As a teenager and into my late twenties I was very conservative. Today most would probably say I am liberal. I feel I am now essentially anti-Republican Party as it exists today. I still maintain some conservative ideas/influences but in the last 15-20 years or so I’ve slowly abandoned most of what I used to believe as conservative principles. Even as a conservative, I was more socially liberal than many of my friends at that time. I was pro 2nd Amendment but I also felt there was a different line that constitutes “infringed” and was not opposed to common sense gun legislation. As a practical matter I felt the AWB (Clinton era) was just bad legislation that was not going to accomplish anything to tackle the issues of gun violence and was just “feel good” legislation. But I was not opposed to background checks, gun registration/licensing, and restricting access to gun accessories that I did not feel had any real practical value outside of a military application. I was anti-abortion at the personal level but I was not opposed to the right to choose. I believed the best way to reduce the number of abortions was through sex education and easy access to birth control. I also felt the Religious Right influence in the GOP was a bad thing. I considered myself nominally Christian at the time but was alarmed at the growing influence of the Religious Right on the GOP. Abortion, separation of Church and State, anti-science positions related to global warming and evolution all became concerns I had as the GOP took more and more of a fingers-in-the-ears refusal to objectively look at the science behind these issues over religious dogma and business interests. I believed we needed a social safety net but also agreed there needed to be more done to move people from welfare to work. I believed in a strong military and that our government had a solemn responsibility towards those who serve(d) but diplomacy must always be exhausted before we put the men and women of our armed services at risk.
What I saw happen was the Republican Party move further and further away from reasonable positions on issues that mattered to me. The final straw was the Iraq War. That does not meant was a sudden change, it was more of a gradual erosion of my own faith in the GOP positions I once held so firmly. Also, as my social circle expanded and LBQT and minorities were not just “them/they/others” but real people I knew personally, that had a a big impact on my worldview in terms of political positions and social policy. Global travel beginning in my late 20’s also began to open my eyes.
As I said, many people I know - friends and family - would probably say I am very liberal. I think that is them projecting more their definitions or liberal on me than an objective understanding of my views. I would say I am more a centrist Democrat. I abhor ideological extremists on both ends of the spectrum. I held hope for many years that the GOP would move back towards a more moderate stances to where I might even vote for a Republican again. Sadly that never happened and instead they’ve just gone further and further away from any form of common sense in governance. I voted for GWB in his first Presidential election but I have voted straight Democratic Party ever since.
Funny, as my income has gone up and the percentage and absolute dollar amount in taxes I pay goes up, I have become even more firmly rooted in my liberal upbringing.
It’s perhaps worth noting that the results of this poll will reflect the current orientation of the board. Meaning, in any group of liberals there will be some who began as conservatives and turned liberal, but none who began as liberal and turned conservative. (And vice-versa, for a group of conservatives.)
So any survey which is weighted towards current liberals will tend to find more people who moved left than who moved right.
I grew up in a moderate Republican household. I was a bit further to the right than my folks. Around college I get a little more libertarian in my views. Then I converted to Christianity and in my readings of Scripture, I realize, hey this is pretty lefty stuff. I’ve been on the left ever since (flirted with Christian socialism for a while, but I realize I’m basically a neo-liberal moderate Democrat).
Not really. But I am convinced that the universe is circular in nature; the further left I go the closer the extreme right seems (to me) than what is usually defined as an average centralist.
Crafter Man is not a liberal nor is the SDMB a group of liberals. I made the general (and rather obvious) point that a group of liberals would not contain anyone who turned conservative and then applied that further in noting that a group which is weighted towards liberals (as the SDMB is) would be weighted towards people who moved in that direction.
Right. But people sometimes treat these threads as being representative. So I wrote it was “perhaps worth noting …”.
I campaigned and canvassed for George H.W. Bush when I was in high school and was a card-carrying member of the local Republican Party.
Later, I began to wonder why the party of “small government” was so interested in intruding on religion, abortion, marriage, etc and became a devout Libertarian.
Then I read Edmund Morris’s fantastic trilogy about Teddy Roosevelt and his disaffection with the Republicans and the establishment of the Progressive movement. It spoke to me. So now I’m a 1920’s-style Progressive.
Like most people in the early-to-mid 60s, I supported the war, on the basis that Communism had to be stopped whenever it tried to advance. It was in the late 60s, when the facts about the war began to come out, that many people’s views began to change. So I was never really that much of the “odd man out”. But I was always opposed to the draft, as a violation of rights.
For the record: Rand believed that many corporate executives are much greater “leechers off society” than welfare recipients. Remember James Taggart and his crowd? People on welfare are insignificant in comparison.
Yes. I grew up in a small all-white Republican Town; my Dad was proudly Republican, and so I was a Republican at 18. 45 years of life intervene. I am now, at 63, a solid liberal Democrat.
My dad was a Reaganite conservative when I was a kid and now he’s pretty much Bernie Sanders. I’ve always leaned conservative, but I’ve probably drifted a bit left recently. Especially on healthcare.
Pretty much this. I have modified some stances over time, but can’t fathom being a straight conservative, liberal or libertarian. No one view is right for all topics, IMHO.
I was more conservative in the Reagan/Bush years, following the hawkish approach to foreign policy and the over-spending deficit raising trickle-down neo-econ policies. As it slowly fell apart in practice, with runaway deficit and money-funneling to the wealthy, I started moving far more to the left for social protectionism and progressive policies. The constantly increasing corruption, cronyism, and embrace of the religious right destroyed the GOP for me. I’m pretty solidly in the Bernie Sanders spectrum now.
I started off as a Goldwater conservative, and have moved left over the years since then - not steadily, but rather in fits and starts. By my mid to late teens, I was a moderate Republican, where I stayed until I left the party with Anderson in 1980, when I was 26. From then until the late 1990s, I was a Dem-leaning centrist. And since about 1997, I’ve been a liberal Dem.
I doubt the vast majority of people are 100% down the line “conservative,” or “liberal,” or “libertarian,” but there are general sets of views that line up better with some of these political labels than others.
I don’t think anyone is suggesting they are 100% party line. There are nuances in anything as complex as political points of view. However, I think that many people can determine if one generalized ideology fits better with their world-view than another one, without having to state explicitly that they don’t necessarily follow it 100% in all things.
I grew up in a university community (which skewed heavily liberal as many university communities do) with a fiercely liberal father and a mildly conservative mother. As a result, I was solidly liberal as a young adult. After a Poli Sci degree and years of study and observation, my orientation has modified somewhat, but not appreciably. Today I would describe myself as a moderate liberal.
In 2000 (the first year I voted) I went from voting in the Republican primary to voting a straight Libertarian ticket in the general. I was briefly a dues paying member and county/college contact of the LP. I became much more of a “liberal libertarian” than a conservative one. Around 2004 I considered myself a left-libertarian anarchist and did not vote. I voted for Obama in 2008 but still considered myself a libertarian. The LP ticket was unacceptable to libertarians. Their VP pick was pretty much a lower rent Trump wannabe, birtherism and “I never saw Obama on campus” conspiracy BS included. I voted LP in 2012, mostly over foreign policy. In 2016 I voted in the Democratic primary. In the general I voted some LP, some Dem, and many blanks. I did not vote for any unopposed candidates and few incumbents, especially Republicans.
So, overall I went from young conservative to libertarian to more liberal but with libertarian beliefs on certain issues.
I’m honestly not sure. I often point out that I “used to be a conservative,” but I’m not sure how much of that was just by default and that I’d never really made a decision.
I do know I’m more liberal now that I was in the past. I just don’t know exactly where I started. Was I really conservative when I thought abortion was horribly wrong, Young Earth Creationism might be right, and homosexuality was a sin? I know I never actually supported fiscal conservatism, or even knew what it was. I never supported the whole “smaller government” and expected the government to be helping out anyone who needed it.
Did I flip, or was I just a liberal with some faulty information?