First time poster, long time lurker here with a question to all of you that was inspired by thisreader of Andrew Sullivan’s blog, The Daily Dish (Overall, an interesting read).
I come from a family that makes Karl Marx look like Dick Cheney (Perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point). My mother is a huge Obama fan and she has instilled in me a liberal set of core values. Lately, however, I have been noticing lately that my views have started to stray from the liberal gospel that has always been preached to me. I am still pretty young and my worldview is pretty much always evolving the more critically I look upon the world and the more viewpoints I come into contact with.
So my question to you all is how has your upbringing affected your own political leanings and how much have they changed, if they have changed, over time? What was it that caused this change?
Thanks in advance for your thoughtful contributions,
Cheesy Goodness
Politically, my whole family including me is very liberal. My sister, though, leans a bit to the right. Religiously, I’m the only atheist, though I think my dad could be talked into it. I think he really just goes to church to socialize. Economically, I’m the only renter. (A certain niece does too, I think.)
How did I drift away? I don’t know. I’ve just never seen any reason to have either a house or a god.
My mom is very religious. She’s a moderate conservative, but she doesn’t talk about politics a lot. She’s also into new-agey stuff, like energy healing and alternative medicine.
My dad is, quote, “Sick of this religious stuff”. Politically, he’s somewhere to the right of Attilla the Hun. He hero worships Nixon, Bush, and Cheney. Every news source to the left of the Wall Street Journal is a “ragsheet”.
I take mostly after my mom. Possibly because my father doesn’t do reasonable discourse. If you ask him why he likes Nixon, he will laugh and say “Nixon’s the one!” and “Nixon’s the greatest”, and he will keep on repeating those two statements over and over, until you give up and stop asking. Oh, and “Nixon was framed.” Maybe he actually backs up his views when he’s talking with friends; I don’t know.
Anyway, like I said, I agree with my mom on most things, except the [del]voodoo[/del] alternative medicine.
Everyone in my family is a political moderate. We all tend to lean slightly to the right but have mostly voted Democrat (though my parents voted for Bush the first time). I guess we’re either socially liberal Republicans or fiscally conservative Democrats. Is there such a thing?? Actually, I think all 4 of us are quite conservative in personal behaviour, we just don’t care about imposing our personal values on others. My father and I are registered as Republicans, my sister and my mother as Independents.
We’re more or less alike in other ways (religious/financial philosphy) etc. I guess my parents did a good job of brainwashing us.
My parents were conservative Democrats when I was growing up, they’ve moved further right as they’ve gotten older while I’m way more left than they ever were.
They were fairly religious back then, us kids went to parochial schools for years, but fell away from active church membership. They both pay lip service to Christianity without bothering to actually do much about it, and it dismays them to no end that I’m agnostic and not raising my kid “in church” like I rightfully should.
FWIW, the other 3 siblings are fairly moderate politically, 1 left, 1 right and 1 is just woefully confused, but none of them are very active or interested in politics. They’re all nominally Christian, but not to the extent my parents were when we were kids.
Pretty much the same, here. My parents’ political views were a mishmash of liberal, conservative, libertarian and (occasionally) anarchic but their behavior and lifestyle was absolutely mainstream. My sisters and I kept the mainstream lifestyles, but I tended to gravitate more toward the liberal spectrum, while my sisters went a little further to the right.
The one thing that all of us seem to have in common, in some degree or other, is a commitment to volunteerism and community involvement. We were never specifically taught that “the politcal is personal” but that’s the way things seem to have worked out.
My family ranges all over the place. My parents are different from each other, the siblings are mostly different, and the extended family really goes all over the spectrum. I think the only thing we all believe in is books.
My parents have long been Conservative - my father was a local councillor - but my own views are just that, my own. I agree with them on some things, and disagree on others.
My politics are fairly libertarian, although I’m actually registered as a Republican. My dad is a die hard conservative Republican, a far righter.
We’re both religious, devout Christians, but he’s conservative Lutheran(the Missouri Synod) and while I was of course raised in that church I’m now Episcopalian. We ordain(gasp!) women, have a woman as our Presiding Bishop, and Fred Phelps hates us because, among other things we tolerated the ordination of gays. Dad’s denomination doesn’t even have women as voting members of the congregation.
I started my changes when I got old enough to begin thinking things out for myself. My interpretation of Scripture became less literal as I learned more about how it got transmitted through time.
Not American, I am pretty unreligious as is my mother. My sis and dad are fairly religious, though not extremely so.
I like to think that our as children we copy our parents when we start something new, until we discover enough about the thing to be confident. My taste in clothes and ties for instance is 180 from what my dads is, yet when I first started wearing suits and ties, I copied him.
I was raised Catholic & went to 12 years of parochial school. Parents are Republicans, but not too far to the right, though everything that’s wrong with this country is the Democratic Party’s fault.
It was quite a day 12 years ago or so that I told my mom that not only didn’t I have faith in the Catholic Church, but I’m not Christian at all. And I’m pretty much a Democrat. We just don’t talk religion or politics. If something comes up I just nod my head and say, “Mmmmm”, until something different comes up.
Mom is a uber-Catholic and very right-wing. Dad was uber-Libertatian and fairly non-religious.
I am Libertarian in most ways, but think basic services are the government’s responsibility including health care (hoping for universal coverage) and would like a small defensive only military. I am fairly non-religious but if asked, consider myself Muslim.
My parents are more conservative than I am on most issues. My father used to be very Republican, but he’s absolutely disgusted with the party now. My mother is somewhat more conservative than the Democratic party platform, but she usually finds that the Dem candidate is closer to her views than the Repub one is. My father is a cradle Catholic, and my mother was a Protestant, but converted to Catholicism when I was in my early 20s. I am a devout atheist.
I am extremely liberal in some ways, and extremely conservative in others. For example, the main reason why I oppose the death penalty in our justice system is because I see so many wrongful convictions. On the other hand, I don’t believe that anyone who is committing a criminal act is entitled to have a safe environment. IOW, I think it should be fine and dandy to set any sort of boobytrap, from the mildly embarrassing right up to lethal. Yeah, the occasional trespasser might get injured, but I believe that most acts of trespassing are far less innocent than are claimed. As for stupid people wandering into the boobytrap, I think that the gene pool needs a little chlorine in it. I think that Darwin award contestants should be allowed to win their awards.
During the elections, I asked my grandmother for whom she would be voting. Mind you, she’s in her 80’s, on Social Security, living in government subsidized housing, and on Medicare. She replied that she would be voting for McCain because if Obama won, the Muslims would “take over”.
