ymarkov | On Becoming a Conservative

People always ask me how I came from my generation and became a conservative. It's hard to pinpoint where the rebellion began, but I can tell you the moment I knew I wasn't of the left.

I was going to a big antiwar demonstration in Washington. I think it was the spring of '71, and I think we were going to shut the government down. Early that evening, before we got in the buses that would take us down the Jersey Turnpike, we went to a rally in the student union and a guy got up and made a speech. I think he was high. I think we were high. He said words to the effect of, Let's face it, man, this is a country whose greatest contribution to humanity is Coca-Cola, which we make in a lab, sell on TV, and force down the bloated throats of Third World children who are dying of malnutrition.

Hooray, everyone said.

I listened to the kids on the bus. They were very earnest. I listened to the grown-ups, women with intense faces and men who were starting to wear beads and medallions. Everybody's liberal parents, hurtling down the turnpike toward mayhem. I couldn't get in the spirit, into the swing. I kept observing. There was contempt for the nineteen-year-old boys who were carrying guns in the war or in the Guard. It was understood that they were uneducated, and somewhat crude. There was contempt for America:

-What can you expect of a culture that raises John Wayne to the status of hero?

-We were founded on violence and will meet our undoing in violence.

-We're at the collective mercy of a bunch of insecure males who have a phallic fascination with guns.

-We're a racist, genocidal nation with an imperialistic lust for land that isn't ours, and... and...

And get me off this bus! I looked around, and I saw those mouths moving and shrank in my seat. What am I doing with these people? What am I doing with these intellectuals or whatever they are, what am I doing with this - this contemptuous elite? As far as I was concerned they were encouraging the real bastards of the world. As far as I was concerned from here on in I would use my McGovern button as a roach clip. And what was the Democratic party doing on the side of these people?

Peggy Noonan, "What I Saw at the Revolution", page 15