"Anyone who makes up their mind before they hear the issue is a fuckin' fool, OK? Everybody! No, no, no... Everybody's so busy trying to be down with a gang. 'I'm a conservative.' 'I'm a liberal.' It's bullshit. Be a fuckin' person. Listen. Let it swirl around in your head, then form an opinion. No normal, decent person is one thing. I've got some shit I'm conservative about, and I got some shit I'm liberal about. Crime? I'm conservative. Prostitution? I'm liberal!" --- Chris Rock
Just something to think about before we get started here. This is going to be a pretty thick diary, and you might not want to wade through it unless you're ready to do some thinking.
As droogie6655321, I talk a lot about my personal political transformation on this site. What most of you might not know about that is I went into what I call the "mousetrap effect."
It's my term for a person who gets so far out on one end of the political spectrum that the cognitive dissonance becomes so great that eventually they just snap over to the extreme on the other side. This can happen with any worldview, including a person's religion (a fervent Catholic who becomes a firm atheist, or vice versa).
When the mousetrap effect happened to me, I snapped from the far right into the far left. Of course, it was a good time to be in the far left, because the year was 2002, and there was a war to try to stop from happening.
It felt good to be a self-identified liberal -- it was liberating to shed all the hatred and fear and dogma that were a part of me when I was a conservative extremist and a fundamentalist Christian. I was thankful for my transformation and the relief it offered me.
As a conservative extremist, I was obsessed with purity of ideology. The reason why I never registered as a Republican back then was because I considered that party "too liberal." And when I became a liberal myself, I couldn't bring myself to register Democratic because I saw them as "too conservative." It sounds silly, looking back, but that's the way it was.
However in time I realized something -- I was identifying too strongly with the label. As I re-examined my beliefs, I found myself taking stances on issues simply because I had identified them as "the liberal stance," not because it was the natural conclusion that I had come to through thought and research.
Even as a liberal, I realized, my views were no less inflexible than when I was a conservative. I started to moderate myself. Today, I have some conservative ideas and some liberal ideas. I still identify myself as a liberal when someone asks me, but that's only for ease of conversation. It's not a label I feel the need to "live up to."
The beliefs that you hold on people, on issues, on the entire world are all worthless unless they are continually challenged. This is why I had it completely backwards when I was younger.
You don't simply call yourself a liberal or a conservative or a Methodist or an atheist or a libertarian and then change your own ideas to fit someone else's dogma. That's an artificial ideology.
The only way to figure out who you really are is to examine why you think the way you do. Go back to the beginning, and ask why your beliefs are what they are.
Is it because that's how people think when they're liberals? Is it because someone else told you that's the way it is? Or is it the conclusion you came to naturally after a lot of careful throught and reflection -- considering every side and all the facts? These questions are crucial.
We have to know who we are, and more importantly why we are who we are.
Many of us here have said that Barack Obama is moving to the center. Some of the same people who are saying this now, I would wager, didn't spend a lot of time checking out exactly who the Senator is, who he was, and what he believes.
Because like any individual who is honest with themselves rather than playing at being a demagogue with an artificial ideology, Barack Obama's ideology is more mature. Some of the positions he holds could be called liberal, and some could be called conservative. Some are in the middle as well, and still others defy classification.
There may not be a single label that suits him completely, as is the case with many of us. Some of us are liberals to a T, and that's fine so long as that's really what you believe.
But we have to realize that we're voting for a person, not a label. Everyone's experiences are unique, and shape their worldview in a unique way that is sometimes difficult to understand for an outsider who doesn't know them. Maybe this explains some of the confusion we've been having in this community as to who Barack Obama "really is."
For me, an ideology that is obsessed with purity is an immature one in many ways. Of course this is only what I've found to be true for me. It may not be the case for you.
It's not a matter of compromising or moderating yourself -- it's simply a matter of constantly re-examining your beliefs. In this process, you may modify some parts of your ideology, and you may toss other parts out completely before rebuilding it from scratch.
We are only as good as the quality of our ideas. And we can only ensure that quality by daring to challenge ourselves with fresh information, insights and experiences. If we reject this new input, our worldview grows stiff, unchanging and inflexible.
We like to kid ourselves sometimes that a stale worldview is the trademark of conservatism. It's a comforting thought, but a false one. The fact is, no one spot on the political spectrum has a monopoly on rigid thought. It happens to liberals in equal measure if we aren't careful.
So in this election season, I encourage you to spend some time getting to know yourself and what you really think. Re-examine some of your most firmly held beliefs. It's a trying, difficult experience, but for those with the mental strength to do it, it is rewarding.
Only when we know what we really believe will we know what we need to stand up for, and who we want to fight for, and how we will work for change in this country.
As Barack Obama is fond of saying, we need to spend less time thinking about how we are going to win, and more time thinking about why we should win.