> If this refers only to features of a world view --
> if the content of the
> views are unimportant -- than it's a description of
> a zealot rather than a
> conservative; it applies by definition to a style of
> holding opinions &
> (not) responding to criticism rather than to a
> particular set of opinions.
> You could be a communist and fit this description.
One of the better autobiographical accts. of being the red-diaper baby daughter of a lifetime Communist is by Kim Chernin, whose Mom exhibited the mix of dogged committment, selflessness and dogmatic zealotry, usually observed in CPUSA cadre that remained in the Party for decades.
This excerpt from an update of the Chernin book, I found touching, esp. in reflecting on the dying process of our parents. http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/index.cfm/action/tikkun/issue/tik0307/article/030721.html
>...On that day I didn't expect us to have much
conversation. She had reached a time when, if she said
anything at all, I had to guess at her meanings and
lead her to them. But she seemed to have something
important to say. She plucked my sleeve and managed to
extract the word "Gorbachev," tentatively,
beseechingly. It was 1985, when Gorbachev had been
elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union.
"Gorbachev? You like Gorbachev?"
"A good man," she said, "good, good man. Reminds me … reminds me … you know? You know?"
"Reminds you of Lenin?" I asked, hoping she wasn't thinking of Stalin.
She looked pleased, tapped the table with her forefinger. "Lenin," she said, repeating the cherished name.
"You like the reforms he's making?"
"Don't you?"
"Of course, sure I do. I wasn't sure how you felt."
That Gorbachev meant so much to her was a confession, the rising up of a doubt or misgiving about the Soviet Union that had been kept hidden, probably above all from herself.
She slapped the table two times with her right palm, looking triumphant. "Glasnost," she said with a strong Russian accent and looked inquiringly at me. I was impressed by how much she was able to communicate with such a ravaged vocabulary. "Glas-nost," she said again, separating the syllables. Her eyes narrowed meaningfully. "You know what it means?"
"Well, not exactly. I mean, sure I know, in the general sense. He's opened up the Soviet Union. He's…."
"Opened up," she agreed with a sound slap on the table. I looked down at her, her face lifted ecstatically towards me, and I saw gleaming fiercely back at me the indestructible core of her life's meaning.
When I went down to visit her we spoke in the babble that sounded to other people like a language. "Wnyap, chamsk, chorkum, vwiebetsk." It was made up of Yiddish, English, Hebrew, and Russian sounds, which served for some basic form of communication. It allowed me to communicate, "I'm here Mama," and for her to respond with excited pleasure, "You're here, you're here!" But one day the babbling briefly stopped. My mother looked over at me with a still, searing gaze and named with perfect clarity the source of her life's enduring love. She said, "the people," and then repeated the last clear words we would ever hear her speak. "The people."
The last time I saw her she was no longer there. The little shrunken body had become almost transparent. There was no way I could open the clenched fists or get her to look in my direction. Her dentures had been lost a few months earlier; since then she'd begun to look like an old Russian peasant, her lips sunken, her face cut with long, deep ruts. She had stopped eating a few days before, and had become remote and unresponsive. I knew she would die soon.
I had come to say goodbye to her with Amy and Louise and Renate, three women who had become my chosen family. Louise drew the curtain around the bed, making the enclosed space oddly ceremonial. Everything seemed supercharged with meaning, which made me self-conscious. This is the last time you're ever going to see her, I told myself. I wasn't sure what to do. I'd never been with my mother when I couldn't get her to respond to me.
Renate suggested I take her in my arms. I picked her up, a dried-out leaf, and rocked her against my chest. Louise suggested we sing to her. We sang "You Are My Sunshine." I sang "Joe Hill" and "There Once Was A Union Maid" and the Garment Worker's song. The songs my mother taught me were coming back after years of being out of use. She didn't respond, not the slightest twitch or flutter or blink, not even when I whispered a few lines of The Internationale "Arise ye prisoners of starvation./Arise ye wretched of the earth./For justice thunders condemnation./A better world in birth," and then choked up and couldn't go on.
The four of us, riding down in the elevator together, pressing close to one another, felt that we had managed to close her life out on the right note. I wasn't sad, in the ordinary way, at losing her. I had begun to dream two years before about her death and dying. In one dream she came back with the ability to fly. She flitted about in the living room some three or four inches above the floor. I thought perhaps this was an image of her soul and wondered if she, a nonbeliever, would need my help getting back to God. These dreams had stopped over a year before her death, and since then I recognized that she had outlived everything in herself except the will to live.
She died three days after our visit, a few days before her ninety-fourth birthday in September, 1995. That was the month large numbers of women went to Beijing for the UN Conference on Women. It was the first time women from former Soviet countries were represented at an international conference of independent, non-governmental groups. I believe my mother was among them, a delegate from the far side, still passionately concerned about about "the people."