It use to be common knowledge that as you got older you became more conservative.  At 68 I am at the leading edge of the baby boomers.  I became politically active during the Vietnam war- I was an Eisenhower/Rockefeller Republican back then.  During the Nixon years I changed my registration to Independent.  Although I didn’t like Jimmy Carter I didn’t vote for  Ronald Reagan.  His supply side economics has proved to be a disaster for most people and the meme that he ended the cold war meme is utter BS.  In the early 70s when I worked for the DIA the intelligence community knew that the old Soviet Union was collapsing.  Over the years I have gone from somewhat right of center to left of center.  Apparently I’m  not alone.  Thomas Ricks has experienced the same transition.

In my late 50s, at a time of life when most people are supposed to be drifting into a cautious conservatism, I am surprised to find myself moving steadily leftward.

This is unexpected. It comes even as I am financially comfortable and enjoying my work. (I’m writing this from my summer home in Maine.) I’m not a natural progressive—I spent the last quarter century covering the U.S. military, first for the Wall Street Journal and then for the Washington Post, and now for Foreign Policy magazine. I have written five books about the Marines, the Army and our wars.

I suggest you read the entire article but the reasons he gives are similar to mine.  Perhaps it’s just because the so called”center” veered so far to the right.  I don’t know.  We have had multiple wars that were built on lies and the investment bankers and other billionaires seem to be in charge of the country.  That is not Democracy but Mussolini style Fascism.  So I guess the question is are Ricks and I moving left or is the right and the Republican party moving away from us?

Here is one snip from Ricks’ post:

Growing income inequality. I also have been dismayed by the transfer of massive amounts of wealth to the richest people in the country, a policy supported over the last 35 years by successive administrations of both parties. Apparently income redistribution downward is dangerously radical, but redistribution upward is just business as usual. The middle class used at least to get lip service from the rich—“backbone of the country” and such. Now it is often treated like a bunch of saps not aware enough to evade their taxes.