Many liberals in this country, especially those in their twenties and thirties, rest supremely confident in the idea that they firmly understand life, that their carefully learned view of the world past, present, and future remains the only truth, and that those who do not agree with that view are at best ignorant and at worst set to destroy civilization. I am among those whom they would deem ignorant or destructive. Sadly, only a few years ago, many of those same liberals sat in my high school classroom, listened to my ideas, laughed at my jokes, liked me, respected me. But now, they are disappointed that I, whom they once admired, could have lost my way, could have become so ignorant of reality, could hold ideas so vastly divergent from their own. And so, some of them no longer wish to talk to me. This, of course, is the new definition of an exchange of ideas, the new definition of discourse. Someone pontificates and everyone agrees. Those who don’t agree, on Facebook, let’s say, are unfriended or just asked to please not respond to that individual’s posts. Liberalism can not abide dissension.
But I choose to dissent. Because much of what young liberals believe to be the truth is not the truth. It is the truth as it has been told to them or taught to them by liberal professors and the liberal press. My truth is the truth that I lived through. I know facts to be facts because I experienced them, not because of what someone told me. And I am not alone. There are millions of us out there, called conservatives, demeaned and dismissed because we don’t hold a liberal view of the world. Well, before you dismiss us, and me, let me share a few things with you.
I lived through the cold war. I learned in school how to hide under my desk to protect myself ineffectually from the effects of a nuclear bomb being dropped by the Soviet Union. And my family had an equally ineffectual fall-out shelter in our basement for years, and I listened to my parents debating how many neighbors they could take in to our shelter, neighbors who had no place of their own to hide.
I witnessed the Zapruder film of President Kennedy’s assassination on television over and over and watched Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on live T.V. And I read and heard all the conspiracy theories about who had killed JFK, and like countless others was not convinced by the Warren Commission’s report. I can tell you all about the “magic bullet” that supposedly passed through more than one body at so many odd angles and then ended up nearly pristine on the gurney in the hospital. I lived through the subsequent assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy.
I watched while Soviet troops marched into Hungary in 1956 and into Czechoslovakia in 1968 to ruthlessly put down those countries’ attempts at more freedom. I watched Lech Walesa lead the fight for a free trade union at the Gdansk Shipyards in Communist Poland and saw him become president of a post-communist Poland years later.
I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, where for days we expected Russia to fire it’s nuclear bombs at the U.S. The thought of imminent death is sobering, even for a 15-year-old.
I saw my friends and relatives go off to Vietnam, and like many young girls, wrote to the U.S.O. who passed my letters to various soldiers with whom I became pen pals, helping to make the hell they lived in a bit more bearable. Two of them came to see me when their tours were up. From a couple, the letters simply stopped coming.
I watched the fight for desegregation and wanted desperately to join the marchers in the South, horrified and angered at the murders of Civil Rights workers, both black and white. I listened to every word of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and believed with all of my heart that a world where we are judged by our character and not by the color of our skin is the world in which I want to live.
I visited Communist Czechoslovakia with a group of Paris students and adults. We were assigned a government tourist bureau guide at the border, stayed in a government hotel in Prague (with 8 stories and a broken elevator), and shopped in government controlled shops (there were no others) where you were yelled at if you attempted to touch something. People were polite, but not friendly. No one wanted to make conversation with you, to try out their English as so often happens in other countries. They were afraid to seem too friendly with Western visitors. So, we walked the grey, colorless streets, drove through the grey, colorless villages where few flowers bloomed and weeds proliferated, and stood outside the bus at the border while they searched inside and underneath to be sure that no Czech citizen was trying to escape with us. It was an educational visit, but a frightening one as well.
Some time later, I watched on the news as President Reagan stood in Berlin and told the Soviet leader, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” And I nearly cried as Germans from both sides of the wall began to do just that, removing the wall chunk by chunk that had divided their country from the end of WWII. And hardly able to believe that it was happening, I saw country after country, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia. . . countries who had lived under the tyranny of socialism from the end of the Second World War, throw off their Soviet controlled leaders, and slowly, painfully establish democracy, freedom for their ravaged peoples. And then the Soviet Union itself disintegrated as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and the Ukraine sought their freedom from the former Soviet Union.
And then I returned to Prague, now of the Czech Republic, after Socialism had been defeated and Democracy ruled. And the change was astounding. Where once people had been grim-faced and not overly friendly, now they were genial, smiling, laughing, cheerfully selling us the many items that stuffed the shelves of their shops and spilled out onto the streets. Flowers were everywhere and outdoor cafés proliferated just as they did all over Western Europe. Democracy had brought sunshine to the Czech people along with freedom.
I could go on and on, but let me make my point. I know what communism was like, because I experienced a world that teetered on the brink of annihilation because of communism in both the Soviet Union and Cuba. There is nothing good about communism. I understand that socialism, which could be considered a milder form of communism, doesn’t work either. It hasn’t worked in Venezuela. It didn’t work in our own Plymouth Rock Colony. When wealth is redistributed among everyone, some become lazy, knowing they will be cared for whether they work or not, and those who work, become bitter and lose the drive to achieve because whatever they earn goes to those who do nothing. Capitalism works best and has always worked best, as long as some provisions are made for the truly needy.
I know that racism exists in some in this country as in others, but that racism is not restricted to white Americans. Some Blacks are also racist, as evidenced by groups such as “Black Lives Matter” whose real message is that ONLY Black lives matter. Yet I have seen black Americans make huge strides in this country. They attend the best colleges. They own businesses. They are doctors, teachers, nurses, members of Congress, CEOs of vast companies. They serve on the Supreme Court. They have run for the presidency. They have held positions as Secretary of State, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and Attorney General of the U.S. No doors are closed to them except those that are closed by their own lack of ambition. Take HUD Secretary Ben Carson. He started life in a ghetto as rough as the south side of Chicago. He could have lived a short life as a gang member, dealing death and drugs on the street corners. But instead, he became a renowned neurosurgeon, a presidential candidate, and now a Cabinet member in the Trump Administration.
I have seen women make equally huge strides, breaking through all of the boundaries that some claim still fetter us. Women hold every job imaginable in this country, from construction worker to Supreme Court Justice to presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. Do we still make less that men in some fields? Yes, although some of those wage discrepancies stem from the particular jobs women hold and from their need to take more time off for child-bearing and rearing.
Can changes be made to better this country and the lives of those who live in it? Of course! Conservatives just don’t recommend throwing out the baby with the bath water. Want to conserve energy? Sure, let’s do that. But don’t invest millions in unproven start-up companies, many of whom fail, at the same time as closing down current fossil fuel industries, forcing the people into more expensive energy sources. Keep using the fuel sources we have while adding more green sources as they become financially viable. Don’t beggar Americans to save a questionable degree in the world’s temperature, questionable because America alone will have little impact while countries like India and China ignore their commitments to green energy.
Don’t dismiss the wisdom of those who actually experienced the decades of history that your professors taught you about in college. Don’t assume we don’t know what we are talking about. Don’t take the word of those who teach history over those who lived that history. If you do, you will end up the loser for it.