I was mostly conservative growing up but started to lean more to the left in my college years...and probably back to the middle as I got older. Who am I kidding, I want low taxes, hate people who game the system, and think a lot of liberals are really annoying. But then again, I think red neck can be too. At the end of the day, I think people deserve chances in life. Not handouts, but opportunities. And that should apply to anyone no matter what their past or background, barring some sort of heinous crime. Why shouldn't the poor be given a free change to learn something so they can turn their lives around? That's not a hand out to me...it still take hard work to get where you want, and lazy people don't take opportunities even when they are practically pushed upon them. I don't think throwing cash at people does much, but I do think greasing the wheels and making it easier for people to chase their dreams or desires is not only humane, it ends up making us a stronger economy. The greatest resource any country has is it's people - if anything, Japan is a great example of that. We shouldn't think of the poor as an unwanted appendix that should go away and rot and die. Instead, if we only saw them as an asset that with the right kind of management and investment could turn dust to gold I think we'd be better off for it.
Caught the tail end of the 60s so I was showing the peace sign a lot during the 70s. By the time I got out of the Army, I was voting straight tickets (Republican) throughout the 80s. (pls do not think that just because I was in the Army I am a Republican- my left wing sibs who shared the same experience leaned the other way) Finally (whew!) found God in the early 90s (via new age readings) and voted with the Natural Law Party. Felt like I wasted a vote so went back and put on my Republican suit for '96, but voted whomever I thought was a better candidate locally. 9/11 changed everything for me. You'd think the older I got the more casual I'd become. Nope. That didn't happen. Now with Obama as our President, I've become a hard core Republican, Tea Partier, Constitutionist, Conservative, or any other name you wish to call me, but the important thing is now I'm more active in politics than I have ever been. So to answer the OPs query, didn't go to college so there was no influence there, but life in general slowly moved me to where I am now.
As an undergrad, not so much. I went to Sam Houston State in the 90's and went straight from there into the dot com bubble. Libertarian trust in the invisible hand was rarely challenged by professors or life. In LA though, I was surrounded by poverty, racism, and a lot of intelligent people that I came to understand were not as lucky as I was. One person in particular was a homeless man who had once had a successful career as a jazz and soul guy that toured with Marvin Gaye. When I finally convinced to go a shelter (and rehab) he had spent nearly 20 years on the street, shining shoes to support a coke habit. Now he owns a company that tours and does gospel performances. I was making more than 100k a year in my 20's and hated my life. At one point I began to realize most of my friends were creative types: writers, actors, musicians -- some were very successful, some not so much, but I lived in their shadow, spending my life in a job I hated. At 31 I had an early mid-life crisis I guess. I moved to Israel with my girlfriend at the time. I started Grad School. She moved to Seattle. What happened in the 5.5 years after that is hard to describe. I just saw an awful lot, and let's just say I soon found myself on the wrong side of popular opinion. I saw Israel up close, and the US from a new perspective living on the other side of the planet. I also spent plenty of time in my own head. I was writing fiction and reading a lot literature and literary criticism and writing songs. I couldn't legally work here, and spent some of that time as an illegal immigrant (not my fault). I was a student and was paying my tuition, but the ministry of immigration was not very helpful, and not at all eager to help someone that was deemed not Jewish enough to merit immigration. I found myself broke and eventually had to work for slave wages for a diamond mogul that hired me to do white collar work. I wrote news pieces, public relations stuff, interviewed African heads of state and filled a lot of gaps in my education about economics. I learned enough to survive on the side in currency speculation to stay in school (all while I was paid less than minimum wage). In short, I was the Israeli diamond industry's b****, and I helped billionaires lie and exploit and game the system, all while I was on the verge of deportation and long past financial insolvency. It was of course, my own fault I wasn't wealthy. It was all very depressing and with what little money I had left, I saw a very good therapist, which I think saved me from having a breakdown, and did a lot to make me much more self-aware. It may not be as exciting as finding God, which seems very common here but I'm certainly a happier person for it. I still consider myself "libertarian" but I'd definitely consider myself left-libertarian in the Proudhon or Bakunin sense rather than the Ross Perot one. I'm not anti-business, but I am at least as distrustful of corporations as I am of government, and both can be very detrimental to the small business owner, which I think is an essential component of any free society. In my experience the amount of collusion I have witnessed between government (many governments, and I would suspect all of them are not immune) and big industry makes me distrustful of both. I don't believe there is any ideal model, but I don't think lassaiz-faire economics is any better than Maoism. It's easy to point at Scandinavia or Canada as successful models, but not everyone can enjoy relatively low populations and tons of natural resources. All of these experiences certainly affected my thinking, but what disturbs me the most, is seeing firsthand how the developing world looks to the US and instead of adopting it's pluralism and respect for law, or the finer points of a culture that has given the world great literature, music, and film, it adopts the lust for profit, conspicuous consumption, and the celebrates the crudest aspects of our popular culture and seeks to emulate it (bad pop music, the gangster pose, shameless greed, and of course, reality television). But then, we do the same thing. For lack of a better term, I call myself an anarchist.
Anything in particular Obama has done (or did you become a tea partier the minute he won the election) that turned you hardcore?
Was a moderate through my early college years. I have shifted to the Right since I began working as an analyst at an investment firm and going to law school.
Disclaimer: Cool story coming up, bro. I seriously did not give a f*#k about politics until the last year or two when I began scoping out this forum and roughly following the Obama election. I've never voted. If I did vote, I probably would've voted Bush in 2000 and 2004 on the basis of "he'd be a guy I could have a beer with." Yeah, stupid, I know. Even in 2004, I now realize I succumbed to rhetoric about Kerry being a pansy flip-flopper and used that as a rationale to dislike him. Again, I didn't vote and didn't really give a f*#k, so that was basically all I knew at the time. 2008 was a bit different. I followed some of the primaries and scoped out a debate between Obama and McCain. I was intrigued by the nomination of Sarah Palin, then amazed by the Couric interview. It basically sealed by vote for Obama right there. Still, I didn't care too much about politics, but the economy and the dual wars caught my interest at the very least. Shortly after Obama's election, I began reading the D&D forum and frequent articles that were politically-oriented. I wouldn't say any of this has actually shaped by views... more like made me realize which way I leaned (up to then I didn't know what a liberal/conservative was or what left/right meant). Obviously, I lean left. Did schooling or work make me lean one way or another? Nope, not at all. I went to a tech school and am a software engineer, so politics don't really come into play anywhere in what I do. Things like an appendectomy and medical bills made me realize how broken our healthcare system is which made me support healthcare reform (though I wish it would've been a more comprehensive reform instead of some patchwork zombie "reform"). Things like my company ceasing 401k contributions and hiring (but not layoffs, thankfully) have made me look at the economy a bit closer. Still, I take a liberal approach to things. Perhaps because I am becoming interested in politics at a time when the Republican party and the right in general is a bit... out of control... is shaping my opinion on things. Or, perhaps I am just wired to be liberal.
I grew up in a Christian home and was raised with a lot of values. I have always been a little right of the center. The older I get, the more I see how liberal/progressive people are screwing up this great nation. I see how the media twist stories to show the liberal viewpoint as fact on subjects as the new Arizona law, Israel, healthcare, how "violent" the Tea party rallies are, many more things. I am finding it very hard to not slide farther to the right. Winston Churchill once said "“If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.” I am 41 now and I definitely have a brain.
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/quotations/quotes-falsely-attributed Quotes Falsely Attributed These quotes make for good story-telling but popular myth has falsely attributed them to Churchill. "Conservative by the time you're 35" "If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain." There is no record of anyone hearing Churchill say this. Paul Addison of Edinburgh University makes this comment: "Surely Churchill can't have used the words attributed to him. He'd been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35! And would he have talked so disrespectfully of Clemmie, who is generally thought to have been a lifelong Liberal?"
So you're saying you have no heart? By the way, for someone railing about liberal propaganda, its funny that there's no actual evidence your great conservative quote was actually said by Winston Churchill. It seems to be a piece of conservative propaganda to attribute it to a popular political leader. Its not nearly as exciting to attribute it to Francois Guisot or Georges Clemenceau.
I have never seen that before. I stand corrected that Churchill said that. I have seen that quote attributed to him many times. I will add that Paul Addison's quote ""Surely Churchill can't have used the words attributed to him. He'd been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35!" doesn't really make a lot of sense given the words attributed to Churchill and does seem to leave the door open that Churchill possibly could have made that statement.
I have a huge heart. I would put my charitable contributions as a percent of my income against anyone and not be ashamed. I also help people in a lot more ways than just money. I am a Christian.
Spending my undergrad at a Baptist university made me a great critic of organized religion in general. (I didn't grow up in a religious family; the univ. game me money). It really made me become very vocal on things I perceive to be social injustices and restrictions on personal freedom like the various wars on vice, or in a nutshell: sex, drugs, and rock & roll, as well as with things like gay marriage and abortion rights, etc. However, though I am a personal agnostic, I have a great respect for individual beliefs, spirituality, and even religion itself, and I find militant atheist diatribes against that very personal freedom of being able to choose what we believe in to be equally as offensive to me as the religious right pounding away about the legislation of morality. Other things have never really changed. For example, I consider myself only a minor gun enthusiast, but I firmly believe it is my right as an American to have guns. I also firmly believe that people should live within their means, which is not to say that I don't believe there should be some protection to protect people if they fall into hard times, but in general I want my taxes low and the government as far out of my life as is possible. In short, if I'm not hurting anyone, leave me the hell alone. If no one else is hurting anyone, then leave them the hell alone, too.
Actually, that is something I admire about Max. Dude is a deep guy. Meanwhile, I have seen puddles deeper than I am. :grin:
School, just slightly Adult life, tremendously. School teaches you the framework. In a sense it can promote appreciation of political structure. It still takes living your life on the receiving end of politics to have pure understanding of it, or to get DISGUSTED by it to REALLY want to do something about it. It isnt until you're paying taxes and seeing how your money and livelihood is being directed that you start to read the newspaper. People under the drinking age are mostly directly affected by WAR and DRAFTING policies. Yes they're affected by laws telling them what they can and can't do, such as any age limit law. But parental guidance and influence still overrides the laws. "What the f**K happened to my 401K?!" will get you tuned into politics and economics. In looking at it, the whole "trickle down" theory and being more conservative as you get older beliefs seem to be ways to make people content and trusting of the system. That in time it will take care of your needs, so there's no need to probe and look behind the curtain.
All that is very similar to how I view things. Bad people with bad intent will ALWAYS break the gun laws, so you HAVE to disperse them to good people. Atheists are too wide open for everyone's good. As an atheist myself, they won't admit it but I KNOW they're miserable. Its unfortunate to know that most of us have beliefs that exist from the availability of resources out there. In boom times with enough to go around, we can heal the world. In bust times, when there's not enough to go around, dog-eat-dog. Still, the main TRUE resource is children. Raising children in a safe environment. Thats what its always been about, and what it should always continue to be about. (Atheists even eat into THAT belief. I've even seen it on THIS BOARD. They need to slow their roll and stop "debunking" every blasted thing...) Thats my IDEALOGICAL socio-political belief platform. In truth I don't trust government, business, religion, AND SCIENCE. We give science a free pass for some reason, but not me. So maybe I'm part moderate/part anarchist
So how did this forum influence you? I ask because while the D&D is considered the Clutchfans ****hole, I think it's a really good place to get news...for people with good filters.
It influenced me mostly by how you described -- keeping up with the news. My opinion on the news, however, it more difficult to describe as to how it was influenced (if at all). I would say I likely lean left right now because of the current political climate more than anything. Right now, the right is rather extreme and being taken over by the crazy fringe for the most part, so I can't really trust anything they do or say. The left simply seems more logical and fact-driven than the right does right now. Will that change in the future? Maybe, and if it does, I could begin leaning right if the left gets too crazy. Essentially, I'll try to go with the more logical/sane of the two.
