Anybody out there who have Parents on the "dark side"?

[Texasgal]

Background:

I was born to a highly progressive set of parents back in the 60's. Growing up, my parents taught me about diversity, love and nature. We consistently took trips that included camping and hiking, we never really went to church, we lived in a commune when I was little and had alot of hippie peace loving friends.

Holidays consisted mainly of helping others less fortunate. We consistently helped others serving the homeless food on thanksgiving, and volunteering on Christmas day to bring food to families. Halloween, my Mother always had my brother and I collect money for UNICEF.

In my teenage years, my parents were quite proud of me when I refused to put my hand over my heart for the Pledge of allegiance in school. ( I was upset about the Balkans conflict at the time) The school called my folks and they sided by me. ( My first act of civil disobedience)

We were also taught about other religions and races, we took in exchange students from around the world. Once we took in a young boy from Tehran that had escaped the uprising in Iran. We helped his family to the United States, we helped them settle, helped them learn English. They are now American Citizens.

Flash forward 20 years.

Things have really changed.

It all started when my sister in law offered to take my parents the their church, it's a Baptist church that seems somewhat fundamental. They have been going to this church now for several years and it seems now that their political leanings have changed as well, the are staunch republicans.

I can rarely talk to my Parents now, about politics or religious topics any longer. They seem to be so out of touch. When the Iraq war protests were going on, I participated, my family seemed horrified and my Mother told me i was "crazy" !

I will say that I am grateful that I was raised in the environment I spoke of above, It has molded me into the person I am today.

I find it sad that my Parents have changed so much.

Anybody out there with a similar situation, and if so, how do you deal with it?

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[Maat]

6. Not all churches. UU is not like that, nor is my church (ucrs.org).

But the Southern Baptists sure seem that way. After all, whose church tells them with whom to associate and what to think? Not mine. My in-laws (formerly did not go to church at all) moved back to Oklahoma (following my sister-in-law and her husband), and now, they are all rabid Southern Baptists.

[ohioliberal]

2. I grew up in the 60's myself, but my parents

have always gone to church, even worse "southern baptist" and I was raised that way. When I reached teenage years, I started to become my own person, however my parents have stayed the same Repukes and highly relgious. My brother is also a repuke and my sister works for local government and she can't stand it. I myself have become the family outsider but I'm damn proud of it!

[InvisibleBallots]

3. DUers would probably hate my parents

and deride them as Fundies. They aren't, and they vote straight Democratic.

[txaslftist]

4. It's a boomer thing...

had a good thing going in the 60s, all that left-wing radicalism, then Carter sort of melted, then comes Ray-gun, antithesis of leftism, then embarrassed by Clinton...

Churchill said you are a fool if you're not liberal as a young man, and you are a fool if you aren't conservative as an older person.(I'm paraphrasing, someone will correct me, I'm sure). Lots of boomers went through the same metamorphosis as your parents, from staunch liberals to staunch conservatives.

I think true liberalism has to based on more than looking around you and trying to fit in with the liberal crowd, because that crowd changes. Once you get into the intellectual basis for people like Gandhi and Dr. King and even Samuel Adams and Thos. Jefferson you move beyond Churchill's specious observation. If you really take the stuff to heart, you'll be a liberal for life.

Don't let your parents scare you. It's just a phase they are passing through.

[Spinzonner]

5. Not personally but

Some people are commitment-philes.

They can't do things in moderation or apply what they perceive as half-measures. They get the emotional feedback they need by being fully commited to something.

Perhaps this makes them susceptible to credulity and becoming involved too readily and without sufficient contemplation.

I also suspect that the hopes and dreams of some progressives and liberals of the 60's were not attained some became disillusioned and sought both the emotional fulfillment of the commitment and the changes they sought through another movement.

Not to imply it's the same thing as with your parents, but I've speculated that in extreme cases of this you have people going from radicals of one stripe to radicals of the opposite. Case in point: David Horowitz.

[Maat]

7. Point well-taken, Spinzonner.

See my story about my in-laws above.

But this 46-year-old is a liberal, despite gettin' on in years.

[SmokingJacket]

11. Very interesting take. nt

[davidinalameda]

8. my mother

voted for both Bushes; very anti-choice; very ultra-Catholic

[ginnyinWI]

9. you don't say how old your parents are, but maybe

they went through some kind of midlife crisis, or crisis in their marriage, or some other traumatic event that caused them to rethink and shift their outlook on life. Or they just enjoy the social aspects of the church and have been swayed in their thinking gradually.

I am 52 and went through a mid-life thing about ten years ago and changed from a conservative to a liberal! I gave up going to church, went back to college and finished my education. Today I'm in step with my three kids, who have also gone/are in college and are liberal Greens/Independents/Democrats. (All voted for Kerry!)

My parents and brothers are still conservative church-goers, and after a few futile attempts, I've concluded that we have to avoid talking about politics or religion if we are going to get along at all. Not much else you can do. My dad has said he thinks I'm crazy, and I think he's brainwashed by conservative talk radio. We had one huge shouting match, and it only made things worse. He thinks of Kerry the way the Bushites portrayed him, so thinks I'm nuts to want to vote for a person like that.

[Wisc Badger]

15. Hey and Hi Ginny

I am also from Wisconsin (Kenosha) 50 yrs old and am moving from conservative to liberal/progressive.

:toast:

[txaslftist]

16. Kenosha

so what do you think of Bob Jambois?

[Wisc Badger]

22. Don't Like Him very much

one of my best friends in life is a Sheriff's Department Captain and Jambois screwed up a case he worked on for over a year as an accident investigator.

Plus Jambois is part of the old boys club in the city. His wife runs around poking her nose into things and sounding like a no it all.

I like the state wide Dems such as Doyle & Feingold, and locally Steinbrink and Krueser are decent. The rest of the local Dems are hacks, I mean Wirch sold his soul to the party apparatus a long time ago.

[txaslftist]

23. Wow, don't hold back.

I personally think Bob should be selling cars, not running the DA's office. He's a democrat like I'm a Frenchman. (i'm not)

[SmokingJacket]

10. Wow -- very similar to my own story.

My parents, especially my mother, were very liberal when I was growing up. She taught me about the Holocaust when I was very young -- that it was the result of bigotry and hatred, and that we have to be certain that nothing like that ever happens again, and that we have to stand up for what we believe in.

She really made me into the liberal I am today.

But around 1993 or 95 or so something big changed with my parents. They moved into the sticks and started listening to hate radio, specifically Limbaugh. Now it's FOX all day, all the time, and Rush while driving.

No religion in my case (yet). But the turnaround has been extremely difficult. Until about a year ago I could argue politics with them, but we've all gotten really toucy lately. Now we have to avoid the subject.

I visit less; they don't visit me at all.

They HATE liberals, and that includes me. Why, I don't know.

We pretend to get along. But it's only getting worse.

[Cleita]

12. Mine had conservative values and voted Republican, but

they were hard-working, honest and worked at being good citizens and good Americans. In today's political climate, though, they almost seem like flaming liberals. I know they would be against the evil GOPers in our government today because they espoused real moral values, not the fake ones paraded around by these hypocrites.

[maveric]

13. My parents were Kennedy Democrats from the Boston area.

We were also taught diversity, civil rights and pro-labor values. They praised MILK, Malcolm X and Gandhi. I was always told that any working person who votes republican is voting against their own interests.

[Mountainman]

14. When ever I here stories like this I think of Emmanuel Kant

Emmanuel Kant

What Is Enlightenment? Immanuel Kant Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude!1 "Have courage to use your own reason!"--that is the motto of enlightenment. Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a portion of mankind, after nature has long since discharged them from external direction (naturaliter maiorennes), nevertheless remains under lifelong tutelage, and why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It is so easy not to be of age. If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not think, if I can only pay--others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. That the step to competence is held to be very dangerous by the far greater portion of mankind (and by the entire fair sex)--quite apart from its being arduous--is seen to by those guardians who have so kindly assumed superintendence over ..................

[txaslftist]

18. Kant should have used paragraphs

[Spinzonner]

21. Paragraphs weren't invented until much later

:-)

[TwilightZone]

17. My father is the most conservative person I know.

He blames all of life's ills on Democrats, usually Clinton. His two heroes are Rush Limbaugh and Oliver North.

I didn't see him for most of my childhood (my parents divorced when I was 4), which I consider a VERY good thing.

Now, I tend to ignore him, and we have agreed to not discuss politics, though I still tend to make snide remarks about how stupid people would have to be to vote for Bush.

[aWaKeNoW]

19. I have experienced just the opposite

from what you have with your family. I grew up in a military, Southern Baptist, republican family. As a child I just thought that the things my parents were teaching me were the "right" things to believe and do in life until I hit my twenties and slowly "woke up" to see what was really going on in the world. I was simply amazed when I started thinking about things differently than the way I had been taught. It was a freeing experience, and it blew my mind that the things my parents taught me really didn't make ANY sense, and how all of the things they hated and fought against are what I truly believe in now. There is such tension between me and my family now...I do feel like the black sheep of the family and dred get togethers. Even my own mother lashed out at me several times during this presidential election race when I would state my views against Bush by saying "I didn't raise you that way!" One time I got so sick of her saying that I yelled back "I am GLAD that broke out of your brainwashing MOM! Thank God I am my own person!" She didn't take to kindly to that..we didn't speak for months. Which I guess was a good thing because I didn't have to hear about how GREAT George W. was during those three months during the campaigning. I know that my family thinks I have "lost" my mind...but I feel like I have found it and I am so glad I "broke" out of that mind set. I feel like a new person.

Growing up in the Baptist church I have seen from the inside how they try to "convert" people one person at a time. I mean if we even missed a Sunday they would have members call our house just to find out why we missed and to make sure that everything was "ok". It was hard for my husband and I during this past year to keep things as "civil" as possible with both sides of our family. His side tried SEVERAL times to get us to be involved in events with the Christian Coalition they were attending, while my side was ranting about all of the good things that Bush has done with our country and how great the war is going. And if I had to hear this one more time, "It's better that we keep the fighting OVER THERE than here in this country!", I seriously felt like I was going to slap the family member that said it.

I admire your parents for raising you the way they did. I doubt if you will ever be able to change their minds back from how they see things now, but just remember all of the things that shaped you into being the thoughtful, loving, caring and involved person in our society. I feel that people like you are what this world desperately needs more of and I am happy to say I am becoming more like that everyday. :)

[Tace]

20. My Parents -- Dad Especially -- Were Always Very, Very Conservative

Republicans. In the past 12 years, dad has become a hateful, rage-spitting bigot. Mom is a Stepford wife. They think Rush Limbaugh is "so funny!." They vegetate on Rush and Fox and are nasty, mean, and emotionally abusive to me when ever they get the chance. We can't stand each other. We don't talk much. I haven't visited in years. They have two beautiful grand-daughters they've seen only a few times.