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A core truth
From last November at VFR, a reminder from a reader that civilization’s existence rests on violence, or to be more precise, on the legitimate use of force. I’ve known this my entire life, long before I consciously became a conservative.
By the way, here’s how I found out I was a conservative.
It was in the early to mid ’80s, a period in which I had been doing a lot of reading and thinking about politics, moving away from my earlier, somewhat standard, and not particularly thoughtful liberalism (a couple of years earlier someone who had heard me opine on various matters, had told me I was a conservative, and I was shocked at the idea). A telephone pollster called me up. One of the questions was, “Do you consider yourself a liberal, a moderate, or a conservative?” Musing out loud, I said, “Well, I’m not a moderate … and I’m certainly not a liberal … so I guess I must be a conservative.” I said it with more conviction than my quoted words indicate. It was the bracing feeling of something clicking into place, the discovery of something important about myself, the culmination of a long evolution I had been going through. But it’s funny that I didn’t realize it until the pollster’s question forced me to reflect on it. Email entry |