Did you have right-wing economic beliefs as a kid?

[LoZoccolo]

I did. I was the one kid in class that got picked on the most, would get beat up after school, would be the last to get picked when they're forming teams, etcetera. But I was smart, so I always had it in my mind that eventually that would trump anything these kids would do to me at the time as it would get me financial success they could only dream of. I figured that I wasn't a bully or roughneck because I was smart, and the fact that they were ignorant and stupid would be their own downfall, and I explicitly liked the fact that they were crude and unwise - it made it easier for me to get on top. I also remember hating working-class kids, because my elementary school was split between my neighborhood and one that was kind-of poorer than mine, and it seemed like the kids from the poorer neighborhood generally gave me more trouble. My parents didn't drum these beliefs into me - they were actually liberal and used to refer to me as "conservative" (I remember they'd say that I probably wouldn't like Doonesbury because I was too conservative for it).

But this was like, when I was eleven years old and younger!

Do you have a similiar story?

[yardwork]

1. No, but you sound exactly like my eleven year old son!

Do you mind telling me how you turned out? Have you, for example, been incarcerated at any time? Any serious problems with the law? Ever got into a bar fight? Speeding tickets?

I hope I don't sound too nosy. We're very worried about our son and wonder if he will survive his teen years. My husband is worried that he will amount to nothing. I feel that if we keep him alive and half-way stable until he's in his twenties, he'll be just fine.

Any advice you could provide would be most welcome.

Liberal parent of a conservative child who wants to be a Marine.

[LoZoccolo]

2. Well, you can be a Marine and be liberal.

I think you'll find a few on this board.

My parents were very "hands-off" about my role as the Alex P. Keaton of the family. In some ways I still am - I'm still generally more moderate than them, even if more active. If you get all Mao on him I think he'll see your beliefs as phony.

I got in trouble a few times with acts of mischief and vandalism as teenage boys tend to do, but the closest I got to getting incarcerated ever was during a protest against Iraq War II. But I got into a good college and now have a career as an engineer if that's the kind of thing you're asking about.

[yardwork]

12. Thank you for responding! I didn't mean to offend Marines

Until we invaded Iraq, I was fine with my son's plan to become a munitions expert in the Marines, but now I don't want either of my children involved in the United States military, because of what the government is doing to our troops.

We support our son completely in his political beliefs. We hope that he'll learn to control his temper and tendency to become violent. Of course, those things aren't necessarily linked to being conservative (freepers notwithstanding).

[sandnsea]

11. My son

Who we used to call "our little Republican", it was actually the Bushie's themselves who turned him off. The 8th grade teacher who equated abortion to the Romans leaving babies out to die. The high school history teacher who was so pro-war that he repeated idiotic things like a truck driver and radiation or something, who my son now refers to as "radioactive man". He thinks they're all stupid now. But he also thinks Democrats are stupid because we can't figure out that in order to win you have to work like a team. I'd call him a pragmatic Democrat at this point, he's 18. Parenting wise, we took the "hands off" approach too. When you've got a kid that makes the right choices 95% of the time, since birth, you tend to just stay out of the way!

[yardwork]

13. That's interesting because our son said that Bush lied to him

He was the only person in our family who supported invading Iraq (he was nine at the time). About a year later he told me that Bush had lied to him about Weapons of Mass Destruction and now he was against the war and against Bush too. He actually stuck up for Kerry even though some kids at school teased him about it (and they tended to be his closer friends).

So I see your point. The Republicans are driving him (and probably millions of other observant children) away with their behavior.

[one_true_leroy]

3. if you mean don't spend money you don't have...

(the old skool right wing, conservative, GOP econ policy) I still have that belief.

[BurgherHoldtheLies]

4. Agreed. Fiscal responsibility is sorely missed in the admin. n/t

[newportdadde]

5. I don't know if I would call that conservative

as much as believing in yourself and that by being true to yourself.. your smarts that someday you would get a chance to make use of your talents and be rewarded for them. Thats not conservative in my opinion. I thought a lot like you as a child, although I was usually next to last not last(before the fat kid).

Of course I don't believe any of that now, the atheltic types etc are the ones who skate by through school, college then on to the business world and advance on good looks, social gracies etc tend to shoot to the top of the corporate ladder. The nerds the worker bees stay put just like in school.

[Nikia]

9. I am realizing that now

It just sucks. I thought that my intelligence and hard work in school would get me more than just a living wage at a mostly routine job. Being from a higher economic social background helps too because networking gives those people an advantage. Those of us without social connections in a position to hire though are seriously disadvantaged.

[DireStrike]

14. As someone who blew potential academic glory

I am a little relieved to hear that it doesn't get you everything in life. Not that I'm glad at that situation, it just sort of vindicates me.

I didn't exactly make good choices though. I don't see how to make it without, at some point, either getting really lucky or pandering to those above.

[Nikia]

6. No, that would have been impossible with my upbringing

My parents were divorced and poor when I was little. We lived in a relatively poor neighborhood. We did belong to the Y and my mother belonged to social oranizations, but we wore clothes until we grew out of them or wore them out, had trouble coming up with lunch money right before pay day, and had my parents run out of gas in line at the bank to cash their checks. Despite this my mother always pushed me academically ever since she found out I had a high IQ as a three year old. In early elementary school, I did not hold the belief at all that poorer children were less intelligent.
Of course, our family background was not poor. My great grandparents owned a great deal of rental property in our town and did spend a lot of money on certain things of value as well as traveled. Both sets of grandparents were middle income/middle class. Neither set were materialists and my mother's father literally saved half his income.
I was not raised to be a materialist nor believe that wealth had anything to do with one's value as a person.
My mother, on the otherhand, wanted to be wealthier and resented her father's thriftiness. She tended to date established professionsals. One man who she dated had rich parents who were principal chair holders of a large corporation and had everything that they wanted including live in help. I never thought that any of these people were better than us. Then she married another upper middle class professional who turned out to be an abusive sociopath and my sister and I didn't really benefit at all from his money.
I didn't really start to notice classism until I moved to my new school after my mother married this man. Our school was a rural district including the richer subdivisions, farms, and trailer parks. I was initially pegged rich kid on the hill, but a couple trailer park and farm kids were nicer to me at first. Go figure.
I couldn't have ever been right wing then. Oh yes and during that time there was the deeply moving book and movie the Lorax, which made me equate corporations only concerned with profit as evil.

[UdoKier]

7. No, I was a little hippie leftie even as a kid.

Went through a brief right-wing phase in my early 20's but quickly reverted to type. Left is right.

[Redleg]

8. Yes, I used to think that poor people were poor because they were lazy

or stupid (they make the wrong choices). Now I am ashamed of believing those things and realize 1) It is lazy to stereotype people that way, 2) the "system" helps keep the poor poor and the rich rich.

My biggest intellectual awakening and the beginning of my leftward ideological shift occurred in the last quarter of my undergraduate program when I took a course in polisci called "the elements of communism." Reading Marx, Lenin, and other writers gave me a new perspective to look at the world.

Believe it or not, going to grad school a few years later to study management and economics opened my eyes even more. I now see the U.S. form of capitalism to be deeply flawed and unfair to working people and that the Rethuglicans are going to undo the protections that we have built into the system, including the National Labor Relations Act, Social Security, and ahost federal regulations on business and employment. God help us if they succeed.

[Solly Mack]

10. Nope. I've always been a liberal.

[Warren DeMontague]

15. I played with army men as a little kid

But by age 16 I was a pot-smoking pacifist, listening to the Grateful Dead. Dang that fiendish 60s culture!