My political evolution - part two
I first became aware of politics when I was a teenager. At that time I was in a Catholic boarding-school and sang in the choir. The boarding-school was in a small town in the middle of southern Zululand and every Sunday and on all the Catholic Holy Days, the choir would travel out into the boonies to sing at remote missions in Zululand. That was the first time that I saw how rural Zulus lived. Till then the only Zulus that I knew were urbanized and, although most were pretty ordinary decent people, there were quite a few urbanized Zulus who were not. Most of the crime was committed by them and black people were feared and hated by the whites who regarded them as uncivilized savages.
Travelling around to remote missions in Zululand in my teens showed me another side to Africa. There was no apartheid in the Catholic Church and I saw black and white priests, monks and nuns living together in harmony. I saw happy black people who were kind and warm and gentle. What I saw made me wonder why black people were so feared. I began to question apartheid.
I was told that apartheid was used not only to control crime but also to exclude blacks from white democracy and prevent the "natives" (as they were known in those days) from "taking over" and destroying white civilization. In the 1950s whites were outnumbered 5 to 1 by blacks; nowadays it is 10 to 1.
In those days each white household was only allowed to have two black servants living on the premises. All the other blacks who worked in the towns and cities had to go home at the end of the day. There was a curfew and no blacks were allowed on the streets of white areas after dark.
"Home" for the blacks were "locations," on the edge of the white towns and cities. The "locations" were basically sprawling townships of cinder-block houses built by the government. The houses, while they could not be owned by blacks, were rent-free. There was water but no electricity. Very basic free medical treatment and schooling were also provided by the government and paid for by white tax-payers. Taxes were very high for whites but blacks paid no taxes. (The very religious Calvinist Afrikaners took their obligations to blacks seriously. They saw blacks as the "white man's burden.") No whites, except government officials and missionaries, ever went to the "locations" because they were such dangerous places.
For over four decades apartheid was used to contain crime within the "locations" and away from white areas. For blacks, crime was something that they always lived with. When apartheid came to an end in the 1990s, crime became a fact of life for everybody and South Africa now has the worst crime rate in the world.
But 45 years ago I was an idealistic teen and saw only injustice. By the time that I was 18, I had become active in the anti-apartheid movement which was spear-headed by the "Liberal Party" one of whose leaders was Alan Paton, author of "Cry, the Beloved Country." I saw South Africa much the same way Paton did, with the eyes of a Christian missionary which is what Paton was.
During the next three years I was harassed and intimidated by the Secret Police. I was jailed, interrogated and threatened. A friend of mine who was the leader of the students' union at the local university was placed under house arrest and eventually given an "exit permit" which was a "one-way passport" with which you could leave South Africa but never return.
This friend of mine (I'll call him "Peter") had been accused of being a communist. The Communist Party of South Africa was the oldest CP in the world outside of Russia. It was founded in 1921 on direct orders from Lenin and was declared illegal in 1950. I asked Peter why he was leaving and not staying to fight. Why was he not denying the charges that he was a communist? After all, we were members of the Liberal Party which had a long tradition of fighting for freedom. That was when Peter told me that I was naive; that he was in fact a communist and that the Liberal Party had been taken over by the Communist Party in the 1950s when it was declared illegal.
Although Marx's books were banned in South Africa, there were contraband copies available inside the anti-apartheid movement and I had read them and decided that I did not like Marxism. From the time Peter told me that he (and most of the members of the Liberal Party) were communists, I was no longer comfortable. I began to realize that certain things that had disturbed me before about my fellow "freedom fighters" (such as their squelching of all dissent within their ranks) were because they were communists. I was more than disillusioned. I was devastated and could no longer work with them to end apartheid.
When I was 21 I received a small inheritance from a great aunt. I used it to buy a one-way ticket to the UK. For the next two years I steered clear of politics and instead jumped into the whole "flower-child" thing and took lots of drugs. Psychedelic drugs led me to Jnana Yoga. I stopped taking drugs and found a Hindu guru. For the next ten years I avoided politics and concentrated on bringing peace to the world by teaching people about meditation. In 1976 I moved back to South Africa believing that meditation could bring about peace there.
In 1977 I came to the USA to see my guru who had moved from India and now lived in the USA. As soon as I set foot in the US, I felt at home and made up my mind that I was going to come and live here. I returned to South Africa and worked hard and saved money so that I could immigrate to the USA. In 1978 I arrived in Miami where my guru was living at the time.
But something else happened when I came to the USA. I began to dislike the guru (and his devotees) and decided to move to Los Angeles where I had friends whom I had met in London. These friends lived in Hollywood and Malibu and worked as servants to movie stars. They also took a lot of drugs especially cocaine which I loathed. I realized that I had to get away from them and strike out on my own. I moved to San Francisco.
In my first few years of being in San Francisco, I still thought of myself as a bit of a hippie and definitely considered myself a "liberal" but the harder I worked and the richer and more successful I became, the more I began to see the hippies and "liberals" as lazy subversive bums. Then Reagan became President and the hippies and "liberals" hated him. That was when I realized that I was no longer a "liberal." I revered Reagan. He spoke my language. He stood for everything that I had always believed in but had never been able to articulate. When I became a citizen a few years later, I registered as a Republican.
Although I no longer mixed with hippies and "liberals," I did not hate them. I tolerated them and expected them to tolerate me but, during the Clinton years, the "liberals" became emboldened and arrogant and they began to hate me because I was a Republican. The only reason that I did not leave San Francisco at that time was because I had the best-paying job I had ever had in my life. I saved lots of money and bought a house and finally went into business on my own when I opened a South African restaurant. It became famous within three months and was a very satisfying experience at first.
But, when W became President, the "liberals' became insane with anger and hatred. I began to loathe "liberals" and eventually realized that I was no longer comfortable living in San Francisco. I used to pray for a civil war so that we could destroy the "liberals." I saw them as worse enemies to America than the jihadists. Yep, I had to get out of San Francisco before I ended up as nuts as the "liberals."
When I first came to live in rural Oregon in 2003, I still hated "liberals." Anyone who has read my blog over the past couple of years knows that I still longed for a civil war so that we could rid America of people whom I regarded as the most degraded type of Marxists - not even real Marxists. Lenin used to call people like our "liberals" "left-wing communists" and he regarded them as "useful idiots" just clever enough to help destroy capitalism but not intelligent enough to bring about communism.
To cut a long story short: it took a few years for me to calm down after moving back to the USA from the Peoples' Republic of San Francisco. But I have calmed down (it helps not to know any commies) and am no longer nearly as intolerant of "liberals" as I used to be and I have returned to my real political convictions: I am a real liberal; not a socialist or a communist but a liberal in the Whig tradition of our Founders. I'm back to my old easy-going, live-and-let-live self.
Most of my friends and neighbors are Republicans but most of my tenants are Democrats. Most of the Republicans are pretty conservative but some are more truly liberal (not socialist) than our local Blue Dog Democrats. There are a few moonbat Democrats even here in the sticks but they are not arrogant and angry and most of the Democrats here are Blue Dogs who voted for Bush twice. Some of them are even more conservative than many of my Republican friends.
I tolerate Blue Dog Democrats even though I think they are wrong to believe that socialism is the answer because we all share one thing in common: we love liberty and are Americans first and foremost even if our versions of America are a bit different. I can live with disagreement. I can even tolerate a bit of socialism. I just can't tolerate the angry narcissistic moonbat brigade. They are my enemies and I believe that we need a coalition of conservative independents, Democrats and Republicans to stand up to these subversives.
Just because I don't agree 100% with my all of neighbors doesn't mean that they are my enemies. Sure, I may disagree with some of them ideologically. I won't back down on my dislike of socialism and big government and will let them know that but I'm more pragmatic than ideological and can ally with people who share my basic values in resistance to those who want to destroy freedom, capitalism and common sense.
I no longer fantasize about a civil war against the moonbats (although I still think money spent on arms and ammo is money well-spent.) Anyway, I'm realistic and know that there will never be another civil war in the USA and I will just have to settle for some unfriendly political skirmishes. We can never turn the clock back to the Golden Age of the Republic not only because we are too far gone into socialism but also because I know that the Golden Age never really existed. Politics in America has always been seriously polarized and it's never been easy.
So, I'll settle for saving what little of the American Dream that is left and work to slow or hopefully stop our descent into European-style narcissistic socialism. I'll need all the allies I can get even if I don't agree with them 100%. That's why I am supporting Rudy Giuliani. I believe that he has the potential to unite the middle-class against the savage hordes of infantile socialists, uncivilized anarchists and hate-filled subversives. But I'll save the rest of my plug for Giuliani and the "Coalition of the Winning" till a later post.
Meantime here is what I have been reading for the past week since it was first published: Pew Research Center for The People & The Press, Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2007 which is subtitled POLITICAL LANDSCAPE MORE FAVORABLE TO DEMOCRATS.(PDF)
I will be reviewing it later as it confirms my hunch that the USA has moved left (not much - but enough to make it necessary to soften my ideological fanaticism and ally myself with other "moderates" in order to preserve what little of liberty and sanity remains in the USA.)
Travelling around to remote missions in Zululand in my teens showed me another side to Africa. There was no apartheid in the Catholic Church and I saw black and white priests, monks and nuns living together in harmony. I saw happy black people who were kind and warm and gentle. What I saw made me wonder why black people were so feared. I began to question apartheid.
I was told that apartheid was used not only to control crime but also to exclude blacks from white democracy and prevent the "natives" (as they were known in those days) from "taking over" and destroying white civilization. In the 1950s whites were outnumbered 5 to 1 by blacks; nowadays it is 10 to 1.
In those days each white household was only allowed to have two black servants living on the premises. All the other blacks who worked in the towns and cities had to go home at the end of the day. There was a curfew and no blacks were allowed on the streets of white areas after dark.
"Home" for the blacks were "locations," on the edge of the white towns and cities. The "locations" were basically sprawling townships of cinder-block houses built by the government. The houses, while they could not be owned by blacks, were rent-free. There was water but no electricity. Very basic free medical treatment and schooling were also provided by the government and paid for by white tax-payers. Taxes were very high for whites but blacks paid no taxes. (The very religious Calvinist Afrikaners took their obligations to blacks seriously. They saw blacks as the "white man's burden.") No whites, except government officials and missionaries, ever went to the "locations" because they were such dangerous places.
For over four decades apartheid was used to contain crime within the "locations" and away from white areas. For blacks, crime was something that they always lived with. When apartheid came to an end in the 1990s, crime became a fact of life for everybody and South Africa now has the worst crime rate in the world.
But 45 years ago I was an idealistic teen and saw only injustice. By the time that I was 18, I had become active in the anti-apartheid movement which was spear-headed by the "Liberal Party" one of whose leaders was Alan Paton, author of "Cry, the Beloved Country." I saw South Africa much the same way Paton did, with the eyes of a Christian missionary which is what Paton was.
During the next three years I was harassed and intimidated by the Secret Police. I was jailed, interrogated and threatened. A friend of mine who was the leader of the students' union at the local university was placed under house arrest and eventually given an "exit permit" which was a "one-way passport" with which you could leave South Africa but never return.
This friend of mine (I'll call him "Peter") had been accused of being a communist. The Communist Party of South Africa was the oldest CP in the world outside of Russia. It was founded in 1921 on direct orders from Lenin and was declared illegal in 1950. I asked Peter why he was leaving and not staying to fight. Why was he not denying the charges that he was a communist? After all, we were members of the Liberal Party which had a long tradition of fighting for freedom. That was when Peter told me that I was naive; that he was in fact a communist and that the Liberal Party had been taken over by the Communist Party in the 1950s when it was declared illegal.
Although Marx's books were banned in South Africa, there were contraband copies available inside the anti-apartheid movement and I had read them and decided that I did not like Marxism. From the time Peter told me that he (and most of the members of the Liberal Party) were communists, I was no longer comfortable. I began to realize that certain things that had disturbed me before about my fellow "freedom fighters" (such as their squelching of all dissent within their ranks) were because they were communists. I was more than disillusioned. I was devastated and could no longer work with them to end apartheid.
When I was 21 I received a small inheritance from a great aunt. I used it to buy a one-way ticket to the UK. For the next two years I steered clear of politics and instead jumped into the whole "flower-child" thing and took lots of drugs. Psychedelic drugs led me to Jnana Yoga. I stopped taking drugs and found a Hindu guru. For the next ten years I avoided politics and concentrated on bringing peace to the world by teaching people about meditation. In 1976 I moved back to South Africa believing that meditation could bring about peace there.
In 1977 I came to the USA to see my guru who had moved from India and now lived in the USA. As soon as I set foot in the US, I felt at home and made up my mind that I was going to come and live here. I returned to South Africa and worked hard and saved money so that I could immigrate to the USA. In 1978 I arrived in Miami where my guru was living at the time.
But something else happened when I came to the USA. I began to dislike the guru (and his devotees) and decided to move to Los Angeles where I had friends whom I had met in London. These friends lived in Hollywood and Malibu and worked as servants to movie stars. They also took a lot of drugs especially cocaine which I loathed. I realized that I had to get away from them and strike out on my own. I moved to San Francisco.
In my first few years of being in San Francisco, I still thought of myself as a bit of a hippie and definitely considered myself a "liberal" but the harder I worked and the richer and more successful I became, the more I began to see the hippies and "liberals" as lazy subversive bums. Then Reagan became President and the hippies and "liberals" hated him. That was when I realized that I was no longer a "liberal." I revered Reagan. He spoke my language. He stood for everything that I had always believed in but had never been able to articulate. When I became a citizen a few years later, I registered as a Republican.
Although I no longer mixed with hippies and "liberals," I did not hate them. I tolerated them and expected them to tolerate me but, during the Clinton years, the "liberals" became emboldened and arrogant and they began to hate me because I was a Republican. The only reason that I did not leave San Francisco at that time was because I had the best-paying job I had ever had in my life. I saved lots of money and bought a house and finally went into business on my own when I opened a South African restaurant. It became famous within three months and was a very satisfying experience at first.
But, when W became President, the "liberals' became insane with anger and hatred. I began to loathe "liberals" and eventually realized that I was no longer comfortable living in San Francisco. I used to pray for a civil war so that we could destroy the "liberals." I saw them as worse enemies to America than the jihadists. Yep, I had to get out of San Francisco before I ended up as nuts as the "liberals."
When I first came to live in rural Oregon in 2003, I still hated "liberals." Anyone who has read my blog over the past couple of years knows that I still longed for a civil war so that we could rid America of people whom I regarded as the most degraded type of Marxists - not even real Marxists. Lenin used to call people like our "liberals" "left-wing communists" and he regarded them as "useful idiots" just clever enough to help destroy capitalism but not intelligent enough to bring about communism.
To cut a long story short: it took a few years for me to calm down after moving back to the USA from the Peoples' Republic of San Francisco. But I have calmed down (it helps not to know any commies) and am no longer nearly as intolerant of "liberals" as I used to be and I have returned to my real political convictions: I am a real liberal; not a socialist or a communist but a liberal in the Whig tradition of our Founders. I'm back to my old easy-going, live-and-let-live self.
Most of my friends and neighbors are Republicans but most of my tenants are Democrats. Most of the Republicans are pretty conservative but some are more truly liberal (not socialist) than our local Blue Dog Democrats. There are a few moonbat Democrats even here in the sticks but they are not arrogant and angry and most of the Democrats here are Blue Dogs who voted for Bush twice. Some of them are even more conservative than many of my Republican friends.
I tolerate Blue Dog Democrats even though I think they are wrong to believe that socialism is the answer because we all share one thing in common: we love liberty and are Americans first and foremost even if our versions of America are a bit different. I can live with disagreement. I can even tolerate a bit of socialism. I just can't tolerate the angry narcissistic moonbat brigade. They are my enemies and I believe that we need a coalition of conservative independents, Democrats and Republicans to stand up to these subversives.
Just because I don't agree 100% with my all of neighbors doesn't mean that they are my enemies. Sure, I may disagree with some of them ideologically. I won't back down on my dislike of socialism and big government and will let them know that but I'm more pragmatic than ideological and can ally with people who share my basic values in resistance to those who want to destroy freedom, capitalism and common sense.
I no longer fantasize about a civil war against the moonbats (although I still think money spent on arms and ammo is money well-spent.) Anyway, I'm realistic and know that there will never be another civil war in the USA and I will just have to settle for some unfriendly political skirmishes. We can never turn the clock back to the Golden Age of the Republic not only because we are too far gone into socialism but also because I know that the Golden Age never really existed. Politics in America has always been seriously polarized and it's never been easy.
So, I'll settle for saving what little of the American Dream that is left and work to slow or hopefully stop our descent into European-style narcissistic socialism. I'll need all the allies I can get even if I don't agree with them 100%. That's why I am supporting Rudy Giuliani. I believe that he has the potential to unite the middle-class against the savage hordes of infantile socialists, uncivilized anarchists and hate-filled subversives. But I'll save the rest of my plug for Giuliani and the "Coalition of the Winning" till a later post.
Meantime here is what I have been reading for the past week since it was first published: Pew Research Center for The People & The Press, Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2007 which is subtitled POLITICAL LANDSCAPE MORE FAVORABLE TO DEMOCRATS.(PDF)
I will be reviewing it later as it confirms my hunch that the USA has moved left (not much - but enough to make it necessary to soften my ideological fanaticism and ally myself with other "moderates" in order to preserve what little of liberty and sanity remains in the USA.)
posted by Joubert at 7:55 AM
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