My views haven’t changed but their place on the spectrum has. But you have it the wrong way. Ideas widely accepted by moderate republicans when I was in college (like, say… the individual mandate) are now considered ultra-liberal. I feel like this graphic pretty much nails it.
20 years ago my views were considered moderate-democrat and somewhat conservative in certain respects. Now with those same views today I am a dead ringer for Karl Marx.
I haven’t been mugged yet.
“If a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who’s been arrested.” – Thomas Wolfe
When I was in college I was *ultra *left-wing. I then got a job delivering pizzas when I was a senior in college, and become a total right-winger. (Delivering pizzas to welfare recipients and so called “disadvantaged” folks will do that to ya. Really opened my eyes.)
Ten years ago I finally came to my senses and became a libertarian. 
I’ve veered left as I age.
Because it’s nobody’s business if you drown cats, right? 
I started out a center-left, Fritz Mondale kind of Democrat in the Reagan years. Today a lot of my views are not even on the table for the national party.
What you do get as you get older, unless you’re very careful or kind of a crank (the good kind), is credulous. You’ll believe whatever you hear the loudest and the oftenest, and you’ll believe it more strongly.
Quite the opposite. I was very conservative when I was a young adult. I have been shifting left for the last 20 yrs and now consider myself pretty much in the center. Somethings I’m a bit left, other areas, I’m still a bit right.
I would say if I have drifted at all, while it cannot really be said as being towards the left it is certainly away from the right.
Having said that I’m in my twenties, so perhaps this doesn’t count.
For me, the only ways I’ve moved “right” are: I’m less isolationist, more nationalistic.
I wouldn’t say that I’ve necessarily drifted either way on the whole (I lean pretty far left), but my opinions on certain issues have changed in both directions.
If you never change your mind, your mind’s not working.
I was slightly conservative back around age 20 and am a bit less so now, but that’s part of my life trajectory in that I’ve lost the desire to be angry over everything other people do that I don’t like and the thought that they should be forced to be the way I want them to be.
I’ve too have become more liberal as I’ve gotten older.
I have become more progressive than I use to be. Hell, I voted for Nixon in '72.
This. I haven’t exactly shifted, but the societal notions of what’s left and what’s right have.
It’s complicated.
I’m pretty much as liberal as I’ve always been, but I think differently. The older I get the more I realize the importance of taking responsibility for my problems. I do believe that cash assistance can be an incentive not to work.
My ideal world would provide all the basic necessities for every person regardless of how responsible they are - health care, education, food, shelter. That’s a pretty liberal ideal. I also don’t really think I have a right to judge whether or not someone is deserving of support. How to reconcile that with the fact that certain benefits can discourage taking responsibility is where I get stuck. And the fact that I would even say that is proof that I’ve shifted a bit more to the center fiscally.
I realize these issues are complex and I do listen to the other side.
Fiscally.
As far as socially, I’m as liberal as it gets, always have been, and have no interest in hearing the other side, which is basically bigotry from my POV.
Maybe a little more liberal, but then I was pretty far right when I was younger. However I’m still definitely right wing (wildly so compared to the SDMB but only slightly so compared to normal people).
You mean normal Americans.
I’m actually significantly more leftish economically–in the sense of being redistributionist–than I was as a youth. And if I was ever anti-regulation, it was as a callow & ignorant youth, and despite my anarchist pose, I wasn’t particularly anti-reg even then.
So, no, I’ve moved* away *from the right.
Interesting that the Guizot quote is about republicanism. I may well have become more monarchist, or at least more cynical about republicanism, as I have grown older. But anti-republicanism is not conservative in my country.
If we are talking about classical liberalism, yes, that probably appealed to me a little more as a youth, but I had at least heard of Upton Sinclair even then, so that was moderated. Interestingly, it is the reckless classical liberals who like to quote that line as if their “conservatism” was that intended by the original phrase.
My very first Presidential election, I voted for McGovern.
I haven’t changed much. Spiro Agnew was much more frightening as a “next in line” than Thomas Eagleton could EVER have been!
~VOW