The discussion on a recent thread provoked a few questions which I hope to address in this entry.

As various commenters expressed a sense of hopelessness or in some cases, skepticism about the possibility of a real change of consciousness in majority Westerners, I asked the following questions, which I will now pose again for those who didn't follow the discussion thread in question:

Have any of you undergone a change in your political orientation or worldview in recent years? Have any of you become more conservative or 'right-wing' or more nationalistic, or simply more politically incorrect?

If so, what was the cause, insofar as you can pinpoint it, which brought about your change in thinking?

I am not sure if any of you would answer 'yes' to the first question, but obviously I can, as I've said on this blog several times. Not only was I at an earlier time in my life quite liberal, and at times frankly leftist, but my return to the conservative principles with which I was brought up was a gradual one, and it took a while for me to realize that the Republican Party was not the natural home of a real conservative. Call me slow on the uptake, but it was a gradual journey for me. I became a real believing Christian about the same time that I abandoned liberalism/leftism in all its forms. The two seemed incompatible to me, Christianity and liberalism. And this was in the depths of the Clinton years, at which time anybody who recognized the depravity of Bill Clinton was a beacon of truth to me, so my standards of 'conservatism' were very low.

However as I grew in understanding of both Christianity and conservatism, I began to see how very unconservative the Republican Party really is, and I was truly surprised to see that many Republicans are quite socially liberal, limiting their conservatism to fiscal matters -- if even that. And as 9/11 occurred, and really shocked me out of a complacency about our security in our own country, I was stunned to see that our President had no intention of closing the borders, cracking down on Islamic militants in our country, or deporting anyone. At the same time it seemed that I noticed our cities filling up with third-world immigrants who displayed everything from indifference to outright hostility to all things American. And yet our administration and the Republican Party, who I naively believed to be committed to preserving America and conserving our traditions, seemed oblivious to both those things. Our President and his unquestioning followers began to show their very un-conservative principles, and the fact that the President began to aggressively push amnesty for the increasingly visible illegal alien population, really convinced me that neither this administration nor the GOP had America's safety and survival at heart.

At the same time, during the last several years, it seemed as if there was an increasingly open hostility to majority America. The O.J. Simpson trial and the reactions thereto, and all the many little experiences of racial hostility caused me to question and ultimately reject politically correct orthodoxy, and to become disillusioned from the 'colorblind' ideal to which we are expected to aspire. In retrospect, I can only feel amazement at the fact that I held to those ideas for so long, despite some very bad personal experiences and also despite the growing racial animosity we are all witness to in America. Most people have so internalized the PC modes of thought, it takes a massive trauma to shake those ideas loose, and even then, many people will cling to them for dear life, as if they can't imagine life without political correctness; they fear discovering any hint of 'bigotry' in themselves. I don't know why I was able to get past that, when so many apparently cannot. I can only say that I have always been a truth-seeker, and I've always had a strong, innate sense of justice. I simply began to see that the scales of justice had been tipped too far to one side; the majority, supposedly in the name of rectifying past injustices, was now being subjected to a greater injustice. Two wrongs don't make a right; I knew that, even when I was a liberal, or 'progressive', which I suppose means I was not a true liberal or leftist, because leftism is all about perpetrating wrongs to 'rectify' existing or past wrongs.

So in recent years, probably within the last 5 or 6 years, I've become much more conservative and much more oriented to my own people; I've come to see that we have been pushed much, much too far in the direction of self-sacrifice, of putting anybody and everybody ahead of ourselves as a nation. We are at the point of essentially giving up our national existence for the sake of what? Making things better for the world's ne'er-do-wells, who couldn't make anything work in their countries? Or making up for our supposed past wrongs, or the long-ago crimes, so-called, of our ancestors? No, the injustice is clearly not being perpetrated by us, although we are being blamed for everything. We are very much on the receiving end of the injustice now, and many Americans seem to find it all but impossible to acknowledge that. It goes against our grain, against our image of ourselves as strong, tough, independent, successful people -- which we are, or have been -- but now, honesty compels us to recognize and acknowledge that we are like Samson shorn, shorn by political correctness and a sense of guilt. Or we are, in a metaphor that I've resorted to more than once, Gulliver bound, tied down by myriads of Lilliputians, many lesser peoples acting in concert to bind us and render us helpless. None, not one of these peoples acting alone would have the strength to restrain and enfeeble us, but acting together, they have succeeded. And yet maybe we gave them the ropes with which to restrain us, those ropes being an emasculating liberalism and political correctness, along with our excessive altruism, our pride, in fact, which is fed by doing good for others -- to our own detriment.

So in a sense we have helped in our own destruction. But if our destruction requires our cooperation, then withdrawing that cooperation might weaken and undo our attackers. They are only able to subdue us with our complicity and acquiescence.

But to return to my questions: have any of you had a kind of epiphany or change of mind and heart? The fact is, even if none of you respond in the affirmative, I know that it does happen; it has happened in my case. Many of the events in the news lately have caused many of us (although not a majority, admittedly) to question the PC orthodoxies, and to respond with a spirit of resistance.

Even if we discount the fact that we might know some in our immediate circles who have been re-awakened, family members or friends, we see the same phenomenon in many newspaper comment sections online; it used to be that with many of these outrageous articles on illegal immigration, or Moslem effrontery, or incidents like the Jena 6, comments would be few and far between, and mostly liberal. Now, even though some newspapers remove conservative or non-PC comments quickly, we still see them before they are removed, and there are many more irate and angry voices now than ever before. You can also see this on some of the mainstream Republican forums, such as one where I posted in the past. I used to do battle with the open borders shills there, and the exchanges got pretty fierce, with me getting the worst of it, and few arguing on my side. Now the situation has reversed; many of those who were moderate or even pro-open borders or pro-Bush have become quite anti-both. I was amazed, when I had stayed away for some time from one such forum, to see the change; things had changed almost 180 degrees. I felt vindicated, now that so many were saying the things I used to say -- and get pummeled for saying -- but nobody was disagreeing now, except for a few diehard Bush fans. Similarly with the war in Iraq, and Moslem immigration. Many people have now forsaken their cheerleader mentality and become critics and outspoken opponents.

How many of these people, though, have really rethought their former positions? Knowing human nature, I would have to say that some of the conversions are merely opportunistic, by which I mean many people will simply follow along with what seems to be the prevailing opinion. The fact is, most people don't seem to be very deep thinkers, and therefore hold very shallow opinions which can shift with the wind. Most people are followers.

And this leads to the other point I wanted to make on the discussion thread, and which I have made in the past: it is not necessary that the majority be on our side in order for change to happen. It never is. Most people are occupied with trivial, ephemeral things, and don't care about politics or the future of the country unless it affects their personal life and pleasures considerably. Many people are quite afraid to deviate from what they perceive as the acceptable, safe, noncontroversial consensus.

It's always a small group of people who are influential in changing things. It was so at the inception of this country. It's probably even more true now, considering how disengaged most people are, and how passive.
And this is true of social and cultural changes, not just political ones.

I've also cited the sixties social revolution as an example of a sweeping change in the way people lived and thought which happened almost imperceptibly. It succeeded especially in the realm of how people lived their personal lives; behaviors which used to be condemned and sanctioned by respectable people suddenly became acceptable. Unfortunately, most such changes were destructive, such as the removal of social stigmas from behaviors like sexual promiscuity and irresponsibility, and drug use. Suddenly, unmarried couples living together openly, which in my childhood was scandalous, and referred to as 'living in sin' became accepted. Unmarried motherhood, which was something to be hidden and discussed in whispers suddenly became no big deal.

How and why did these behaviors and attitudes seem to change in the blink of an eye? And truly, it was almost that sudden. How could generations-old taboos be so easily dropped and forgotten, as if they had never existed?

I would give this reason: the social conventions which discouraged these behaviors were not deep, sincere beliefs, but mere pretense. People apparently no longer believed in the old moral codes which condemned some of these behaviors. Sadly, those who disapproved because of their Christian beliefs often proved to have no deep convictions. It was all hypocrisy, in many cases, and the old taboos were upheld only by perceived public opinion. People refrained from sleeping around openly, or having illegitimate children, only because of what they feared the neighbors or the kinfolks would say. Now that God had been declared dead, and it appeared the neighbors wouldn't care, people indulged in their carnal urges, and felt no need to hide it or to be ashamed.

I mention this not with approval, obviously, because it was destructive to society and to our people. But I use it as an illustration of how people uphold morality that they really do not believe in because of fear of disapproval. Once these people are freed from the possibility of condemnation or of being shunned by their neighbors and kin, they will drop the outward observance of the abandoned principles.

I believe that most people, in their heart of hearts, do not believe in the absurd belief system of political correctness, with its denial of the plain evidence of our senses, and most people, I would say, do not believe that they carry some genetic guilt for what people did generations ago. Most people inwardly know that these things are not true, and nobody, except the most disturbed individuals, wants to believe the worst of themselves and wallow in guilt. So deep down, I think many people are only giving lip service to the pathological liberalism under which we exist now. They conform because they fear the consequences, and they don't want to be the first one to step out of line and say 'I refuse; I dissent.' They don't want to stick their necks out. But once it is seen to be safe, once they see others doing it, it may have a snowballing effect, just as with the sixties and seventies social revolution. Pretending and keeping up a false front is wearying; it's hard to maintain. No normal person wants to live a lie, or live by lies, and that is what liberalism and PC demand that we do.

And again, as with the sixties revolution, our human nature will out. Human nature, or at least our lower selves, wants to be hedonistic and sensual, so it was easy for people to drop their inhibitions and indulge. Unfortunately, following our natural urges was not all good in that sense. But liberalism also goes against our natural grain. It demands that we be self-sacrificing and self-abasing, and it demands that we put strangers ahead of our own kind -- which does not come naturally to normal human beings. Liberalism/leftism is a profoundly unnatural and deeply dishonest belief system, one against many people are inwardly rebelling while outwardly going through the motions of obeying.

It might not be as hard as we imagine to return to more traditional ways of thinking and living.
We can all set an example, and speak the truth where and when and how we can, and we can simply refuse to even give lip service to the liberal belief system. The more of us who refuse, the more may be emboldened to drop all the pretense.