The Making of a Conservative...

In an convo with one of my lovely daughters the other night, she asked me how I came by my rather "loud" and shall we say, rigid, political leanings.  I said I'd try to bring her up to speed.  

I grew up in a home ran by two professionals, I told her.  Both of my parents were real estate brokers, and insurance brokers.  We lived well.  Because my parents worked their asses off.  So I came to know what comes from an eternal struggle.  End of story.

So you can also understand I came by many of my beliefs at an early age.  So when I finished up my military service, and college, and then paid my dues working for a succession of yuuuge corporations, I started my own company.  Of course I did.  As I once described it during a lecture I gave to a class of MBA candidates at Pepperdine University, "entrepreneurism is a disease for which there is no cure."  I was fully prepared for what was to come.  As prepared as anyone could have been.  But I knew going in that there was a class of folks who'd be hiding in the bushes, trying to take from me any success I might enjoy.  Instead of trying to achieve their own, I might add.  So I had my hand on my wallet going in.  Even so, God, was I ever surprised...

There was not a single day, in those entire 37 and one-half years my wife and I ran our company, that someone, somewhere, wasn't trying to put their hand in my pocket.  Deeply.    

And most often that "somebody" was the gubmint.  Usually the State, but the Feds wanted their pound of flesh also.  It was a near-Herculean effort for my wife an me to try and hold on to some of what I earned.  I spent ten of $Thousands on accountants, each of whom was charged with protecting me from a rapacious Gubmint.  A gubmint that wanted to peel me like a grape.  I even had to buy a piece of the Oakland Convention Center as a tax dodge.  

Those who don't start and run their own companies, the 97% or so, have no idea what it's like to try and be an entrepreneur in the more socialist states.  States like California.  The one in which I unfortunately live...

This experience made me believe the best form of government, as I informed my gorgeous daughter (one of four!), is the one that stays out of your speech, out of your wallet, out of your educational choices, out of your church, out of your gun cabinet, and out of your bedroom.  Yet here's the reality: I pay taxes.  A lot of taxes.  A bit less than half of America pays taxes.  But half of America...doesn't.  And yet, that half wants some of my hard-earned money.  I told my daughter that's reality.  That's the windmill against which I am tilting.  And have forever been tilting.  

Ever since I chose to become enlightened and choose Conservatism...

I think my daughter has begun to finally understand.  As the saying goes, the first step is for the scales to be removed from one's eyes...