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Do you know of any lefties who used to be conservatives?
07-02-2016, 12:24 PM
I was pondering this the other day.
Certainly there are many on the right who were formerly lefties - myself included. Seeing what the left has become these days, I'm not surprised.
But is there anyone you know of, whether famous or not, who was a conservative but is now a left-winger?
"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others...in the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute." - John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
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Do you know of any lefties who used to be conservatives?
07-02-2016, 01:04 PM
For celebrities, it would be career suicide to ever express conservative ideas. I suspect a lot of them are in the closet.
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Do you know of any lefties who used to be conservatives?
07-02-2016, 03:03 PM
Had a buddy in high school who was always rather soft, but still conservative. He drives a subaru now covered in stereotypical liberal bumper stickers. I blame the hippie university in Portland he went to, plus his family is die hard left.
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Do you know of any lefties who used to be conservatives?
07-02-2016, 03:54 PM
I was decently conservative before I went to college, only to fall for the preachings of my professors. I lived on campus, so it was even worse. It hard to explain, but you basically become left wing just by breathing the air. Basically, if you wanna get along with most people, you have to be left wing. You just adopt it through osmosis because it's leftism isn't even debatable at that point. Conservative counterpoints are literally met with arguments like "oh my god, are you serious...".
But then I entered the real world and swung back to the right.
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Do you know of any lefties who used to be conservatives?
07-02-2016, 10:10 PM
I used to be more left-wing when I was younger; mainly over issues such as drug de-criminalization; I also grew up around fundamentalist Christians and felt that they and some of their beliefs (such as young earth creationism) were pretty stupid.
Later on I identified more with the right once I saw how much the modern left is motivated by a victim mindset, and how unlike religious extremists they seem to have a lot more influence in academics and the mainstream media. Also learned that the far-left is just as "anti-science" as fundamentalist Christians; what with claiming that an unborn child isn't a human unless the parents "decide" so, or that sex has nothing to do with biology, just "feelings".
Not to mention things such as climate change hysteria, and deification of science as "gospel" basically just taking the place of religion for atheists and leftists; as far as evolution goes, they simply use evolution as a 'creation myth' and use it to justify as "life is meaningless, do whatever you want" view of the world.
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Do you know of any lefties who used to be conservatives?
07-02-2016, 10:36 PM
I suspect it happens from time to time when people come out of university on the left, join the workforce and swing to the right, then get disillusioned with the two-party-one-party system and swing back towards libertarianism, mother-earthism or some other kind of protest mentality.
Those protest mentalities are more closely associated with the left, despite the fact that most people in them wouldn't be able to stand the company of progressives OR conservatives.
The public will judge a man by what he lifts, but those close to him will judge him by what he carries.
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Do you know of any lefties who used to be conservatives?
07-03-2016, 05:06 PM
There is this quote: Who isn't a socialist with 20 has no heart. Who is it still with 40 had no brain.
When you are young you want to rebel, change the world and feel immortal. You want to have everything fair and right. Its kind of a natural tendency and when you are from a very conservative background it even mix with the natural rebel period. On the other hand what should kids rebel against today? We have freedom of expression, strange family models and all kind of liberty. Things seem less stable and so younger people tend - at least in Germany - to bring back traditional values. Family, kids because in the outside world the things are less stable and so they want to have at least the private life stable. This leads also to this strange behavior with kids. Kids become a project for insecure parents because no matter what, you can lose your partner, your job, your friends but your kid say.
Furthermore there are some articles out there that younger people have the tendency for less sex partners. Don't know how accurate it its. For me it feels like those hyper liberal SJW types are at their peak. When you look at some twitter trendes or social media outrage, it goes always back to the same few sources of people / groups. So the only drive away from be conservative is when you did grow up in a super strict environment.
Personal I don't like the term conservative. Conservative people are for me people that want to keep and restore the past. Then they come up with things like Rock music is bad, video games are bad, the internet is bad because they are not able to adapt new things of society change. When you want to keep your values you have to adapt and transform them to the new circumstances.
We will stand tall in the sunshine
With the truth upon our side
And if we have to go alone
We'll go alone with pride
For us, these conflicts can be resolved by appeal to the deeply ingrained higher principle embodied in the law, that individuals have the right (within defined limits) to choose how to live. But this Western notion of individualism and tolerance is by no means a conception in all cultures. - Theodore Dalrymple
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Do you know of any lefties who used to be conservatives?
07-03-2016, 05:33 PM
Two useful heuristics come to mind for choosing sides when you have limited information:
1. When only one side attempts to address the arguments of the other, go with that side.
2. When the vast majority of defectors change to the same side, go with that side.
Conservativism wins on both of these.
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Do you know of any lefties who used to be conservatives?
07-04-2016, 08:23 AM
Hillary Clinton's father was a republican. Early on Hillary was a Goldwater girl.
Elizabeth Warren had early ties to the Republican Party but I wouldn't classify her as having been a conservative. I believe she voted republican mainly on economic issues.
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Do you know of any lefties who used to be conservatives?
07-04-2016, 10:39 AM
Quote: (07-04-2016 08:23 AM)Dantes Wrote:
Hillary Clinton's father was a republican. Early on Hillary was a Goldwater girl.
Elizabeth Warren had early ties to the Republican Party but I wouldn't classify her as having been a conservative. I believe she voted republican mainly on economic issues.
That seems appropriate. Hillary Clinton, like Bill fall into the "southern democrat" category. Southern democrats are essentially more corrupt republicans, which is hilarious as thats they way they would like to paint actual republicans.
Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing? Psalm 2:1 KJV
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Do you know of any lefties who used to be conservatives?
07-04-2016, 12:30 PM
And to answer the question in the OP, yeah I've known a few people who went from the right to the left. One guy I knew was part of the Young Republicans in undergraduate and vote for Dubya Bush twice. Disillusion with the GOP around that time led him to move to the left even though he's not a SJW type.
The other ones I know are these two girls who were raised in conservative, suburban families going to church and all of that jazz. One of them even led a Bible study at her high school. After graduating high school both of them went YOLO and started getting into booze and drugs. They also started getting more into politics and typical of a lot of girls their emphasis is mostly on these bleeding heart social issues, especially LGBT ones though one of them is starting to get big into gun control too. Both of them are also Bernie supporters, big surprise.
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Do you know of any lefties who used to be conservatives?
07-05-2016, 08:53 PM
Arianna Huffington
However I question if she ever truly believes in anything, except social climbing.
You don't get there till you get there
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Do you know of any lefties who used to be conservatives?
07-06-2016, 02:04 AM
I know a few, all women from traditional, religious families, and turned leftist while at college / university.
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Do you know of any lefties who used to be conservatives?
07-07-2016, 03:43 AM
I went the other way (liberal to hardcore conservative) driven by actually living around liberals.
I don't know anyone who has done the opposite.