Skjellyfetti wrote:I think I've shared a story on here before that really formed my politics... here's an abbreviated version. I don't feel like typing it all out again... may come back and do it later. But, it deals with noticing that the private schools in Montgomery, AL (where I grew up) all opened soon after the Brown vs. Board decision. All the white families that could... took their kids out of public schools and put them in private schools. Private schools are overwhelmingly white... public schools are overwhelmingly black. Montgomery... being the state capital... a lot of the white rich folks with their kids in private schools are also the people that run the government... state senators, lobbyists, judges, etc. and they're the ones that defund the public schools that their kids don't attend. so, of course... alabama's public school system pretty consistently ranks among the worst public schools in the country. but, at least the minorities stay marginalized.
Around here the hardcore Dems are the ones that go to the most exclusively white private schools.
Skjellyfetti wrote:Parents? both hardcore Republicans from the deep South. My dad could give Citdog a run for his money with the Confederate bullshit.
Teachers? none shaped my politics in anyway that I can recall, really. My English teacher, junior year in high school made us all subscribe to the Washington Post... so I started my newspaper reading habit then.
Friends? none shaped my politics, really. I have conservative, libertarian, and liberal friends... but, i really don't talk about politics much off of this site (this is where I vent )
Location? grew up in the Deep South. If location shaped my politics at all... it was in rebellion.
Career? Career still in the works. Start grad school classes in a couple of weeks. I don't think my plan for my career was shaped at all by my politics or vice-versa.
I think I've shared a story on here before that really formed my politics... here's an abbreviated version. I don't feel like typing it all out again... may come back and do it later. But, it deals with noticing that the private schools in Montgomery, AL (where I grew up) all opened soon after the Brown vs. Board decision. All the white families that could... took their kids out of public schools and put them in private schools. Private schools are overwhelmingly white... public schools are overwhelmingly black. Montgomery... being the state capital... a lot of the white rich folks with their kids in private schools are also the people that run the government... state senators, lobbyists, judges, etc. and they're the ones that defund the public schools that their kids don't attend. so, of course... alabama's public school system pretty consistently ranks among the worst public schools in the country. but, at least the minorities stay marginalized.
should have listened to your Dad. He's RIGHT. I can only imagine the shame he must feel to know he raised such a cowardly scalawag of a son. How he must wish your mother did the WHOLE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY the immense favor of coathangering you when she had the chance.
"Duty is the sublimest word in the English Language"
"Save in defense of my native State I hope to never again draw my sword"
Genl Robert E. Lee
Confederate States of America
Skjellyfetti wrote:Career? Career still in the works. Start grad school classes in a couple of weeks. I don't think my plan for my career was shaped at all by my politics or vice-versa.
Have you ever worked?
"Ah fuck. You are right." KYJelly, 11/6/12
"The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam." Barack Obama, 9/25/12
Skjellyfetti wrote:Career? Career still in the works. Start grad school classes in a couple of weeks. I don't think my plan for my career was shaped at all by my politics or vice-versa.
Have you ever worked?
Yes. Currently at work as a matter of fact.
"The unmasking thing was all created by Devin Nunes"
- Richard Burr, (R-NC)
My parents were moderate, working class Dems - we lived in a Reagan Democrats kind of neighborhood growing up...
I went conk in the mid-90's as a teenager, in part as an act of "rebellion" (since i found i didn't really like pot) - and spent the 90's working for GOP candidates - got my first paid gig in '98 for conk congressional candidate.
in 99 and 2000 things started to change for me. for one thing, I was getting more and more put off by the fringe right and the hold it held over the party... and how the party was pushing anyone with a more moderate view (I was always a civil libertarian) out of the party.
in 2000, I was working for McCain in the primaries on a volunteer basis (10-15 hours/week)... then came the South Carolina Primary... watching what Rove did, the disgusting tactics (implying he had an out of wedlock mixed race baby) among other things began really getting to me. then, before the primaries were finished (but mccain was basically out of it) i was told i ought to sign on as endorsing Bush (as an officer in one of the state parties "affiliate groups")... i told them i didn't want to - they told me they would call a meeting and kick me out... so i quit.
a few months later, i left for college at NDSU... when I got to Fargo, I went to the College Republicans first meeting... was so disgusted with how militantly right-wing it was that I went to the Dems meeting, just to see... the ND Dems were moderate, and nice. I joined up, and pretty quickly started moving to the left. Partly, I suppose because of who my friends were (the few liberals up there had to band together) and partly because unlike what you might think... the profs at NDSU are pretty right-wing... and I really resented it.
By the summer of '02 I was interning for Paul Wellstone...
It all happened pretty fast.
North Dakota State University Bison 2011 and 2012 National Champions
I'm a pretty centrist kinda of guy because frankly, both parties are full of things I don't like (and of course, some things I do like). I'm an a la carte voter and will probably remain that way - hard to see either party switching enough that would make me go exclusive to either. So I'm kinda bi-party.
Ivytalk wrote:My parents were moderate-conservative Republicans, but I was quite liberal in high school. Then I went to Harvard, experienced the intolerant liberalism of students and faculty there in the late-Vietnam era, and moved steadily rightward. By law school, I was an editor of the conservative law journal. I haven't looked back since!
Hard to believe there was (and are) liberals on an Ivy League campus. And saying the faculty was liberal, am I reading you correctly, IT?
Ivytalk wrote:
Nah, the Harvard hottie-hippies were generally lacking in the hygiene department and overendowed in the body hair department.
Those are just regular hippie-chicks. True hottie-hippies are few and far between.
true hottie-hippies aren't real hippies as a rule.
otoh - a very small subset of hippie girls are down for anything, and can be real freaks in the sack... figuring out which is which is like cracking the fucking davinci code though...
Last edited by TwinTownBisonFan on Fri May 06, 2011 1:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
North Dakota State University Bison 2011 and 2012 National Champions
You know, that is a really tough thing for me to put my finger on. I can't really think of what "caused" me to have the general set of philosophical outlooks I have. I know that very early on I developed the belief that the intent behind the establishment of the American Republic was the minimum extent of central government possible and that the Federal government is not supposed to be empowered to do anything the Constitution doesn't explicitly empower it to do. And that went along with my own belief that it is better to favor liberty over security while accepting the risks that go with that.
Also, I remember developing the belief that having a system that seeks to provide "safety nets" results in a threat to liberty (if government says it's going to take care of you, government can assert an interest in regulating your personal behavior) as well as an impediment to motivation. In that regard I do remember liking the way Jesse Helms once summed that up. He wrote that we've developed a system of "rewarding indolence and penalizing sucess." Whatever one thinks or thought of Jesse Helms, I thought that pretty much summed it up in a nutshell.
But that quote didn't really shape my outlook. The outlook was already there. I just thought it was a succinct way of putting it.
I guess at some point some reading I did or class I took resulted in my beliefs about how the Constitution was supposed to work and what the idea was at the start of this country. But I really can't remember what it was or they were.
Well, I believe that I must tell the truth
And say things as they really are
But if I told the truth and nothing but the truth
Could I ever be a star? Deep Purple: No One Came
Upbringing from grandparents and parents and Barry Goldwater's "The Conscience of a Conservative" all set me on the path to my conservative/libertarian, fiercely independent attitude.
My dad was a construction worker and my mom taught grade school, and I spent my early years constantly following the big dam projects in CA and surveying suburbs when they were still country.... my dad worked on a lot of them - Hetch Hetchy, Shasta, Oroville, Hell Hole... never spent a year in the same school until 6th grade, went to five 1st grades in one school year. Not surprising that my sympathies are populist. Like 'jelly, I don't talk politics much away from here and my friends run the gamut.
Political influences were Studs Terkel's stories of working folk and Bill Buckley's Firing Line TV show. The first time I remember having a light go on was watching a young Muhammad Ali debate some college boy about the draft. This was after Ali refused induction and the college boy wanted to know why he refused, given the soft duty he was certain to draw, and he said something about not having anything against the Viet Cong, it wasn't the Viet Cong who called him niqqer and made him sit in the back of the bus. I was in junior high and it was the first time I recall seeing things from somebody else's point of view.
You matter. Unless you multiply yourself by c squared. Then you energy.
"I really love America. I just don't know how to get there anymore."John Prine
Books
Hard work
Running a couple of the companies I have started
The entitlement society in the USA
Unions
Lazy people who refuse to get a job and work
The Second Amendment
Walter Williams
Liberals
Stalin
Marx Brothers
Castro
Loss of manufacturing in the US
Mainstream media
Common sense
ALPHAGRIZ1 - Now available in internet black
The flat earth society has members all around the globe
)
Start grad school classes in a couple of weeks. I don't think my plan for my career was shaped at all by my politics or vice-versa.
