How do you persuade people?
During last June's federal election, I was perpetually annoyed at how all of my friends lost all of their capabilities to think logically when it came to mindlessly supporting the liberals... one more time.
I couldn't formulate arguments that could persuade even a single person! It was frustrating. Which was always so strange for me, "I'm a conservative, am I really that weird? Are my views really that radical?" No, they're not and they weren't back then, either. I'm still pretty convinced that most people could be persuaded, if given the right reasons. I was so disingenuous that I actually tried to convince people through the gay marriage issue. "Yeah guys, they're going to let gay people get married and have kids and everything!, oh, but just so you know, I actually don't mind that at all".
So, over the course of the next few posts, in order to make my case for conservatism, I hope to illustrate how I personally became a 'conservative.'
I know that many Sikhs have been suspicious of the Conservative Party from way back during the mid-1980s when Joe Clark was in India during the funeral of Indira Gandhi and did NOTHING to speak out against the killings of thousands of Sikhs in the streets of Delhi, even though he must've known that it was taking place. I think this really soured a lot of Sikhs on their potential support for the conservatives. I had to tell at least a dozen people this past federal election that: "no, no! Joe Clark is a Liberal now!". And I also remember back in 1993, during the federal election, when I was 6 years old, I was really excited that the Liberal candidate in my riding (Herb Dhaliwal) would win, just because he was a "Sikh". This was different for Sikhs in 1993, because the conservatives never had any prominent South Asians in their cabinet, or even in their caucus, and the reform party didn't attract any 'ethnic' candidates until 1997. I sort of realized this as a 6-year-old, but a lot of people feel the same way at some level. There's no better way to counteract that fundamental lie about conservatives being racist than to prominently display minorities within the party (which is why I assume that the Conservative caucus is the most ethnically diverse.)
I'd like to start off by saying that I was always conservative from when I was very young, yet my general thoughts and beliefs didn't develop into actual feelings of support for any 'conservative' party until... ummm, until I was 13. (Well, I always supported the Republican party in America from when I was very young but that was only because I strongly disliked Bill Clinton, even though I don't dislike him as much currently - I'll discuss that another time.)
My first 'conservative' inclination was when I was around 8 or 9 years old, when I learnt that my parents paid around 50% of their income to the government. I was floored. Absolutely stunned. I couldn't believe it! Over 50%?!?!? And for what? It seemed so unfair. I was shocked, confused and a whole lot more. And THEN, I learnt that they paid more money, because they MADE more money. My feelings of how unfair things were jumped from high to super-super high. "You mean they penalize success?" I don't think I actually said that, but that's how I felt. Things need to be communicated in terms of 'fairness'. A young person, who hasn't been sufficiently brainwashed by the state or by state-supporting elites will ALWAYS agree that the graduated tax system is unfair. I remember once, in English 11, I wrote this pathetic essay about how the federal income tax was "illegal" because it was only created during war-time when it was sold to the Canadian people as a temporary measure, and my aggressively socialist English teacher gave it a C-. I was pretty stunned, because I didn't realize or understand how my calls for a "flat tax" could be so easily dismissed.
I was 8 or 9, so I never really knew anything about politics, but there was still an image in my mind, for some weird reason that the Liberals were a "pro-business" party, and that's an image that a lot of young people actually still hold. I remember being sick, home from school during the delivering of the 2000 federal budget, when Paul Martin cut taxes... I was actually sort of impressed. The image in my head that the liberals were a pro-business party was re-enforced, because no one communicated to me the fact that they really weren't. I knew that the reform party was more "conservative", but that only made sense to me in social-conservative terms; it never did make sense to me that they were actually more capitalistic. A lot of young people have a lot of lofty goals and dreams and it has to be communicated to them that the liberals are infact a party that holds down the potential of the Canadian economy, it has to be communicated to them that the liberals are a big government party that spent the country in a multi-generational debt because Pierre Trudeau didn't care about the future.
Another 'conservative' inclination came through abortion. No one told me about abortion until I was at least 9 or 10, and even then no one told me whether it was "good" or "bad", but that decision wasn't that hard to make. I was absolutely shocked and horrified when I heard about abortion, and I won't lie about that. My views on abortion might've become a bit more nuanced since, but I was genuinely horrified by the thought of abortion, and still am to this day. The fact that the liberals were a predominantly pro-choice party didn't annoy me as much as the fact that the liberals absolutely VILLAINIZED Stockwell Day during the fall of 2000. I'll get to that tommorow or the day after; but after the Liberals villainized Stock Day for being "a Christian" (essentially), I was permanently horrified by the Liberal Party of Canada.
I couldn't formulate arguments that could persuade even a single person! It was frustrating. Which was always so strange for me, "I'm a conservative, am I really that weird? Are my views really that radical?" No, they're not and they weren't back then, either. I'm still pretty convinced that most people could be persuaded, if given the right reasons. I was so disingenuous that I actually tried to convince people through the gay marriage issue. "Yeah guys, they're going to let gay people get married and have kids and everything!, oh, but just so you know, I actually don't mind that at all".
So, over the course of the next few posts, in order to make my case for conservatism, I hope to illustrate how I personally became a 'conservative.'
I know that many Sikhs have been suspicious of the Conservative Party from way back during the mid-1980s when Joe Clark was in India during the funeral of Indira Gandhi and did NOTHING to speak out against the killings of thousands of Sikhs in the streets of Delhi, even though he must've known that it was taking place. I think this really soured a lot of Sikhs on their potential support for the conservatives. I had to tell at least a dozen people this past federal election that: "no, no! Joe Clark is a Liberal now!". And I also remember back in 1993, during the federal election, when I was 6 years old, I was really excited that the Liberal candidate in my riding (Herb Dhaliwal) would win, just because he was a "Sikh". This was different for Sikhs in 1993, because the conservatives never had any prominent South Asians in their cabinet, or even in their caucus, and the reform party didn't attract any 'ethnic' candidates until 1997. I sort of realized this as a 6-year-old, but a lot of people feel the same way at some level. There's no better way to counteract that fundamental lie about conservatives being racist than to prominently display minorities within the party (which is why I assume that the Conservative caucus is the most ethnically diverse.)
I'd like to start off by saying that I was always conservative from when I was very young, yet my general thoughts and beliefs didn't develop into actual feelings of support for any 'conservative' party until... ummm, until I was 13. (Well, I always supported the Republican party in America from when I was very young but that was only because I strongly disliked Bill Clinton, even though I don't dislike him as much currently - I'll discuss that another time.)
My first 'conservative' inclination was when I was around 8 or 9 years old, when I learnt that my parents paid around 50% of their income to the government. I was floored. Absolutely stunned. I couldn't believe it! Over 50%?!?!? And for what? It seemed so unfair. I was shocked, confused and a whole lot more. And THEN, I learnt that they paid more money, because they MADE more money. My feelings of how unfair things were jumped from high to super-super high. "You mean they penalize success?" I don't think I actually said that, but that's how I felt. Things need to be communicated in terms of 'fairness'. A young person, who hasn't been sufficiently brainwashed by the state or by state-supporting elites will ALWAYS agree that the graduated tax system is unfair. I remember once, in English 11, I wrote this pathetic essay about how the federal income tax was "illegal" because it was only created during war-time when it was sold to the Canadian people as a temporary measure, and my aggressively socialist English teacher gave it a C-. I was pretty stunned, because I didn't realize or understand how my calls for a "flat tax" could be so easily dismissed.
I was 8 or 9, so I never really knew anything about politics, but there was still an image in my mind, for some weird reason that the Liberals were a "pro-business" party, and that's an image that a lot of young people actually still hold. I remember being sick, home from school during the delivering of the 2000 federal budget, when Paul Martin cut taxes... I was actually sort of impressed. The image in my head that the liberals were a pro-business party was re-enforced, because no one communicated to me the fact that they really weren't. I knew that the reform party was more "conservative", but that only made sense to me in social-conservative terms; it never did make sense to me that they were actually more capitalistic. A lot of young people have a lot of lofty goals and dreams and it has to be communicated to them that the liberals are infact a party that holds down the potential of the Canadian economy, it has to be communicated to them that the liberals are a big government party that spent the country in a multi-generational debt because Pierre Trudeau didn't care about the future.
Another 'conservative' inclination came through abortion. No one told me about abortion until I was at least 9 or 10, and even then no one told me whether it was "good" or "bad", but that decision wasn't that hard to make. I was absolutely shocked and horrified when I heard about abortion, and I won't lie about that. My views on abortion might've become a bit more nuanced since, but I was genuinely horrified by the thought of abortion, and still am to this day. The fact that the liberals were a predominantly pro-choice party didn't annoy me as much as the fact that the liberals absolutely VILLAINIZED Stockwell Day during the fall of 2000. I'll get to that tommorow or the day after; but after the Liberals villainized Stock Day for being "a Christian" (essentially), I was permanently horrified by the Liberal Party of Canada.
posted by Japnaam Singh at
7:38 PM
1 Comments:
I agree abortion is horrifying, but in extreme cases where either the child or the mother, or even both , would die, I think only then it is okay to use abortion.
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