[Misfire]

When I was 2, my sister was born with cerebral palsy. She required a lot of attention from my parents. Being raised in that environment, I grew up learning to be very independent. The realization that people develop strengths to cope with situations where they don't led me to question a lot of the myths I was taught in school (especially from my 8th grade civics teacher who was a bleeding heart uber-leftist). This of course led me to right-wing conservatism, where I happily remained for several years. Until I went to college, all I knew about libertarians was that "those are the weirdos who just want to legalize drugs." In college I learned a) libertarians aren't just about that, and b) legalizing drugs is actually a good idea.

FWIW, my father is the world's most outspoken moderate. ([img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img])