I decided that I was fed up with unions who only seemed to want to take dues from their members and promote the careers of their union bosses.  Whenever a boss retired from the union movement he was assured of a safe Labor Party seat in Parliament.  Now this is not to say that the conservative parties are any better as far as ‘Jobs for the Boys’ goes but at least their policies are better and people can actually save some money under a conservative party government.  The old adage that you vote for the party that is the lesser of two evils seems to be true when it comes to politics also.  Having been raised as a Libertarian I cannot just discard everything that I grew up with and I have retained some vestiges of my former beliefs.  I believe that while I would vote for the conservative side of politics, my own personal beliefs will still have a strong influence on my ballot. 

            After the Australian conservatives were swept back into power in 1996 with John Howard as Prime Minister they kept the Medicare health scheme because it worked well.  They tweaked it a bit and refined some of the parts but it was a good policy and it was kept largely unchanged.  A national health scheme that everyone contributes to is a good idea, and if people want to have private insurance that is also their right, but as a citizen they will still contribute to the national scheme.  This provides a safety net for people who fall on hard times and cannot afford private health care.  It was a conservative government who gave first home owners a grant of $7,000 and then raised it to $14,000, because this stimulated the economy.  And in 2007 the Australian people were duped into replacing them with a Socialist Labor Government, not because the Howard government had governed badly, not because they had broken the budget, but, according to the opposition, that 11 years was too long, and that the Liberal Party was old and boring.  Well, I figured a country gets the government it deserves.

            People who examine events and governments critically will be in a good position to make judgments on the issues that come up during the term of a leader.  Unfortunately many people don’t think about the freedoms they have at their grasp, and they just vote as their parents or family has always voted, without giving it much thought.  We in democratic countries have the freedoms to vote for whomever we want.  If a leader does badly we can protest in the ballot box, if they do well, we can reward then in that same ballot box.  Government of the people, by the people, for the people need not be dead just yet, but if one looks at the apathy and ignorance some show towards voting and political processes, one might think it is indeed dead and that we are just going through the motions.I can put my metamorphosis down to events that occurred in Australia and England.  I saw confrontations between militant unions who wanted to impose their wills on their employers and conservative governments who acted in the interests of the nation.  Perhaps the same developments are happening right here in the USA with the increasing influence in Washington of the special interest groups with liberal agendas.  Voters should not blindly support every agenda championed by a politician simply because it is supported by their party.  If there is one thing that I learned in my life and travels, it’s that in a free society a person is free to vote with their conscience.  To be able to vote with knowledge one needs to be familiar with the choices available in a dualistic society.  I feel that my change in outlook reflects a natural progression that is quite human in that we have the freedom to choose. Winston Churchill once said, “If a man is not a liberal at 20, he has no heart, but if he’s not a conservative at 30 he has no head.”