What Made Me Conservative?

March 1st, 2009 | By Sonnie Johnson

For Lent, I decided to stop judging myself so harshly. Ask how’s that going for me. Not good, not good at all but I’ll push forward. To make up for my inability to give myself a break, I’ve also massively turned down my XBox Live time. I’m sad about this, just give me a minute.

While I was flipping through the channels yesterday, I passed by Fox and Rush Limbaugh address to CPAC was on. In Rush’s first address to a national audience, I found so many reason’s to cheer. I got a different take for you, as I often do.

I questioned yesterday, when did I become “conservative”? I came to one undeniable truth, I’ve been conservative since the first time my mother gave me an allowance. We were on welfare, I’m talking public housing and food stamps. You know what I’m talking about, the peanut butter with just a picture of a peanut on the front, yeah.

Anyways, every summer when it was time for the ice cream truck to roll around, my mother would give us an allowance. We got $2 a week. Back then, the lady on the corner sold frozen Kool-aid for .25 cent and ice cream cost .50 cent off the truck. With $2 you were ballin.

When I got to the age when I was paying attention, something seperated us from the other little kids in the neighborhood. They went to the ice cream truck with food stamps. My mother refused to let us spend foodstamps on anything. If she didn’t have cash to give us, then she would go to the store and buy us ice cream with the food stamps. If I haven’t said this enough, I miss my Mom.

She was so old school. One summer, we were in the store and I saw this set of books I wanted. Yes, I was such a nerd. I knew better than to ask my mother for them, she didn’t play that. I started to save my $2 a week. I did it quitely. I snuck in the house when the ice cream truck rolled around so no one would pick on me for being the only person without a treat.

One day, I went to count my money and it was missing. I lost my mind crying, another thing my mother didn’t tolerate. She would make you completely stop crying before you told her what was wrong. I told her about my money and she was happy.

Not that it was stolen but that I took initaitive to save. She quickly found out my brother had taken my money and spent every single dime. He got a beating but I still lost all the money I had saved.

I was mad as hell. I had saved and he got to spend, why didn’t I get my money back? My mother told me, shit happens and you have to find a way to get past it. I was pissed. I called my dad and told him what happened. He came huffing and puffing and took me to the store to buy those books.

What’s my point?

All I cared about as a kid was, what was fair? It didn’t matter that my mother was trying to teach me a lesson, it wasn’t fair and I wanted no part in it. My dad riding in on his white horse proved that life was fair.

Until I got older and realized, waiting for someone to ride up on their white horse is frivolous endeavor. Not because it won’t happen, but because you lose the experience letting someone else save you.

My mom was trying to teach me how to get up when I fell down. My dad didn’t teach me anything, except if you cry I’ll bend. Which lesson do you think is more effective now that I’m grown?

One more little story before I tie them all together. My mother had friends of every color. Race never bothered her. For those of you who don’t know, I was adopted, so I didn’t look like the other members of my family. I was lighter and skinnier and stuck out like a sore thumb.

I was often ridiculed. My sister and brother would call be ‘yellow’, ‘red’, and ‘orange’. I hated it. My mother would always pull me aside and ask if I thought I was beautiful. I was an awkward kid. I didn’t think anything about me was beautiful, but my mom made me constantly ask myself what I saw when I looked in the mirror.

Being the typical kid, I just wanted her to make them stop. She would, but not before she made me realize nothing they said changed who I really was. I was high yellow and skinny and that’s how God made me. The rest was irrelevant.

These are the lessons that make me conservative. I thought about all this yesterday as I watched Limbaugh speak. My mother never wanted us to go on welfare, she didn’t even want us to use foodstamps. My mother believed you will get knocked down, it’s only important that you get up. But most importantly, she taught me only you can make yourself a victim.

My mother made me conservative.

You think that’s all, don’t you? Not by a long shot. I moved with my dad when I was 11 or 12 and everything changed. No one checked my homework, made sure I went to school, or gave me a time to come in the house. I did whatever I wanted. All I had to do was keep my grades up.

So, what did I do with no one pushing me forward, I stood still. I made all the wrong choices and with each mistake, my father was there to bail me out. No questions asked, no long drawn out speeches about what I did wrong; just complaints about how he had to miss time at work to deal with me.

Now, my boys, they kept me quite conservative as well. I was trying to think of a single situation where Obama’s plan of government would fly on street level, and it does. Except by fly, I mean bullets wheezing through the air looking for a target. Imagine telling the top drug man on your block, he has to re-distribute his wealth.

Think about it. Imagine another crime family telling Scarface, you make to much money, you have to give us some. The street level dealer can’t make it without you. What would happen to the street level dealer? (I’m going to make up a story like that soon, I got some other points to add.)

He wouldn’t get a dime and if by some chance Scarface would’ve given him the money, nobody would’ve liked Al Pacino anymore. He would be soft and un-gangsta. The only respectable way to get Scarface’s money would be to take him out.

If we applied the same principles to real life, instead of complaining for the top to give up some of what they have, we would go and take it from them. I’m not talking about killing rich people. I’m talking about creating the businesses and technologies to take their place at the top.

Instead we stand back and hate on what they have. When did we become haters? When did we start hating the players and not the game. What’s even worse, we invented it and still can’t live up to it.

I know I get off subject, but the truths are still there. No one member of your group is going to pay for everybody no matter how much money they have and they shouldn’t have to . And you know your boys, would they continue to hang out with you if they always had to pay your way? Would you keep floating someone you know doesn’t even try?

No, but you expect the Government to.

The streets made me conservative.

Most importantly, above my mother and every friend I’ve ever known, God had made me Conservative.

All things are possible through the Lord that strengthens me. Not through Barack Obama, the Democratic Party, and the United States Government. God said we should only worship one Savoir and to beware of false idols. They will come claiming to have all the answers, all you have to do is follow.

I choose to follow God. When everything in my heart tells me that something is wrong, I trust it. When I pray for guidance and these are the words I type, they are not from me alone. I won’t let my heart be troubled by those who criticise and judge me for always, and I do mean always, stepping out on faith.

Faith that God has his hands on us and this to shall pass, as long as we are willing to stand up and give him praise.

In these trying days, are we putting more faith in a Man, than in the Lord. If only Barack can save us, then where is God’s part in all this? I know the politically correct thing is to separate church and state, but I have a problem with people that can do that. I can’t cut off my belief in God for anything. I can question his word but never just place it on the back burner.

Is this the ultimate step in taking God out of our society? We are a nation that prays and worships. When did we start praying to Obama, Pelosi, and Reid instead of the God for help with our mortgage, children, and everything else? When did we establish false ideals it was O.K. to worship?

God made me conservative

I purposely didn’t point out the one time in my life when I was liberal. I mentioned it, but I didn’t bring notice to it. Can you pick it out?

Bingo. When I let my dad solve all my problems for me. It was the unhappiest time in my life. Want to know why? When I should have been planning for college, I didn’t have a care in the world. When I should’ve been building a network of close friends, all my friends were being arrested or killed. When I should have been dreaming about a bright future, I was failing to prepare for any future at all.

Why? My dad was there to ride up on his white horse when ever I needed him. I don’t have to worry about college, my day will take care of it. He always has. It took me 7 years to go back to school and it wasn’t because my dad made it happen.

It came when I lost my mom and realized all the lessons she had taught me made strong enough to make it. It doesn’t matter if Bush or Obama is in office. I’ll be O.k because I’m not afraid to fail. Even though I hate failure with the passion of a thousand burning moons, I know I can get back up. I’ve done it a hundred times.

I guess I could say, Life has made me Conservative