Centerfield

My mother is an idealist liberal, while my father is the only Jew in Florida that actually meant to vote Buchanan in 2000.

I don't know where that leaves me, but it makes for interesting conversation when I visit.

My mother has been a Republican since she couldn't get a job in KC (in the 30's) because (her perception) of the Democratic machine. My Dad (deceased since '84) was a Democrat though a centrist one.

Until '94 I was an independant. Since then I've been a registred Republican (done primarilty to participate in the primaries in AZ [i.e. conservative Republican vs moderate Republican, one of whom will likely win the general election])

My dad was a staunch anti-commie Republican, with a capital "R". His sister stayed in China, was a party member but because of her art and ties to old money was imprisoned in a re-education camp during the cultural revolution.
In the 80's he turned Democrat. Said he was tired of having a recession everytime a Republican was in office (Eisenhower alone cost him a business venture or two) and had been whacked again by the economy.
This is a guy who is a polymath. Had three or so different majors at Stanford (architecture, zoology, etc), various other arreas of interest explored while doing grad work at Cal. Built his own electrophoresis machine in our cellar, in a start-up he built one of the first commercially available all solid state oscilliscopes (one is rumored to still be working in the Biology bldg at Cal). Worked with composite materials in the 60's. Has patents on ag sprayers and what not. Had a vineyard for 10 years or so in the 80's while doing more inventing and company stuff.
Currently semi-retired and even more democrat.
So really he had no influence on my political beliefs although I appreciated his as I was growing up.

My mom has always been liberal. Her mom's father owned a newspaper on Long Island and had the pleasure of having a cross burned on his lawn when he editorialized against the Klan which was growing in numbers at the time. He was said to have roared out with laughter when he saw the burning cross. Meant he got to them. His daughter, my recently departed grandmother, wrote the obits in the family paper and was cynical about both parties but was a Democrat. Mom's side of the family has often been anti-war. Mainly because of the casaulties. One uncle literally got blown to bits in WW1 after bing drafted and was on the front lines only briefly. One of my uncles got his mind messed up pretty badly at his last battle - he was an LST pilot and had survived about a dozen landings-, his unit was surrounded by the Japanese and they fought them off for more than 30 hours. Of the 12 survivors he was the only one who made it out of the mental health facility fairly intact although bipolar and was often abusive.
Pretty ugly. Her dad, an MIT grad, owned a steel company that his father started and died Christmas morning 1944 of a massive heart attack - overworked and overstressed from the tons of hours devoted to the war effort. I doubt if the smoking and the dietary predilections of the time were any help.

Also have to figure that I grew up in the Berkeley area, the son of a racially mixed marriage - still a novelty at the time.

So yeah, I'm on the ACLU side ALLLLLL the time. Walked precincts for George(24 bombing missions over Europe)McGovern, helped out Dellums and other campaigns. Grew up influenced by good democrats and liberal republicans like George Christopher, past mayor of San Francisco.(he ran in 66 against Reagan and unfortunately for California and the rest of the world, he lost.) George Christopher opened his house to Willie Mays when Mays was having trouble finding housing in the better part of Daly City or somewhere around there.

I think there's about 5 of his ilk in the GOP these days.

Great thread!

My mom grew up in a very progressive, northeastern Republican family. Kind of the true Rockerfeller Republicans if you will. Religion has molded her views for the past 40 years and have pushed her to the far right of the GOP.

My Dad grew up in the South, thus a Democrat. What's funny now is that although most of his politics lean toward the Democratic Party (including being a pacifist--not that all D's are pacifist), he allows abortion and gay marriage to drive him into the ranks of the GOP.

As for me, I'm a funny mix. I consider myself quite a liberal Republican. I'm pro-choice, pro-civil unions, etc. Basically, very liberal socially and fiscally more conservative.

My numerous siblings; however, all follow in the footsteps of my parents...as far right as you can get without bumping into Lou Sheldon.

My dad is Republican, my mom is a conservative Democrat. I'm an independent.

I don't really think my parents had an effect on my political leanings because they rarely talked politics, at least not with me present. I think my political nature was shaped more by surroundings outside the home. I grew up in a small conservative town of 13,000. But then I moved to liberal Austin and attended the University of Texas. I think my interaction with both conservative and liberal groups enticed me to be of an independent mind. I saw both groups rigid ideologies to be a little ridiculous and thus sought another way.

My mother despises all politics and almost all politicians. I think the only political figure she has ever said anything nice about was Harry Truman. My father is a centrist democrat(?), but not all that political. He's voted for both parties and tends to vote against incumbents in local elections as a matter of principle. So I am the product of an ultra-cynic and a free thinker. Maybe that's why I'm here.

If you are personally conservative, in the sense of sticking with what you know and are used to, then remaining in the party in which your parents raised you is a 'conservative' thing to do. Like Marcus, I grew up in Berkeley - and a lot of my peers (I am 56) march in lockstep with the revealed wisdom of KPFA and the local party - so they are not freethinkers! I think that is a conservative mindset.

Yup, my family background tends to push me into the Conservative camp (particularly on Foriegn policy issues).

My parents both grew up in pre-war Poland. My dad had the misfortunate of being a 19 year old 2nd Lt. in the Polish Army in September of 1939. He was stationed on Polands Eastern border. Most people remember that the Germans invaded on September 1st 1939 but alot of folks in the West these days like to overlook that the Soviets invaded exactly 2 weeks later IN SUPPORT of thier German ALLIES and between them partitioned Poland.

My dad was probably fortunate (if you can call it that) to be captured by the Russians since he was jewish - he lost his mother to the Nazi's in the camps. He was doubly fortunate as he avoided being one of the officers that ended up in the Katyn Forest, spent the next 2 years in a Soviet "P.O.W." (i.e. forced labor) camp watching his comrades die off from exposure, disease and malnutrition.

One day after the Germans invaded the Soviets in the Summer of '41, the NKVD entered the camp and "offered" the polish P.O.W.'s the opportunity to join the Soviet Army. My dad took the offer....he figured if he was going to die, it was better to die fighting Nazi's. The NKVD, loaded all the Poles who refused the offer into trucks.... no one ever heard from them again.

He spent the rest of the War as a tank commander in the Soviet Army fighting on the Eastern Front. He survived the war, met my mom in a refuge camp after the war and a few years later managed to escape with her to the West. He came to the U.S. with a family to look after and $38 in his pocket.....and through hard work and playing by the rules ended up owning his own business and firmly entrenched in the top tax bracket. One of those real hollywood, immigrant success stories.

My Mom was 10 years old when the Germans invaded Poland. Her dad and uncles were all active in the resistance. All 7 of her uncles were executed by the S.S. Her dad was one of the members of the Polish Home Army that got to participate in the Warsaw Uprising (not the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising staged by the jews, the other one that happaned later). He watched as the Soviet Army reached the suburbs of Warsaw a few miles away from his position....and promptly stopped....let the Nazi's massacre the Home Army (which had ties to the Polish government in exile in London) and threatened to shoot down any allied aircraft that dared fly in supplies to the Poles.

My mom's dad also survived the War. The post-war Soviet backed puppet government declared him a war hero and gave him a medal..... and as a reward placed him under house arrest for the rest of his natural life. My mom's sister and some of her other surviving relatives eventualy made it out of Eastern Europe but her dad never did... he was always too closely watched. He died behind the Iron Curtain.... she never got to see him again. I remember her crying when she used to get letters from him.... they were so full of holes from the Soviet censors cutting out parts they didn't like that you couldn't read them....they looked like swiss cheese. His Soviet minders did let him call her once from his deathbed (this was in the late 70's) ....it was a 5 minute, monitored, phone call.

So yeah, I used to get real giggles from all those "Give peace a chance" crowd liberals who kept squawking about how the Soviets weren't really so bad and that we could trust them to live in peace with us.... and how communism had so much to reccomend it. It also kinda gives me a different perspective from those folks who grouse about us not having any right to invade a soveriegn country like Iraq. You see my family LIVED under a regieme like Saddams.... they would have been thrilled for Martians to invade as long as it pushed Stalin and Hitler out....it also makes it real easy to differentiate the bad guys from the good guys. Anyone who thinks our troops are "occupiers" not "liberators" has no clue about what a real occupation is like.

Anyways, that's how my parents background tends to effect my perspective.

regarding 'conservative' thinkers.

In part dave is right except that the numbers of those conservatively liberal marching in lockstep are pretty small. Unfortunately sometimes they are the loudest. Most people I've discussed politics with have a pretty wide range of beliefs. Most tend to be socially liberal to varying degrees and many are fiscally conservative, which is somewhat at odds with how the Hannity/Rush crowd look at us.
I recently talked with a construction guy who, like me, is a native. We were hanging out waiting for our car windows to get repaired (mine got broken into and the guys were caught and plead guilty). We touched everything from race (he's black) to economic development in Oakland. Looking back I don't think most folks are marching lockstep as much as there is a nebulous unity of opinion.
I think you'd find the same thing in conservative areas.

Interesting threat. Like many that grew up in the Depression, my mother adores FDR, and is generally a Democrat although I would not describe her (to say the least) as socially liberal. My father, too, was sort of a legacy Democrat growing up in the Depression. I would not describe him as liberal in the sense that we think of it today (when I was a teenage liberal, I used to lecture him from the left--no he did not smack me!). He voted for Nixon in '68 and was almost disowned by his family, voted for McGovern because he felt sorry for him. He probably would have like Reagan's defense and foreign policies but would have preferred Democratic economic policies.

I never felt rebellious toward my parents. I grew up in Tennessee and was, to say the least, far to the left of my friends-but never radical. Iwas pretty much of a classic New Deal/Cold War liberal, but started moving to the right in the late 80s. Although I still think detente was the correct policy in the seventies, I became increasingly uncomfortable with the revisionist historyof the Cold War and the de rigeur rejection of American institutions by the left, as well as the racial politics played by Jesse Jackson, et. all. On the other hand, the advent of the "New Right" and the Bush Administration has moved me back toward the left-center.

I had never thought about this before, but, in retrospect, I think my father's basic political moderation did influence greatly the way I think about politics.

I'd like to think Marcus is right, but my impression is that, while, certainly, not all liberals or conservatives agree on every policy, there is a lot of lockstep thinking. I see this among my family and friends. I think a lot of them are uncomfortable with my political beliefs because they are hard to categorize--so they tend to call me "conservative" because I don't agree with all the prevailing conventional liberal wisdom.

I don't really see a lot of people that really enjoy give and take--most seem to prefer to talk among like-minded people.