When I get into a political debate with friends or family that are liberal in their political views, at some point one of them will say "Well yea, you're conservative because you're one of the ones benefiting most from Bush's tax cuts."

I'm 33. So for most of my life I wasn't well off. Yet for as long as I've even contemplated what the role of government should be in our lives as well as what people should do for themselves versus what the "community" should do for them I've had conservative views.

In other words, I was a conservative long before I was making enough income to benefit from any sort of tax cut. 

Liberals tend to sneer as they talk about "tax cuts for the rich" and impugning those who are conservatives. There is always the temptation to turn it around and say that they're liberal because they want other people to have to pay for their half-baked life choices of failures.

The call-word of conservatism is "be your own man".  The call-word of liberalism is "we're in this together". Both are noble sentiments. But which one leads to greater success in the real world?  Most successful people I deal with are conservative. It's not even a close thing.  The people who have achieved the greatest levels of personal and professional happiness and are able to materially provide for themselves and families to the level they wish to are nearly always conservative in their philosophies. 

So which came first? Are we to believe that these successful people were once dreamy, warm fuzzy thinking liberals who, upon becoming successful suddenly changed into cold greedy conservatives who want to keep more of their money? I don't think so.  Instead, the conservative values of self-reliance ultimately lead to success more often than the values of liberalism.  And a result, most people who are successful are conservative.