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Finding My Political Views Was an Act of Self Love.
How I grew with my beliefs.
I grew up in a conservative home.
On car rides during the week as a kid it wasn’t music that we had coming through the speakers, but Talk Radio. For as long as I can remember my Dad listened to the likes of Hugh Hewitt, Mark Levin, and of course Rush Limbaugh. As I got a little older and the topic of politics came up on occasion, of course I was eager to share what my Dad has taught me. I repeated what I could remember, too young to realize that I held no actual beliefs and had nothing to back up what I was saying.
But critical thinking — like many other skills — is one that develops over time, and so does the nuance of political discussion when growing up. By the time I got to the age where these conversations were beginning to turn real and thorough, people would challenge my ideas with their own more thought out answers. That wasn’t something I was prepared for. The idea that I had absolutely no real answers to most of their points had crept in to the back of my head, and it stuck. I was beginning to get frustrated by it, and I entered college with that attitude.
Whether I wanted to admit it or not, I had internalized not only my Dad’s political views, but everything that my friends and especially my teachers had shared with me. I…
