Why must certain professions be so strongly linked to liberalism?

Hindsight is of course 20/20. And as you get older, usually you get wiser.

I decided to become a registered nurse when I was 19 years of age. It wasn’t so much a love of mankind but a conscious decision to have a career that for as long as I chose to work, I’d have a job (boy was I wrong about that!). After a couple of false starts at college (dropping out due to knee problems that I thought were fixed—ha!), I began to work toward an associate’s degree in nursing in 1978, starting the actual two-year nursing program in 1979.

As I learned more about the profession, I discovered there were two areas that I was pretty darn good at—labor and delivery and surgical nursing. I caught on real fast in both areas, and was among the few students in my cohort who was invited to scrub into actual surgeries and to fully participate in managing laboring mothers, including internal exams.

I ended up working at a place I had no desire to work at, but I was unable to leave the area, being married and thinking my husband was right in his desire to stay in the area. One of the first things I had to do when I acquired that job was join the California Nurses’ Association—a union.

My experience with unions up until that time had been watching the United Farm Workers use intimidation methods to achieve their goals. I sure hated the idea of giving a union my hard-earned money to do next to nothing for me.

Naturally union membership included subscriptions to newsletters, and it was then I learned that being a nurse meant being a liberal Democrat. Calls for donations for PACs and other liberal special interests came in the mail thanks to my union membership.

In retrospect, would I have sought another career if I’d known that my career choice would have linked me to liberal ways? I admit I am pro-choice, but I am also pro-spaying and neutering of repeat welfare offenders.

I am also against universal healthcare, but I am for the government getting truthful answers as to why health care is so costly (is it really lawsuits and insurance premiums or just greedy doctors?). I am against non-taxpayers with social security receiving care (especially adults). I am against illegals specifically coming to the U.S. to get free health care. I am against the misuse of emergency room services for routine health care, too. I saw plenty of abuse while working at that hospital.

Today I received an e-mail blast from a freebie nursing publication, “inviting” me to click a link to be part of tomorrow’s inauguration celebration.

The e-mail read:
“Nurse.com presents Inauguration 2009: Where will you be on Jan. 20? Go to nurse.com/inauguration to be part of the crowd!”

Our nurse writers and editors will be covering the historic inauguration of Barack Obama. We’ll travel by plane, train, and bus to bring you reports from…

• A Chicago-to-the-Capitol-bound busload of nurses who knew Obama way back when

• A special medical unit stationed smack dab in the middle of the crowd on the Washington Mall

• And from the hottest seat in town, front and center in the media section at the swearing-in ceremony

I deleted the e-mail.

I do keep my nursing license active but sometimes I question my sanity. I will never work as a nurse again because of my job-inflicted back injuries. I do not have the proper degree to do any sort of administrative or research work as a nurse. Yet because of my career choice, I am assumed to be liberal and receive plenty ‘o propaganda in my snail mail and e-mail.

I do not expect any liberal cause to help me get work. Being liberal is all about being “young” and “hip,” and I am neither.

Not that I've done any better with what I ultimately did when I did finish a four-year degree. My BS is in public relations, a profession that is highly linked to journalism. And we all know where most journalists stand politically nowadays ...