news media, newspapers, family members, all wanted me to hate conservatives! But I realized I had become one just by being pro-life…

When the Republican Party won the 2004 election that year it was a sigh of relief. Politics faded out of my mind and I got back to living my normal life.

Then about two years ago, I was at Barnes and Noble looking through the current events section. A lot had happened since 2004. I had gotten married and was then pregnant, taking a break from school and working some temp jobs while waiting for the delivery date. So I had lots of time on my hands. That’s when I came across the savior of my life. It would redeem me from my political ignorance and forever change my view of the world. It came in the form of the book: Letters to a Young Conservative, a primer on Conservatism for young people by an immigrant like me named Dinesh D’Souza.

Wow, I was so excited that there was so much more about Conservatism that resounded with my other values and made so much sense! My interest for understanding the roots of Conservatism and Liberalism was piqued from that day. I read it and reread it and tried to get my husband, my brother, Aaron, and everyone else to read it too. Aaron, who was not much into politics back then, thought naturally I was crazy… all over a measly little book.

Letters to a Young Conservative taught me a lot. I was beginning to realize how much garbage I had been fed throughout my impressionable years. Were the ideas of Liberalism really compassionate towards the poor? No. I realized their leaders talked a lot about helping the poor but when it came to their own personal lives, they sure didn’t do that with their money. Joe Biden was a prime 2008 example who gave less than 1/4% of his income to charities in the last ten years while other much hated Republicans like George W. Bush, John McCain, and Dick Cheney so generously and quietly gave many, many times over that percentage. 

But it wasn’t just the empirical data. Ideologically, the liberal answer to solving the issue of poverty was essentially flawed. It’s not that they want you to help the poor. They want you to give heaps of your money to the government, who will then decide how they will do that. They are the middlemen who demand you pay your taxes and not be so greedy, so you do (unless you’re an Obama appointee), and then someone else receives this “free” money who never knew how hard you worked for it for it to be taken away by the government, who then takes all the credit. Furthermore, when government is so heavily relied upon to “solve” these social issues, it takes the personal responsibility for either a giver or a receiver out of the picture. If the government is expected to solve poverty, then I don’t have to do anything about it. If the government is giving me more money for holding a lower paying job or not working at all, there’s no incentive for me to strive any higher. Many liberals are outraged when they hear about poverty or some other dire social situation. They get so angry, demanding the government to fix it.

Conservatism resounded a lot more with my values. It emphasizes the strength of the individual; they say you are the maker of your own future, giving you incentives to work hard and be self-sufficient, and trust that you know how to spend your money better and more efficiently than the government. If you see a bad situation in society, why not you get your hands dirty and do something about it and not expect the government to? Conservatism understands the limits of government. You can do more for your future, for your life, and for others than the government.

On the other hand, modern day liberalism and socialism upholds a victim mentality – liberal leaders tell us we shouldn’t expect ourselves to accomplishment these great things without the help of the government, they tell us to rely on the government for our futures, that we should expect someone else to pick up the tab for our healthcare, education, and childcare, never emphasizing that every single dollar that’s used for these “free” services actually come from its citizens. With a communist streak, they uphold the poor and vilify the rich, despite the fact that most of their revenue comes from the latter. Furthermore, why should I trust that the government will come through on its word? It mandates that a portion of our every paycheck go to social security and then the government changes its mind when it realizes that the whole system is going to be bankrupt in the next decades and so we probably won’t even reap the benefits of our investment when we really need it.

Everyone knows how inefficient and bureaucratic government is. It wastes millions and billions of the public’s money and when that’s all gone, takes out huge trillion dollar loans against our futures to pay for the most ridiculous projects. The $800 billion bailout bill is a primary example. $300 million for contraceptives? $5.2 billion for the horribly corrupt, voter registration fraud driven, “non-profit”, ACORN? Forgive me if I don’t see how that’s going to save our economy. And sadly, George W. Bush did not stick to conservative values when he instigated the first failed bailout bill. 

Yet President Obama and the Democrat leaders want more and more of this inefficient, debt-ridden, bureaucratic system? Can you imagine what that would be like? Going to the doctors and being treated like you’re at the DMV? Government-owned hospitals that are run down because the state’s budget had to cut renovations? Having to wait a year to see a neurologist, another three months for an urgent MRI, then dying three days before the MRI appointment? As a matter of fact, it’s already a reality in some Western European nations like England which adopted socialized healthcare long ago.

Ahh I remember when I was a 17 year old teen in New Zealand, stricken with severe adolescent acne. I went to my family doctor who told me it was going to be over a year before he could get me an appointment with the hospital dermatologist. A teenager can’t wait a year for this kind of thing to clear up! Well, thankfully, there was a private dermatologist in town who was able to see me in two weeks and saved me from further complexion humiliation that year. Good healthcare is not free, and whenever government steps in it will definitely not be good!

Well that is just the beginning of what I started learning about the real ideologies of conservatism and liberalism. I was indeed shocked and humbled to see that simple ideas had such reverberating consequences on our society and specifically our lives. And we have only scratched the surface. There is much more about these philosophies that needs to be explored and discussed.

On a side note, as a female minority who grew up in a Chinese immigrant family of eight who moved to New Zealand with parents who spoke no English, I am in no way downplaying the hardships of poverty or dismissing the real disadvantages that many people face as it has been my first-hand experience.

Are you a conservative who also has a story of conversion? Are you a moderate who is still undecided or wavers between the two opposing political ideologies? A gung-ho liberal who won’t change your mind? Leave a comment and let us know!

[LS]