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Most of us define ourselves as left or right or somewhere in-between. Some people start out as one thing and eventually become the other. Many things can influence our political identity such as our parents, our education and our life experiences.

In my case my mother is an conservative and my father a liberal. I took after my father and my sister took after our mother. I was raised Catholic and became an Atheist. My sister remains a Catholic. Needless to say there are some pretty interesting and heated discussions that take place when we are all together.

My education played a part as well. I became a liberal when I was quite young but remained a believer until I was in college. I feel higher education freed me from the chains of religion and I consider my atheism as part of my political identity as many theists consider their religion as part of their political being.

My life experiences have taught me that conservative politics and religion [especially when they are mixed] are harmful to humanity in general and deadly in cases such as religious wars. For me at least liberalism offers a much more humane and decent world than conservatism offers. Others of course have different views. What are yours on the subject? What was the largest influence on your political/religious views? Care to discuss it?

My conversion to conservatism was the result of taking an economics class in college and realizing I was on the losing end of every argument of every issue with my conservative hubby .   

In short, like most folks I grew up when the follies of liberalism became self evident.

“If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”

Churchill     ;)

I was a liberal, voted for Jimmy Carter, voted for Teddy Kennedy against Carter… Couldn't vote for Reagan… But Reagan impressed me because he was a leader… But as I've said before what really changed my mind was when I had my first black girlfriend and how my wonderful liberal friends treated her and I… I learned don't listen to a liberals words, watch what they do… They didn't want me to bring her to parties or to their house and the few conservative friends I had didn't care, treated her with respect. And over the years, the most racist people I've ever met are liberals, yet after their rants, they always have to point out that they aren't really racist…

Religion, I was an atheist, when I was very young I figured out that Christians didn't do what the Bible said, and I thought the best way to go after them was to know the Scriptures better than they did, in essence fight fire with fire… And over the years I've watched as a lot of atheist just belittle and ridicule Christians, but do it with no knowledge of the Scriptures and very simply that Christians do not pay attention to it… You actually have to argue the point with more knowledge, get them to question their faith by showing them where their faith is wrong… But as I was going through the Scriptures I kept finding little things that after a while, my thought was well the church that was described in the Scriptures either existed or did not and it was provable, there would be a church that did the things as described or the whole thing was a lie…

And to my surprise, I found that church…

I didn't come to religion because of belief or faith…

I found it with knowledge.

And surprisingly, the church is based on knowledge…

Hos_4:1 Hear the word of the LORD, ye children of Israel: for the LORD hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land.

Rom_2:20 An instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law.

1Ti_2:4 Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.

2Ti_3:7 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

Heb_10:26 For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,

funny isn't it, it's not about faith or belief, it's about knowledge.

ohh that's a good point!
Actually I used to be liberal on my early teens, and I slowly converted to conservative on my late teens.
Now, after many years I am still conservative.
Actually, what really influenced me was the fact that I was always religious, and my religion makes me love my country.
Usually, the libertarians and generally the left, don't like patriots and they consider them as internationalists.
However, I don't think a state which helps the poor is a bad idea.  :-[

I grew up in a conservative Republican farm family. My Grandfather had been a county commissioner and my dad was politically active. My only brother was an Army vet and very conservative.

I ran for and won the Youth Governorship of Ohio as a republican.

But the VietNam war changed my perspective. I saw government hurting, not helping America and students, not older leaders, fighting the good fight against a war for no cause.

Still, I was a moderate, voting for Nixon, Ford, Reagan.

But their policies left too many folks behind and helped the richest too much. By the end of the Reagan presidency I was still a moderate but the country had moved so far to the Right I was seen as a liberal.

And so it is today. I am a moderate in the world of right wing political insanity. It is difficult for me to imagine (not really looking for a fight here) how any thinking person could support the policies of the American political Right today.

So now i am a liberal...who knew?

If you were old enough to vote for Nixon;   what branch of the military did you serve in?  If not, how did you get out of the draft?  Does your brother still call you a slimy pinko?

My parents are extremely liberal and very political. They taught me how important it is to fight for liberty and the things I hold dear.

Having worked in the Executive Branch when Ronaldus Maximus was in the White House (with Gary Aldrich and Ollie North); I found my idea of true leadership in Reagan. I grew up thinking that Jack Kennedy walked on water, and it's taken me a lifetime to realize that it was all just window dressing.

Anyone who is a Christian, if they were born in the Middle East would be a Muslim. When it comes to religion people generally accept the religion they are taught without question. Those here who rail against Muslims, would be very good Muslims if they were born in the Middle East instead of in the West.

Came outta High School looking for something different. Had always been one who didn't wanna dominate, or be dominated. Joined the Libertarian Party. Convinced parents to join as well. I hadn't read Ayn Rand until some 10 years later, and then still later dabbled in Von Mises. Still not quite satisfied with him. But better than most. Then Hayekian who no longer posts, kinda re-introduced me to the Austrians. Rothbard/Hoppe in particular were pretty close to the way I feel.



Try and be as much a menace to those who wish to dominate as possible.

I went to a city state secondary school in UK in the 90s and was raised in a single parent (mum) family = average success in life possible at best.   Rarely will anyone come out of that situation and have high success in life.  I know this from watching everyone around me in the similar situation achieve more or less nothing.   All these children's great potential was wasted because of the rich monopolizing resources and creating horse shit societal structures.  The rich children are either not better or marginally better vs the poor children but the rich get better everything.

So after having this experience it was pretty clear to me that as regards the nature/nurture debate in psychology, nurture was getting extremely overlooked & nature extremely over hyped.

My first thoughts were communism (like alot of people) but seems like we cant practically achieve this yet so anarcho capitalism is the answer for coming decades imo because i believe it can create the best egalitarian society.

So my life influenced my political views.

Conservatism or authoritarianism generally has no connection to actual life energy - Try some deep meditation and  this becomes clearer.  We are spinning around the universe on a rock and could get taken out by a meteorite any second, think about it.... there is no control.

I was raised Christian, went to church every Sunday til I was 18ish.  When I started to really think about things I figured out that it wasn't for me.  I've never liked politics, and never been one side or the other.  I think they are all terrible.  Not really sure what influenced that way of thinking, I guess it was just my own observations.

I found I regularly got into arguments ( Surprise surprise ;) :D ) with republicans and the like on the internet and I could never agree with the kind of things that were being said in my country either which quite frankly I consider bullshit so I eventually started researching all kinds of political viewpoints that mainstream politics likes to pretend doesn't exist.

People like Ron Paul were the obvious lot that got me started and I definitely like Libertarianism but as I'm learning more and more I keep feeling that we will inevitably have to tear down our whole government system and start over fresh because it's so corrupt. I also found I couldn't stand religion a lot because of what people came up with to justify their violence so eventually I found and I think I've settled into Anarchism because I haven't completely disregarded the idea of some kind of more powerful beings ( I seriously doubt they'll be gods but idiots may well think they are ) but I refuse to worship them or acknowledge them as gods. I don't really fall to Anarcho-Communism or Anarcho-Capitalism I'm somewhere in between, I think I'm more of an anarcho-individualist for this reason, people can do whatever the fuck they want as far as I'm concerned as long as they don't force people into it or try to assimilate them into a group.

All sorts of reading on the internet and just general exploring is what got me where I am today and also helped me find Bitcoin.

Religion: First time I tried to read the first page of the bible. I was like 6. I read the first page and couldn't do anything but laugh. Atheist ever since.

I took a peek outside of the bubbles of academia and traditionalism and realized that worshiping a deity of any sort, whether in the form of God or man who calls himself "the government", always ended well for the deity and always ended bad for me.  Of course the deity wants me to believe I can't live without him, that's his bread and butter.  If you ask me, liberalism and conservatism are mostly two sides to the same coin: both agree people should have a ruling class, both believe the ruling class will lead them to the "promised land", both believe the ruling class is absolutely vital to human existence for no real reason (usually citing "so it has been so it shall always be!" which is a logical fallacy)...they just don't agree on what that ruling class should do.  (Which is funny, since the ruling class decides what it wants to do on its own anyway.)

I don't think we should have a ruling class, and that's how I exited mainstream politics and entered libertarian philosophies.

Religion was a more primitive form of politics where a God or a pantheon represented the ruling class and people made up whatever they wanted to enforce against others; this was usually coupled with a king who ruled by divine right from the gods, which many rulers still claim to do.  Nowadays it's more of a social thing (unless you're in the middle east, where religion and politics are still indistinguishable), so I really don't think it matters if someone is religious or atheist, since they probably practice secular religion anyway.  If anything I can be considered non-religious, which very few people on this planet can actually claim to be.

What I find hilarious is when someone insists we must all be equals, yet still believes we should have a ruling class.  What greater inequality is there than that?!  It's so hypocritical that I'm surprised they haven't collapsed in on themselves and formed a miniature black hole of hypocrisy.

No, it's not - and these passages actually prove that. It's not general knowledge they extoll, it's "knowledge of God", and "knowledge of the truth" ( very often "truth" and fact are not the same thing) .  Essentially, the only "knowledge"  it's being based on is knowledge of the doctrines of the church. That's not actually knowledge. It is actually the very definition of faith. I'm not saying there's something wrong with faith - just don't confuse it with knowledge.

I'll answer this question in two parts - the religious and the political - but I think the two will be drawn together.


First, political. I grew up in a liberal home, but in a very conservative town and area.  I was exposed to both sides from a young age, and even as early as High School, I made my own choices as to where I would stand on issues.  My father rarely discussed politics. He voted in every election, but I don't ever recall him telling me for whom he voted. My mother was a different story - she was as liberal as the day is long, and a devoted Democrat. And it would be foolish to try and say that she didn't have an influence on me. I had a history teacher in High School who was as conservative as my mother was liberal. And we had some wonderful  - and even occasionally heated - discussions. I had him for American History 1 in my Freshman year, and then I actually sought out his electives over the next couple of years, because despite our differences, I had a great deal of respect for him, and his teaching method. I learned a lot in his classes, and I also learned other perspectives, and he too influenced me. My first major election was the 1980 Presidential election, between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. I backed Carter. I didn't like Reagan, and more importantly, I didn't trust Reagan. I wasn't crazy about the progress Carter made (or didn't make), but I felt he got something of a raw deal, and respected him. My second major election was the 1982 gubernatorial election between Tom Kean and Jim Florio. Much to my mother's chagrin, I backed Kean, and still to this day believe that he was our best governor in my lifetime. So, even back then, in my early twenties, I was independent and not absolutely tied to one party. And that continued, as I grew older. My mother was 100% anti-gun. I never was. I earned an expert rating in the service with a pistol (I qualified with the rifle, but was never close to as good or as natural as I was with the pistol), and my enjoyment of shooting continued from there. At one point I competed on an amateur level, and like most serious competitors, I loaded my own ammunition. Also in my 20's, I discovered a talk show host in Philadelphia named Irv Homer. Irv was libertarian, and even (before I knew who he was) had run for Vice President of the United States on an independent ticket. I listened to that station - WWBD - until suddenly one day, the talk show hosts were canned and they switched to a hip hop music format. The three major daytime hosts were a staunch conservative on morning drive, a staunch liberal mid day and then Irv in the afternoon. It was a good balance, and gave me exposure to various viewpoints. I went libertarian myself for a number of years - even joined the party - and still hold to many of the ideals from those days, but two things drove me away. First there was the realization that my ideology, as good as it really was, really only worked in a world in which there was no such thing as greed, either for power or wealth. The second was in recent years how the party started to shift to the right and embrace right wing extremism instead of classic liberalism. I make no bones about it - I am definitely to the left of center. But I am not extreme in that, and am a genuine moderate who leans left, and a genuine free thinking independent. The only campaign I ever worked for was actually a Republican who ran for governor (he lost). I'm no partisan.

IMO communicating your belief of god is kinda pointless because nothing has ever been proven objectively.  Therefor everything thats happened to you that is relative to god is subjective so organized religion is illogical.

But today Churchill would be considered a liberal.

Religion - I was baptized Episcopal, but raised Presbyterian.  At one point in my youth, I was determined to become a Presbyterian minister. The thing is, the more I studied, the more questions I began to ask, and having the vast majority of those questions answered with some variation of "because the Bible says so" or "you have to have faith", I was basically driven from organized religion.  One fundamental truth I came to on my own is what I state in my signature line - that the value of your faith is really shown by the kind of person you are.  One day, about 10 years ago, I took a trip to the beach with my sister, a friend of hers, and their children (separate, not together). Both of them were devout Christians, and a conversation came up - my sister was always trying to save my soul (even though I'm actually a much nicer person than she is). During the conversation, her friend asked me to put what I believe into words. I explained that basic principle that I do believe there's a God, but none of us can truly understand the nature of God - it's way above us. But I did believe that there was only one actual God, and that all around the world, when people prayed, no matter what they believe as the nature of God, only one set of "ears" received those prayers. I also described that philosophy from my signature. My sister looks at me and says "Oh my god, you sound like a Unitarian". I'd never heard of Unitarian-Universalism, but being recently divorced and alone, and looking to expand my community interaction, I checked it out. I went to the national web site, and read all about them - and was surprised that yes, they DID embrace the same philosophy that I had evolved to. Essentially, I remain agnostic on some level - not because I am unsure of the existence of a God, but because I never stop question.

And that's what draws the two -politics and religion - together for me. That basic agnosticism - always questioning - applies to both my political and religious lives.

Personal suffering + reason + time = universal compassion.

The formula for my ideological formation. Now have some modern scientific wisdom, it's free:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7vXX33C6Mg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9wM-p8wTq4

If a slave can choose his owner, does that make him free? That has always been the question to ponder for me, when it comes to capitalism.

The only difference between capitalism and the other two major exploitative modes of production is that the labourer has a choice over their master and means of subsistence. Slavery, feudalism and capitalism are fundamentally the same in that their core relation is the same: in all three forms of the exploitative trinity there is a class of workers and a class of appropriators. Posts like this will inevitably be met with vulgar moralistic arguments by capitalist apologists, claiming that capitalism is the best humanity can manage and that we should thus stop complaining, as if we are the pessimistic ones. The ambition of socialism lies in its assessment that humans can do better than class society. Moralism and pessimism do not come into it, it is rather an assessment born out of a ruthless structural analysis of how class systems work.

https://i.imgur.com/vOo1QXj.jpg

Came outta High School looking for something different. Had always been one who didnt wanna dominate, or be dominated. Joined the Libertarian Party. Convinced parents to join as well. I hadn't read Ayn Rand until some 10 years later, and then still later dabbled in Von Mises. Still not quite satisfied with him. But better than most. Then Hayekian who no longer posts, kinda re-introduced me to the Austrians. Rothbard/Hoppe in particular were pretty close to the way I feel.



Try and be as much a menace to those who wish to dominate as possible.