A History of My Political Views

I thought my first post should be a back-story on how I reached the political views I have today. This is too much to put in the about me section, hence a full post.

In high school I cared absolutely nothing for politics, seeing it as a topic that was always argued at family get-togethers, but not anything I had a desire to learn about. As I was going into college I saw more and more people that talked politics who were my age. Most I knew were quite liberal and hearing a lot of what they had to say I became very liberal. One of the first papers I wrote in college was why gun control was necessary and why our founding fathers would have supported it.

Second semester freshman year had a professor, a very liberal professor, who taught literature philosophy. No matter the discussion he always told us there were two sides to every argument, and he would always play devils advocate. At the time I really did not have any opinions so I would only argue when there were facts to input, but he really got me thinking. I started to look at the other point of view on all the liberal ideas I had just taken for granted.

Some of the views I kept, including many of the social ones such as gay rights and abortion and religion as part of the state. I looked into the conservative point of view, but would never be able to agree with it. Other topics though, I started to change. I looked into fiscal policy and slowly began to see how blind I had been agreeing with liberal politicians. My biggest change of all came on the topic of gun control. By the time I took a speech class my sophomore year I gave a speech on how important gun rights were and in no case could I find gun control causing more good than it did harm.

Junior year I did very little with politics, mostly learning about the different sides to the climate change debate. In the end I took neither side completely making more of a hybrid of opinions. The summer between Junior and senior year I wrote an essay for one of the people on Youtube I subscribe to, who works at Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). I got accepted and went down to Washington D.C. with a group of like minded people and got my full awakening to the Libertarian point of view. Which is now what I would consider myself closest to. It was an amazing experience.

Senior year I finally started being politically active on campus. Joining both the College Democrats and the College Republicans. Since I like more of a balance in politics and Rhode Island is almost entirely a blue state most of my work was with the college Republicans, not to mention it is a much more active group than the college Dems. I enjoy hearing peoples opinions in both groups and love being involved so much in politics.

In the end I have become for the most part fiscally conservative and socially liberal, but I am constantly learning and adjusting my opinions on different topics. What I learned the most from all of this is how much I still have to learn.