Many people with whom I engage online have come to know me because of the work that I did as a black conservative. It is often difficult for them to see me in any other context. A question I answered on Quora may help those with genunie curiosity.
Q. What turned you from liberal to conservative?
A. Seeds were planted all through my life. I noticed contradictions and lapses in Left politics. Having grown up with both my parents as cultural Marxists and social workers, I was right in the middle of the vanguard.
The first blow to that thinking came in the form of the work by Thomas Sowell whom I read in college. This was about the same time as the second Reagan presidency lead the country out of inflation. So by the mid 80s I was definitely pro-business and while not a supply-sider, definitely mindful of all economic aspects of political thinking. Having worked in a bank in the early 80s, I understood that people could not game the market and had no misgivings that capitalism was rigged against the people.
The second thing that happened was I came to understand the limits of Affirmative Action, having written the algorithms of the Balanced Workforce Model of Xerox Corporation that won awards from the Business Roundtable as the most progessive organization. From that I started to understand the actual supply and demand as well as the impact of political thought on meritocracy. Basically Affirmative Action is little more than a planned economy. In that way, it can never work and never not be controversial.
Thirdly, I came to recognize the ego-driven mendacity of the ‘activist’ world. I did so by participating in that smushy landscape of performance poetry and bohemian self-righteousness. It was fun, but it was not productive. Around that same time I began to sense that which was best described by David Graeber (the man who coined ‘we are the 99%’) as the ‘bullshit economy’. I ran from it and started taking money more seriously. Well because I got married and had kids, quickly. I moved to the South from NYC.
Then in quick succession several things happened to me that pushed me over the edge. Of course there was 9/11. Then I finally read some real history about the Soviet Union and learned (in my 40s!) how evil Stalin was. Enron collapsed and cost thousands of people their jobs, but Stalin murdered that many people every week. I had a fairly large payday and started to personally experience how it felt to be envied and hated for being rich. I found myself shopping at Walmart and immediately recognized the actual diversity of people that low prices and competitive capitalism serves. I completely lost all contempt for the working class. I found out that only about 3,000 people were ever lynched in the entire history of the post-civil war era.
So ultimately I saw where I came from as childish and self-serving and I was determined to grow up. I decided to understand the Right as well as I understood the Left. It was very surprising how much intellectual depth I found. It was right in front of me all the time but I never paid much attention or took it seriously. It took several years for all of this to gel, and ultimately I abandoned political conservatism but I came to respect a way of thinking that I had never participated in. I walked the miles in conservative shoes.
After I tired of political conservatism (it took about 8 years), I began engaging in what I call my ‘martial education’. At the same time as I recognized the divergence between Progressivism and standard Liberalism, I recognized how Identity Politics as well as a fanatic ideological puritanism struck Conservatism in the mainstream. So I see a wide variety of threads in these ideologies, few of which have clarity to their participants and partisans. I gradually adopted Stoicism which ultimately was fairly simple. These days I am fascinated (still) by history, and newly by psychology which as a computer science guy is fairly rare. Also behavioral economics and Taleb’s Incerto is fascinating to me and I really hope to square the circle by understanding the philosophy of religion. I expect big things from Aquinas, Nuemann, Jung, Spinoza and a few others.
I think the biggest matter of political philosophy that faces Western Civilization is that of relativism and shallow atheism. There is an essential lack of discipline of thought that only a certain element of ruin will adjust. Our ruling classes are currently not threatened by the nihilism they tolerate and are easily able to retain power in a lazy way. It seems to me that on certain conservatives perceive this threat, while the rest appear content to Let It Be. It’s not worth it to me to pledge any fidelity to any cadre of political philosophers. My way is to be Stoic and let things fall apart, but with a stubborn streak of public engagement of this sort in Quora. Now I really have to get back to work…
Recent Comments