Political Socialization

I found this amusing story online:
"About 10 years ago we had a teacher at Currituck High named Mr. K. He was and still is a staunch Republican. He taught a class called Current Issues. This was a very popular class because Mr. K knew his stuff and loved to debate with his liberal students about anything and everything. He would get so riled up when they would defend taxing the rich even more. So, he devised a diabolical plan. To convince his students that income redistribution was wrong, he began a program called "grade redistribution." The plan worked like this: Students who made 93 or higher would lose 3 points from their grade and these points would be added to the students' scores that were the lowest. Students who made between 85-92 would lose 2 points that would also be added to those students who made low scores. Now, I really don't think I need to tell you much more except that his plan caused a huge uproar; but more importantly he illustrated his point without ever implementing it."

Politics have always been something that my family talks about, but we are always very neutral. We will bring up both points of an argument without it ever really getting heated. I think the only time I have ever seen the political discussion get to a point where it actually shaped what I believed was when my parents were arguing about the monthly medicine bill. My father was arguing that if the country would just budget itself we could make room for what he called common health care and my mother was arguing that to any needed programs, like parenthood development and welfare, would take a beating if this were ever to happen. Now me being about nine at the time didn't really see any flaw in this plan, but now thinking back on it, I find it comical that he had this idea that our government could ever really agree to cut spending to implement a program like this. But when I was nine, I couldn't help but think that whoever came up with this idea was genius. I mean, health care that everyone could have and that everyone would be treated equal when it came to its distribution. This conversation is probably one of the main ones that makes me lean more left than right most of the time. The idea of everyone being taken care of, although it is not exactly ideal, is one that I favor greatly.