I discovered a long-time acquaintance is a red diaper baby. Her parents are bona fide Communists, as were her grandparents. The sort that hoped that we would lose the Cold War. This actually explains a great deal. She’s one of the most conservative people I know, in the traditional sense of the word. And her mannerisms really strike one as a fundamentalist Christian or something. She’s been mistaken for right-wing by mutual acquaintances. It’s the lifestyle that she leads. And yet her politics were way out in left field. Why?
Well, if you’re a real traditionalist, and you were born into a family where the family tradition is Communism. You keep up the fight. You honor your family’s heritage and accept the wisdom handed down from one generation to the next. Their good guys are your good guys. Their bad guys are your bad guys. Your tribe is the USSR, defunct or not, and not the nation in which you were born and raised.
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5 Responses to Communism Is the Answer
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She’s one of the most conservative people I know, in the traditional sense of the word. And her mannerisms really strike one as a fundamentalist Christian or something.
Intriguing post but I don’t quite get the connection. Can you elaborate?
Are you familiar with Haidt’s research on liberal morality and conservative morality? Or the study on brain activity where conservatives have a greater acuity for potential threats and liberals a higher tolerance for ambiguity? Along those lines. She’s the type of person that, when you meet her, if politics don’t come up, you’d assume she was quite conservative.
My “fundamentalist Christian” comment may be a bit off the mark. It came to mind because a mutual acquaintance, upon discovering her left-wing beliefs, had assumed that she was exactly that. I had (briefly) assumed that she was, while not necessarily religious, definitely a social conservative.
Interesting. I always thought it was theoretically possible for a conservative person to be born into a liberal environment and take those values as the ones worth defending in a conservative fashion, but always assumed in practice they’d drift right to be with people they fit in with better–conservatives like sports, liberals like art, etc.. Wonder why this didn’t happen in her case?
Hmmm, I would guess that she was raised with more liberal entertainment venues. She hates TV with a passion. Her rationale initially came across as conservative to me, as she disliked the values portrayed. It was only later I found out that she was talking about the commercials.
Seeing as communists are responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people, I think they get off light in polite society.