What (or whom) most shaped your current political views?

Answer 1

I believe I landed where I am because of some things that happened to me between the age of fourteen and sixteen.

Who? Well I had an enormously funny and brilliant history teacher named Nick Kavanedus. He was teaching global history
(which was a new thing in the US in 1964. One day in class he looked at me and said: you may think that things were the same a hundred years ago, and will be the same in another hundred years. Trust me, you would not recognize the past if you saw it, and the future is an even bigger mystery. All that needs to happen is a couple of things get invented, a couple of crazy men do some bad things, a couple of smart men do some good things, and it's a new world.

Anyone, he told me, with a hardened political view is making himself pre-obsolete and useless to the world. The only truth is change.

Then I read Kurt Vonnegut.

What? On my own, against the current of apathy around me, I figured out that the Viet Nam war was a terrible fraud, and that the supposed missile gap between the US and the USSR was baloney, all to feed a big hungry machine that most folks were not even remotely aware of.

Then Kennedy got iced, and Johnson betrayed a generation.

I became the young man who would grow into the man I am now. Those are my roots.

Answer 2

I was a JFK democrat, but after he died I lost interest in politics. Twenty years later I started noticing that democrats were saying things that I knew from personal experience were not true. The more I paid attention I noticed that lying was a way of life for them. The Clintons really made that trait obvious to every observer of the White House shenanegans, and the problem continues to get worse. About the same time I first noticed the degredation of the democrat party I started noticing how strong, positive and straightforward Reagan was. I've been conservative ever since. Many democrats have good intentions, but they are naive and don't recognize the lack of honesty and character in most democrat politicians.

Answer 3

I hold the political views of my region, although I do not live there anymore.
I've lived at several economic levels and been friends with people who lived their whole lives in poverty or in economic comfort. I filter the political rhetoric through my life experiences and to me, one side is playing a crooked game of blame-the-victim to advance their own selfish interests.

The most dismaying thing is that this self-serving group is also manipulating the US international as well as the domestic policies of the country with an eye to improving their business standing.

Answer 4

The inability of the party I used to favor. Broken promises, deceit, poor handling of government, etc.

Guess I'll be more detailed.
In school (went to ten of them from K-12) most of the curriculum was leaning towards democrat.

Over time and gaining experience with things around me... City Councils, watching politics in general, living through many different experiences - I changed my political views 180 degrees.

Answer 5

My life. I've seen first hand how the lives of Americans are ruined by the government and by the big businesses they are in bed with. Both political parties are corrupt. Our last two presidents were cold blooded murderers. No one can agree on anything even though democrats and republicans are just different sides of the same coin, a coin which is the official currency of Idiotland.

Answer 6

reading, watching and listening to all the reports I can. Not taking a "political" side. Right is right, wrong is wrong. I try to elect officials that will do things in "my" interest and not another countries. I live here and pay the bills.

Answer 7

Years studying politics in high school and in college with the goal of ultimately going into politics myself. I thought better of it after working on a failed state legislator's candidacy. After the candidacy, I still followed politics but with a considerably more cynical outlook on it.

Answer 8

Love of nature. I was originally Republican but I have seen the light. The Republicans want to pave the planet for greed.
They are even encouraging the destruction of the planet because they believe in and hope for The Rapture. Sick people.!
I'm now Independent because I dont agree with some of the Democrat platform. They are in the pockets of the Big Unions and believe in too many entitlements. But their environmental platform and many others I am with them 100%.

Answer 9

Education. My political views are framed by my knowledge and understanding of the world around me.

Answer 10

"Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand - This book started me on the path to recognizing the profound social value of money and profits. It laid bare the base nature of socialism. You don't have to agree with everything that Rand wrote (or at least how she writes it), but her literature is very inspiring. [I'm not so hip on her non-fiction works.]

www.mises.org - The groundwork for admiring the free markets being set by "Atlas Shrugged", I found a coherent structure for understanding the market in the philosophies of the Austrian school of economics.

Ron Paul - I had completely written off politics until I encounter Rep. Paul. The first article I saw written by him is here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul303.html. He is a champion of free markets and governments limited only to the function of protecting individual liberties.