Is it over? Can we come out now?

Ahhhh! The conventions are over and we get to move on to the meat of the election. The conventions are simply the longest (and most annoying) of the campaign ads. We can now tune them out, DVR everything and Fast Forward through them.

I was thinking about how I became a conservative as I drove home from Biloxi the other day. Reagan had a line... "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Party left me." My transition was something like that.

When I was a liberal, it was the late 60's. The liberal mantra was all about getting government intrusion out of our lives. Let us live as we please, stop invading our bedrooms, quit judging our lifestyles. Now, the liberal mindset is much the opposite and demands intrusion by the government and supporting those lifestyles with the taxes of others.

I think most people in this country only want government intrusion when there's a natural disaster or a major downturn in the economy. On the latter, they seem to approve of bailouts for themselves only.... which they never get.

That's the problem with allowing government to intrude; it is never the way you want them to. You want them to help the little guy but he's hard to find. From the homeless guy on the street to the small businessman who wants less paperwork and lower taxes, the "little guy" would like to be left alone. But we want the government there to help us rebuild after a hurricane and to grant us low interest loans to add to the insurance payouts. We want the government to do most of the cleanup. But once that's done, we'd like it to go away and let us get ourselves going again.

I was listening to the radio and someone interviewed people on the street around the Democratic National Convention. He asked about corporations and profit. Almost all seemed to be opposed to both. That bothered me. Do they not work? Do they not work for a corporation or a company that has at least one corporation as a major client? I worked for a large corporation for 34 years. They treated me both well and poorly over those years. My desire to do as I pleased conflicted with their desire to have maximum productivity. I wanted a larger paycheck, they wanted to keep my wages down. We compromised often enough to keep me around.

Liberals seem to hate the rich. Yet I have never met one who didn't want to be rich himself. I could never understand that. I think it was just envy in action.

So... I didn't leave liberalism, liberalism left me.