Question in the title but as someone who considers themselves a leftist while my whole family is pretty far right, I feel like I struggle to meet them halfway whenever politics come up. I want to try to get more perspective and ideally a ‘steel-manned’ version of why people feel conservatism is good for them and their loved ones.
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Because I’ve always been a conservative. All of human existence has universally benefited from the inherent tendency to conserve beneficial traditions. This ensures the transmission of vital knowledge for survival across generations, preventing each society from starting anew. Preserving successful social structures, ethical principles, and cultural norms fosters stability, cooperation, and shared identity, which are foundational for societal flourishing. This “conservatism as a way of life” provides the bedrock upon which progress and innovation can build, offering a stable platform of accumulated wisdom that has allowed humanity to thrive.
I’m a conservative because I agree with its positions and way of thinking; believing it to better foster the common good.
Appealing aspects of conservative positions:
Apposes killing unborn children
Family as an essential bedrock of human flourishing
Not afraid of guns
Apposes radical and nonsensical ideologies
Doesn’t believe government can solve most problems
Appoints judges that follow the Constitution and not the latest fad.
That’s a few at least.
I was pretty left for most of my life at 58 now. I kind of supported Bernie after being a lifelong democrat without questioning it. When I saw the way the establishment shoved Hillary down our throats, me and a friend both became disenchanted and I guess we both started questioning everything, as well as numerous other people I know.
Once I started learning more from both sides and questioning and thinking through my whole philosophy of the nature of government and the role of government, society, culture and family, I found myself aligning more and more with the Right, especially the anti-establishment right.
Trump started making more and more sense to me and once you start liking what he says, I think you can’t help but like him and find him hilarious, entertaining, charismatic, and right as well as very smart about just about everything.
It may be hard to imagine, because if you don’t like Trump’s views, you are likely to hate his personality and his demeanor, his voice, his appearance, everything about him. He’s definitely polarizing.
Even the things that seem a bit outrageous suddenly makes sense. I’m not exclusively a Trump supporter. I like JD Vance and there’s quite a few people I would like to see and succeed him as president .
I barely disagree with any of his positions about just about everything. This isn’t all because of Trump. It’s because of what I have thought through and also what I see coming from the left, including what is going on in cities like my hometown of Seattle, with permissive attitudes allowing homeless people to destroy the city, as well as all kinds of ridiculous do-gooder mentality, not enforcing the law, vilifying the police, collecting outrageous taxes and doing ridiculous things such as giving them away calling them democracy vouchers which is basically giving every city citizen a $40 voucher to be given to the candidate of their choice, which is just absurd to me.
On top of that, I disagree more and more with left positions, lack of personal responsibility, obsession with talking about diversity and identity politics all the time, telling black people they are oppressed and everyone hates them and racism is rampant when I believe most people don’t much care except they judge people by the way they act not the color of their skin.
Plus, me and many of my friends of my generation are pretty sick and tired of being told we are racist and homophobic and terrible people for having pretty much the same views we had 20 years ago that were considered on the left. I spent most of my youth in Seattle and San Francisco around a lot of gay men and I’m totally fine with that. But me and actually a lot of gay men I know are far from in agreement with the latest fanciful theories about gender and trans issues.
I know quite a few of my contemporaries who feel the same and have questioned and rethought their whole perspective. And it’s not like they have all just sold out and joined the establishment. It’s much more complicated than that.
Honestly, most people I know my age who are still far left or fairly left, which is most people I know in Seattle Don’t seem to really think for themselves. They pretty much just continue the knee jerk attitude they had when they were punk rockers back in the ’80s and Reagan was a villain and Clinton was a god and anything your parents thought was wrong and everything you’re favorite 22-year-old punk rock singer had to say was perfectly correct.
It’s easy to maintain that mindset without much question in a city like Seattle. I’m not saying they are completely wrong, but I honestly don’t think they have given it much deep thought.
I know quite a few people who are kind of on the fence. They seem to agree with conservative perspectives more and more, but just when they are 90% there, and their old ideas about liberal being cool and right and conservative being uncool and bad kicks in and it short circuits their thinking and they just start reverting back to platitudes about the rich paying their fair share or conservatives being heartless or selfish etc.
Then there are others I know who grew up religious conservative and went to some great effort to overcome that thinking, so they have embraced the opposite rather than finding a non-religious conservative perspective.
A lot of it also came from what I consider the role of government. After much consideration, I concluded that the role of the government is to provide for common defense, remote the general welfare, to a limited extent, and maintain justice and enforce property rights and such .
It is not the role of government, in my opinion, to fix society, to combat racism, to force people to like each other, to prevent people from voicing opinions about each other, to redistribute wealth, that’s a big one, or many of the other things the left would like to use for. I just don’t see that as appropriate and that was a big part of becoming conservative.
Lastly, I have come to understand conservative values more and more. Current liberal trends that pretty much treat children as belonging to the community more than their parents, view religion and the importance of the family as highly suspect, and traditional values such as women staying at home and raising their own children, people focusing on dating to find a partner to marry and have a family with if that’s what they want, and the very idea that that may be what they want and will make them happy in life are all looked down upon or derided, in favor of having fun and being sexually promiscuous and celebrating pleasure seeking whether it’s in the club or in the bedroom rather than the idea of a virtuous life, family and community being the route to true happiness.
Anyway, that’s about it. I don’t mean to be too critical of those on the left. I’m sure many of them think about their own positions but honestly I don’t see it. I know many on the left say the same thing about us on the right so fair enough. But I can honestly say that I was one and I switched after careful consideration and coming to conclusions I consider to be logical and well thought out. I’ve had a lot of help along the way from various thought leaders on the right, both new alt-right and traditional religious and non-religious conservative thought. And I’m here to stay as far as I can see.
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I was super left for most of my 20’s and have the Sociology BA to prove it, but went back to school for nursing, and began working in the ICU and ER at about 30. Both, but especially the ER, show you a dark slice of life most people never see, and on that slice is a lot of terrible behavior and objectively bad choices that are obviously awful to anyone with a brain and/or moral fiber, and not due to some societal ill like the left always tries to attribute everything to instead of actually holding people responsible for their actions.
Within about 5 years, it was clear that leftist ideology in general is often some combination of naive, fake, weak, or cowardly. When you brush up against real life all the time, it tends to ground you and remove those ridiculous pie-in-the-sky ideals one can harbor in the relative ease of contemporary life.
The right has plenty of its own flaws, so I sit center-right and I’m registered as an independent, but relative to the modern left, I can only consider myself conservative.
I’m going to rephrase your question and say when did you lose your thoughts about the Republican Party and become an independent. I have a massive amount of information for you to dig into. Rupert Murdoch is a Leninist. I am a hairdresser in Scottsdale, Arizona and you should ask me some goddamn fucking questions. I was a republican for well over two decades.
I think the other side has gone crazy. I don’t identify with them anymore, and I feel I’m going to lose all my friends if I “come out” – because they are all graduate-degree educated and all rabid liberals. The very FACT that saying I identify with the conservatives will make half of them hate me – makes me dig in and be more sure that I don’t want to be part of that.
I HATE the way liberals can be so cruel and closed minded, frankly. I know they think they’re saving people who are on the fringes – the forgotten or those who are different or who have experienced racism or sexism, etc. But I am a valuable person too, even when I disagree, and I deserve to be respected even if I disagree. It’s like there is no other opinion.
Not overly into politics in that period, I posted the March DOGE interview because I thought everyone would be excited we were saving money and at last tackling govt waste, and these people looked pretty competent! Within 10 minutes, FOUR of my friends descended – two to write nasty things about all the lies, and two to talk a bit more judiciously. This is not just my friends. Lindy Li called it a cult. I vote a split ticket, and what makes me feel bad is that I didn’t vote for Trump – because I wanted to keep my friends. But it’s just really awful to feel awful all the time – and attacked. I thought I posted something just we all could celebrate something good for the country. But we don’t agree on ANYTHING anymore – and if I say Rubio likes Daylight Savings Time, they’re going to want Standard Time. I’m tired of division. I think the Republicans are just nicer and not as crazy.
Part of it is that Trump has been SO demonized, and I was guilty of hating him too – without looking. But doing more analyzing and realizing that his trolling has been his way of negotiating. He’s not crazy – it’s a strategy to go wild with demands and then pull back. People call him a liar, but he’s been saying the same thing since 1988 on Oprah. He uses hyperbole, and he lacks suavity, but (barring scandal) he says what he thinks. I finally watched someone who took his side and explained why he won the election, and it helped. I didn’t identify with people screaming on MSNBC and CNN. I thought Carville was correct-ish. Zuckerburg calling him a badass kind of made me take another look at him – and he was, there with his hand in the air right after being shot in the head – and then compare that to the shady FBI lady on CSpan who didn’t defend a former president. People don’t LIKE him, but that doesn’t mean you don’t do your job. It doesn’t mean you kill someone or allow him to be killed. The end does NOT justify the means.
And now, he’s in office, and I’ve done more research bc of DOGE. And fuck it, Trump’s getting things done. He seems different this term – his campaign manager said it, and I had already said it. He thinks it’s after the assassination. And he’s not vindictive – he didn’t go after people who hurt him. Only Letitia James, and that was after her fourth go at him. He was elected by a majority to lead the US. Newsome doesn’t have the right to secede California from the US on tariffs.
Anyway – taking Trump out of the picture:
The main reason is that government is mostly to print and manage the country’s money, to protect citizens, and to defend the country. I may be missing something, but that’s its main purpose – to help facilitate a life for its inhabitants. The social stuff – that’s more the courts.
So – on that basis:
Smaller government with fewer regulations. Dumb regulations are dumb. Like all those tiny little lawsuits for no reason. Choose real ones. Then let him work. Let the small businesses grow. Let us all just work and live.
Defense – they believe in building a defense, talking to other countries about their weapons, etc. They don’t generally want to wage a physical war, though there are exceptions.
They want to pay down the $36 trillion debt. Like – democrats don’t seem to care. Yeah, let’s add all the student loans. $1.7 trillion? Did you add in my Save the Turtles project? Okay! All the pork just needs to go. Both sides add it, but I guess Republicans at least talk about it.
Right now, with this presidency, they’re finally going to try to make China either play by the rules, or they’re going to move China away from us. China is frankly, scary, because they just don’t have our interest at heart and don’t abide by their agreements (2020) and are building a scary amount of weapons and nukes. No I win you win – just steal and defeat and win. No other president has taken this on. He’s not winning so far, but I’d like to see what happens.
Defending the border. Biden let 12 million people go through. If you cross the border illegally, you have begun with a crime. And they commit further crimes to stay. They can apply for asylum, apply to get in. Maybe we can work with Mexico on this. But Trump – he called the president of Mexico, and now she has 10,000 troops on their border. That easy. Trump added 6500 on ours to equal 9000. He just got things done.
Military action for civilian rescues. My family is from the mountains. When Helene hit, I knew exactly what those problems would be. The roads are poor and winding under the best conditions, and people don’t ask for help from anyone except family and maybe a neighbor. But Biden left my people like that for a week, with just a pittance of help, two weeks, a month, and people died who would have lived had adequate attention been offered. It needed a guerrilla force (those pockets) and someone with the willingness to help. Did Biden not because they were supposedly Trumpers? If he had come in right away, he would have gained their vote and loyalty for good. We don’t forget people who help us. The way Trump acts – he would have had troops in Asheville and all the small pockets where they hid and died – he would have had as many troops as he could to rescue those people. I love my mountains and I hate Biden’s cruel inaction.
I don’t know if cutting taxes does help. I’d go flat tax here with a high threshold. I need to study more economics. Same with tariffs. Just watching things play out right now. I know that we didn’t have an income tax until Wilson, and we relied on tariffs, and that sounds – better? Same thing with unions – I don’t know yet.
Apparently, being Christian is now conservative. Tf. Religion in general is okay, and it doesn’t belong to either party. But I like that conservatives don’t actively tune me out and make assumptions if I say I’m Presbyterian. I swear, they accept everyone. I think it’s okay to be part of a religion or not.
They’re not primarily focused on social issues. I mean – I’m somewhat liberal socially in terms of “do what is right and be really nice to each other.” “Don’t fight wars.” “Do what you need to do with abortions, but don’t kill a child that can exist on its own, but really, I don’t like them – but you should have a legal right to work with your doc” and “Marry whomever you want to marry.” and “‘I’ll call them they and Sarah Sam if they ask.” and “Take care of people – let’s help those people get housing and help them be safe.” But I don’t think it’s the government’s main job.
I don’t know if it’s conservative, but Trump wants to bring manufacturing back. With AI here – we’re going to need someone to keep an eye on this. We went from making more in 2000 to the agreement with China – and slowly, we lost manufacturing. All those car companies. He may not succeed, but I like that it’s a goal.
Conservatives seem more willing to give and work with each other. Obama wasn’t having it. Trump’s not having it. But usually.
Finally, country over world. I want the world to have good things. I want to be a good ally and partner – but I want my president and representatives to consider what’s best for the country first.