The night I officially became a conservative

All right, I know what some of you might be thinking: huh?? What the crap are you saying? After all, four years ago I posted a similar topic with an equally scandalous title ["http://n8daoggblog.blogspot.com/2005/04/night-i-officially-became-liberal.html"], reflecting on listening to Ann Coulter deliver her, um, "speech" at St. Olaf my freshman year.

I live with a conservative. But I also live with someone who challenges people to think for themselves, and at least verify what they believe and why. For much of the year I've been a little nervous whenever politics came up in the discussion, because previous experiences (with other people, I should point out) have been less than pleasant. But it was sometime last week, when the conversation turned to politics. And he asked me about government control, basically who should be the most in charge of spending and taking care of the people: the states, or the federal government.

The series of questions used the example of gambling. In this case, gambling has been proven to be so bad that the federal government decides to ban it across the country. Now, there's one state [it doesn't really matter which one] whose entire funding for its public school system is based off gambling revenue. The question: should this state comply with the federal government and basically suffer deficits with their school funding, or should they defy the federal government on the grounds that they need this gambling business in order to survive and provide for their schools? I replied the latter. My roommate pronounced me a conservative, solely on the grounds of which governments should be in power.

Now, this was actually not shocking for me. When I was at St. Thomas I learned all about the American government and American history (in the 1800s, anyway), and how the government was set up to be a republic of elected officials in three branches: legislative (makes the laws), executive (enforces the laws), and judiciary (interprets the laws). But back in the day, the federal government was intended to be kind of an overseer of all the state governments, and I guess it seemed to work alright.

The other part that made this not shocking, was that one of the things that bothered me about George W. Bush during his presidency was he seemed to like spending a lot. This spending was one of the big reasons I couldn't support the Iraq War, because it was quite unnecessary, and the money could have--and really should have--gone to other things that might have needed more funding (I'm thinking infrastructure, mostly).

I have to say I am a bit disappointed in Barack Obama. When he first became president, I looked to him to spark new awarenesses about people of different backgrounds and lifestyles, and champion a greater acceptance of these differences (ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion). Instead he's put his entire focus into pumping people's tax dollars to try and resuscitate a slumping economy that doesn't seem to be anywhere near rebounding. I remember when Hillary Clinton was campaigning last year, it was one of her themes, and a reason why I preferred Obama over her.

Anyway, I've spent far too much time talking about politics today. Like I'm sure I've said before, it seems to make a lot of people angry at times, and I'd rather enjoy my life than be miserable (you'll notice I have yet to post about the Cubs this year).