Conversion

By letter to the editor

To the editor:

As of three days ago I was a diehard liberal Democrat. I followed the trumpet call and marched in lockstep with whatever was declared to be true by the liberals in my family, all my friends and particularly my professors in college. There was no other choice a sane person could make and those who were "conservative" were no more than bible thumping fascists and greedy capitalists who just wanted to exploit all of us.

There was no straying from this orthdoxy and frankly and I never wanted to stray as I was comfortable in that environment. I was overjoyed when Barack Obama was elected President and despite his lack of overall success (from a liberal viewpoint) to date I continued to gloat in the fact that we had defeated those neanderthals known as the "right" and that in time our policies would be triumphant. I began to get a bit queasy when I observed what was happening in Greece and France etc, but wrote that off to their unique situation and not what we could accomplish here, if we just stuck to our principles.

Last Tuesday, Oct 26, someone at my office left a copy of an article on my desk entitled "Socialism and Reality" by Steve McCann. [Link here] At first I was going to throw it away as it originated on a far-right wacko internet site (as had been told), but the lead caught my attention so I read the article. As I finished the last paragraph a sense of dread began to flow over me as I thought, my God this makes sense and I had never thought about these points written in such a clear concise and logical manner. Surely I and all my peers couldn't have been wrong all this time. I sent the article to others in my circle and the ensuing arguments and conversations were unreal. But no one could refute the points raised in the essay except to call Mr. McCann and your site all sorts of vile names.

Since then I have gone on the American Thinker site for the first time and read some of the articles and while I still consider some of them to be too extreme some really do inspire thought. Thanks to an article someone, I do not know who, left on my desk I have begun a transition to becoming a more open person willing to question and understand what has and is happening to my country. Thank you and Mr. McCann

Richard MacIntyre