Leaving Conservatism Behind

Abstract

“The failure of conservatives to attend to the world as it actually exists, the world in its suffering and hardship, drove me from their ranks.” Matthew Sitman delivers a powerful narrative about his working class roots in central Pennsyvania and a political evolution beginning with youthful religious conservatism, transforming to a leftist, class-based politic. “A class-based politics acknowledges that we are bound in ways we do not choose; that we are constrained in ways that the exertion of our wills may never overcome.”