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In reply to the discussion: Things that made you a liberal [View all]Aristus
(66,275 posts)perpetrated against people who weren't like me.
In 1976, the Army post I lived on put on a gigantic bicentennial pageant in a movie theater converted for stage theater use. The program was several hours of songs, sketches, and re-enactments detailing American history. During the Civil War section, a gospel choir sang an old slave spiritual "Oh Freedom!" during a re-enactment of the auctioning of a slave family. A school friend of mine played a young slave boy, one of my teachers played his mother, and a man I didn't know played the father. The mother was wrenched from her husband and her son by a planter in a white suit and hat, and they were "sold down the river", causing the mother to sing the final verses of the song solo. Seeing a family torn apart like that, even just in a piece of theater, was disturbing.
My father's historical interest in World War II, my mother's portrayal of Mrs. Frank in a local production of The Diary Of Anne Frank, and the miniseries 'Holocaust' brought the plight of the Jews in WWII to my attention. And I studied it very carefully from my father's books on the subject. I had had a crush on the girl who played Anne Frank in my mom's play, and knowing that she 'died' after the end of the play sunk me into a deep depression.
Finally, the thing that really solidified my liberalism was 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' in 1993, after I was more or less grown up. Since my family had been active in community theater, I had known gay men and women for a while, and hadn't really thought about it much. I didn't really know much about homosexuality. I developed friendships with some people in the gay community in Louisville, Kentucky, near Fort Knox where I was stationed. I remember asking one of my friends: "Is it a choice? Did you choose to be gay?" He replied: "I would never in a million years have chosen to be this way. I can't get married, I can't serve in the Army like you, and anytime somebody wants to, he can beat me up and the cops won't do a thing."
I had voted Republican in 1988 and again in 1992. I haven't voted Republican since, and don't plan to ever again.
Injustice, even though it doesn't happen to me or lots of people like me, is the driving force behind my liberalism.