I Wish I Were Still A Socialist

I remember well the first day I opened up Kesey’s The Electric Koolaid Acid Test. I was 14 years old and had developed an intense fascination with the 60s. Being an era of great music and me being a budding musician, I guess it just made sense to start there. But behind the music was the sense of community, the counter-culture, the sex and drugs. It all appealed to me.

I’ve always immersed myself in whatever happens to be my current passion, and the counter-culture was no different. Within a few years I was full-blown hippy, despite being raised by conservative Republican parents. My hair was long, my girlfriend’s skirts were flowing, and I cared not much about anything except for music, my friends, and the next good party.

This lasted for many years. I toured with the Grateful Dead, and as that got old (it was fairly dangerous, law-wise, and I don’t enjoy huge crowds), I came back to the beach and resumed surfing. All the while I was still playing music. And I graduated from college.

I stayed employed throughout college and was able to pay my bills and have a lot of fun. I also had a child for which I was making child-support payments and to whom I was doing my best to be a young father. I don’t want to sound as if I was irresponsible. I was not.

Of course I was a liberal, by default, although I was not really interested in politics. My disinterest in politics stemmed mainly from the counter-culture programming: Never trust someone over 30 and never, ever trust the government. I just wanted to be free, and to be left alone to do whatever.

Oddly enough, my vision of freedom was wrapped in a “stick it to the man” belief system. If a person was rich, it must have been ill-gotten, and therefore not deserved. Ergo, I was never concerned about confiscation of wealth through egregious taxation, nor was I concerned about benefiting from government largesse. It all just seemed fair.

I will spare you the details of my transformation. Suffice it to say the old saying about being a liberal in your 20s and a conservative in your 40s (Winston Churchill, I believe) became true for me.  That and marriage and more children…

I am now much more Libertarian than liberal, but not really a Republican, as I don’t care about many of their planks, such as gay marriage, abortion, etc. And while I still put on the Grateful Dead on my XM satellite radio, I find myself pining for the days when I still believed it was possible to take care of everyone who needed taking care of. I wish I could worship at the government alter and place all my faith in the State. I wish I could still turn on, tune in, and check out, knowing all the while that the State would take care of my every need and want, from cradle to the grave.

Its a great time to be a Socialist.

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