Turning conservative in my old age?

It is just over a week since my wife did the equivalent of taking the garden shears to my hair.

I grew up in the generation that always had its hair long, and I still prefer myself like that.

I went in the bathroom this morning and snarled at the mirror. It didn't look too happy either. Maybe it's time to get a new, happier mirror.

Curious days. As regular readers will know, I do not like the political terms left and right - they are utterly meaningless concepts that do not cover the range of possibilities.

Lacking any other way to express it for the moment though (loss of hair has reduced my IQ to about 157, so I cannot think straight today), I will go down that silly road to explain my problem.

Most Americans have me tagged as being on the "left" - a liberal (not in the European sense, liberals here are ultraconservative at least where money is concerned). Not too easy to tie down on that though as I think things through and do not give standard answers.

"You're a Socialist!", I was once told. My reply:

"I would be if I thought that Socialism worked!".

The same is true of any -ism though except Fascism, which needs widescale slaughter of people whose ethnic background you despise, and I cannot even remotely accept that.

Anyway, twice now in the past week I have been faced with a situation with people to the "left" of me. Firstly the Blockupy protest in Frankfurt last week. "All well and good, I see why you are angry, but it won't achieve anything, will it?". Cynical sneers come back ....

Then yesterday on YouTube I ran into a guy who was really angry (you get a lot of them who are, on YouTube, but he (?) was exceptionally so).

I had remarked that I had little time for Mitt Romney (yes, American cousins, like most Europeans I am hoping for a second-term for Obama, even if only as the lesser of two evils). But at the same time you cannot treat this story about Romney being a bully at the age if 18 and still consider it relevant. People do mature, even if they do not turn into anything desirable.

The guy who replied was so angry he answered the post twice!I was wrong, period, period, PERIOD!!!!

He also missed my point that there are far more important reasons for exposing Romney as being inadequate for the job on what he is now, not what he was 45 years ago. I can come up with six excellent reasons without trying too hard.

Maybe I am turning into a conservative. That could be the reason. I won't shout and jeer at their nasty candidates and their past misdeeds. I try instead to reason out their thinking and behaviour. I also agree that you cannot share wealth if you do not create it (no not all of it, just enough to keep people out of debt and out of poverty!).

So am I turning into a conservative?

I don't think so, I still think that they are invariably wrong (most of them don't seem interested in sharing wealth when they have created it for one thing). The days of the great conservative politicians like Adenauer and MacMillan seem so long ago and far away. Maybe I should go and tell the mirror that, it might even smile back at me.