That sounds a little patronizing, Doug. No, I don't feel better, because I could rant all day and it still wouldn't change things. It would be pretty difficult for someone to refute what I have said above because I chose things from my own experience or observations, and should someone try to say I've got it wrong, I could easily bury them in facts. And I only scratched the surface on a few things I could rant about.

Doug, folk singer or not, I used to be a conservative. I voted Republican. A lot! Among other things, I soaked up a lot of the writings of Ayn Rand—Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, and all that sort of thing, conservative economists, et al, and I was a real advocate of the unregulated free market. Let it do its thing and it will solve all of the worlds problems.

Then, I took a good, long look at the real world and saw some things that just didn't look right. I started asking questions. I started asking "why?" And I didn't get satisfactory answers. Instead of corporations headed by people like Hank Reardon and John Galt, ethical, able, starry-eyed idealists, I saw people getting laid off right and left because the profits had either slipped a bit or didn't quite reach the level of anticipated increase. I saw people having to sleep in back alleys while the politicos said we couldn't afford low-cost housing, in the meantime campaigning for building big sports stadiums. I saw that the hated politicians who supposedly were inhibiting the free-market by saddling it with capricious regulations were not actually regulating, they were doing the bidding of the CEOs. I saw people lose their pension plans because some high-level white collar crook stole their investments to by himself another mansion. I saw lots of questionable domestic policies slid through quietly because people were distracted by some crisis overseas. I saw oil and timber companies given permission to devastate the few remaining wilderness areas so they could increase their "bottom line." I saw that America has some of the best politicians that money can buy. I saw—

Well, it looks like I've started off on another rant, so rather than bore people and eat up a lot of bandwidth, I'll wrap it up here. I don't really consider myself a liberal, because I think I lack a lot of the credentials that many of my liberal friends and acquaintances have. But there's nothing like a good look at the real world to shake a conservative's beliefs, especially if it's someone who's willing to ask "why?" And I still ask the question: why can't we do something—even if it turns out to be unprofitable—even if it turns out to cost us something—for no reason other than that it's the right thing to do?

Don Firth