How and why have you evolved politically?

[Mordecai]

Agnosticism --> Atheism
Early teens --> Late teens

My parents never really tried to install religious values into me. My father was raised Catholic and went to a Catholic school but he does not attend church and doesn't appear to follow the doctrine. I suspect he is agnostic (if not a closet atheist). My mother is religious but does not adhere to an organized religion (maybe spiritual is a better descriptor). She believes in God, Jesus Christ, Buddha, karma, and feng-shui.

Non-interventionism --> Interventionism
Early teens               --> Late teens

Learning the real, tangible, grisly details of what goes in other countries where they don't have democracy or republican values and rebuking the liberal/libertarian pessimism that intervention only makes things worse.

I think I've always been left-leaning, I believe in the idea of a welfare state where certain basic essentials are available for those who cannot afford it but recognize the impracticality of politicians being too left-leaning in the 21st century, so I take them as they come (the Keating/Clinton/Blair "New Left") because the alternative is inevitably a head-up-their-ass conservative who has backwards social views or has idiotic economic policies.

[TTS1996]

MRWP.  They used to meet at the People's Republik of Cambridge.  It's a bar, in the other Cambridge, as you might have ascertained by now.

You're plainly a troll. Someone in Cambridge, England, knows that they are "the Cambridge" and doesn't feel the need to call themselves "the other Cambridge". Someone in Cambridge, MA, knows there's another Cambridge, but assumes they're talking to Americans who know sod all about England and so doesn't need to explain; to them they're "the Cambridge" too. Especially on a forum like this where avatars explain in bright colours where you're from. Canuckistani? Work on the American principle. You're not going to be talking outside your continent.

And besides, "the People's Republik of Cambridge" is not an English phrase nor I guess in vogue at Harvard or in Boston.

[traininthedistance]

And besides, "the People's Republik of Cambridge" is not an English phrase nor I guess in vogue at Harvard or in Boston.

Actually, it's a real bar; I've seen it. 



And "People's Republic of Cambridge" is also a phrase that gets bandied about from time to time.

I think angus is a little too sure of the universality of his own anecdotes sometimes, but he is no troll.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Is a change in issues really "evolving"?  Well, whatever, I don't consider it evolving, but here's what's different over the last 10 years or so:

1) I'm for legalization of almost all drugs and prostitution.

2) Favor gay marriage being legal.

3) In favor of nearly all free trade agreements.

4) In favor of "drill baby drill"

5) We need to stop being the world's policemen.

6) We need to stop our non-stop regime change position (goes with 5).

7) Get rid of the Patriot Act, Fatherland Security (except some of the agencies underneath it that have always been around).

8 ) Gut the power grabs the entire alphabet soup of government agencies have taken.

9) Favor school uniforms

Oh hell there's tons more, but I'm done typing.

[traininthedistance]

As for my own evolution... the only really major shift that took place happened when I was about ten or so, when, one by one, I sloughed off all those socially conservative Catholic morality police positions, hand-in-hand with sloughing off belief in Catholicism in general.  First I became okay with premarital sex, then SSM, then divorce, and opposition to abortion was the last thing to go- it lingered on basically until I was in college.

FWIW, the thing that started me on the path to questioning Rome?  I couldn't for the life of me see why it was fair that women couldn't be priests.

Besides that, I have more or less always been a liberal intellectual snob (yes, even back when I was still in single digits and otherwise under the sway of religion).  And you know what?  I'll goddamn own it.  I've always considered the environment the absolute number one issue out there.  I've always valued cosmopolitanism and diversity.  I've always been center-left on economics, wanting a strong welfare state with good regulations but accepting the basic premise of a market economy.  I've always cast my lot with the artists and the scientists and the professors, and sought to justify my positions with their discoveries and expertise.  Sometimes, I'll change my views on individual things- I have grown to more-or-less support nuclear power, to rail against restrictive zoning (and, by extension, to take a dim view towards much of what gets called "historical preservation"), and learned to love inflation.  But I'd say that all of that is less a change in ideology/outlook, and more a consequence of, deep down, staying the same: since my axioms demand that I be willing to change my views as better evidence comes to my attention, it would be a wonder if I didn't do so.  

[All Along The Watchtower]

I have turned from a feel-good generic liberal Democrat into a somewhat jaded yet (I'd like to think) smarter version of myself. Still a Democrat when it's time to vote, but I have become far less optimistic about politics. It's important to keep things in perspective, be pragmatic, yadda yadda cliche etc.

Oh, and I have socialist sympathies (but don't we all, at times? ) Whatever, though; I would stop at identifying myself as a "socialist" because too many well-meaning but rather naive young liberals identify themselves as such.

[IceSpear]

When I was like 13 and just learning about politics I had a "communist" phase (embarrassing). But since 14/15 I've been a liberal, and still am at 21.

[DC Al Fine]

I've always been fiscally centrist and socially conservative.  Most of the changes in my politics have been why we should do something, not what we should do.

[Mr. Illini]

Partisan conservative Republican ---------> Paleoconservative --> Libertarian --> Minarchist --> Brief moderation phase --> Center-left

Issues that remained constant through all of those:

Pro-marriage equality
Pro-life
Environmentalist streaks

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

When I realized that the American tradition of separating people in winners/losers, makers/takers, etc. is simply BS to hide the true plight of the working class and that rich people aren't to be admired.  Did not change the idea that people must have the ability to choose how they want to spend their careers, nor did it affect how important I think the incentive to innovate/create is, but it caused me to support more government intervention in fixing the injustices of the capitalist system.

[Torie]

I haven't evolved much fundamentally in that department (yes, I have a bit in others ), since about age 6. Yes, really. Sure at the edges things get a bit more complex, and more of those pesky grays emerge, as the decades fly by at an ever faster rate, but that is simply the effect of acquiring a greater mental database I think more than anything else.