I’ve been so blessed to be living in Santa Monica, California since January 2009 and below, I will list 8 reasons why I went from a Democratic Socialist, to a Moderate Democratic, to a Libertarian.
To tell you a bit about myself, I was born in Canada. In 2005, I graduated from community college and left Canada in order to live in Europe. My initial plan was to work for one year and then go to university in Los Angeles to get my B.A. That one-year quickly became three but I finally came to my senses and crawled back to North American life of my hands and knees, a decision that I haven’t regretted since.
Below are the 8 reasons why living in America changed my political beliefs:
1) Misconceptions About Life in Europe – In the USA, some people are somewhat clueless on what life is like in the rest of the world. Not like Canadians are anymore enlightened but I’ve talked to so many people at my school who are usually cynical, idealistic teenagers that tell me things about how peaceful and progressive Europe is as compared to the “oppressive, backward USA”. I become flabbergasted and absolutely dumb founded by the hate the average young, American youth has for America. I wasn’t asleep during the Bush administration, or the last two years, but come on. Thank your spoiled stars you didn’t grow up in Liberia, Chad, Bosnia or any other third world country. Thank God you grew up in a place with running water, toilets that you don’t have to squat in, where warlords aren’t trying to kill you and your family or where curable diseases claim millions of lives each year. We’re all spoiled rotten in North America and that’s the reason I woke up from the leftist dream because I want to be spoiled too. European life isn’t as good as it is here. Sweden, Denmark, Germany and France, for example, are terrible countries filled with politically active racism, discrimination and very high suicide rates. Overall, the American youth that I’ve spoken to have a perverted idea of the world at large and I find it terribly sad but I know why they believe in these misinformed things.
2) Michael Moore Is Lying To America – Michael Moore is a left leaning populist and a hypocritical Anti-Capitalist. Moore is an entertainer, not a documentarian, who makes tremendously bias films in order to push his own political agenda. Those who are swayed by his films, as I was once after Bowling For Columbine, need a seriously lesson in the always important subject of microeconomics. While Bowling For Columbine was somewhat interesting, I’m sick and tired of people assuming that Moore’s depiction of Canada in Bowling For Columbine is somehow accurate. How many times do people come up to me and say, “So, you don’t lock your doors in Canada” or the one that inferiorities me the most is “Canadians are so much friendlier than Americans.” These are just blind statements that come from Moore’s biased opinions. Canada has crime but since Canada only has 32 million people and not 300 million, I guess there’s less of it. Canada has violent and non-violent crimes, which are just likely to happen to a person in Canada than in the US. Canada has gun crimes too, like in the US. Heck, I’m pretty convinced that Canada was invaded by the US sometime ago but since some idiot forgot to sign a paper so we’re still considered a country. I hate to break it to people but I always seem to have to, there isn’t much difference between developed countries in this world, most want to be and are envious of the USA. Anyone who tries to fill your head with how different Canada is to the USA or how Europe differs from the US is lying to you or it completely ignorant of life outside the US. Every country has crime, disillusionment, racism, poverty and ignorance. You can’t escape it, because all countries, whether socialistic or capitalistic, dictatorship or democracies, radical or republics, are all run by people. I recommend a documentary called “Michael Moore Hates America.” It’s really fascinating.
3) Thou Shall Not Question Thy Liberalness – Hypocrisy always makes me laugh because everyone’s a victim of it, no matter how self-righteous we think we are. In the summer of 2009 I was taking an English class and one particular evening we had a substitute teacher. I got into a small argument with her because she started talking about how Karl Marx was so wonderful and that Michael Moore was a champion for the average worker. Needless to say, I rose my hand and destroyed all her arguments and explained that I’ve seen socialism in action, as did my father and grandparents who warned me about the dangers of communism and socialism my entire life. I explained that Moore distorts facts in his documentaries to support his own Marxists views, that he in fact can’t be a defender of the worker because he’s a multimillionaire who won’t redistribute his personal wealth. He also makes that same wealth by way of using capitalism, the very thing he hates the most. I brushed off this discussion and a couple days later I received an email from the Assistant Dean who wanted to see me. Curious, I went in and what would you know? The substitute wrote complains against me. According to the substitute, I was being rude and disruptive in her class when all I was doing was pointing out the flaws in her arguments. To note, I was in an English classes devoted to learning how to make clear arguments in essays. The Dean didn’t really care, especially after I told her my side of the story. I explained that the lecture on how great Karl Marx was had nothing to do with anything we were discussing in English class because the class was not devoted to Political Science or Political Philosophy. The Dean agreed with me and thankfully didn’t put anything into my permanent record. I was really taken a back on how this liberal academic was defensive against the other side of a small argument.
4) Separation of Humanism and State – In the summer of 2010 I took a film course that happened to be located in my school’s science building. This was the first time I took a course in that particular building and what I found was blatant hypocrisy. Next to the classroom I took the course in was a poster that displayed two columns on it. The first column read, “Scientific Discoveries” and listed several examples of scientific discoveries. Next to that is a column read “Creation Science Discoveries” and nothing was listed below. The bottom of the sign read and I’ll paraphrase, that evolution should be taught in schools in Kansas and an organization is listed below that promotes the same agenda. Interesting, I thought, this was the science building and not the humanities building where the political classes are taught. I then began to read under the first column where lists of scientific discoveries are given. To a laughable, ironic surprise I noticed that more than half of the things listed were either names of people or discoveries made by those of faith. In fact, many of the scientists listed believed in Biblical Creationism. I thought, do the people for the Kansas evolution organization even know this, or if they do, do they even think it matters? A few weeks later, I began to explore more of the grounds around the science building. To note they’re the only building that posts such blatant political posters next to classrooms but I actually saw something even more astonishing on another section of the science building. There’s a poster that reads, “Uncle Darwin” with a picture of Charles Darwin dressed as Uncle Sam, “Wants you to support science and reason”. The most shocking thing was that this poster is made by the Center for Inquiry, a skeptic organization. The problem with this is that the Center for Inquiry is an origination where most of its members are atheists. CFI actively promotes secular humanism and its founder is Paul Kurtz, a prominent atheist founded the Council for Secular Humanism in the 1960’s. Other CFI members include the secular elite, such as biologist Richard Dawkings, magician James Randi and Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society. Many scientists and other critics have criticized CFI in the past for promoting scientism, which is a philosophy and not actual science. So I pose this question, imagine if there was a poster that read “Uncle Benedict” with a picture of the Pope dressed as Uncle Sam, “Wants you to support science and reason by teaching evolution in the classroom”, which the Vatican and most Roman Catholics support by the way. What do you think the repercussions would be? It would violate Church and State, the ACLU would open a court case and people would be fired left, right and center. Why then, is it ok for CFI to use Charles Darwin, who attended a Unitarian Church toward the end of his life, to promote their atheistic, secular humanistic agenda in a publicly funded college? Why do people go crazy over the separation of Church and State, yet we turn the other way when we have atheism and state being unified? What utter hypocrisy.
5) The DMV Is The Reason Socialism Doesn’t Work – Government bureaucracy at its finest and it’s the reason why socialism doesn’t work. I won’t bore you with my personal stories about the DMV, but most Californians that I know hate the DMV so just think about this. Imagine everything that you wanted needed to be distributed by the government. I’m talking about all necessity: food, clothing, water, shelter and other products like electronics, furniture and other things that we would typically go to a store and buy ourselves. Imagine however, if you needed to get in line and get these things from the government, which manufactured a limited quantity of necessity, products and services. Well ladies and gentleman of America, there is a system that believes in this and its called socialism; where the government controls the means of distribution and production. Yes, this is also communism. Those who are socialists and communists in America, who shop everyday, own or rent homes/apartments, own their own cars, buy toilet paper, tooth brushes, shampoo and shoes, to name a few, are hypocrites who exercise capitalism every day of their lives. If you like owning property and keeping the money you earn then you are not now nor will you ever be a socialist. It’s really that simple.
6) Patriotism is a Good Thing – The one thing I always felt deprived of while growing up in Canada was a sense of national pride and unity. Ask any Canadian what they are and very rarely will they answer that they’re Canadian without stating what countries their parents, grandparents or great-grandparents came from. That’s because we have multiculturalism in Canada and not the melting pot like in the US. I would call myself Canadian but it’s kind of hard. Yes, I am a Canadian citizen as well as a Hungarian citizen. I don’t vote in either country and I haven’t lived in Canada since 2005 or Hungary since 2006. I really don’t feel much pride as a Canadian either. I feel more pride coming from Macedonian and Hungarian decent while living as a student here in American than I do as a Canadian. One thing that I really do love about America is that veterans walk around proudly displaying insignia of military units on their clothing. You’d never find any Canadian doing this and it’s kind of sad. In Los Angeles, I feel so much respect when I see people with “World War II Veteran”, “Korean War Veteran”, “Vietnam Veteran”, and “Gulf War Veteran” worn so proudly on their clothing. I have gone up to several people and said thank you for their service. I’m often told that not many young people thank veterans for fighting for their freedom and for that I feel ashamed. Everyone needs to thank these vets whenever they see them, as they’re the reason why Michael Moore can hate America and why he spews socialism in his movies. I think that America has made me more aware that many veterans, both men and woman, young and old, have given their lives for the freedoms that none of us should ever take for granted.
7) Glenn Beck and Fox News – When I first graduated college in Toronto, Canada in 2005, I was a supporter of the New Democratic Party of Canada. When I arrived in Europe I suddenly saw the repercussions of communism and how democratic socialism has negatively affected the countries I lived in, particularly that of Germany and Hungary. In America, I started watching the Glenn Beck Program after going on YouTube and watching a video of his in which Glenn described the history of the state of Israel. Being half Jewish and someone who went on the Taglit Birthright trip in December 2008; I was struck hard by Glenn’s accuracy and factual depiction Israeli history. I had never seen much Fox News before because of course Fox is the evil conservative, right-leaning media outlet that lies all the time and convinces stupid people that America is a good country. I began to watch more video of his program which went into his views on libertarianism, the free market, and interviews with Penn Gillette, people from the Ayn Rand Institute, Vince Flynn, Ron Paul and Tea Party supporters. His guests, including Beck, seemed very rational, honest and were willing to discuss both sides of the issue. I then starting taking a look back to the liberal media sources like CNN and MSNBC. I found that like the angry liberal communist substitute teacher, the other side was often missing and looked down upon as unenlightened. The one thing that kept me watching Glenn’s show was Founder’s Fridays. I researched many of the books that Glenn featured on his show and found that much of what he said was true. These Founding Friday’s really struck me was how accurate and detailed the information is and how available each reference is for people to do their own research. To me, this is something that I didn’t see much on the other news sources so it was worth my time to become a regular viewer.
8) Overturning Prop 8 – So what do you do when you twice lose a vote on an issue that you feel so strongly about? First, you insult, assault, accost, vandalize and dehumanize people who oppose your position that gay marriage should be legal. After that, you go to federal court in the most liberal part of the state and thus the country, Northern California, and get it overturned. God bless the American court system, it’s so politically correct. Prop 8 really opened my eyes to the hate liberals have for those who don’t side with their views on every issue. The people of California spoke on two separate occasions; they don’t want gay marriage legal in their state. It doesn’t mean that the discussion is over or that in the future there shouldn’t be another vote on Prop 8, it just means that for now the majority of voters said no to gay marriage. What made me change my beliefs was seeing the hate that Prop 8 opponents displayed against religious groups that support Prop 8. Say and think what you want but I lost all respect for Prop 8 opponents who felt the needs to vandalize private property, run people off the road, scare and use derogatory language in order to make their point especially around children and families.
And those are the 8 reasons why America changed my political beliefs.
