{"id":2475,"date":"2008-04-22T07:20:54","date_gmt":"2008-04-22T12:20:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2475"},"modified":"2008-04-22T07:34:53","modified_gmt":"2008-04-22T12:34:53","slug":"im-not-a-liberal-so-im-not-an-expert-at-stuff-i-know-nothing-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2475","title":{"rendered":"I’m Not A Liberal, So I’m Not An Expert At Stuff I Know Nothing About"},"content":{"rendered":"

I tell people I was a liberal until my early twenties. The fact is, it was a slow slide, starting from when I was 15 or so, until 1984 – when I voted for Reagan (and made sure I told nobody about it). When I was 17 in 1980, I wrote the “Federalist” party platform at North Dakota Boys State; it was all full of “redistribution of wealth” and “comprehensive programs”, and probably qualified me as a McGovernite. By 1986, I was a conservative talk show host<\/a> of sorts.<\/p>\n

There were six people I credit with the change:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Jimmy Carter<\/strong>: The “Malaise” speech was about the first thing that started souring me on liberalism.<\/li>\n
  2. Ronald Reagan<\/strong>: I don’t think I need to explain.<\/li>\n
  3. Alexandr Solzhenitzyn<\/strong>: If One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich<\/em> and The Gulag Archipelago<\/em> couldn’t convince one of the evil of the left run amok, what could?<\/li>\n
  4. Fyodor Dostoevskii<\/strong>: Crime and Punishment <\/em>is the universal excoriation of the moral vacuity underneath socialism.<\/li>\n
  5. Paul Johnson<\/strong>: Modern Times <\/em>pretty well gutted the historical record of liberalism’s “achievements” that I’d been given in high school (even in my relatively-commonsense rural district).\n

    and finally…<\/li>\n

  6. P.J. O’Rourke: <\/strong>Because after all of the above, I still needed someone to convince me that it was OK to be a conservative and <\/em>play my music too loud; to assure me that conservatives were the kind of people I really wanted to be.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Oh, yeah – O’Rourke is coming to town:<\/p>\n

    P.J. O\u2019Rourke<\/a>, best-selling author and America\u2019s leading political satirist, will be speaking at the University of Minnesota on Tuesday, April 29th at 7pm. The event, titled \u201cYes, I\u2019m Still a Conservative, Damnit!: An Evening with PJ O\u2019Rourke\u201d<\/strong><\/u> is hosted by the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities chapter of Collegians For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT).<\/p>\n

    The event will be held at Northrop Auditorium (84 Church St. SE) in Minneapolis. The event is free and open to the public, with a special gift to the first 1000 attendees. No tickets will be issued.<\/p>\n

    With more than one million words under his byline and more citations in the “Penguin Dictionary of Humorous Quotations” than any other living writer, P.J. O’Rourke has established himself as America’s premier political satirist. He is the best-selling author of 12 books, including “Parliament of Whores”, “Give War a Chance”, “Eat the Rich”, “The CEO of the Sofa”, “On Wealth of Nations” and “Peace Kills”. Both Time Magazine and The Wall Street Journal have labeled O’Rourke as “the funniest writer in America”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    They left out about 200 other countries, but we’ll give ’em points for effort.<\/p>\n

    Be there!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I tell people I was a liberal until my early twenties. The fact is, it was a slow slide, starting from when I was 15 or so, until 1984 – when I voted for Reagan (and made sure I told nobody about it). When I was 17 in 1980, I wrote the “Federalist” party platform […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-n-e","category-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}