The Making Of A 9/11 Republican

Wow! What an article!

Left coast conservative columnist (I felt weird typing that phrase) Cinnamon Stillwell explains her “road to Damascus” switch from a standard California leftist to being a conservative in her article, The Making Of A 9/11 Republican.

As one of a handful of Bay Area conservative columnists, I'm no stranger to pushing buttons. Indeed, I welcome feedback from readers, whether positive or negative. I find the interplay stimulating, but I am often bemused by the stereotypical assumptions made by my critics on the left. It's not enough to simply disagree with my views; I have to be twisted into a conservative caricature that apparently makes opponents feel superior. They seem not to have considered that it's possible to put forward different approaches to various societal problems and not be the devil incarnate.

But in some ways I understand where this perspective comes from, because I once shared it. I was raised in liberal Marin County, and my first name (Cinnamon) is a direct product of the hippie generation. Growing up, I bought into the prevailing liberal wisdom of my surroundings because I didn't know anything else. I wrote off all Republicans as ignorant, intolerant yahoos. It didn't matter that I knew none personally; it was simply de rigueur to look down on such people. The fact that I was being a bigot never occurred to me, because I was certain that I inhabited the moral high ground.

The leftists’ most annoying characteristic is their relentless assumption of moral superiority.

Having been indoctrinated in the postcolonialist, self-loathing school of multiculturalism, I thought America was the root of all evil in the world. … I put aside the nagging question of why so many people all over the world risk their lives to come to the United States. …

So, what happened to change all that? In a nutshell, 9/11. The terrorist attacks on this country were not only an act of war but also a crime against humanity. It seemed glaringly obvious to me at the time, and it still does today. But the reaction of my former comrades on the left bespoke a different perspective. The day after the attacks, I dragged myself into work, still in a state of shock, and the first thing I heard was one of my co-workers bellowing triumphantly, "Bush got his war!" There was little sympathy for the victims of this horrific attack, only an irrational hatred for their own country.

Notice her leftist colleagues had absolutely no sense of shared fate with their fellow countrymen. Their indifference is the sort that would be slightly more appropriate if they were citizens of another country, not this country. In a way, this is logical. Most leftists have a transnationalist outlook and consequently don’t have an emotional attachment to our country; they can’t hide it.

The other noteworthy point is the total lack of compassion shown for their country and for the 9/11 victims. This indifference is shows her leftist colleagues are complete moral midgets.

Of course the same group of said moral midgets can be guaranteed to assert that they have the most refined sense of moral ethics available. Why during the 80’s, when Africans of European decent denied English common law rights to Africans of African decent in the country of South Africa these same folks—or folks just like her colleagues—were picketing the South African embassy. But let jihadist racial cleansers kill 3,000 Americans on our mainland and “Bush got his war!”

[Adopting a Colombo tone of voice] Just one more question: where did Cinnamon Stillwell work on September 11, 2001? Did she work as a columnist in a newspaper back then? If yes then this means that her co-workers—the same moral midgets who were smugly indifferent to 3,000 American deaths on the mainland—were employed by the mainstream media! Think about the mindset of those who work in the MSM the next time you’re viewing or reading its products.

As I spent months grieving the losses, others around me wrapped themselves in the comfortable shell of cynicism and acted as if nothing had changed. I soon began to recognize in them an inability to view America or its people as victims, born of years of indoctrination in which we were always presented as the bad guys.

Never mind that every country in the world acts in its own self-interest, forms alliances with unsavory countries -- some of which change later -- and are forced to act militarily at times. America was singled out as the sole guilty party on the globe. I, on the other hand, for the first time in my life, had come to truly appreciate my country and all that it encompassed, as well as the bravery and sacrifices of those who fight to protect it.

Thoroughly disgusted by the behavior of those on the left, I began to look elsewhere for support. To my astonishment, I found that the only voices that seemed to me to be intellectually and morally honest were on the right. Suddenly, I was listening to conservative talk-show hosts on the radio and reading conservative columnists, and they were making sense. When I actually met conservatives, I discovered that they did not at all embody the stereotypes with which I'd been inculcated as a liberal.

Although my initial agreement with voices on the right centered on the war on terrorism, I began to find myself in concurrence with other aspects of conservative political philosophy as well. Smaller government, traditional societal structures, respect and reverence for life, the importance of family, personal responsibility, national unity over identity politics and the benefits of living in a meritocracy all became important to me. In truth, it turns out I was already conservative on many of these subjects but had never been willing to admit as much.

In my search for like-minded individuals, I also gravitated toward the religiously observant. This was somewhat revolutionary, considering my former liberal discomfort with religious folk, but I found myself in agreement on a number of issues. When it came to support for Israel, Orthodox Jews and Christian Zionists were natural allies. As the left rained down vicious attacks on Israel, commentators on the right (with the exception of Pat Buchanan and his ilk) became staunch supporters of the nation. The fact that I'm not a particularly religious person myself had little bearing on this political relationship, for it's entirely possible to be secular and not be antireligious. Unlike the secular fundamentalists who make it their mission in life to destroy all vestiges of America's Judeo-Christian heritage, I have come to value this legacy.

So I became what's now commonly known as a "9/11 Republican." Living in a time of war, disenchanted with the left and disappointed with the obstructionism and lack of vision of the Democratic Party, I threw in my hat with the only party that seemed to be offering solutions, rather than simply tearing away at our country. I went from voting for Ralph Nader in 2000 to proudly casting my ballot for George W. Bush in 2004. This doesn't necessarily mean that I agree with Bush on every issue, but there is enough common ground to support his party overall. In the wake of this political transformation, I discovered that I was not alone. It turned out that there are other 9/11 Republicans out there, both in the Bay Area and beyond, and they have been coming out of the woodwork.

Like many a political convert, I took it on myself to openly oppose the politics of those with which I once shared world views. Beyond writing, I put myself on the front lines of this ideological battle by taking part in counterprotests at the antiwar rallies leading up to the war in Iraq. This turned out to be a further wake-up call, because it was there that I encountered more intolerance than ever before in my life. Holding pro-Iraq-liberation signs and American flags, I was spat on, called names, intimidated, threatened, attacked, cursed and, on a good day, simply argued with. It was clear that any deviation from the prevailing leftist groupthink of the Bay Area was considered a threat to be eliminated as quickly as possible.

It was at such protests that I also had my first real brushes with anti-Semitism. The anti-Israel sentiment on the left -- inexorably linked to anti-Americanism -- ran high at these events and boiled over into Jew hatred on more than one occasion. The pro-Palestinian sympathies of the left had led to a bizarre commingling of pacifism, Communism and Arab nationalism. So it was not uncommon to see kaffiyeh-clad college students chanting Hamas slogans, graying hippies wearing "Intifada" T-shirts, Che Guevera backpacks, and signs equating Zionism with Nazism, all against a backdrop of peace, patchouli and tie-dye.

…In the end, the blatant anti-Semitism on the left, even among Jews, only strengthened my political transformation. I was, in effect, radicalized by the radicals.

But more than anything, it was the left's hypocrisy when it came to the war on terrorism that made me turn rightward after 9/11. I remember, back in my liberal days, being fiercely opposed to the Taliban and its brutal treatment of women. Even then, I felt that Afghanistan should immediately be liberated, as Malcolm X once said in another context, by any means necessary. But when it came time, it turned out that the left was mostly opposed to such liberation, whether of the Afghan people or of the Iraqis (especially if America and a Republican president were at the helm).

Indeed, liberals had become strangely conservative in their fierce attachment to the status quo. In contrast, the much-maligned neoconservatives (among whose ranks I count myself) and Bush had become the "radicals," bringing freedom and democracy to the despotic Middle East. Is it any wonder that in such a topsy-turvy world, I found myself in agreement with those I'd formerly denounced?

Cinnamon Stillwell’s complaint regarding “liberals [becoming] strangely conservative” and liberal hypocrisy are breathtakingly bland. I much prefer to apply Christopher Hitching’s observation regarding Noam Chomsky to them: the left’s support of the underdogs has mutated into support for the mad dogs.

My riposte to Hitching’s comment is that this is nothing new; the left has always supported the mad dogs of this world. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro all got a pass at the time from the American left.

All of this means is that there is nothing strange about today’s leftists' behavior; the left’s primary technique has always been framing indictments against the U.S. The left never felt the need to be internally self consistent because the indictments were never sincere in the first place; they were all just another weapon to attack the U.S. with.

The war on terrorism is nothing more than the great struggle of our time, and, like the earlier ones against fascism and totalitarianism, we ignore it at our peril. Whether or not one accepts that we are engaged in a war, our enemies have declared it so. It took the horrors of 9/11 to awaken me to this reality, but for others, such lessons remain unlearned. For me, it was self-evident that in Islamic terrorism, America had found a nihilistic threat that sought to wipe out not only Western civilization but also civilization itself.

The Islamists have been clear all along about their plans to form an Islamic caliphate and inhabit the entire world with burqas, stonings, amputations, honor killings and a lack of religious and political freedom. Whether or not to oppose such a movement should have been a no-brainer, especially for self-proclaimed "progressives." Instead, they have extended their misguided sympathies to tyrants and terrorists.

In the end, history will be the judge, and each of us will have to think about what legacy we wish to leave to future generations. If there's one thing I've learned since 9/11, it's that it's never too late to alter one's place in the great scheme of things.

Why does Cinnamon Stillwell assume that the left’s sympathies are “misguided”? The left supported tyrants such as Stalin when he was starving his farmers to death and they support a tyrant like Castro today. What’s the inconsistency?

Hat tip to KelliPundit.

Postscript:
I added all the emphasis in the quoted article.