I was a life long Democrat from Virginia. My whole family is fairly liberal and we have always voted Democrat. I wanted the country to have nationalized health care and welfare programs for everyone. I pretty much wanted the government to take care of me from cradle to grave, so that everyone in the country would at the very least have a house and a job, no matter how poor they were.
The 2008 election was the first one I was old enough to vote in and of course I voted for Obama. I remember I had a friend and I asked her, "Do you think you're gonna vote for McCain or Obama?" and she said she didn't like either of the candidates. I found out she liked Ron Paul and I thought to myself, "Why would she support such a weird candidate?" Of course I knew nothing of Ron Paul, I never saw a Republican debate, and I only heard the negative things the mainstream media and my liberal friends have said about him.
After Obama was elected, I knew it was gonna be a rough time for the country either way. He received the Nobel Peace Prize, which I always thought was dubious, but w/e I thought. He began the stimulus package, which I kinda understood the logic of. I took an economics course the following year during college, which they taught Keynesian Economics, which further reassured me that Obama was doing the right thing. I got annoyed every time someone in my class would question the stimulus package and asked our professor about it. However, when the logic of the stimulus package was explained and how the mechanics of it was supposed to work, I did find that the stimulus package is really just the trickle-down theory of economics. Also, I found what it indirectly does is indirectly take money out of people's savings and puts it into the economy. Even so, because my professor was very adamant about this, and I understood the logic of how it increases GDP, I believed in it.
After a while, the economy never recovered, and we were still in Iraq. I thought to myself that perhaps Obama will not be able to do as much as we wants to. He then started proposing the Healthcare plan, which I always thought why? I understand that healthcare is important, but shouldn't we focus on the economy first? It just seemed to me Obama was trying to do too much. Then something happened that just made my support for Obama run downhill from there. The controversy of the ground zero mosque occurred. Obama gave a press conference where he said that they should be allowed to practice their religion, just like everyone else in their country. From this tone, you could clearly tell that he supported the mosque, not to mention all the cheers he got from the reporters, and I was cheering along with them. However, the very next day, a reporter caught Obama walking toward an airplane and asked him again about the mosque and he said that he was not saying that he personally supported it, but he was simply stating that it was their right. Me, along with many newscasters, called out bullsh*t! He clearly supported the mosque, and now he's backing away from that.
I voted for Obama because I thought he would have a humble foreign policy. He would talk to Iran without preconditions, he would have empathy for other nations, he was this new generation of politician where he would not play the games of the political world. Now that he was president, I thought that the old squabbles between politicians would end. But after I saw the way he acted during the incident of the ground zero mosque, I realized that he really was just another politician.
At the time, I had recently become a fan of the show, Penn and Teller's Bullshit. On one of the episodes, Ron Paul (who they first mistook for Ian McKellen) was talking about the income tax and government. He was saying how republicans get elected, but then do the opposite of what they say they're gonna do and make the problem even worse, and then democrats get elected, do exactly what they said they were gonna do, and make the problem even worse. I just really liked how funny he was and how he articulated his answers. So I became intrigued and I looked him up on youtube and saw him during the presidential debates. Afters seeing him answer, I had a man crush. He was completely different from any other Republican, and he was better than any Democrat. What he says makes complete sense. I bought his book Revolution: A Manifesto and I read a little about Michael Scheuer and I would here about Peter Schiff. I looked those guys up and I fell in love with them as well. I understood how GDP was not a real way to measure how well the economy was doing and I understood how we got into this recession in the first place, it wasn't do to "Animal Spirits." I also finally found out how America's intervening policy in the middle east has actually been very harmful toward American and explains why the terrorists hate us so much, not because our women go to college or we are free and prosperous. I became a paultard.
Today, whenever a political conversation comes up, I try to not seem so passionate about it because people get annoyed and they automatically shut themselves off from you. I usually just try to gently get thoughts in people's head, like asking why healthcare is so expensive in the first place? How did we get into this recession? Why do the terrorists hate us so much? So far, I have gotten quite a few of my friends interested in Ron Paul, luckily primaries in Virginia are open, so they do not need to worry about changing party affiliations or anything. On the night of the May 5th debate, I called my dad up to ask if he was watching it. As my entire family is very liberal, he said, "No, why would I watch a republican debate? I don't care about them." I then told him that my man was Ron Paul, he said "What? No! He is a God-fearing republican, his son Rand Paul is completely crazy." Of course you would not be able to change someone's mind in a single phone call, but I asked him to just watch it and see Ron Paul's answers. He said he might watch a little. To be honest, I think he forgot, which I think is a good thing since that debate actually was not a very good one in displaying Ron Paul's views.
Now that the summer is beginning, I think I'll be able to talk to my family a lot more about the libertarian views and that Ron and Rand are not nearly as crazy as they think they are. This is my story of how I took a completely 180 degree turn from being a liberal leaning on socialist to libertarian. I have never felt so passionate for an ideal and a politician in my life before. Ron Paul has cured my apathy and I'm spreading his views around.
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