What originally lead you against your previous leftist thought? I would say the first thing that made me start thinking against socialist thought was the limitations that many “egalitarian” or collectivist systems created to diversity. In general, it seemed that they rejected the diversity that naturally came about from human culture, which is expressed very well in a free market.
Please don’t evict me: Alex Jones.
Jones manages to quite impressively play with leftist biases (e.g. corporations are evil, America is evil, military/police worship is evil) while at the same time slowly drawing you towards a limited-government position. He’s a loudmouth and he’s over the top, but apparently, this M.O. worked for me.
I was leftist until 7th grade because my grandfather always said the right want to take from the poor and give to the rich. And I didn’t like theft…
Then I started getting some kind of clue about society and gave it up right away.
Milton Friedman: capitalism and freedom. Liked it and tried to look for his Monetary History, but found Rothbard’s instead (thanks gigapedia for not having Friedman’s History!).
Four years in the military! I lived the BS!
For me it was M. Friedmans idea of education vouchers that brought me to read D. Friedmans “Hidden Order”. After that I started to read german libertarian media, but cant remember how I stumbled across it. Then I came to this site and since I am more and more convinced of the power of liberty.
Though I never really was leftist, I always was critical to society but pro-market … I think I just failed to realize that government influences economy too.
Alex Jones did it for me. I used to think that regulation was good… and that we needed the bailout per se. But I didn’t know the true nature of the bailout. I think Alex Jones helped me see that it was just a package for the financial elite. That was before I understood any economics at all… but he really helped me. He also helped me see that socialism wasn’t about distribution of wealth.
Ron Paul also helped me a bit. I used to just like his moral argument he gave about printing money. As if that was it. But I read his book Revolution the Manifesto (sp?) and it pointed me to the direction of this website. One of the things I did first was that I was actually quite a socialist back then so I wanted to see what this website had to say about socialism, and, it took me completely by surprise. I started to really appreciate laissez-fair economics and I started to see how what we have is a completely different system that’s not entirely market based but based more on the federal reserve. After doing a lot of reading on this website… and looking at a lot of economics things… it helped me see that government monetary policy and their fiscal policy only helped make things worse. I guess it was all about education for me.
Coming to understand in a conversation on my350z.com that businesses aren’t there to stick it to the little people and how instead they have to compete for our labor.
When I heard and read from people who were there what life was like in Soviet Russia. And that the Communists want to conquer the world, as they declared in their street posters openly.
Combination of talking to a Republican friend of mine in college and training BJJ.
I was leftist basically because my entire family was too (Jewish family) and I went to very liberal schools and I never heard the other side until college. I know that may sound unbelievable but I wasn’t exactly looking for other positions either. I just happened to meet someone who was very right wing and ultimately he showed me why my life experiences fit better with rightist thought than leftist thought. But it took a while.
I never stopped being one upon becoming a libertarian anarchist. Cheers.
Ron Paul, and his anti-war position had a lot to do, as well as his impresive congress record.
Later on, the sense and consistency of austrian economics helped a lot. Monetary history got me hooked.
A leftist on Mises? I’d love to see you post more often.
The usual is what gave me a leftist bent: bleeding heart, affluent suburban white kid guilt, a poor understanding of history, a poor understanding of economics and a poor understanding of government.
Then I started reading Human Action.
I remember the times brainpolice used to post more often. Heh, heh -good times, good times (though liberty student would’ve begged to differ).
Well you would have to define what you entail by leftism. Traditionally speaking, all libertarians are leftists. It would actually be as such
Anarchism------------Socialism-------------(Reactionary/Aristocracy) Conservatism
Some people like to think of it as a rightist movement. I don’t really have a qualm so long as you properly define what is on each side.
I was a leftist until 2007 (I come from a family of socialists). Ignorance and naivety were the culprits.
Learning about corporatism + this quote:
“the libertarian sees no inconsistency in being “leftist” on some issues and “rightist” on others. On the contrary, he sees his own position as virtually the only consistent one, consistent on behalf of the liberty of every individual. For how can the leftist be opposed to the violence of war and conscription while at the same time supporting the violence of taxation and government control? And how can the rightist trumpet his devotion to private property and free enterprise while at the same time favoring war, conscription, and the outlawing of noninvasive activities and practices that he deems immoral? And how can the rightist favor a free market while seeing nothing amiss in the vast subsidies, distortions, and unproductive inefficiencies involved in the military-industrial complex?”
Good old Murray
Discovering how leftists are full of envy and hatred.
My transition to libertarianism was a rather interesting one, and it all happened rather quickly. For a great while, I was, like many at a young age, a confused Marxist. I remember starting to have doubts about the ideology when I tried to formulate how a socialist/communist society would operate, what its institutions would resemble, etc. I very quickly realized how similar Marxian socialism and Fascism really were. This bothered me a great deal, since I could not imagine why these two supposedly opposed political system could be so structurally similar. I clearly remember thinking of how easy it would be to “flip a switch” and simply by changing a few titles and organizations around, convert a Fascist society to a Communist one, and vice versa. But I was a busy college student and didn’t really draw any lessons from these doubts, but the seeds were planted into my mind.
At around the same time, I was a radical vegan who completely believed in the notion of animal liberation. I thought that humans should leave animals alone in the wild and not interfere with their lives. I remember one day thinking about this ideology, when an inner contradiction revealed itself to me: why did I feel that it was just to not interfere with the lives of animals, but had no qualms about dictating how human animals should be made to live? This bothered me quite a bit, but I had no idea how to resolve it. But this experience did prime me for what came soon after.
I had learned about the Federal Reserve during this time, and was completely stricken at how unjust and immoral the whole thing seemed. I learned of this politician named Ron Paul who was criticizing the Fed through an interview of him I had watched, and I started listening to what he was saying. This “evil capitalist” was making a ton of sense to me. A short while later, I was completely surprised to find out that he was going to be running for president. Even though his beliefs were opposite to mine, I felt that he was sincere, consistent, and honest in his convictions. I really wanted a person like this to be president, and I hoped that he could expose the Federal Reserve if he gained support. And so I supported him, even though I was a progressive at that time.
As I became involved in the Ron Paul campaign, I was really impressed by the cogency and consistency of his personal philosophy, and I was drawn in. I wondered what was behind it. Then one day I heard him speak about Austrian Economics, Mises, and Human Action. I realized that his philosophy stemmed from a school of economics, the Austrian school, and became fascinated with what they had to say. I read about Mises and Rothbard, their ideas, and it all immediately clicked. I remember reading Mises’ Socialism with charged delight; it obliterated any remaining doubts I had, and showed me how silly socialist ideas really were. It was exhilarating! The first time I read Economics in One Lesson was one of those moments in life that you wish you could save in a bottle, so that you may relish a few magical drops from time to time.
The feeling you get when learning of Austrian Economics for the first time can’t be described as anything but magical. The clarity of insight, the fog clearing from my mind, was illuminating beyond any other experience. I wasn’t just putting on glasses for the first time and seeing the world anew. I was Galileo peering through a telescope at the cosmos; I was Darwin on his expedition when the first notions of Natural Selection crept into his mind; I was Newton under the apple tree. It was the first time in my life when everything that was so jumbled and incomprehensible about the world finally made sense. And it was beautiful.