How I Became a Conservative

A young woman's journey from left to right

Hi! My name is Madeleine, and I am the editor behind the scenes of Ken’s articles and have been on the podcast a few times. I will be guest writing for the month of October, and wanted to start by introducing how I became a conservative! Interestingly enough, a big part of this stems from the fact that Ken was one of the first people who told me that I didn’t have to feel bad about being white.

Around the summer of 2020, I was entrenched in my feminism and social justice warrior phase. I had grown up in a conservative, Christian household, and held to the beliefs that my parents (and the majority of my peers) did; but as I grew older, I began questioning why I believed these things, and at the same time started to think more deeply about the liberal opinions I had seen on social media. The ideals of feminism and many of the other political stances of the left began to make sense to me, because I had experienced sexist treatment myself, and saw the suffering of others in minority groups and had compassion for them. It began to build into the mentality that I was the victim of systemic misogyny, while also being complicit in systemic racism, among other things; and it all came to a head when George Floyd was killed.

After this happened, I was upset by certain posts I saw on Facebook from older white conservatives, questioning the narratives I had bought into. I made a post myself countering these folks, and in very passionate terms, laid out my experience of white privilege and how ashamed I was for it—and, essentially, how everyone else should feel the same. Ken commented under my post, and among all of the comments that were cheering me on in this indictment of my race, he said something that took me by surprise: after an explanation of how he saw the blame being unfairly placed on white people, he stated, “My hope when you read this, and any white person, is to let go of some of the burden in believing it is your responsibility. It's just not true.”

I could barely believe it—Ken was the first non-white person to give me permission not to feel guilty for something that was not my fault. I had always done my best to treat everyone fairly, no matter who they were; but the only people who were going to let me get away with that were other white people, who the media said were just trying to assuage their own guilt. It blew my mind that a member of a minority could not hold the hostility of people I never met against me. But once I started to believe it, it was very freeing.

I’d had plenty of conversations with both of my parents about the new ideas I was believing—talks about the wage gap, socioeconomic disparities among racial groups, and who should be voted for in the 2016 presidential election. Despite these reasonable conversations that were had, it always bugged me that my parents stood firm in what they believed to be true, because it didn’t align with how I felt. I didn’t like hearing that feminism was holding me back, rather than sexism; it didn’t sound compassionate that my father believed black people could make a better life for themselves, even if they didn’t start out in a good situation. It very much upset me that someone like Donald Trump got to be in office over Hillary Clinton (an opinion I now redact). But, something else happened at this time to show me that, as Ben Shapiro likes to say, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” The left offered sympathy and affirmation for any type of victimhood that I was going through, and that felt good. I couldn’t see past the emotional benefits, because I believed my media was telling me the truth. Until this happened.

After I made that post on Facebook, my mom came to speak to me about it. She told me that it was hard for my dad to read it, because he couldn’t believe I would post something like that; and she asked me to watch a video that she had come across, explaining the details of what had actually happened. The video she showed me was by Candace Owens, who had taken the time to expose the reality of who George Floyd was, everything that led up to his death, and how the media portrayed the event compared to the actual facts. It was the first time that I had been confronted not by an opposing opinion of political matters, but a blatant spinning of the facts to suit an emotional and political narrative. The jig was up—I had realized that my media was biased. That was when everything started to fall down.

I realized that if the media was lying about George Floyd, they could be lying about anything. My family and I were discovering the bias of the COVID-19 pandemic coverage, and how medical professionals had been manipulated for political gain as well; and suddenly every institution I had placed my trust in had come under question. I was slowly unraveling the truth that I didn’t actually want to be a career woman, but a homemaker, and that I had bought into the feminist narrative that this was not good enough. I realized that maybe Trump wasn’t actually crazy when he claimed “fake news,” like I thought he was! My eyes were being opened to the truth, and it was such a breath of fresh air. (I never thought that voices like Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder would be like music to my ears!)

There are still taboo topics that I don’t have full-formed opinions on yet, but my purpose in sharing this story is to illustrate what it took for me to understand that I was being enslaved by lies, but also that I could have freedom from them. I no longer had to believe that everyone saw me as an inferior because I’m a woman; nor did I have to believe that I was a horrible person because I was white. I was able to accept that I was not just lazy, but didn’t want to pursue a career because I had a more traditional calling. And what it took was someone being willing to break from the mold and show, in love, me that I was believing lies, and give me a hand in finding freedom.

After the pandemic, I have never appreciated freedom more. I didn’t know what it was until it was taken away from me, and now I don’t intend to ever give it up again. I am still fighting for freedom in many ways, but this is one I am proud to have support on—and I am proud to be a part of a publication like this, that offers a voice to those like me.

That’s my story! Thank you for reading it, and please pass it along if it resonated with you. I am looking forward to posting the rest of this month, and I hope you will come back and join me next week for another taboo topic.

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