Canuck here, there's not as much of an appetite for libertarianism up north as there is in the states.
I grew up in a conservative area, but became quite a leftist in high school. However, when I moved to a leftist environment (university) I quickly grew tired of the left's antics -- especially the constant political correctness bullshit.
It was in this time I fell in love with the US. Like many Canadians, I had been raised in a very anti-American household. My family and friends would constantly look down their noses at Americans with an unmerited sense of superiority.
I was friends with some politcal science majors who convinced me to watch the Republican primaries with them "for fun". I had always (foolishly) assumed that the Republicans were a monolithic party of backwards hillbillies. I was surprised not only at the variety of opinions, but also how sensible a lot of these policies sounded. Coming from a society that scoffs at Americans love of "freedumbs", I started being interested in and embracing the idea of liberty re: social issues.
I was still somewhat of a big government conservative (the jewy neocon type) until one summer when I worked for the federal government. I was amazed at the amount of middle managers who were paid close to six figures to walk around the production for pretending to look busy. I had three different managers I reported to, all with different titles, but all seemingly had the same duties.
Government projects are incredibly wasteful and unproductive and left an awful taste in my mouth. It was a real shock realizing these retarded busywork projects were costing the taxpayer millions and millions of dollars every year. It was a very small step to libertarianism from there.
What's your story?
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[–] saintPirelli 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago (edited ago)
European here. There are no relevant Libertarian movements at all here. I feel like in Europe there are a lot of social axioms that a vast majority believe in (or at least pretend to believe in). Nuclear power plants are bad. Everything right-wing is evil. The Catholic church is retrogressive at best and all priests are child molesters. Global warming. Immigration per se is a good thing. Guns are bad. A tightly knitted social net is important because poverty can hit anybody at any time through no fault of their own. You get the idea. When so many people are convinced by the same thing, even though there are very obviously valid counter arguments, that rings my alarm bells and sometimes, not always, I find myself on the other side of what is "socially acceptable".
Poverty is the result of the capitalist society we live in is another one of those axioms that I - in the heat of puberty - had kind of forgotten to critically question. I can remember finding the Facebook-Page "Capitalism" and was shocked by how many people were "Liking" it. I have never met a single person who defended capitalism so I assumed it was either some kind of dark humour or the same way I can't explain why some people are satanist and willingly choose to follow evil. Then I realised that I had no idea what capitalism actually means, read up on it and here I am.
Now I work for the government and see how inefficient it is and how it disrupts those willing to produce first hand every day.