Like me, my friend came of age in the late 1960s and early '70s, when liberalism was the "default" position of most of our friends, parents, teachers, pastors and the media. And that was certainly true of most of those of our generation met when we finally got to college. Yes, there was a smattering of conservatives and Young Republican types around - but on my campus, anyway, most of them were geeky, squeaky clean and not much fun to hang out with.
It wasn't until decades later, in the late 1990s, that a combination of influences and events gradually led to my conversion to conservatism. (And while I often get "accused" of being a Republican, I'm not. I'm just a conservative who happens to vote that way a lot of the time - but not always.)
The point, though, is that my political views evolved as I aged and experienced more of life.
There's a famous quotation on that subject that comes to mind, attributed variously to Churchill, Bismarck and Disraeli: "If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain."
As a conservative, I think there's a great deal of truth to that - even though if that is strictly true, I apparently had no brain for nearly a decade
And if there is anyone who could be cited as an authority on the evolution of one's political views, it would be Churchill, who was first elected in 1900 as a Conservative, became a Liberal four years later and then in 1924 rejoined the Conservatives.
Plenty of other politicians have changed parties as well, sometimes strictly for personal, opportunistic reasons. U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter comes immediately to mind in that category, who last year jumped ship on the Republicans in hopes of keeping his seat but was given the boot by Democrat Primary voters.
And it's worth noting that as Cobb County changed almost overnight in the mid-1980s from a majority Democratic County to a majority Republican one, that many of the county's major political figures of the time changed their affiliations as well.
It's also been noted how future Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes of Marietta headed the campus Republicans at the University of Georgia during the late 1960s and how future Republican U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson was head of the campus Democrats there during the same period.
More recently, longtime Republican Congressman Bob Barr of Smyrna, after losing a re-election battle following redistricting, switched to the Libertarian Party and ran for president. (He didn't win, by the way.)
Plenty of major political figures started out on one end of the spectrum but wound up on the other, with arguably the most famous being Ronald Reagan, who was a "Roosevelt Republican" in his acting days but had become a Goldwater Republican by the time he ran for California governor in 1966. As Reagan famously explained, "I didn't leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me."
Though I have never been a member of any party, his description of the Democrats' ever-more-leftward drift over the decades also explains my disenchantment with most of their policies.
In my mind, a willingness to periodically re-examine one's beliefs is an admirable quality. It shows that your mind has not atrophied and that you are not blindly obedient to whatever political beliefs or theories were instilled in you early on. As your life situation changes - as you age, as you start a family, as you advance (or regress) in your career and move up or down the economic ladder - it is natural to occasionally reassess how those changed circumstances mesh with your politics and vice versa.
Just because you feel and vote a certain way at age 20 is no guarantee that you will or should feel and vote the same way at 40, or at 60.
I have no idea where my friend will wind up on the political spectrum - whether she'll gradually become a conservative, revert back to her once-staunch liberalism or keep a toe in both camps for the foreseeable future. And that's fine. The important thing is that she and many others are keeping an open mind, not just pulling the same lever blindly like a punch-drunk gambler at a nickel slot machine.
Joe Kirby is Editorial Page editor of the Marietta Daily Journal and author of "The Bell Bomber Plant."
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Roy became a Democrat so he could play the "I am a common, working man just like you" & gather the minority vote. He is probably the richest man in the GA governor's race, but that is ok by liberals because he is just ole Roy, one of us. Are they blind & deaf? Yet any Republican running for the Governor's job, no matter what their wealth, is perceived by liberal voters as wealthy & doesn't care for anyone who doesn't have much money. Funny how the liberals work that & EVEN believe it!