Why I Left the Left
By Caitlin R.
My earliest political memory is from November 4, 2008. My elementary school buzzed with excitement as news broke that Barack Obama had been elected president. I had little understanding of politics and no idea who John McCain was, but I knew that our blue team had defeated the red team. As the child of California Democrats, I woke up to CNN on the TV every morning. My parents never explicitly disclosed their political party, but I knew their opinions. As I grew older, I engaged more with the views of the Left. I passionately argued for gun control in history class. I took a picture with Gavin Newsom when he delivered a speech at my school. And during the 2016 campaign, my high school friends and I bashed Donald Trump’s rhetoric and scorned our Trump-supporting classmates.
Then Donald Trump won the 2016 election. After a lifetime of believing that the liberal agenda I subscribed to was not only factually correct but morally superior, I was shocked by America’s choice for president. The Left taught me that Americans needed the Democrats to support the poor, fix climate change, eliminate inequality, and cure the country’s problems. At the time, the 2016 election felt like a no-brainer. How could the majority of the country diverge from the obvious path? Didn’t they know what was good for them? My head spun with questions. What did these red voters know that I didn’t, and how could so many people disagree with my deeply-held beliefs? Maybe I’m missing something, I thought. So I started examining the arguments on the Right of the political spectrum.
As I associated with more open-minded people during college, I was introduced to all the beginner conservative outlets: Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire, Professor Jordan Peterson, and Tucker Carlson’s segment on Fox News. After a few months of digging, I found an answer to my political conundrum. While America is unquestionably flawed and plagued with ongoing issues, the solutions do not lie in government. With that, I realized an essential pillar of conservatism: individualism. Everywhere I turned, my epiphany revealed the hypocrisies, false gods, and inconsistencies laced in leftist doctrine.
I had a great many revelations. First, the Left peddles poisonous products, such as victimhood and reparative justice, and it depends on a manipulative Democratic leadership to sell them. American third-wave feminism, now part and parcel to leftism, is an insult to women in despotic countries struggling to secure the freedom to move without an accompanying male escort. Instead of encouraging women to explore opportunities and chart their own path, be it a career, motherhood, or a hybrid combination, the Left convinces American women, now fully enfranchised, that they’re oppressed and still have liberative milestones to achieve. A master of exploiting crisis and emergency to consolidate power and erode individual liberty, the Left pushes gun control to rob Americans of their last defense against tyranny and invaders.
Leftists reject America’s founding promise as the greatest experiment in republican democracy in the civilized world, all while enjoying its privileges and protections. They insist that America is built on oppression and is unfair, but they ignore the testimonies of communism-battered Cubans arriving on Florida’s shores, desperate for a fraction of a chance to live the American dream. Instead of appreciating the countless rags to riches stories of immigrants and native-born Americans of all diverse creeds, ethnicities, and socio-economic backgrounds, the Left damns America for the stains of its pasts, rather than applaud its success in the present.
The Left refuses objective truth, making right and wrong beholden to the political animus and whim of the day. The meanings of common words in the English language, such as violence, man, and misinformation, have been distorted beyond recognition. The Left redefines free speech within a narrow rubric that forbids and censors thought and expression outside its confines. Those within the Left’s ranks pander endlessly to each other but also participate in a merciless, cultish cancel culture that strips people of their reputation, livelihood, and dignity overnight for seemingly minor infractions. In the leftist worldview, there is no room for redemption, personal growth, or absolvement from former wrongdoing. In casting dissenters as domestic terrorists or conspiracy theorists rather than just people with different ideas, the Left has stifled conversation and killed civil discourse and debate. The Left expects Americans to accept its revolutionary re-writing of American history and literature and trajectory for the country without objection, resorting to nasty epithets, reductionist accusations, or societal blacklisting for those who don’t capitulate.
When I became aware of all this, it dawned on me that it’s the Left, not the Right, that embodies fascism. A totalitarian government does not announce itself. It creeps into power democratically and gradually. The people often voluntarily forfeit their liberties under the seduction of false pretense or promise. But once the people surrender their rights and freedoms, only violent overthrow can win them back. From nonsensical business closures to the breakdown of academic and free-thinking, to the nasty social alienation and indoctrination of cancel culture, I saw the authoritarianism of the Left rearing its ugly head. More problematically, I saw an entire generation of Americans blindly accepting it.
After surveying the evidence, I concluded these things myself, as a woman and a fully cognizant individual. I didn’t need the Republican party to persuade me; the Left did all the convincing I needed. I chose conservatism because the political philosophy speaks for itself. It promotes maximum human potential, prosperity, freedom, and good despite humanity’s many defects. Conservatism is predicated on the power and potential of the individual, not on the organizing power of government. To young people, conservatism may seem slow, unadaptable, and “behind the times.” But that’s the point; social, economic, and cultural change unbalance society. A society that’s always moving is not necessarily always moving forward. Mechanically, conservatism preserves the institutions, cultural norms, and personal liberties that make America great. Conservatism fundamentally understands that the vision the Founding Fathers had wasn’t just revolutionary but metamorphic.
This country is unlike any other. It doesn’t have an ethnic backbone or a centuries-old lived history. Unlike being French or Swedish, or Japanese, being American isn’t a predicative label of belonging— it’s a shared belief in the common rights of man and the intrinsic value of their protection. Conservatism is about applauding and preserving what makes us American— not shaming us for it. That’s why I left the Left.
Photo via Free Range Stock
