In a previous diary I was asked to post the story of how I turned from an extreme right-wing asshole into the moderate that I am today. Be warned that there is a lot of religion in this story (it's very, very tied into what I believed), and also be warned that it is very personal. I'm taking quite a risk by sharing it on such a high-traffic political site, especially. But on the flip side, I think it will help the cause by helping the dKos community to understand what makes the right-wingers tick.
Please forgive me in advance if this is a little disjointed; I am not a morning person and this is a hard story to tell even on the best of days.
I was born into a church called the Worldwide Church of God. Without going into a huge amount of detail, this church was a few notches to the right of Limbaugh. I would point you to some websites explaining what they were all about, but they seem to be down right now.
This church taught many stupid and controversial things. They taught, for example, never to go to a doctor, never to vote or get involved in politics (so posting here is a big middle finger up to that), to always listen to the church leadership no matter what, and to never have anything to do with the "world", no matter what. Many of you use the figurative "don't drink the kool-aid" - If the cult leader (one Herbert W. Armstrong) had told us to drink the kool-aid, literally, there would be a lot of dead people out there right now. We were also not to celebrate any holidays except for thanksgiving, and we had our own set of Holy Days to follow.
One of the most important teachings to my narrative is the teaching that Revelations was literal, and that the world was going to end shortly, to be replaced with a thousand year reign by Christ.
Anyway, I was born to a family that was heavily involved in this church, and followed every single one of their teachings to the best of their ability. So, being raised in this environment, I also "drank the kool-aid", as it were. I was judgemental of everyone - gays, women, other christians, especially non-christians - if you were not in my church, I wanted nothing to do with you, and you were going to hell.
In 1986, Herbert Armstrong died. As tends to happen when cult leaders die, someone else took his place, and the cult itself began sinking into turmoil. The new leader decided that the cult should not be as cultish anymore, and began to make some changes to bring it more into mainline Christianity. First went the prohibitions on holidays, then the restrictions on what to do on the Sabbath, and so on and so forth.
I was confused and afraid. Everything I had been taught as a child (I was about 17 or 18 at this point) was being demolished. But then I started to look at it logically, and I slowly began to understand that I was the one with the problem. Or more accurately, that what other people did was none of my business, unless it directly affected me. And that there was nothing to be scared of - that they were people just like me.
I was strongly anti-abortion, until I realized that it wasn't any of my business. I began to understand that there was no way to tell when the baby was viable until it was born, so while it was perfectly OK for me to be morally opposed to abortion (and I still am!), that it wasn't my job to make that decision for a woman.
I was strongly anti-gay, until I realized that it wasn't any of my business. While, as again, it was perfectly OK for me to be repulsed by the act (and I still am!), it isn't my job to tell people what they can or can't do in the bedroom, and I shouldn't treat them badly because of their own choices.
I was strongly anti-atheist, until I became one. I'm now agnostic with theist leanings, but not very strong ones. After you've been beaten over your head with God for that many years, you just kind of stop caring anymore.
And before I knew it, I was moderate.
This was my journey out of extreme right-wing wackoness - and there is much much more to this story, of course, and I'll answer most questions you might have, but I want to leave with an observation on what makes the right-wingers tick. Having been one myself, I think I'm unusually qualified to speculate on that.
I believe that they are afraid. That is the overarching thing that drives everything they say and do. It pushes logic out the window, it causes them to temporarily lose track of their values. They are afraid of hell, they are afraid of people who do not believe as they do. They are terrified that the "atheists" will take over. Most things that they do are motivated out of fear, and they will do anything to try to remove or assuage that fear. We are not just battling ideologues - we are battling scared ideologues. And those are the most dangerous kind of all.
And how does a right-winger stop being a right-winger? Easy. Well, not so much. He/she thinks. He/she looks at things critically. He/she stops running away from the fear and confronts it. And, most of all, he/she has to be willing to look critically at his or her opinions. If a right-winger can reach that state of mind, then turning centrist or moderate really isn't that far off. What is the most important for you on dKos to understand is: you cannot force this frame of mind. You can only guide, but they have to make the decision on their own. You won't change them without their cooperation.
I think the same thing applies to the left as well :-) but that's a different debate for a different day - the motivations are not the same. Suffice it to say I've seen some of the same kind of fear in the far left.
If I don't respond to any comments in the short term, I have things to do this morning. I will respond this afternoon, though. If you don't like this diary, I'm sorry, I don't intend to post any more like this in the future. I'm sure that every single one of you will find something to like here - and something to hate. That's OK, at least we're talking.