Growing up in a politically minded, conservative Christian household in the Midwest put me on the fast track to becoming a Republican - a label I had embraced until 2012. My childhood contained talk radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh as constant soundtracks around home and my mother informing me of all of the ill-deeds of former President Clinton. I was taught that Clinton, and those liberals like him were the antithesis of the great vision the Christian founders of our country had in mind and he was leading the nation down a terrible path which leads to destruction and can only be averted if we get back the White House in the next election. The next election - framed as the most important ever - came and Christians by and large got their man in George W. Bush. How silly all of this seems now.
Of course, the terrible events of September 11, 2001 came and the fundamental changes to America moved as swiftly as the nation was taken to a never ending War on Terror. But, war I was told, was the right thing to do and, moreover, supporting it was the Christian thing to do. Whether it was in Afghanistan or Iraq, it was our duty to make the world safe for democracy -whatever that means. None of this I questioned, it all just made sense. I encountered differing opinions for the first time from my high school teachers, particularly in the run up to the 2004 election, a time when our conservative hero was possibly most vilified. I recall reading books by the likes of Sean Hannity and others in the conservative wing to prepare me to win debates with my teachers and occasional classmates - and win I did and I loved it. I believed that logic and basic common sense were on my side to justify the entire Republican platform and thought that Democrats were simply inferior people for being unable to see it. I didn't know how else to understand it. Although I was still too young to vote during that election cycle, I recall the smugness I felt when Bush won re-election.
My undergrad years were considerably less political. Taking courses in math and the hard sciences left little opening for political grandstanding by professors or students, however I remained watchful of the national arena, priding myself on being informed and always ready for a debate. Things continued apace, the preconceptions I held since childhood unchanged, until 2011 when I was working as a research intern in Bellingham, Washington. While at West Point, my younger brother had begun listening to audio books - I preferred the paper or electronic variety (and still do) - and he shared his library with me. One of them was Ayn Rand's book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. As a staunch, self-described conservative, this one caught my attention and I immediately began listening to it during my commute. This was my first introduction to Rand - good, conservative Christians back home tend not to buy books by avowed atheists - and many of her essays in that book intrigued me, although much of her writing did strike me as problematic. There was one line of argumentation, however, which rang true for me then which would begin to undo nearly the entire edifice of my political thought; she argued that humans own themselves.
On its face, this seems to be an obvious proposition hardly worth mentioning. Of course I own myself! Who else would? However, from that startlingly simple statement of self ownership a whole host of related premises flow. She argued that from our self-ownership, we can deduce property rights because we get to decide how to spend our time and what to focus our efforts on. If I go to work and receive an income in exchange for my time, that is a part of my life which I have willingly exchanged for monetary remuneration. If anyone were to interfere with that voluntary agreement and take that which I have spent a portion of my life to acquire, they are essentially stealing my life. At the time, I thought this was great, I'm a conservative and am against taxation, now I have the strongest argument against taxation that I've ever encountered. But she pushed it further to the most extreme example: conscription. She was writing in America in the 1960's and 1970's, so the Vietnam draft came under attack at this point as the grossest type of violation of personal rights. If taxation is theft of one's rights and property, then conscription was even worse as it confiscated the entire voluntary, productive output of the individual against their will. This wasn't a position that was so easy to square with my upbringing in a patriotic, military family. She had me in a difficult position. I agreed with her in the case of taxation, but it would require renunciation of my belief in that great government power to do what our wise, elected leaders knew was best by drafting young men and sending them to war.
I deferred judgment on the issue for a few months when I moved to Zürich, Switzerland for my graduate studies. I discovered that Switzerland has mandatory military service, Wehrpflicht, that was subject to a national referendum that year. It was shot down by a wide majority, but it put the question of self ownership back in front of me, and in discussions with Swiss friends and colleagues on the subject, I found myself taking the minority position that the Wehrpflicht was immoral. The state had no right to subject its desires on to others without their consent, much as I had no right to force another to serve my needs against their will. And with that, the first domino of my erstwhile Republicanism fell.
As the idea of what it means to own oneself played about in my head, questions surfaced regarding the nature of democracy itself. In a democratic state - such as the United States in some respects, and even more so Switzerland - the majority of the populace makes the laws and decisions based on their vote. The question arose, if they vote to take my money or to send me to war, what actually gives them the right? I own myself after all, so what confers this new power to another group to decide how I can and cannot spend my life? They may be more numerous, but there seems nothing mystical about 51% of people over a certain age living in a geographic area that is largely an accident of history being able to override my autonomy. Moreover, it does not seem that any majority in this area would have the right to take from me what is mine. These thoughts worked through me in 2012 and settled on the Iraqi invasion by the US government which I had applauded nearly a decade earlier. With this new framework in mind, that now seemed to be an unconscionable offense against the rights of every resident of Iraq. Moreover, there seemed to be a deep contradiction in the idea of forcing "democracy" on another group of people that I simply could not ignore.
At the time, I was on mailing lists for various right-wing think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation. With my evolving view of the defining issue of the Republican party in my lifetime - the wars of George W. Bush - rapidly deteriorating, I grew increasingly skeptical of the standard party line that was peddled by these news letters beginning to see the flaws and contradictions in their statements when taken together. The GOP soon became farcical to me and I became ashamed to have associated myself with it during my youth.
Despite my deep dissatisfaction with the American political environment, I could not remain apolitical. There was too much at stake. Moreover, I remained a deeply committed Christian - and I had never known a politically aware non-Republican Christian. There were, of course, those Christians who were apathetic towards politics, but most cared deeply and all of those I had encountered in my life - in the United States at least - clung strongly to Republican values. Even in Switzerland, there was some sort of political affinity among those Christians I knew with the GOP (although being a foreigner has a great benefit of freeing one from the baggage of contentious political issues). The question seems silly to ask now, but at the time had great importance - was there something coherent between Christianity and the Republican ideals? Did the former lead to the latter in an American context? How do I square my changing views with my faith?
