Change of tune

Hi all, thought I'd share something and see if anyone else has had anything like the same experience.

I used to class myself as an 'anarchist'. I believed in direction action, that government was essentialy a bad thing and that people should be allowed more or less to govern themselves.

About a year back I changed my mind. After being involved a great deal in grassroots movements, I began to be disillusioned. Everyone around me seemed to be into the whole sloganeering thing, and doing things that they thought were making a difference but in reality weren't achieving very much at all. On top of that, most of the people around me seemed to be very much into it for how they thought it made them look.

I got out of it, read a lot of political theory, did a lot of thinking and reassessing of the world and my own ideals. I'm now more or less at the opposite end of the spectrum - I believe in small, democraticaly elected government by the people for the people: essentially, republicanism a la Thomas Paine or Thomas Jefferson. I think that a lot of smaller 'anarchist' movements do a lot of damage to themselves through some of the stuff described above, while being at the same time difficult for a large portion of the public to relate to (even though I still agree with some of their principles) and unable to take into account or consider opposite views - basically, close minded.

Anyone else had any experiences like this, entire turn-arounds of their own viewpoints? How and why, and what do you believe now?

I used to be what I guess was a type of socialist. Most of my views were liberal, but I agreed with the republicans when it came to militarism. I supported a strong centralized government that promoted equality and multiculturalism. I didn't think that illegal immigration was a bad thing because illegals do work that Americans don't want too. I also thought that jihadists were out to destroy America because they mistakenly think we're a morally corrupt society and they want us to stop drinking alcohol and cover womens faces.
My positions changed durastically over the years after working various jobs with different kinds of Americans and immigrants, spending time in the military, and going to college. I still support socialistic policies as safety nets and to help the poor, but I think that they need to be distributed in a manor that keeps people from being dependent on and abusing them. I no longer support multiculturalism. I DO support legal immigrants who want to learn english, either are educated or want to get an education at an American university, and want to work here. There are lots of very smart students in American universities from Asia, Europe, and Africa and we need them to stay here and contribute to the US after they graduate. Illegal immigrants that don't want to assimilate at all are not good though. I think we need a strong military, but do not need to be involved in the middle east. I blame our support of Israel for our problems in that region. I don't believe in an international Jewish conspiracy or any of that stuff though. I am willing to pay fairly high taxes if the government uses the funds for the right things and doesn't just spend it on buying off useless allies, supporting people who don't intend to ever work, propping up hospitals that are being financially hit by providing healthcare to poor uninsured illegal immigrants, and bailing out businesses that have already demonstrated their incompetance.