Death of a Leftist; Birth of a Centrist

I should write a book entitled, "How I Went from Liberal Moonbat to Rational Conservative". There really was a time, not too many years ago, when I drank the leftist kool-aid; no, I friggin' bathed in it.   Re-reading some of my old stuff, I wanted to kick my own ass!

While deeply ensconced in the far left, I joined a message board and was thrown unceremoniously out of Plato's Cave, kicking and screaming all the way.  I was force fed classical liberalism, and berated into actually thinking about the leftist rhetoric I was spewing.  I came out of this experience a changed woman.  I no longer wished to sit beside Marx and swap stories.  Sacrificing my students' learning of the fundamentals in favor of a course in Islamic Basket Weaving became anathema to me.   I began to base my Worldview on the careful examination of empirical evidence, not on the way I felt about whatever was transpiring in the world around me.

I recognized that women had the right to make their own choices; they were no longer required to live by my (then) radical feminist mores. A new phrase entered my lexicon:  equity feminism.  I found that I could strive for parity, not dominance.  What a revelation!

So, for better or worse, this is the Me that you see today.  

There is one thing, however, that I will hold on to with a death grip of steel.

No one, and I mean no one, is ever going to take away my tie-dye!

Subjective Objectivity

There is an entire educational curriculum based on the writings of Howard Zinn, the "historian" who wrote "The People's History of the United States". This is downright frightening when you consider one of Zinn's most famous quotes on objectivity:

"Why should we cherish “objectivity”, as if ideas were innocent, as if they don’t serve one interest or another? Surely, we want to be objective if that means telling the truth as we see it, not concealing information that may be embarrassing to our point of view. But we don’t want to be objective if it means pretending that ideas don’t play a part in the social struggles of our time, that we don’t take sides in those struggles.

Indeed, it is impossible to be neutral. In a world already moving in certain directions, where wealth and power are already distributed in certain ways, neutrality means accepting the way things are now. It is a world of clashing interests – war against peace, nationalism against internationalism, equality against greed, and democracy against elitism – and it seems to me both impossible and undesirable to be neutral in those conflicts.”

"Why should we cherish objectivity?", Mr. Zinn asked. I'm going to let you answer that question, friends. Is objectivity and accuracy something to strive for when examining our history, or should subjective anecdotes be retold as if they were fact, muddying our historical waters with conjecture and judgment?

You decide.

The decision was easy for Mr. Zinn. According to him, "There is no such thing as pure fact."