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.