Another Excerpt from My New Book

Here is another expert from my book, "The Education of a Black Conservative." This is the opening of the book. I would love to hear your thoughts! I have to emphasize that this is a ROUGH draft!

I am a black man. I am a young black man. I am a young black man who grew up poor and who is a college professor—a professor of music, at that. I am a conservatory-trained composer and music theorist who has an apolitical mother and a father who leans so far left, he probably thinks Keith Olberman is a “card-caring member” of the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” Based on this quick description of my background, it is understandable how one usually becomes mystified when they discover I am a staunch conservative and a member of the Republican Party. If you sit back and think for a second, how could a young, black, academician, black, musician, black male side with the right?

I attended this one-man play based on the poetry of e. e. cummings at this charming little theatre in west Tennessee. After the play the actor, Anthony Zerbe, spoke candidly to the audience and expressed an idea that I found intriguing. He said people who are different just to be different are arrogant, but people who are different because they are trying to find their own way are noble. I have been called arrogant at times; whether it's true or not, I do not know. I certainly did not feel that if I were unlike most people with similar backgrounds, it was a result of me being different just to be different. In fact, at that moment in that quaint theatre, it did dawn on me that from a very young age I was, in good faith, trying to search for answers on my own—trying to find my own way. That behavior molded who I am today, leading me to have strong beliefs that typically are not aligned with my particular demographic, but a belief system that is grounded in deep conservative ideals.

The simple answer to the wonder of my political leanings is that whether the issue is taxes, abortion, foreign relations, or the economy, the conservative perspective just makes sense; it’s more logical. The key is one cannot merely stop with the emotional side of the issue. It may be difficult and uncomfortable but one has to go farther in the debate. I discovered that the liberal perspective of an issue often sounded better on the surface, but the conservative point of view needed proper explaining, and once one perhaps understood all aspects of the debate, at least for me, the conservative angle was just plain right. For example, it sounds good to say we should drastically raise minimum wage. But, when one thinks of all the repercussions—such as, small businesses having to hire less people; resulting in higher unemployment; resulting in more people dependent on government aid; resulting in higher taxes; resulting in more layoffs—raising the minimum wage all of a sudden becomes a bigger issue that is at least worth thinking about rather than the ubiquitous “selfish” and/or “greedy" label generously given to the average conservative by the self-righteous liberal.

Another case in point. It is easy for some one to say we should immediately withdraw troops from Iraq. Again, here is a liberal perspective that sounds very good on the surface; yet, when one actually thinks of all that would result from immediate withdrawal, the issue becomes much more complicated. For instance, immediately ending the Iraq war would likely have a dramatic increase on sectarian violence due to the instability Iraq's very new democratic government. This would most likely result in the vulnerable new democratic government being overthrown by rebels. Those rebels would have a leader that would emerge amongst them producing a dictator perhaps with terrorist or anti-American ties. That leader would try to harm the United States and we would be over in that region again because the job was not completed the first time. The reality is that we would all love for the troops to come home from war or for the minimum wage to substantially increase. It is not that simple.

President Barak Obama in part won his election to the presidency of the United States by eloquently including strong emotional appeals in his rhetoric. We heard, then Senator Obama, say many times on the campaign trail that he would immediately withdraw troops and within a year to eighteen months have all of the troops out of Iraq. Most Americans had become very tired of the war and many believed that the war was unnecessary in the first place. (a debate we can have later) But even he, the smartest man who ever graced the earth, once in the Oval Office and once taking a time to completely think about the issue (and not to be flip, but access to some intelligence), certain blunt claims that were emotionally stated became more difficult to implement. We did see an immediate withdraw but we are not seeing it as fast as be promised us. And, we will be leaving one of the would biggest United States Embassies behind.

Although I feel I have lead an interesting and unique life, I do not have the “audacity” to write my complete memoirs. I am only twenty-eight. On the other hand, I have to include parts of my story throughout this book to…

(C) Shawn E. Okpebholo 2009. Yellow Einstein Press