What has influenced you to your current position in politics.

[moorobot]

My story is essentially the opposite of yours. I became the left-winger that you see now as opposed to the unreflective moderate that I was as a youngster, in part, because I had a lot of right-wing instructors whose ideas, theories and principles struck me as wrong. Attempts to persuade me that libertarianism or "religious rightism" had the opposite of the intended effect. In fact, if I had to identify one point as 'the turning point', it would have been the course I took in microeconomics (with a clear right winger, even for an economist). What pushed you to the right pushed me to the left.

[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])

[GoodCallYouWin]

I started out as a communist. My family had always supported the socialist party (NDP) which is fairly popular up here in Canada, so I did too. Eventually I started posting on the internet, got my ass handed to me constantly and started to question the ideas I believed in. A few years ago I encountered Anarcho-Capitalism on this forum, laughed at it for a while, tried to poke holes in it. I have had many strong libertarian leanings throughout my life, sort of intuitively realized how harmful the war on drugs is and have always been very adamantly anti war (especially offensive imperialist wars). Maybe 6 months ago? I started reading mises.org pretty heavily and watching videos / listening to lectures. Took 'Ethics of Liberty' out from the library, read 'Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against nature' (both by Murray Rothbard, the second being a collection of essays)... and that's basically how I became influenced to be an anarcho-capitalist.

[tame_deuces]

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How have you come to acquire the opinions that you currently have?

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Knowledge of history, experience with the brutality of some societies, studies of humans in organizations, working in a wide variety of jobs both in the public/private sector, politics, my military service and my grandfather who many times over put everything on the line for what he believed in.

And with that came the realization that there exists no ultimate truth to complex problems, that several things can seem completely opposite but both still hold true, that good solutions are mostly compromises and that many systems' best value is how good they are at resisting those who wish to exploit it. And maybe last but not least, if you don't wish to fight for it, what you say and think is useless.

[xorbie]

Reading Nietzsche.

[tolbiny]

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How have you come to acquire the opinions that you currently have?

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This

Plus:
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Long and painful analysis of my own hypocrisies.

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BCPVP losing argument after argument to Borodog. Damn you!

[Metric]

First I noticed that I didn't seem to like it when complete strangers presumed to order me (via government power) how to live and distribute the fruits of my labor. Then later I noticed that complete strangers didn't seem to like it when I presumed to order them (via government power) how to live and distribute the fruits of their labor.

[Archon_Wing]

Off the top of my head:
- Discussion in college and on assorted forums and the realization that people who disagree with me are not selfish, cold heartless bastards that kick cats around for fun. Well, at least I hope so...
- I had initially posted in here just to mess around and troll Ac'ists after reading those crazy whining threads in ATF about these forums. However, I eventually saw that they had good points, as well as the more mainstream politics posters also were worth listening too. The recent thread about voting requirements may be a good example of relatively civilized and thoughtful discussion IMO. But anyhow, this is more of the first point anyways.

- When I didn't know where to place myself on the left-right thingy.
- When I learned in high school, that the Civil War was not just about slavery
- When I learned about interference in South America
- When I learned more about other countries. In particular Canada and many countries in Europe that don't have this bizzare morality crap towards homosexuality and abortion, or at least as not as bad in the US. Of course, the more repressive regimes, where people are jailed for saying the wrong things on blogs, where people are killed for being gay, or where women get stoned for adultery would show me some of the other extreme. This would liberalize my previously narrow views about homosexuality, drugs, and more.

- The UIEGA, simply because I'm self-centered

- Most importantly, 9/11. When I saw those planes crash into those buildings I knew that a lot of [censored] was going to happen as well as the actual terror coming close to home.

- And the above two lead to Ron Paul, who I see as sort of a "lesser evil" kind of thing. I don't really see him as some kind of savior, but I don't know where else to go.

[daryn]

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Paying 40% of my income from poker to the government.

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yes

[daryn]

am i the only one whose parents (as far as i can tell) have never had the slightest interest in politics whatsoever? i mean i have never talked about anything remotely political with my parents, and they definitely don't vote.