When I wrote “The Making of a 9/11 Republican” last year, I had no idea the column would come to define my political persona. The story of my journey from Marin County liberal to post-9/11 conservative columnist seemed to tap into something larger, a cultural and political phenomenon born out of the horror of Sept. 11, 2001.

 

It was indeed a pivotal moment in history and one that turned everything upside down and forced Americans to choose sides. And I chose to side with America, possibly for the first time in my life. In doing so, I parted ways with my former comrades on the left who were too consumed with hatred for this country and western civilization to join me. Instead, they went in the other direction, sympathizing with the most backward of ideologies in a desperate attempt to remain in the anti-American camp. 

 

Thus was I catapulted into the ever more crowded realm of former leftists who ended up taking a right turn somewhere along the way. As the hundreds of e-mails I received from readers with similar stories made clear, 9/11 had that effect on many others. Across the Internet, which has become the modern-day barometer of emerging intellectual and political trends, writers, bloggers and readers alike embraced the topic, adding yet another dimension to the discussion. 

 

Today it continues in the form an online discussion group called the 9/11 Neocons. Inspired in part by the New York-based Liberal Hawks, I started the group to provide a haven for political misfits from the Bay Area and beyond. Those who, like myself, experienced a political transformation and yet don’t necessarily fit into any one particular niche. For having been a diehard Republican for a couple of years, I now find myself embracing my independence. Indeed, I’ve often wished I’d titled my article “The Making of a 9/11 Conservative” because that’s how I most closely identify myself these days. 

 

Still, traces of my former self remain. For in my case, it wasn’t so much changing my politics as beginning to engage with reality. Being a liberal was simply taking the easy road, as most of my opinions were based on emotion, not reason. War is bad, food not bombs, guns kill, no blood for oil, U.S. out of Humboldt, save the whales and on and on. I had only to swallow such slogans without delving deeper because I knew with complete certainty that I was in the right. Being jolted out of that realization meant that I had to face facts and investigate for myself, a process that was both fascinating and daunting.  

 

Dispensing with pipe dreams of pacifism and 1960’s based acid-induced visions of peace and harmony certainly wasn’t easy. The hard cold truth about human nature, which is that war and aggression have and will always exist, can be difficult to accept. But once one does, strategies for coping with those troublesome aspects of humanity become much clearer.

 

It’s not that I or anyone else out there is “pro-war,” a charge often leveled by the so-called antiwar crowd, most of whom are really just rooting for the other side. Rather we realize that, as the saying goes, freedom isn’t free. Or in other words, free people must be ever vigilant about protecting themselves from those who would seek to impose their tyrannical worldview.

 

Similarly, individuals must be vigilant against abuses of government, as well as exercising personal self-defense. Such beliefs led me to embrace another aspect of my newfound politics, 2^nd Amendment rights. While I was never an anti-gun fanatic and even took some lessons prior to 9/11, the idea of self-preservation in perilous times had an obvious appeal and I’ve since delved into it further. Being a woman has made the exploration all the more necessary and yet all the more challenging.  

 

For despite all the left’s apparent bravado regarding women’s rights and the ever-elusive “revolution” to come, the idea that women must represent some sort of pacifistic ideal is still popularly held, even when it conflicts with the promotion of human rights. Hence the trend of liberal women’s groups such as Code Pink: Women for Peace and The Raging Grannies loudly opposing wars of liberation, while shilling for those who would treat them like chattel were they to triumph, anything to hold onto the mythical idea that women are by nature placid. But anyone who’s witnessed the fury of a mama bear protecting her cubs would be disabused of that notion in an instant. The women warriors in the U.S. military, many of whom have sacrificed their lives to protect our country, cast further doubt on the left’s dubious ideas about womanhood. 

 

When a woman does step out from the pack and declares her political independence, she is doubly ostracized by the left. Much like the fury directed at conservative minorities, conservative women are treated as traitors to their gender. Suddenly all propriety and talk of “sensitivity” goes out the door. That’s why the left directs so much sexist, racist or in my case anti-Semitic hate mail at conservative female writers. But I tend to look at such vitriol as proof that my work has hit home, as well as yet another confirmation that I made the right decision in leaving the left. 

 

These days, if there is any political group my views are most closely aligned with, it would be good old mainstream America and I’m proud of it. Politicians may disappoint, but one can always rely on the good sense of the American people. The wonderful messages of support I get from readers in so-called “fly-over country” are one of my work’s greatest rewards. In my days as a San Francisco liberal elitist snob, this would have been unthinkable, but I now look at it as a badge of honor. 

 

Politics aside, the one thing I’d like to be able to say to future generations is that I at least tried to fight the good fight, if not by military means, then by being a soldier on the information battlefield.

 

In a post-9/11 world, that’s the legacy I’d most like to leave.

 

 

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