I grew up in Virginia during the eighties and nineties.  My childhood occurred in the Reagan years – a period during which many conservatives grew to consider the United States a nation of conservative people.  Much to my surprise, Virginia hasn’t always been so conservative.  But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

Growing up, the handful of people who did talk to me about politics were conservative.  So without really earning it, I adopted what I will call a “series of conservative opinions.”  In my twenties, I grew to recognize these opinions as being rather more like libertarian ideas than conservative ones, and far right of neoconservative ideals.

As I approach thirty and fatherhood, it is becoming more important that I understand these philosophies and their politics to a much greater depth.  Unfortunately, independent critical analysis doesn’t exist – everyone’s opinion is biased by nature, from some much more than others’.  So I have decided to make a different approach.

I intend to read two books

• The Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater
• The Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Krugman

For those of you who know neither the books nor the authors, I suggest you head to Wikipedia and play catch-up.  Suffice it to say, these men represent the faithful few: men truly dedicated to the ideals of their political camps.  So I will read them both, and throughout the experience I will measure my reaction as a means of deciding (for now) where my own politics lie.

In short, I will develop my own opinion.