Has you political alignment changes with age?

Has you political alignment changed with age? Were you once Liberal when young but now as you are older lean Conservative... or were you once Conservative when young but now as you are older lean Liberal? Or has you political alignment not changed at all over the years but become stronger?

My daughter was almost militantly Liberal as a young woman, but now with a few years and kids she is much more Conservative. She is still very much Liberal, but she is not so militant now and her opinions are much more tempered and varied.

As for me, I am 46 and my political alignment has taken a surprising change. I first saw the change a few months ago, but more than likely the change has been slowly happening over years.

I have always been fairly Conservative, but key events in my life have been slowly eroding my convictions forcing me to view some things from a different perspective. When I was young (in my 20's) I was healthy and took pride in whatever job I worked. Honest pay for an honest days work ideal was my motto. I Use to look at panhandlers and the homeless and scoff at them thinking that they should just get up off their lazy azz and work!

How blind I was...

At age 30 I was struck down by a debilitating illness that has robbed me of the health to be gainfully employed. My wife, daughter and I teetered on the brink of homelessness. And I soon found myself just one social rung above the homeless panhandlers... and hanging on with a tenuous grip. I came to realize that many homeless were not homeless by choice... or laziness... but because they were disabled in one way or another and fell threw the gaps in out social welfare system. My family was lucky as we met the requirements to receive public benefits... mainly because we had a child in the house. If I did not have a child I may very well have been on the streets panhandling myself!

Because of the above experience I now consider myself a Social Conservative. Over the last couple years I have begun to lean more towards the Liberal way of thinking in many... not all... but many ways. I have been judged because I am a man and I let my hair grow out once I became disabled... because I listen to Heavy Metal and some believe it is the "devils music"... because I like to play D&D (Dungeons & Dragons) "again apparently some think it is satanic"... because I like video games... because I do not "look" disabled... because... ... ...

And who are these people whom so freely dispense their judgment unto me? The very people in society that I use to be part of... the people that I use to be like... the Conservatives.

I still to this day consider myself a Social Conservative, meaning that I am Classical over Keynesian economics, hawkish on foreign affairs, but very Liberal when it comes to Social matters. So will I one day make a complete transformation from Conservative to Liberal... I doubt it... but I am certainly moving more and more towards the middle.

So what about you? How have your views, party affiliation, or political alignment changed over the decades? Or have they changed at all?

Curious

 

I'm centre left now and I think I've always been centre left.

 

I have always felt that govt should not protect us from ourselves, but as I have gotten older I realize that is libertarian.

 

Thanks for asking. When I was 10, I announced to my parents that I'm going to be a Republican but only had a vague inkling as to why. When I was 16, I was arguing with my Economics and Government teachers and defending Reganomics. The older I get, the more right wing I get. At the rate I'm going, I might just start a militia and overthrow our corrupt, unconstitutional government in about 10 years.

 

I was a libertarian when young, I'm a socialist today. I've also become more insistent in my ideology, but more practical when it comes to tactics.

That's the fundamental conclusion of socialism. There's a great deal of propaganda in the US proposing that it's about the state handing out benefits for people unwilling to work (a rather distinct group from those unable to work), but socialism has always been about securing honest compensation for honest work in a meaningful job. There's nothing conservative about wanting an honest day's work and an honest day's pay.

That's not slipping through the cracks--that's how the system has been designed. The system today has been designed to expand a pool of desperate labor willing to take any offer for work or benefits, by tying social welfare to the number of children in the household. Rather than seeking to make sure that every person in the US is afforded a basic level of human dignity, even if they're unable to work, we make it contingent upon children. It's a perverse sort of incentive.

Keynesian economics is mostly just fascist economics, not really liberal or socialist. Foreign affairs can co both ways. I'd say you already are a liberal if you believe in liberal social policy.

College changed my ideological direction to libertarianism, business ownership made me a socialist (it sounds odd, I know), and working in the political field gave me both a respect for pragmatism and a disgust for the current state of American politics.

 

I think I've always been fairly libertarian and staunch supporter of the Constitution, and as the years go by my conservatism seems only to get stronger.

 

Yes, radically.

When I was 20 I believed all the hype. I thought the government could make life better for it's citizens, and I actually supported it.
Now, I'm older, have had some life experience, and have found that government has absolutely no socially redeeming qualities. It's pornography.

 

I was somewhat of a socialist until I decided to do some personal research into economics and foreign policy.

My socialist ideologies were based on a general ignorance regarding many subjects. I had partial knowledge of these subjects, leftist leaning teachers, and my skewed version of what I thought I was seeing in the world (anecdotal evidence).

After I decided to go get some learnin', I very quickly became akin to modern US libertarians. In other words, a strict economic conservative who is near paranoid in my concern for constitutional matters and powers.

 

I was always a centerist until Reagan became President and shortly thereafter became left of center.

 

Yea I no longer like Tom and Jerry, I mean democrats and republicans

 

The more progressives I come across in life, the more conservative I become. That and the more I pay in taxes. But I'm still young, I'm still in my twenties at least.

Most of the people my age I know are to the left. Very few of them are married. Most of them in their late 20s have kids out of wedlock. I still run into old friends now and again, it's quite stark the difference between how the conservatives and the progressives have ended up thus far.

A lot of the conservatives have served in the military, are married, and stable. They are upwardly mobile.

The ones on the left mostly graduated with worthless degrees and aren't doing so hot.

I suppose that's what happens when you roll through life thinking someone owes you something just for drawing breath.

 

I have over my life of 47 years found myself right of center. I cannot say I am a conservative, nor am I a liberal. When it comes to social issues I am about as liberal as they come, but fiscally I am conservative with compassion. In the past few years I have to leave where I had my children grow up,start life anew. I fell in the cracks of the failed economy, I moved over 500 miles closer to family, and farther away from my children in college. I have had to make a decision as to how I can best provide for them and my wife, so I made a change. It isn't easy. Life experiences do change a person, hopefully for the better, but not always. Our political beliefs I believe come from personal hardship or personal victory, and we can't understand if the other person doesn't get where you are coming from. To label one either a liberal, or conservative is usually not correct, very few people I have met fit in one or the other catagory. I find we both have conservative and liberal stances depending on the issue.

 

Started off moderate libertarian. Since fallen off the political spectrum entirely.
I have enough audacity and arrogance to claim that labels can't really describe what it is that I am.

 

I'm only 23, but I've been getting way more libertarian these past few years. I guess at this point I'm a social libertarian and a fiscal moderate.

 

Kind of. I claimed libertarian when I was in high school cause it sounded cool. Then I really didn't care much but voted for Bush the first time and skipped the second one. I almost thought I was liberal or progressive till I saw all their lies. Then I thought I was conservative till I saw their lies. So now I am back to libertarian cause I have yet to see someone that lies when being held to actual written rules as their guide.

 

It sounds like you got yourself hip-deep in some biased literature. Why not try reading some economic perspectives from the left?

 

When I was younger I was socialist, better said socialdemocrat, in America I would have been liberal.

Later I became a bit communist, or communist at all. But always I had my side leaning to anarchism, but I didn't believe possible anarchism. Later I became more informed about anarchism, I understood it better, and I became completely anarchist, but not totally revolutionary, I didn't believe in revolution.

Now, I am anarchist and revolutionary. I defend the revolution. Peaceful always that is possible, but revolution at all. And every day that passes more convinced about the social revolution is absolutely necessary. So in conclusion, as older I become more radical I become.

 

You communist.

 

So the teachers and other leftist influences in his life wasn't enough, you want him to go brainwash himself some more to be screwed up with socialistic ideologies? Wow, not blind are you?

 

Yep, liberal. Big government, but no government at all leaning.

 

After spending the past month on this forum, I'm convinced that we would be better off if ruled by a benevolent despot...

Bro

 

When I was young I considered myself socially liberal. I have always been fiscally conservative. In my early 20’s I considered myself libertarian for the most part. I then caught on that the only thing holding the people from their liberty is Government, no matter if it is the American model, communist, socialist, etc.

The only constant with any of the list above is Government. So in my mid-twenties I became an Anarchist. I have remained so for the last 10+ years and only see that my views have become clearer that Anarchism is the only real choice for me.

 

Always conservative. Watching liberals chase silly utopian pipe dreams cemented my political positions early on. I mean, really...who wants to be aligned with nuts who champion perfection to the exclusion of reality?

 

"Leftist teachers"? They don't exist in the US. Teachers in the US teach well within the bounds of acceptable debate. The rare few who step out of those bounds quickly find themselves marginalized. You can't find leftist teachers at all outside of colleges--and they're rare as hen's teeth there.

No one actually teaches the leftist view of the world in schools. It just isn't even discussed. They instead teach the view of the world that says Republicans and Democrats form two sides of the entire political spectrum, not bothering to teach "radical" ideas outside of those two options.

You will never see actual leftist teaching in an institutional setting. Speaking resistance to power and the status quo is not even remotely in line with what schools want to see out of teachers. Schools in the US in particular are too strongly geared towards making people productive workers rather than informed citizens.

I don't think anyone can intelligently comment on political theory if they haven't at least been exposed intellectually to the leftist perspective. How can you think yourself competent to comment on socialism if you haven't even read anything by socialists? Sheesh, is the ideology of the right so weak it can't even stand up to someone reading No Gods, No Masters? The actual leftist perspective isn't even talked about in schools, let alone taught. They don't even mention that it exists.

You can start talking about how the teachers in school have a leftist bias when they introduce a module on the Spanish Civil War (beyond a bare mention that it happened and Franco won), or even mention the existence of the Paris Commune. Hell, do they even teach the French Revolution at all now? I bet students are lucky to even have an opportunity to read selections from the Communist Manifesto, which isn't even a proper work on socialist theory--it was a political pamphlet for people who were already on board with socialism.

So yeah, I do suggest that before people tie themselves down to Hayek and Friedman, they ought to at least sample some of the opposing viewpoint. After they get done reading the Road to Serfdom, maybe they ought to sit down with Post-Scarcity Anarchism for another, equally radical viewpoint from the other side.

 

I went from being a squishy 'moderate' to a conservative as I began to understand both money and taxes and read the Constitution.