When profession and politics collide.

[Allenberg]

As if I'm cursed, I was a signals intelligence analyst in the military for six years. I'm also anti-war and a member of the ACLU. Needless to say, very few of my colleagues at the National Security Agency were fellow card-carrying members. So, this presented a dilemma, and I got out of the military.

Flash forward to now. I'm now a pre-contract agent with Bankers Life and Casualty, and it comes to my attention, through the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (kind of like the AMA for docs and the Bar Association for lawyers) that most insurance reform legislation proposed by Democrats would in some ways harm the bottom line of insurance companies, which would be filtered down to agents like myself.

Once again, I find myself in a politics-vs-profession battle. This job I got will pay really well, and will let me be able to provide for my family. The way I see it, I'm once again selling out my morals to make a buck, but hey, a guy's gotta feed his family. I feel I do my part my donating money to Democratic candidates, the DNC, MoveOn, and Democracy for America. It's my own private justification.

Does anyone else face this situation in their professional lives?

[ewagner]

1. Yes

I am an independent agent (and backed out of the "pre-contract agent" routine with Bankers about two years ago)

I specialize in individual health insurance, medicare supp and long-term care...my political beliefs are in direct conflict with a lot of what I'm doing. I'm doing it only until I can find a way to do something else. Fortunately, my spouse has a job that will allow me to keep from doing some of the more obnoxious things that the industry may require.

[ewagner]

2. Dupe

dupe self-deleted....

[sinkingfeeling]

3. Yes, I think most liberals, progressives, and some Democrats who

work for the Fortune 500 companies have the same dilemma. I worked for one such corporation for 30 years and rarely found someone who shared my views. I once went home from work and returned to one of our plants to protest the company's position on South Africa!

I guess I was lucky in that the company actually had a policy that allowed for personal political activity and you could do just about anything as long as you did not 'speak for the company'.

[DBoon]

4. Yup

work for a large Federal government contractor. Just transferred out of the area that does DoD work and into one that does local government.

It wasn't the work itself, so much as the people I was working with. The people at the DoD side were very right wing, many of them evangelical fundamentalists (like the book of revelations mouse pad one high level manager used....).

Do what feels right. There are no "politically correct" jobs. There are only jobs that are "less bad".

Despite their evil side, insurance is still a useful and necessary thing. Unless you get serious bad vibes from these folks, I'd take the job.