(02-17-2023, 06:46 PM)The Real Marty Wrote: I think we're shaped by our entire life experience. My parents were die-hard liberals. My father was a lawyer. He, I, and my older brother had intellectual discussions at every dinner. It was competitive. I think what I got from him was a reliance on logic.

When I was growing up, I was even more liberal than my parents. But when I was in college, I became much more conservative. I rebelled against the knee-jerk liberalism on campus.

I think it's largely true that a person with little money is attracted to socialism, and a person with a lot of money is attracted to free market capitalism. I think we gravitate to the political values that are most to our own advantage. I think we adopt values and then spend our lives reinforcing them.

So most of the time, if you want to know where a person's values came from, you just have to look at their situation in life.

"What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie? I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky. The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing; Rush in and die, dogs - I was a man before I was a king."