RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events How did you develop your political beliefs?

How did you develop your political beliefs?

Are they the result of your upbringing or the environment that you grew up in? Or are they something you developed independently?

Have there been events in your life that have shaped your personal politics?

Have your political beliefs changed as you got older - have you become more right or left wing?

How do you see them changing in the future?



Can this please not turn into a flame war or a thread where people try to undermine each other.

Mine were probably highly influanced by my Republican mother. However, as my mom has some really stupid opinions (like 'homsexuals are pedophiles') I question them and have a toned down republican lean but am Independant. My opinions change if they aren't strongly held and supported, but when I have good reasoning and logic I usually stick to my ideals (no discrimination, etc.). I definately see them changing in the future.

Hell, after reading some arguments for abortion, there are a few cases in which I would support an abortion. It's no longer merely a gut reaction of disgust. I have reasons for why I support it in a few cases.

I grew up in a very liberal household and was politically aware at a very young age. I followed politics religiously drifting farther left each year. In '96 I proudly voted for Nader. Then I had to go out and work for a living. I'm not saying that paying rediculously high taxes on a rediculously low paycheck turned me conservitive. It's when my job put me in a position to view my side from the "other side" You see, one of my first jobs was as a currior in and arround Seattle. Well in mid December 1999 I had to deliver a care package to a downtown hotel for someone who was in town for the WTO. By the time I got to the hotel. that later would turn out to be the same hotel where then President Bill Clinton was staying, things had gotten harry enough that the police had barraceded the hotel and would let noone in. Well, i turned arround and headed back to my VW Van care package still in hand. On my way back I encountered some protesters who since I was semi nicely dressed stated yelling at me and were locked arms so as to not let anyone pass. I tried to explain my situation to some of them and they just kep chanting saying that they couldn't let anyone through, so I started to belittle one of the protesters telling them to take off thier damn Nikes since one of the groups they were protesting was infact Nike.... Nothin' so to make a long story short I ditched the package and stayed there for the day quesioning the protesters quizing them slowly beginning to realise how utterly uninformed they were. That week (the protests lasted almost a week, I had eventually got out by the way) I started to listen to some guy who shared my frustration with teh protesters only to discover that he, unfortunately was one of those local dirty conservitive talk radio guys, well I still listened occasionally and soon learned that these guys weren't alwayse wrong and the things I had been told about them weren't true and *gasp* some of the things they said that challenged my deeply held convictions acctually held up to close scrutiny. Well the story isn't entirely over, but my pancakes are ready.

I was encouraged to be Republican Conservative, but a bit like Uschi's case, I really didn't dig the way my mother encouraged me, so I kinda figured stuff out for myself later. I was kinda surprised to find that the right was what I agreed with.

I've had political opinions different from my parents since I got into high school and discovered I was actually smarter than my parents. I was raised in ignorant Conservatism (I'm not saying Conservatism is ignorant, I'm saying my parents' approach to it was and is ignorant).

I was bitten by a radioactive liberal.

Actually, this is a good question. I'll have to think about it and get back to you.

My mom is generally slightly to the right (getting further as she gets older, but I think this is fairly common) and my Dad is pretty much in the middle ("If God didn't want us to sit on the fence, he wouldn't have put a crack in our arse"). There are anomallies to their beliefs, homosexuality has always made dad slightly uncomfortable, but never really bothered mom.

I've always been socially Liberal that I can remember, but I used to be economically conservative. I did A-level economics and some stuff at university and started to find things I didn't like about it (the whys and wherefores are not the point of this thread and so I won't expand) and so I became a full on (evil) liberal.

In terms of military, I probably do stand slightly to the left, but I have no problem with military intervention when justified (my opposition to the Iraq war, for instance, wasn't based on my leftyism in my mind, but again, that's a different argument).

My parents are moderate Conservatives, although it’s not really discussed. I have strong Liberal leanings but I also believe that a Liberal Government will fail if their policies are liberally enforced. If you want these freedoms then you have to be tough and set clear boundaries, but you should also be prepared to be flexible. I think I’d define my position as a hard, hands-on style of Liberalism.

I grew up during the Conservative Thatcher era and I think, more than anything else, that has shaped my politics. I’ll accept that, in the short term, Thatcher was good for the country because it was in a pretty sorry state when her Government took over. After a while, her policies began to benefit a wealthy minority while those at the bottom end of the social scale found themselves squeezed.

It was a terrible era of great inequality and Thatcher used the police force to put down resistance in a very brutal and heavy handed way. She ran the country like it was still a world-ruling colonial power, rather than the diminishing empire it really was. Occasionally they show footage form the 1980s on TV and it’s hard to believe this was England only a couple of decades ago.

In the post Thatcher years, the Conservative party became ridden with corruption and sleaze. It was also deeply out of touch. They attempted to distract from this by embarking on a series of witch hunts. For a while, single mothers were blamed for the collective failings of UK society. There was a horrible, condescending political slogan that the Conservative party used around this time to defend their methods: “Yes it hurts. Yes it works.” The trouble is, their policies hurt the most vulnerable people in society.

On a more personal level, when I was 17 I moved away from reading Sci-fi and Fantasy and began reading a lot of left field literature and philosophy. A few people at my school came out of the closet and I began experimenting with hard drugs.

I did some travelling abroad and when I was in The Yemen Republic, frequently wandered into areas where foreign companies were extracting oil or natural gas, while around them the indigenous people lived in poverty and squalor.

Two of my friends, who I’d known since their early teens, got put in detention centres and later ended up in prison. At one point, one of them was selling his arse on the street so that he could buy heroin.

There was a terrible pre-determinism to their descent into crime: the shitty, abusive family backgrounds, the mental problems, the failure at school, the belittling comments from teachers who’d given up on them. It turned me off this perception that criminals are animals and that you should lock them up and throw away the key. These boys did bad things but they weren’t bad people. They were trapped in a cycle of behaviour, partly of their own making but also reinforced by things beyond their control. They were let down by a society that was too lazy to look for solutions or commit to anything other than lock them up whenever they caused trouble.

In addition to my Liberal beliefs, I also have a strong Libitarian streak, which is mainly a reaction to my parent’s knee-jerk deference to authority figures. It also comes from watching people in power demanding more respect than they are due or using their influence to bully those in inferior positions. Nothing really disgust me more than the misuse or power and it’s been difficult for me to disassociate this from the Conservative party in the UK, because they were a textbook case of how power can corrupt ideals.

I think that it’s only in my late twenties that I really developed a conscience and it’s been in those years that my political beliefs has crystallised. I have set myself a personal goal of being receptive to politics other than my own , but, so far, I’ve fallen well short of that goal. There’s idiots and scoundrels from all political persuasions. The only people who count on any side are people of integrity, which is what I hope to be one day.

You are right about Thatcher's early years. People make out she destroyed the country, but 70's Britain was a mess from what I've seen and read (chikd of 1980 so I have no memories to go on there).