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Ferguson switched me. I still have very liberal objectives, but a more conservative world view and strong belief in conservative government principles to solve them.
And here's the thing, I mostly agreed with the points of protesters there (knew _many_ of them personally). I learned to completely disagree with how they were trying to achieve those goals. They were failing to recognize that liberal local government and a strong federal government were exactly what created the problems they were fighting against.
The belief is that cops are simply racist and authoritarian as a function of racist oppressive conservatives on police forces supported by conservatives in government. The "only bullies and psychopaths sign up to be cops so we should not have cops" idea. I think it is quite the opposite. Racist and authoritarian police officers are created by the nature of police work. This is exacerbated by low pay and underfunded training (the best police officers leave for private sector security).
We need to change police work, not police officers, and that starts with smaller federal government and much larger local government. The key to solving the "racist police" problem is not in liberalism. That is the creator of the problem. The solutions though are very liberal: investing in government to have much better trained and paid police officers (though eventually fewer of them). The long term solution is even more liberal, which is deterring crime with opportunity to make police a less needed practice that can evolve from current methods that grind down police officers. And yet, you reach that long term solution with conservative ideals of a smaller government footprint and lowering barriers to local business.
Thinking on these topics, in the wake of Ferguson, has shifted me to conservative ideals of government even as I still hold very liberal end goals. Ultimately I have reached the conclusion that American liberalism is incredibly authoritarian while American conservatism is still far too strongly tied to some of the past evils of social conservatism.
Never liberal socially. Always Catholic/Conservative/Pro-life. I used to vote Democrat for worker's rights and because I believed they stood up best for the poor.
Now I don't know what I am but I no longer support the Democrats. As a previous posters said they are completely off the rails.
Anyone here Switch Their Political Side? Any liberals here , call themselves conservatives now?
Same Goes for Conservatives? Have you switched to Liberal Mindset?
What are the reasons that made you switch?
Personally for myself , after 8 years of Obama . His presidency has made me lean towards the Conservative Mindset but prior to him. I always leaned toward the liberal policies.
Now I find myself leaning completely away from being liberal as obama has helped me see the light. I don't think I will ever go back in that direction.
The natural progression is for people to lean left in their youth, but as they gain experience and insight into the real world, lean right.
Its natural. As adolescents we are given what we need without a requirement for any sort of commensurate contribution. For children, it is appropriate, but for adults - people who have a semblance of intellectual and emotional maturity, it is soon discovered that contribution is a prerequisite to receiving. One can't receive, what hasn't first been made by the sweat of the brow.
Liberals either can't or don't, or don't have what it takes, to expend meaningful effort,, i.e. to "contribute", and feel, accordingly, that they are "owed".
Progressives (the mindset that now rules the DemocRATS), are out to get as man people as possible into feeling that if they don't get life handed to them on a silver platter, and without contribution, that they are being, in effect, robbed. The 'rats then offer them a living at other people's expense in order to fully addict them and gain their support (in the form of votes and other ways) forever.
The form of "freedom" the 'Rats offer is often referred to as Barracks Freedom. Yes, you get your three meals and a cot, but sacrifice your future for your measly keep - and form many is is an opiate, impossible to resist.
I was more open to liberal thought years ago. They've gone off the rails.
Ditto.
When I was younger I bought into the stereotype that conservatives were all bible-thumping bigots and was all for the "eat the rich" liberal mentality.
But then I grew up and soon realized that you didn't have to be "rich" to be on a liberal's menu......and that there's a big difference between being socially conservative and fiscally conservative.
In my youth I was ideologically right wing economically (lower taxes & regulation ---> higher growth ---> greater prosperity for all over the long term; which doesn't always play out in the real world) and socially moderate. Around college I dropped the ideological economic rightism and moved much further left socially. After college when I was exposed to the real world I saw the actual consequences of left and right economic policies and moved rightward again economically on a more pragmatic case-by-case basis that usually but not always lines up with economic conservatism.
At the same time as those shifts on fiscal matters, I've gotten a lot more Republican as the Democrats have continued to become more and more a party which is unapologetically racist. There's a lot more fuzziness in "this party has better economic and administrative viewpoints while that party has better social policies" than in "this party has better economic and administrative beliefs while that party has better social policies except for trying to legislate and cheerlead discrimination against people like me at every opportunity"
I've always been classically liberal and have never really changed. I support individualism, social and economic liberty, equal treatment before the law and free markets. My views are largely utilitarian. In general, I believe that people should be able to live their lives as they see fit so long as they're not infringing on the rights of others.
I disagree with both progressives and conservatives on a lot of things, but I generally find conservatives more tolerable because they tend to be less sanctimonious and less intellectually dishonest. If you disagree with conservatives, they tend to think it's because you're misguided or naive. If you disagree with progressives, they tend to think it's because you're evil or have some major character defect, i.e. you're stupid, uneducated, racist, bigoted, hateful, greedy, selfish, corrupt, hate the poor, blinded by white privilege, etc. It's a lot easier to deal with someone who thinks you're misguided as opposed to someone who thinks you're pure evil or defective.
This varies from time to time, however. It is probably largely a function of whoever is in power at the time. I found conservatives rather intolerable in the early 2000s with everything that went on surrounding the Iraq war. I've always found the religious right quite intolerable. I can't stand their moralizing and their attempts to force their personal views of morality onto others. The most annoying thing is their insistence on fighting these petty losing battles on social issues which compromises their positions on economic issues and makes those of us with similar economic views look bad by association. However, the religious right has little power today outside of certain states mostly in the South. They're fading away and are more of an annoyance at this point. Unfortunately, they've largely been replaced by the moralizing culture warriors of the regressive left who operate in a very similar fashion and worse in some ways.
Anyone here Switch Their Political Side? Any liberals here , call themselves conservatives now?
Same Goes for Conservatives? Have you switched to Liberal Mindset?
What are the reasons that made you switch?
Yes. I've never been a fan of the right's social conservatism regarding things like religion and drug policy. But I was always conservative, heavily libertarian, growing up. That is until the 2004-2007 housing bubble when I began to question the "free market" nature of the system.
And then when the 2008 collapse and bailouts came along, I completely abandoned American conservatism.
For the most part, since 2008, I've been waiting on conservatives to stand up and take responsibility for what was their crisis. For their part, they buy into GOP propaganda that it was "the liberal's fault," and have a whole song-and-dance about "the government made Wall Street do it." So they are out of touch with reality, and there's no responsibility forthcoming.
So I'm basically a socialist now, because I don't think American conservatives have a grasp of what is actually transpiring around them. They always seem to have their own alternative version of the facts, carefully crafted by the party to appeal to their pre-existing biases.
Maybe after all this Trump stuff blows over the party will reform itself into something I can tolerate. But I doubt it.
I used to be liberal on a lot of different issues, but now I'm pretty much conservative about everything.
Keep in mind there is a HUGE difference between conservative and GOP faux conservative. A conservative approach to marijuana is that the government has no business getting involved. A conservative approach to gay marriage is that government has no business in marriage and any consenting adults can marry. A conservative approach to prayer in public schools is that the government, school officials, shouldn't promote it or have anything to do with it nor tell children they can't pray to whatever God, or none, they choose on their own time. If students want an Islam club, they can have it, but not receive any funding or such.
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