CPAC 2009 Conservative 13 yr old wonder boy today 17 no longer conservative.

[gabeana]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78068.html

similar thing happened with me, I am 43, but in my high school years I thought Reagan was the greatest fortunately I went to college. There I was exposed to different ideas and complex history that was not straight from a H.S. text book of course the changed my opinion of Reagan. Its funny when I was 16 or 17 bragged to my family that I was going to be the first registered republican in the family. Well when I hit 18 my views were already changing registered a dem, first election voted for Dukakis and have not looked back. Now I am looked on as a radical professor by my students, kind of irks me because I'm not radical just speak what I see to be the truth

[DJ13]

1. Now you know why conservatives hate higher education

[Initech]

18. Is there anything conservatives like besides fetuses?

[DJ13]

23. Yes

Money.

[alfredo]

29. And guns, lots of guns.

[Pab Sungenis]

33. Sadly, though, they don't complete the trifecta.

[alfredo]

42. The Shit has hit the fan.

[Jamaal510]

47. Well they like

-Corporate socialism
-Guns
-Pretending that 2000-2008 never happened
-Any news station that always confirms their beliefs i.e. Fox
-Death Penalty
-Forcing Christianity on everyone

[Suji to Seoul]

49. War and dead soldiers, because the hate the veterans too.

[LeftishBrit]

2. Sometimes getting older does mean getting wiser!

[Shankapotomus]

3. Just saw this....

He's basically defected....lol.

i think Bill Maher should invite him on the show so he can update everyone on his political leanings.

[bluedigger]

7. It's the least Maher could do.

The kid deserves a public platform to clear the air.

[alfredo]

43. On Bill Maher? That's jumping into the deep end.

[Shankapotomus]

44. Really?

I was thinking that since he is just a kid, Maher might want to give him a break (we're all allowed one mistake, as they say) and let him clear his name on national television. After all, Maher did get a few laughs out of the kid's ignorance.

[alfredo]

45. Oh sure, Bill will treat him well. I was thinking of the rightwing backlash if he

goes on Maher's show.

Loyalty to party is supposed to absolute. He will be treated as a traitor.

[Jamaal510]

48. I doubt there's much harm in him appearing on Real Time,

since he was already on Lawrence-O's show. The RW probably already burned bridges with him by now.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

55. Burned bridges? He'll be lucky they don't burn his house down.

[alfredo]

56. Maher's show is more politically charged.

[WinstonSmith4740]

58. He probably will...

But, unfortunately he just announced Friday it was break time & he was going on vacation, so he'll probably be in reruns for the next month or so. He joked about how shit always happens when he's off

Caught this kid on O'Donnell and he's pretty cool. Not real sure if he's really settled in on a philosophy yet (he's still only about 17), but he does seem to have seen the light about today's "conservatism".

I'll bet this kid read a couple of books when he was younger and thought that the old "Rockefeller" Republican still lived today. But then he got exposed to what has happened to the Republican party, it turned him off. I mean, c'mon...what 17 year old boy wants to be told that ALL sex before marriage is terrible and horrible and will send you to hell?

[surrealAmerican]

4. He grew up.

"... I think I’ve changed a lot, and it’s not because I’ve become a liberal from being a conservative — it’s just that I thought about it more. The issues are so complex, you can’t just go with some ideological mantra for each substantive issue.”

Good for him. He's going to love New York.

[marias23]

57. Of course hes not a Republican

He can think for himself

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

5. This is the same guy that was shown on Bill Maher's show a couple of weeks ago.

[thelordofhell]

6. I guess he finally got laid

[Tom Ripley]

19. Yep, and in a way that the CPAC crowd finds to be "immoral" and unnatural"

count on it

[bluedigger]

8. I had Nixon's picture framed on my bedroom wall as a 13 year old.

That was in 1973...

[Ikonoklast]

9. I had a pic of Tricky Dick, too.

Except it was on a dartbord.

[bluedigger]

11. I would have got my ass kicked for throwing darts into the bedroom wall.

[Jackpine Radical]

37. I had a Nixon bumper sticker.

Nixon's name was preceded by the word "Impeach."

[Ikonoklast]

38. Mine said, "DICK NIXON BEFORE HE DICKS YOU".

Got pulled over and fucked with a lot by the local gendarmerie way back then.

They always assumed that as a long-haired hippie I was stupid enough to keep pot in my car, so they tore it apart a lot.

To this day, I can't stand the cops.

[hifiguy]

52. I had "Impeach Nixon" stickers on my bass case from '73 on.

One said "IMPEACH! Dick's pulled his last trick" and the other said "Impeach the Cox-sacker!"

[YOHABLO]

63. proud progressive dem for life ..

Last edited Wed Jul 4, 2012, 01:57 AM - Edit history (1)

I can proudly say I have been voting Democratically (big D) all my voting life. I was born when Eisenhower was president. My mother worked for the Adlia Stevenson II campaign for president .. and most of my family came from factory working jobs before, during and after WWII. I became very much aware of politics at a young age, particularly from the time John Kennedy was assassinated and even more so when the war in Vietnam began to escalate under Johnson and of course Nixon. I think Watergate opened my eyes to what the Republicans were all about .. I have never thought of switching parties, ever. I didn't have to go to college to be persuaded one way or the other. I grew up with parents that took the time to explain to me the 'politics of the day' .. perhaps in a biased way. But I know that I am on the 'right' side of the issues. I find it more alarming that college professors are not exactly unbiased in their lectures. Many are preaching the U of Chicago Leo Strausian economics crap as I write. Many are espousing how Social Security will not be there for young folks today, nor will Medicare be an option as well. I don't know about other parts of the country, but here in the South .. the propaganda is a thick as FOX glue.

Jonathan Khron would be a great speaker for Progressive Causes .. in that he has finally seen the light. I hope.

[Downtown Hound]

10. I had a similar transformation

My dad was a staunch, conservative Republican. I guess I identified with him until I was about 17 or 18. Things just happen as you get older. I read books, I opened my eyes, and I got exposed to different ideas.

My dad died when I was 19, not long after I had stopped calling myself a Republican. And when he did he was broke, penniless, and bitter. He's fallen victim to a scam in which he bought a small business franchise that grossly overplayed how successful they were. His business failed, his health failed, and his spirit failed. That was my first real lesson in capitalism and how cruel and vicious it can be. I have never once looked back at being a Republican again, and have only drifted more and more leftward as I got older.

Winston Churchill might have been a great man in many areas, but he was flat out full of shit when he said that when you get older if you're not conservative you don't have a brain.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

20. That is not a genuine Churchill quote, by the way

It is not found in anything he said or wrote. In fact, he joined the Conservative Party when he was still in his teens, so he was in effect a life-long Conservative.

[Pab Sungenis]

32. Not entirely.

Churchill left the Conservative Party in 1904 and won a seat in Parliament as a Liberal. He didn't rejoin the Tories until 1924.

But you are right that the quote is fabricated.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

41. Like nearly every other quote the righties use to "prove" their points

One of my relatives on Facebook "liked" a quote in which Thomas Jefferson supposedly said something about how it was immoral to tax productive people to support the lazy.

Since there was neither an income tax nor a welfare system in Jefferson's day, the quote sounded fishy, so I looked it up, and it was actually invented by some guy in Oklahoma in the 1950s, which sounds about right.

[caraher]

12. Speaking truth is radical

Always has been, always will be...

[hootinholler]

13. These days speaking truth IS radical. n/t

[Scootaloo]

14. Oh, I remember those days

13 years old, I thought Mallard Filmore was funny as hell. Clinton was the worst president ever, and of course, "this country needs a war!" was something I took as perfectly rational. I couldn't enjoy Michael Jackson because "he was gay," and my friends were going to hell for playing Magic: the Gathering.

Five years later, I'm screaming at the TV when the Supreme court installs Bush as president, regretting that I was too young to vote in that by a month

[alfredo]

30. I started to turn Liberal at a very early age. Sen Joe McCarthy made me dislike conservatives.

The Civil Rights movement pushed me to the left, then my girlfriend barred from taking architectural drawing because she had to sit on a stool and that was not "lady like" made me a feminist. A gay neighbor endured years of daily taunts and beatings, but never gave up, and that made me see the light on rights for the GLBT citizens. The Christian Right made me come out as an Atheist. I'm a natural Atheist, there was no life style choice there, no intellectual gymnastics, just a twisting of the gut when I tried to believe in the tales. The Army made me an anarchist. I've mellowed a bit, but there is still that hardline radical jiggling around in me.

[Scootaloo]

31. Mine came from poverty

Seeing my mother try to decide whether to buy groceries, pay the rent, or boy gas for the car. Spending time surviving only by the few thin threads of TANF that Alabama let get through. I guess everything else sort of sprouted from there.

Except the atheism; that's always been there. I tried to be a good little baptist. Didn't work; Not that it's difficult to be a bad baptist, i guess

[alfredo]

35. My dad owned a small business and a small chicken farm. We had good and bad times.

But we could always have eggs for breakfast, and chicken for dinner. Our rabbits were a good source of protein too. If we wanted fish, we'd head to the stream or pond. The fruit trees and garden helped keep the grocery bill low. Dad had some less than legal ways of making extra cash, but nothing dangerous or violent. That helped us live well on little.

[WillParkinson]

51. I was always grateful...

In my family we wanted for little, except for dad to actually be there with us. He was always too busy working to be a member of the family.

Now I'm older (by quite a bit) and don't really have a connection to him. It's kind of like Harry Chapin's "Cats In The Cradle".

[nxylas]

15. Same with me

I thought Thatcher was the bee's knees when I was in my mid-teens. I grew up in a Tory-voting, Daily Mail-reading household, but as I got older and started thinking for myself, I realised that I could not reconcile the beliefs I'd inherited from my parents with my own sense of justice. It was Thatcher's tacit support for the apartheid regime in South Africa and her remark about Britain being "swamped with alien cultures" that clinched it for me. I'd always hated racism, even as a Tory Boy, and spent a great deal of time arguing with the National Front kids in my school. Realising how deeply racist Thatcher was led to the whole house of cards coming down.

[Marr]

16. I assumed he was the political version of a child beauty pageant contestant.

I don't know how a child would end up doing that unless he had a parent who was seriously pushing it.

[Douglas Carpenter]

17. just read that on salon.com

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/02/performing_child_pundit_no_longer_conservative/

Thirteen-years-old is a bit to young to assume someone has achieved their permanent self.

[Fearless]

21. Soo...

When does he come out of the closet? During or after college?

I'm not trying to be mean spirited and I am a gay man myself. What changes between 12-13 and 16-17 years of age. Something that challenged his beliefs on social conservatism first and only later economic issues?



Best of luck to him either way. Seems like a reasonable, reasoning young man. Could go far in life with an open mind.

[Nevernose]

25. Being a high school teacher I see quite a bit of this

Kids who were never strongly exposed to gays, or blacks, or Latinos, or the working poor often have their eyes wide open to the multiculturalism that is the very fabric of America. It's neat to watch over a period of three or four years, (usually) privileged straight male WASPs realize that they aren't the center of the entire universe.

[Fearless]

28. Imagine that! Lol!

Teens that don't know everything!

[ErikJ]

22. CPAC video

Thom Hartmann just said that he had him on to debate him a few years ago and the kid kept following him everywhere he went still debating him. Probably the beginning of his awakening.

[magical thyme]

24. I love this line...

"I understood it enough to talk about it but not really enough to have a conversation about it.”

[TeamPooka]

26. The Boss says it all...

&feature=related

[Crowman1979]

27. I remember him from the stories TYT did involving him.

Great unintentional comedy.

[quaker bill]

34. I would say I have gotten a touch more conservative over the years

In that I no longer think I am going to form a commune, but simply hope to live in a community with shared values. Age and experience does this to people. I am not going to make peace with everyone either, but that is OK. Some choose a difficult path through life and it is not always my place to try to disuade them, occasionally it is best just to stay out of harm's way and let Kharma be Kharma.

[Laelth]

36. My story is hauntingly similar. n/t

-Laelth

[kwolf68]

39. Very nice

This is a young man interested in nuance and perspective. I think he realized that he was spoonfed his drivel.

Conservatism is inherently corrupting and cancerous. Many won't escape it, but I applaud those who do.

This young man may one day be a 'star' on the left...

I know the transition for Righty to Lefty. He mentioned social issues being his door to moving away from the right.

I was always an environmentalist. Even as a hardcore righty, I loved nature (still do) and was always on 'that side' of the debate with Liberals, but on nothing else. hell, I even had concocted ways to protect the environment with zero government regulation, all ideas impractical.

As you start to take notice in these things you start to see your puppet masters are bullshitting you. Because I learned about nature and science in college and work and starting hearing things from the right that were totally not true.

While I sadly did not vote for Al Gore in 2000, it was about a year or so later I was pretty much accepting of the Liberal vision, even pronounced that move right here on DU.

The move is not easy. You get questioned by family and friends. Their pablum starts to annoy. Christmas and other holidays are deflecting political rancor. But I am more at peace and happy now with my views than ever before because I've 'tried' them all and believe this is where I am most comfortable politically-on the left.

[grantcart]

40. The Republicans know this is inevitable.

This is why they have to demonize instead of having rational discussions, they know that in a rational world very few young people would stick to their agenda of fear

[Blue Owl]

46. Somewhere Rince Priebus is nervously perspiring...

n/t

[snot]

50. Hence the ongoing (and succeeding) effort by cons' to take over college edu.

[EC]

53. I wondered at the time about his parents.

Never have heard if they were repubs or Dems.

[eaglesfanintn]

54. Alex P. Keaton

That was pretty much me in school. I thought Reagan was the greatest president ever and pretty much subscribed to every talking point out there in the 80's.
As I got older, I began the slide from the right side of the aisle over to the left.
My parents were a mixed marriage - mom a Democrat and dad a Republican, but he never spoke of his politics. He would never tell us who he voted for, but we pretty much guessed he voted R most of the time (although I don't think he was a straight-ticket voter). As I've gotten older I often have wondered about how his politics coincided with his public life - he has spent the last 20 years working for various non-profits including a food bank.
The other day we were talking about the ACA and Mitt Romney and he told me that not only did he vote for Obama in 2008, that he was planning on voting for him again this year. I guess I'm not the only one in the family that has come over from the dark side.

[fascisthunter]

59. hahahahaha....

[agentS]

60. I don't blame the kid one bit. NOW the rethugs have a serious problem.

The Rethugican party has lost a really good speaker, all because they wanna act like spoiled brats who don't want others to have nice things like clean water and decent wages.

Teenagers sometimes are smarter than adults. They realize pretty quickly that they have to live in the world for a long time, and hating gays all day isn't going to cut it anymore.
Here's something special the kid said.
“I started getting into philosophy — Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Kant and lots of other German philosophers. And then into present philosophers — Saul Kripke, David Chalmers. It was really reading philosophy that didn’t have anything to do with politics that gave me a breather and made me realize that a lot of what I said was ideological blather that really wasn’t meaningful."

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78068.html#ixzz1zc3JbyB1

And this is EXHIBIT FUCKING B why the Rethugs want to kill public education! They don't want people to develop educationally, because they will read things that contradict the authoritarian sound-bite drivel that Rethugs spew!

EarlG, get this kid a free membership to DU, please!

[YOHABLO]

61. ''Now I am looked on as a radical professor by my students,''

So where does he teach .. Liberty University? I think it is important to reach these kids .. but they are the most vulnerable to FOX's propaganda. It sickens me to think that kids today think if you are left .. you're a communist. Sick Sick

[RFKHumphreyObama]

62. I seem to remember some people on DU predicting this at the time when he was a conservative hero

I got interested in politics early and, in terms of American politics, I was probably what you'd classify as quite a staunch right winger. I supported Clarence Thomas's confirmation to the Supreme Court and thought Anita Hill was making it all up, I flirted with supporting Pat Buchanan's presidential bid (until my cousin in the US -who sometimes posts here -cautioned me about him), wrote a letter to newly-ex President Ronald Reagan telling him how great he was and was outraged that the Democrats were even considering opposing President Bush Snr. in his re-election bid (and the whole Iran-Contra thing was an evil Democratic witch-hunt as well, of course)

Then I got a bit older, enhanced my intellectual horizons more and expanded my political philosophy and the rest is history. By the end of 1992 alone I had gone from a potential Buchanan supporter to an enthusiastic Clinton-Gore backer

[daligirl519]

64. Good for him. . .

He got himself some "book larnin." It happens.