Monday, October 22, 2007

Why the Left should be Afraid

Andy Hammond has a podcast about his journey from Left to becoming conservative. It kind of reminded me of my own journey from Yellow Dog Democrat to a small "l" libertarian. I know that there are more of us who spent our early years parroting that which we were told to believe. Then, little by little, we began to question some of the underlying assumptions as we moved through life until we started blogging as either conservative or libertarian.
Now for the reason of the title of this post: With the aging of the Baby Boomers, are we going to see more and more conservative/libertarians and less of the Left die hard zealots? Is the Left in danger of disappearing as we grow up? Is the Left primarily the vehicle for the young? Not to discount that there are older Lefties, Ted Kennedy comes to mind, but they were a product or at least a carryover of the Roosevelt years.
The one thing in their favor is going to be Social Security. Since so many of my generation has failed to put anything toward retirement, they are going to have to rely on the Social Security "Lock Box" which doesn't exist. Of course, the younger workers who are going to see a hike in their taxes may be less inclined to support their parents when they see what they will have to pay.
The disappearance of the Left would actually be bad in my mind. We need the Left to keep probing and testing to try and help people. Just like we need conservatives to rein in their excesses. Consider that the views of many conservatives are not that different from the then Left of the 60's.
Both sides are needed. Now if we can just get them to quit attacking, and start reasonable discussions, we might actually get somewhere.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"The Death of the Left" cannot happen so long as those who are in charge of educating our young are the biggest proponents of neo-socialist idealism. Our schools and universities churn out liberal thinking robots that need the years and years of real-life experience to make the journey you describe toward an understanding of the human condition that yields conservative thought.

Plus, if Conservative Cowgirl is right, left and right is less a social matter and more a genetic predisposition. Sort of like being gay ;)...

Steve said...

Can you get a shot for that?