Ideological shifts are a helluva drug.
As your username attests to. 
Teenage libertarianism seems to put one on an express lane to socialism.
Something about getting a real job and having compassion for others is a good start 
Are you implying that I do not have a real job or compassion for others?
Maybe it starts with the obsession with purity and once libertarianism failed to mesh with reality... well. I never started with that problem.
You can support healthcare for the poor and middle class and still be a conservative
You can support a 45% tax rate on the top income bracket and still be a conservative
You can support regulating the piss out of banks and still be a conservative.
You can support co-ops and still be a conservative.
I never needed to be a socialist to support these things, though I have been called such many a time by people who don't know any better.
I never worried much about whether Ayn Rand, Ludwin Mises or Karl Marx would approve of what I think. I never gave a damn what some textbook said was doctrinaire thought and acceptable to be in x group. I determined that for myself. My only concern is what works to provide people with the most choices and yet stability, and will thus produce a stable society. A stable society being less prone to wild swings and populist urges, thereby produces that most desirable of circumstances for a traditional conservative, preservation of the system from collapsing.
Therefore my views did not change when I got a job, and I would like to think I always had compassion for others.
