Can you describe the history of the development of your political views?

My parents were Workman’s Circle Jews; my Uncle Mike was a Communist in Albany, and not even the Ribbentrop-Stalin pact moved him off the Party Line.

In 1968 I helped burn down the Bank of America branch in Isla Vista, California, and trash the ROTC building on the UCSB campus.

So, I guess you could call me a Moderate Democrat.

I never paid much attention to politics growing up. But as a woman who turned 18 in 1984, abortion rights and equal pay for equal work were important issues for me, so I initially voted straight democrat.

I have since come to see how corrupt the entire 2-party system is, and now only feel that the democrats are the lesser of 2 evils, primarily still because of the abortion rights issue. Neither party truly represents what they were intended to. So although I lean a little to the liberal side, I vote Libertarian whenever they have a candidate running.

I would love to see the entire system get an complete overhaul. Fundraising shouldn’t be the determining factor in how a candidate is allowed to get air time or be represented in the media or in debates.

I was born in post-communist Romania.All my grandparents are communist,my mom and my uncle are religious fanatics and my dad is an economist which thinks that politic is useless.I also have a step-family which has a lot of idiot superstitions and I have to listen them every big celebration(Christmas,Eastern etc)I hate every one of them and I also like science so I started to guide after Einstein,Carl Sagan,Stephen Hawking and other great man of science.As a result I become an agnostic which thinks that today’s politics isn’t politics it’s just a fight between corrupt people.I think that politics shouldn’t mean power,they should be a huge responsability to do what’s fair(not best)for the people you represent.I also think that if the world’s mentality would be the same as the scientist mentality than the world would be much better.In conclusion my politic part is a “scientific” one.

My family were always democrats, so I took on that label as well as a young teenager. As I got a little older, I realized that my grandparents were ‘old-school, southern democrats’... not what we think of as democrats today. My grandfather was actually a racist, sexist bigot! I was the very first person to stand up to him about his harmful views (he was also a big, scary guy). It wasn’t a matter of politics to me, it was a matter of fairness. My friends and boyfriends were all colors of the rainbow. They were just people. Why should any of them be judged for anything other than their character? I didn’t want to hear him spouting off about (insert “n word“s here) anymore.

In addition to that, my black boyfriend was badly beaten by a group of yahoos after he had the nerve to walk down the midway at the fair holding my hand, with an “I love you” helium balloon floating between us. As a result of these things, racism was the first ‘political’ issue I ever cared about. Again, I didn’t see it as political, though. Just an issue that was directly impacting people I cared about.

That basic issue of fairness is what has informed by views ever since. When I was old enough to think and care about the actual politics of my views, I did my research. I am a democrat… but, thankfully, not the same kind of democrat my grandfather was.

Never paid much attention to Philippine politics until Benigno Aquino. was assassinated then everyone was out in the streets, including high school student me, protesting against the Marcoses and martial law. In college, joined the protest rallies against the U.S. military bases and wrote a lot of articles (for the college publication) against the human rights violations during that period. Have not voted since 1992 mainly because I was disgusted (and still is) with the corruption attendant to Philippine politics and elections. Stopped believing in god (the Catholic one) when I was 15 and started learning, around that time too, everything I could about evolution and gravity all the rest of the physical laws too, but gravity is the most fascinating of all, IMO. So an atheist, a great believer in human rights, and very much would like to have been sent out on that interstellar mission into the edge of the solar system. yipee! the links are looking like the way they should be. Not much on politics, I’m afraid.

I first registered as Republican in 1974. I didn’t agree with the Democrats in power at the time (McGovern, Humphrey, Johnson), and found agreement with Lindsey of New York (who was considered a moderate Republican). At the time, Nixon was falling from power, and I thought the moderates would take over the party. They didn’t.
In college, I was told to debate a nuclear arms treaty (I think it was START), and I was told to oppose it. I found a lot of trouble trying to justify a NO vote on it, and finally found a TIME article that said that it was opposed by most of the Right, and some on the far left. I took the far left view in the debate, and felt fairly comfortable there. I knew I didn’t belong with those on the Right.
I realized I was a moderate Democrat, though I stayed registered Republican for another 5 or 6 years. I worked very hard to elect John Anderson President in 1980, but otherwise have almost always voted Democrat.

I voted for Anderson in ‘80 during the the mock election at my elementary school. I was vaguely aware of corruption among Louisiana politicians in my teens. I was fortunate, I suppose, to have found very liberal/progressive teachers and classes at a very conservative college and was able to see the problem
with the overt and institutional racism that I grew up with in Louisiana, and I also learned about third world politics via the medium of film.

In ‘96, I was an active Green Party member at a time when the Greens had achieved major party status in New Mexico. (They’ve since lost that status.) I’ve kind of
always been a third party guy.

Following that, my next major political shift was picking up a David Icke conspiracy theory book on a whim, reading it six months later, and then spending a year or so devouring conspiracy lit/info. Consequently, I became a full-fledged whack job (and still am). What’s new for me now is something like a “Wizard of Oz” sensibility that falls more along the lines of reality is malleable and rooted in our imaginations. So politics, IMHO, is sort of a form of mind- and reality control. It directs our collective chanting and takes advantage of our caring natures to create a reality that let’s us squabble over window decorations while distracting us from our innate and divine power.

hmm, my Dad always said the Republicans were for the Rich and the Democrats would get us into a war. I don’t remember him voting, but then, by the time I was old enough to vote, he was too crippled up to do much more than drink, swear at the tv and give my Mom grief.

I started out as a Democrat, wandered into the Libertarian camp for awhile, pondered the Moderate Republican camp, and decided that no matter the party line, career politicians were all crooks and liars and the only reason they existed was to continue feeding at the public trough and to get re-elected. I have never voted a straight party ticket. I always vote my conscience.

I spent some time in the Republican circles, but the Far Right was taking over everything with their God rhetoric, so I wandered back to the left again. I’ve decided that the only safe place for a free thinking atheist (erp, sorry, Evelynist) was right in the middle. Some say being in the middle of the road can get you killed, but I say that it is easier to see trouble coming from that vantage point.

I identify with Independent.

I don’t remember my parents talking about politics but they watched a lot of news and I saw coverage of the McCarthy hearings and the HUAC hearings here in SF and though I don’t remember my Dad saying anything, I got the impression that he disapproved, Both he and my mother were involved in organized labor which was pretty political, I got interested in Kennedy in 1959.

We moved South and one day when I was in middle school they brought in a right wing speaker. When I went home with his load of hooey, my Dad sat me down and poked holes in it. After that we had a lot of political discussion. A lot of his input was challenging me to think logically when I went off in an adolescent fervor about injustice.

I was surprised many years later that my mother was a Republican,

NOTE: Italy has a multi-party system, so we use degrees to left and right where far left are old-school “USSR communists” and far right are the remains of the Fascist Party

My mother is a catholic centre-left winger my father is more of a centre-right winger. I took off from both my parents’ ideas and subsequently became an infoanarchist and an anarchist in the sense used by Bakunin (therefore a collectivist anarchist).