NS Conservatives

My life in politics has been very sheltered. Neither of my parents identifies with a particular party, but if they were to label themselves, they would consider themselves more libertarian or republican if it came down to choosing between the two main parties. I would consider my viewpoints extremely similar to theirs, identifying myself as a cross between libertarian and republican. My upbringing and sheltered political life has dictated much of my view on politics and political issues.

Political issues on the whole are very unimportant to me, but in recent years, their significance has grown. With the economic collapse and slow recovery, I have started to pay more attention to the political issues surrounding us today. For me personally, I feel as if my life will be more affected by economic policies than social policies. In my eyes, fiscally, my future is more at risk than it is socially.

My view on government is that each politician has a personal agenda that coincides with a national agenda. I like to believe that every politician has the country’s interests at heart, but sometimes may be overridden by their own personal desires. No human is a perfect being, and politicians are not exempt from this. Unfortunately, the media has the ability to blow comments, mistakes, and actions out of proportion to vilify or turn politicians into celebrities. Because of this, I have tried to shy away from reading, watching, or listening to anything about political candidates and their personal lives.

My political socialization has been a very unorthodox. My parents and family has been my most prominent agent, due to living with them for most of my life. They are at the heart of my lack of political knowledge, for politics do not get discussed at the dinner table unless one of us kids has a question. However, indirectly they have influenced us via their actions in certain situations where it comes to money as well as social issues. My parents are firm believers in a strong education, regardless of the costs on the family. Grandparents on both sides of the family, dead and alive, instilled this upon my parents. My father’s parents were both from well-to-do families who took a very firm stance on a strong education. My mother’s parents both place a strong emphasis on education due to their inability to complete theirs until many years after WWII. This lead to both sides of the family being firm believers that anyone can do what they want when they put their mind to it and apply themselves. This in turn, creates their stance on economic issues that are more about freedom than equality.

My education however, was and still is on the other end of the spectrum. In my early childhood years before high school, I attended a small private day school in Massachusetts. Many of the teachers originally being from Massachusetts, had a very strong liberal stance on things. Politics in the later years of Middle School became a prominent subject as well. In 8th grade we studied the Massachusetts election and had a debate over which liberal or conservative policies we believed were better. As I reflect, there was a severe difference between the amount of conservatives and liberals where the liberals outnumbered the conservatives 3-1. In my high school years, I attended a boarding school in New Hampshire, where the situation seemed to be opposite to that of earlier years. Again, the teachers were very liberal, but this time the students seemed to be more on the conservative side. It was very easy to figure out where students came across their beliefs. Many of the more affluent, white, Christian students were conservatives, much like their parents. The liberal students were the less affluent, minorities (occasionally), and Jewish students, which is not very different from the way Janda et al write about it. At this age however, politics became a much more common subject, and occasionally caused friction between students. This led to me attempting to abandon conversing in it as to preserve my friendships.

Other methods of socialization have been very scarce in my life. I was not allowed to watch TV until I was around the age of 12, so I missed out on large portions of TV for younger children that often have underwritten political issues. My ability to watch the news as I increased in age declined once I went to boarding school where the only TV was in the student lounge and often had Sports Center. I did however, find myself reading more news, but rather than focus on domestic issues, I found myself reading BBC, due to its ease of access on my computer and simple navigation. Movies and videogames have been prevalent in my life, but I never looked at them as any sort of teaching method. Being a conservative in MA and NH sometimes worked to my disadvantage when talking politics to friends, so as I grew older and learned more about the touchiness of the subject, the topic declined during conversations.

I believe that my parent’s ability to instill the lack of politics in my house has led to my ability to have room to be able to organize my own ideas on politics. However, much like them, I have very little interest in following it due to the nature of conflict it brings about. If a conversation does arise and I am required to talk about it, I have learned that reading up on subjects is often in my best interest, and if I am uninformed of a topic, I would prefer not to talk about it rather than spew secondhand information.