Why I Am a Leftist

In terms of openness, as a life-long liberal I must admit to an almost visceral distrust of political conservatism. Although intellectually I understand the concepts of in-group loyalty/distrust of outsiders, purity/sanctity, and hierarchy/authority, recognizing them as part of the defining foundations of conservatism, I seldom identify with them.

Unlike a great many conservatives, as a person I am neither anxious nor fearful. Although I fully appreciate that the world has many people who are willing to commit evil acts, my life is not organized around protecting me or my family from that potential threat, I reject the idea that the world is basically hostile and the best course is to take precautions that ensure my personal well-being and that of my family. Therefore, I do not believe that someone just around the corner is ready, willing, and able to kill me and rape my spouse and daughters. Which means that purchasing firearms has never been and never will have any place on my To Do List.

On a personal note, I used to work for a guy who proudly told all his employees that his most basic principle was: “Fuck them before they fuck you.” Needless to say, I truly hated that prick.

I am not hostile to immigrants, foreigners, and racial or ethnic minorities and have never viewed them as more of a threat to my safety than white Americans.

I do not ordinarily fear attacks by other nations, nor do I support spending hundreds of billions of dollars on our already bloated military, nor do I believe pre-emptive attacks are the best defense.

I abhor the use of torture and believe all those who advocated and used torture during the Bush Administration should have been indicted and tried for crimes against humanity. For that moral and legal failure, I blame President Obama.

I believe taxation is necessary to preserve and enhance civil society and do not lose sleep worrying about the imposition of unfair taxes draining away my hard-earned nest egg.

I have never admired very wealthy people for their riches but typically have viewed them as little more than parasites who have exploited society to acquire undeserved fortunes. Obviously, I recognize exceptions to that sweeping generalization.

The issues of social stability, structure, and natural hierarchy have little place in my life. Although I have a doctorate, I have never asked students or others to address me as “Dr. So and So.” I have always despised those who try to use advanced degrees in their pursuit of social dominance. BTW, I don't worry about social stability since we live in a stable society, with the grave exception of the mindless gun violence caused by widespread gun ownership.

As a lifelong leftist, I do not hate or distrust complexity or compromise but accept them as normal parts of human life.

I do not typically require certainty regarding complicated questions and have always had a deep-rooted suspicion of authority and authoritarians. I am a rebel in many ways

I do not regard change as automatically bad and love to do things that are adventurous, such as living for more than a year in a country about whose language or culture I knew little.

I empathize strongly with the sufferings of others and believe injustice is highly immoral and also should be illegal, even though it has been a common and continuing element in America throughout our history, especially in our flawed criminal justice system.

I strongly believe that armed citizens are a threat to all of society and that the Second Amendment should be repealed and firearms and ammunition confiscated.

I reject factoids and “alternative facts” as well as assertions or campaign promises made by political candidates that are demonstrably false. Unlike a great many conservatives, I am very analytical and have never been  contemptuous of scholarly and scientific standards of evidence. In other words, I am not a Young Earther and reject climate change denial, evolution denial, and anti-vaccine nonsense.

I rely on education and science to solve social and economic problems.

I support well-designed and implemented welfare programs because they have the potential of reducing hunger, homelessness, child poverty, illness, crime, and other social problems. I firmly believe conservatives have made the term “public welfare” into a pejorative that unfairly and inappropriately tags the poor and disadvantaged as undeserving and irresponsible.

As a lifelong leftist, I detest the effort on the part of conservatives to conflate liberalism (including social democracy and social justice) with socialism and communism.

I strongly believe in personal responsibility and hard work but also understand how structural constraints to equality and freedom have permeated American history.

White supremacy, both overt and covert, and white privilege permeate America and are the foundations of racial prejudice.

I strongly oppose abortion and the death penalty.

I do not believe that whites who have worked hard and followed “the rules” are being passed over in favor of minorities and immigrants who conservatives loudly claim have not followed the same paths.

I do not believe that right-leaning people who have made what they consider to be moral choices have been required by the government to underwrite people whose supposedly poor choices, irresponsibility, or lifestyles offend them morally. Although I recognize that that is precisely what a great many conservatives assert, I believe objective evidence demonstrates those claims to be spurious.

I strongly support labor unions although I do not expect they will be perfect in their functions.

I favor the establishment of a higher minimum wage and higher poverty level thresholds.

I strongly support universal, single-payer health insurance in the U.S.

I believe the oceans of money being poured into political campaigns have made the American electoral process the definition of legalized corruption.

I strongly advocate taking a harder position with Israel with respect to the “Two State” solution and pressuring Israel to remove entirely its settlements in the West Bank.

I detest with every fiber in my body a criminal justice system that prosecutes children as young as twelve as adults and that also refuses to recognize mental illness as a mitigating factor in criminal acts.

I do not believe corporations have the same legal standings as people/citizens in the Constitution and that the Supreme Court was manifestly wrong and driven by ideology in its decision on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

I strongly advocate for more federal regulations for Wall Street and the major banks to insure the economic collapse that led to the Great Recession of 2007-2008 never happens again.

As a rule, I distrust corporations to do anything other than increase their bottom line, which means they typically like to push externalities onto others to pay, and by others I mean the public, and to stifle or eliminate competition so they can raise prices and improve their bottom line while giving their customers the finger.

I believe the concept of free and unregulated markets is a fiction created by conservatives determined to increase profits and decrease or eliminate regulations that curb predatory acts. The goal of those conservatives is to allow corporate and property interests to dominate civil society by creating a hierarchy of value with owners/wealthy at the top, managers/professionals in the middle, and workers at the bottom who have no means of protesting unfair and unsafe conditions or low wages because their unions have been destroyed by conservatives like the Koch brothers.

I believe that conservatives and capitalists cooperate to hold workers hostage to the market’s needs and drives and, when conservatives are in power, capitalists and corporations are given free rein to drive their incomes up while holding that of workers down, hence the terrible inequality we have today. Incidentally, I count Bill/HillaryClinton and Barack Obama as conservative Democrats in bed with capitalists.

I believe the Constitution must be interpreted as a "living" document, not one frozen in the late 18th Century.

I believe the Supreme Court has never in its history been free of ideological bias or overt and covert racial prejudice. Dozens of its head-up-its-ass decisions over the centuries amply illustrate that contention. Hello Johnson v. M'Intosh, Dred Scott v. Sandford, Pace v. Alabama, Plessy v. Ferguson, Ozawa v. United States, Village of Euclid, Ohio v. Ambler Realty Co., Hirabayashi v. United States, and Korematsu v. United States among many others.

I am convinced by recent research, as well as by lived experience, that American society is one in which citizen influence over government policy is directly related to their financial resources, and here I’m pointing the finger at anonymous donors and large corporations that use their funds to sway political decisions in what I view as legalized corruption blessed by an openly and unabashedly ideological and partisan Supreme Court.

I do not have a mud room or a man cave or a firearm of any kind. I own neither cats nor dogs, though I am partial to dogs and more than four decades ago my allergist determined I am allergic to cats, cigarette smoke, dust, and leaf and grass mold, among many other substances.

We live in a country that is uniquely responsive to the preferences of the affluent, making it a democracy in name only and a plutocracy in deed where money buys political access and compliance as well as the willful ideological blindness of the U.S. Supreme Court.