As I’ve whined before, I’m a liberal in a red state. Most of the time, I keep my mouth shut during political discussions. Occasionally, however, I’ll hear something that blows my circuits, and I’ll make the mistake of letting my liberal viewpoint be known. I am then jumped from all sides. Since I am not adept at oral debate, I get tongue-tied and embarrassed, and my friends and family get the satisfaction of “winning” these disagreements.

I’m used to it.

What really honks me off, though, is when people blame my liberal views on my youth, my inexperience or my job. They tell me that I’ll get over it, as if I’m a six-year-old who just skinned her knee or got crushed by the boy next door. They tell me I’ll learn to be a conservative as I get older, see more of the world, and get away from university vacuum in which I work.

That’s funny because when I was younger, I was conservative. I’ve actually gotten more liberal as I’ve gotten older. I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s, hating Jimmy Carter and loving Ronald Reagan. Carter was responsible for the high gas prices that so upset my father. Carter’s ineptitude prolonged the hostage crisis in Iran that gave my mother nightmares. Reagan was the hero. When he was shot, I sent him a get-well card and framed the reply I received from the White House. I remained a Republican through my undergraduate years at a liberal college campus; in the first election in which I could vote, I voted for George Bush over Clinton.

It wasn’t until I was older that I came to consider myself a liberal. I was working two jobs and fighting to make ends meet, watching gay friends struggle with AIDS, studying the Bible and thinking about starting a family. All of a sudden, the Republican Party seemed very out-of-touch with all the things I was going through, all the things I was really worried about.

As far as inexperience goes, I admit that I have fewer experiences than my parents, aunts, uncles, and 60-year-old friends and relatives. How could it be otherwise? They have 2 or 3 decades on me. But here are some experiences I’ve had that I don’t think they have: I’ve cleaned the blood off a friend’s face after he was ambushed and beaten up just for being gay. I’ve helped a friend struggle with the painful decision of abortion because the condom broke and she had no money or insurance, and she knew her parents would never consent to adoption. I’ve watched a hemophiliac friend die very slowly of AIDS because Ronald Reagan refused to act to protect the national blood supply. I’ve been told by security personnel in an overseas airport not to speak English or mention that I am American because our foreign policy has alienated just about every other nation on the planet.

Actually, when people say that I have less “experience” than they do, I think they really mean “money.” Many folks tell me that when they were young (and poor), they used to be Democrats, even campaigning for John or Bobby Kennedy. As they got older and gained more experience (and money), they switched sides. I’ve always said that conservatism is the philosophy of the haves trying to keep their stuff from the have-nots. Most of the time, you accumulate more stuff as you get older; when you have more stuff to protect, conservatism probably seems more appealing.

Finally, there is the issue of my job. I teach English at a large urban university. As colleges go, it is relatively conservative. It is a predominately commuter school in the middle of a very red state, so about 80% of my students are Republican, and the faculty’s probably split about 50/50. The word “university,” however, is anathema to most conservatives. For many years now, the Republican Party has been painting college students, professors and intellectuals in general as the enemy, and it terrifies me. If you know history, current conservative rhetoric about universities and academics should worry you too.

Totalitarian regimes have a long history of coming down hard on colleges. Guess what Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Iran’s current president all have in common? One of the first things they did in their rise to power was to purge their respective nations of all the intellectuals. They exiled or assassinated college professors, leaders of university think tanks, student activists, scientists, teachers, and writers. During China’s “Cultural Revolution,” Chairman Mao sent thousands of scholars to their deaths to keep them from criticizing his horrific campaign. So when well-meaning folks tell me not to be taken in by the “intellectual elite” I work with, I have to suppress a shudder.

People also seem to forget that I’ve been teaching for only five years. I worked for the Disney Company for 10 years, and I worked for a financial services company for 6 years. Talk about a vacuum! In that company, I was completely surrounded by far-right conservatives who “never roved beyond the narrow limits of (their) money-changing hole.” (Dickens, A Christmas Carol) At least in the university, we have the courtesy to look at both sides of an issue. In private industry, they never feel the need to look past the bottom line.

Anyway, as long as I live in a red state and most of my friends are Republican, I guess I’ll just have to keep nodding and smiling. Should I forget my place and speak my mind, I’m sure everyone will remind me that I’ll grow up eventually and get over my silly liberal ways. It could happen. Especially if I ever get rich and forget my values.