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Early conviction? What changed me?
I actually grew up in a liberal atheist household. Both my parents were pretty much hardliner democrats. I never really liked the right-wing from a young age because I saw them as a bunch of religious zealots who wanted to ram their religion down everyone elses' throats through use of the government.
What changed my views? I took an interest in a few things.. politics, philosophy, and history. My first 'real' book I read was probly 1984, by George Orwell. I still think that is one of my favorite books, if not THE favorite. Reading 1984 gave me a reason to distrust excessive government powers over social and economic policy. Seeing Bush pass the Patriot Act, and executing domestic spying programs made me just look, shake my head, and say "1984".
Next book I read was Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Rand appealed to me because I had never really seen conservatism from an atheist perspective. I had been pretty prejudice about conservatives, thinking they were all a bunch of bible thumping hicks who didn't know their ass from a hole in the ground, and voted blindly republican.
I liked Rand, and read through just about everything she had written. The other thing that appealed to me was that she was pro-choice, and that she thought the government had no right try and control sex between consenting adults (such as banning gay sex or trying to control the lives of gay people), or regulate pornography. This brings me to now.. I've started reading the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, and I've almost completed Animal Farm by George Orwell. I've also recently been reading from a wide variety of websites about libertarianism, guns and gun rights, human rights, and property rights, the relation of the two, and in general, the debate and battle of individualism vs collectivism and big-government.
Likely what changed my views the most drastically on the gun debate was reading about the historical connection between guns, self defense rights, gun control, gun proliferation, and genocide/democide, not to mention the overwhelming amount of evidence showing that gun control doesn't effect crime much at all. I then saw the movie "Innocents Betrayed", which really threw me over the edge, so to speak.
The largest problems I have with the right wing remain that the republican party is still (generally) for the Patriot act, domestic spying, generally seems to hate gay people, oppose stem cell research, and supports a very VERY aggressive interventionist foreign policy that runs contrary to the guidelines set forth by the founding fathers of the USA. The last remaining problem I see with them that comes to mind at the moment is that they are for restrictions on the freedom of speech, such as fining broadcasters for saying naughty words on the air which might piss off the religious right, and generally, parents who don't want to parent their own kids, not to mention that they are possibly even more corrupt than the democrats (though they are both certainly very corrupt).
The largest problem I have with the democratic party and the left is that they are borderline socialist, oppose gun rights, support gun control, won't stand up to the republicans on important issues like the patriot act, supports the U.N, and that their high taxes operate to destroy small businesses and competition largely to the benefit of large corporations who are in bed with the government, so to speak. In general, I want the dems to keep their nose out of my pocketbook, and to stop infringing on the 2nd amendment, among the other things mentioned.
The libertarian party is a very attractive alternative to me. I see them as having all the good aspects of either major party, minus the bullshit.