Why does the left tend to condemn those who have made a life journey?

I'm talking here about people who make changes in their beliefs or who change parties or who otherwise think things now that are counter to what they may have thought five or ten or forty years ago.

We **all** make a life journey. The path for me was different from yours. Your path was different from hers. And his, and hers, and his .......

We were born to a family that was nurturing and loving ... but conservative. We were born to strife and pverty and without a familial moral compass. We had parents who were liberal and intuitive and the darlings of all the other kids. We were fathered by the ogre on the hill.

Ronald Reagan was a Democrat and a union leader who went on to become the patron saint of modern conservativism and the role model of the even further right Neocons. He is revered by the Forbes and the Buckleys and even the Bushes (well .... maybe).

I hear it said that we need to be wary of recent converts to the Democratic Party. Okay. But why would we be more wary of them than ....... Rham Emanuel ....... or Joe Biden ...... or <insert name of any one you choose here>?

It has often been said of recently naturalized citizens of the US that they make better citizens, overall, than those born here. It is often said that religious converts often become the most ardent practitioners of that faith than those born to it.

And so it may well be with political converts.

Don't mistake this view for any lack of healthy skepticism. Of course we need to be skeptical. Wary, even. There's no shortage of candidates changing party purely as a political calculation (Norm Coleman, you listening?)

For me, that need for healty wariness and skepticism means learning something about the person *before* judging. And learning more about a consequential convert than an incosequential one. If I meet and speak with a former Republican turned Democrat in a bar, I'll pretty much take what he says at face value. In the end, politically, he is just one vote. Nothing more, nothing less. But if he's a candidate for county dogcather, I at least want to know how he treated his dogs in the past. If he's a candidate for governor or Congress, I have an obligation to learn more.

But never should a person's life path be cause to deny them outright. That is no better than racial or sexual or religious prejudice, now is it?

I'm a pretty damned tolerant person. But I am also a person who has some pretty deep dislike for some black people. And some gay people. And some religious people. And some Democrats. Not for those descriptors, but for who they are ...... as people. Those I deeply dislike are few in number, but, to be sure, they're there.

As in all things, judge the person .... not the descriptor.

any specific incident or person in mind? In other words, what exactly are you talking about?

... it was inspired by several recent posts about Jim Webb trying to win the primary to run against Allen in Virginia.

I honestly think that a Dem win in Virginia can be the key to unlocking the solid south - formerly Dem and now Republican.

look at what someone DOES not who they say they are, for actions define a person better than any desciption they could give you. I know a person who was county chair of the Democratic Party who told me to my face that he wasn't going to support any of the Democratic candidates in 2004-not even Wesley Clark (I live in AR, where Clark is from). I decided then and there that no matter what this fellow called himself, he wasn't a Democrat. An independent group of bipartisan voters took out ads for Kerry and offered to drive folks to the polls in 2004. These folks were mainly hippie types and retirees who had moved to the area. The retirees were mostly former Republicans who had done their research and were appalled at what Bush was doing. To my mind, they were the true Democrats, not the 'chairman' of the local Dems who wouldn't support the national slate and only wanted to get elected to a local office himself (he lost, btw; in fact, no local Dems were elected in 2004).

.... ask anyone from Maryland how the formerly 'beloved mayor of Baltimore - one William Donald Shaeffer - who went on to become our governor and continues today in elective office as our State Comptroller is viewed. He's endorsed every Republican that comes along ... from top (Bush) to bottom.

He finally has a challenger or two for his seat.

re: the local county chair. Not supporting Democratic candidates is a BIG NO NO for party officials like that. After all, there has to be SOMEONE who are "party loyalists" and who will that be if not party officials? Now I have no beef with independent-minded individual Democrats who want to express their own opinions, but the situation you describe is ridiculous.

but the county chair is a "local" and there is bad blood between "locals" and "transplants". I would consider running for the position myself, but I was active in environmental causes in the county about ten years ago, and though I was on the side of the local loggers, my husband and I were strongly distrusted and even hated. One fellow came over one night to shoot my husband, and only stopped when he realized who my husband worked for (a local who is, sadly, apolitical).

Someone who has truly turned away from the dark side to become a Democrat is fine with me. (They may have to listen to an "I told you so.") What I do have a big problem with, though, is people (and I've met some) who rightly are disgusted with the fanatical right who've taken over the Republican party and want to turn the Democratic party into the old Republican party. They call themselves "new Democrats."

To those people, I say, "Fix your own party. You can't have mine."

.... it is reasoned and based on judgment.

<blush>

another reason, one that has nothing to do with the validity of life journeys or junking what doesn't work along our way.

Consider the recently converted religious person. Or the recently awakened neophyte atheist. Or consider the more banal example of a recent convert to a smoke free existence. Most of those folks overcompensate by making a fetish of their new conversion and pains in the asses of themselves in the bargain. It takes time for reality to set in, for them to be come ordinary again. It can be an uncomfortable transition for all concerned.

Add to that a missing element of trust, especially with political conversions, because the new convert may be reacting against old ideas rather than adopting new ones. It's why we approach cautiously, like procupines in love.

It's entirely understandable. The best thing is to back off a bit, let the person define himself/herself. Then maybe we can deicde a little more rationally.

A waiting period is perfectly fine .... both to assess honesty and to let that 'pain in the ass' period pass. (I know **excatly** what you mean by that!)

You're right. This may be a bit of hypocrisy on the part of liberals. We talk about (well, at least I do) how important it is to question beliefs and thus, grow stronger. But a lot of us don't really have much patience with former Republicans that went Democrat. We ought to welcome them - as someone else said, they turned from the evil empire and joined up with the rebel alliance.

I know what you're saying, also, about hating certain people. I don't hate people for being Republican but for having bad attitudes - "liberals are traitors" and the like. I don't have a problem with people voting differently than me.
Ringo

baffled me. I think and hope it's extreme immaturity; an implicit self-righteousness borne of a lack of self-knowledge and characteristic of young people in the main.

I tend to think that the vast majority of Democrats do not judge as hastily as you have professed. After all, one of our core values that sets us apart from the republicans is true tolerance for others. With that said, I also think that right now many of us are worn out from being screwed over and lied to by the republicans and the mainstream news media. Some of us might just be a little testy, even paranoid as to what the motives are of others who have supported the republican agenda. Let's face it, our country as a whole has been F-cked over, and as a political party we have been F-cked over as well, even by some of our own leadership.

Personally, I have not only been pissed off at the republicans and the news media, but also for the people who have followed them and allowed them to have their power. I have found myself angry at those "swing" voters who were too lazy to search for the facts before the last election. Even though I believe that the election was illegitimate, it still shouldn't have been that close to begin with. So when one of these swing voters finally realizes that they were wrong in who they had supported, it takes a lot of patience for me to restrain my disdain for the choice they made to support Bush in the first place.

I do think you made valid points in your post. My own thinking and beliefs have evolved as well. I just believe for some of us Democrats it will take a longer time than others to fully accept recent converts. It's just human nature. However, I think when we get past the anger and distrust, we all understand that one of our common goals is to educate and convert as many people as possible to ensure the well being of our democracy.

It seems to me that a lot of what you said is true. It also seems to me true that our own current internecine wars foment this burdensome distrust, particularly of anyone from 'the right' ... whether that 'right' is the right of the Dem party or just 'the right'.

There is justifiable mistrust of those who seem to incessently call for the party to 'move center' in this day and time, when we **all** know today's 'center' is yesterday's mainstream 'right'.

Political parties, and political movements, are both evolutionary and reactionary. The evolution is moving to wherever on the spectrum the greatest number of the party's constituancy is. The reactionary part is where the diehard and politically aware start to cut no quarter to anyone who isn't right where they are. The best of all worlds is when those two very different views come into some reasonable balance.

It seems to me that after we've been out of power for as long as we've been, the reactionaries hold sway (I count myself among the reactionaries). If a newcomer who once resided on the other side wants in, he's welcome .... so long as he recognizes that we can respect him and allow him to think whatever he wishes, but that we will not be changing our core values to make him feel more welcomed. It will have to be him who adapts if he wishes to stay.

We'll be back in power before the evolutionaries get to have a bigger say.

And then the whole process will start again.

".... so long as he recognizes that we can respect him and allow him to think whatever he wishes, but that we will not be changing our core values to make him feel more welcomed." - I couldn't have said that better myself.

Political expediency by many of our leaders at the expense of the Democratic Party's core values is part of the reason why our political process is so messed up. At least that's my opinion.