I grew up in a wonderful household with two very hard working, loving parents. From as early as I can remember, both of my parents worked extremely long hard hours making things meet. While we were poor when I was growing up, all of the schools near where I lived were abysmal, so my parents, on top of everything else, sent me to an excellent private school.
Up until my early teenage years, my dad worked hard selling things for various companies, from steaks, to jewelry to paintings. The only constant was that he was selling stuff. In my early teens my father decided he didn't want to only do sales the rest of his life so he started up his own marketing business. At first he only had a few clients but as the years passed, his company became bigger and bigger. As a teenager I saw how hard he worked and I saw how government taxes and regulations harm small businesses. I saw what a drain this was on people like my father. Then, in my late teens, his company ended up merging with a larger small business and he became a member of the board of directors of this larger company. While things were easier in one respect, as he was no longer the CEO, things were harder on the other hand, since he was at a larger company and he was back to working on sales, albeit from his new position as a partner and Senior VP of the company. After over 20 years of hard work, going from door to door sales, to phone sales to his own business, back to the corporate world as a partner and VP, he had finally made it to the top of the corporate ladder.
But then I watched channels such as NPR. I listened to other left leaning radio stations. And I saw what the left thought of people like my father. People who had worked hard their entire lives to get where they were. I saw the consistent criticism of business owners and the constant leftist attempts to strip people like my father of the fruits of their labor. And I realized no matter how unpopular it was, I could never be a leftist. But at that point I considered myself an independent. I hadn't yet made the leap to becoming a Republican.
Then another major change occurred in my life. I got a job working at a well known non-profit organization which will stay unnamed. This organization was filled with people who were concerned about the human rights of children, the elderly and all people. Everyone in this organization worked hard for relatively low amounts of pay. But that didn't matter. People were there to help others. They weren't there for the pay. I worked at this organization for nearly 8 years and I noticed something funny. In our efforts to defend the rights of children and others from human rights abuses, most of the traditional leftist human rights groups would not give us the time of day. Of course if we were working with a human rights abuse that had received a lot of media air time, they would want to jump in and be all over it. But if the case hadn't received a lot of air time, they couldn't be bothered. I found that time and time again, the majority of the people who were helping these innocent victims were conservatives. Not all of the time. But most of the time. While we were non-partisan, it was an undeniable fact that some of the people supporting these abuses were leftists and because of that, many of the liberals wouldn't touch us with a ten foot pole.
I remember one case where children were (and still are) being tortured in the name of therapy at a hell hole called the Judge Rotenberg Center in Massachusetts. The center, would hook up electrodes to the children and give them bad shocks, which in some case burn their skin, when they "misbehave." "Misbehaving" could consist of something as small as speaking out of turn or being rude to one of the employees of the center. I know psychologists, one of my good friends is trained as a psychologist and there is no part of legitimate therapy, where the psychologist tortures a child with shocks. And anyone saying that this is a part of standard psychological practice is a lunatic. One of the center's strongest supporters was a psychiatrist, Carl C. Bell, who was connected to the Clinton administration. For one reason or another, in the face of clear cut abuses, most of the organizations, setup by leftists to investigate abuses of children suddenly had no interest. In other words, all of their high minded talk of being non-partisan, of placing the rights of children above politics was simply talk. Now granted, there were some liberals who opposed this and have carried out actions to work to stop this. But the responses from the mainstream leftist human rights organizations were underwhelming.
There was another case where children were, in the name of "helping" their mental health, being asked to fill in a detailed questionaire which included invasive questions such as what kinds of sex the child had or not had and among these questions were questions regarding firearms in the household. In other words, government schools, which are supposed to be educating childre, are getting them to spy on their parents and putting together a list of individauls with guns for an unknown reason. When various government officials were asked about this, they denied that they were putting together a gun database so that weapons could be confiscated at a later date. But why else would children be asked to spy on their parents and report information on guns in their house. In my mind, there is no other reason. Anyway, we joined with like minded organizations and the questionnaire was taken out of the schools it had been put in. But the "esteemed" ACLU, that cares so much about human rights, was nowhere to be found. If they cared so much about human rights, why didn't they care about this clear cut violation of the rights of children and families.
There were many other abuses we investigated and exposed. Too many to go into on this blog. But the common denominator was that, time after time, liberal human rights groups would, too often, chose politics over the rights of victims of abuse, if the perpetrators of the abuse were supported by or connected to other leftists.
And on the flip side, I found time and time again, the group that supposedly cared nothing about abuses, conservative Republicans, rushing to our side to expose the misdeeds of those committing these abuses, whether they be leaders of large left leaning organizations, government bureaucrats or simply deranged individuals. Time and time again, they came to our aid. Now granted, we did have friends who were liberals. We worked with liberal politicians. But most of these liberal politicians were unwilling to take on the biggest source of these abuses, an overreaching out of control government that curtails people's rights. Most of the injustices we dealt with stemmed from the fact that government is FAR, FAR too big. And because of its size it is far too easy for government agencies to violate people's rights. And while it is necessary to correct these agencies, when they are wrong, it is also important for politicians to look at government with an eye on reducing the scope and power of the government and eliminating unnecessary government departments. The less power the government has, the less room for abuse there is.
So, having seen how big government damages human rights through my time working in human rights, combined with my first hand view of the problems that big government causes to small businesspeople through over regulation and taxes, I, in examining both parties a few years ago, decided to register as a Republican. And the rest is history.
