When did you first realize you were a liberal?

[terrya]

Have you known for some time...your belief system? Or did your thinking evolve to this point?

As long as I can remember, as long as I established what was right, what should be, I was a liberal. I grew up with JFK and Lyndon Johnson and the War on Poverty...the realization that government HAS a role to play in bettering all Americans lives. IN short, I've always been a liberal.

I'm just curious as to what your thoughts are.

Thanks
Terry

[Book Lover]

1. Absorbed it with my mother's milk

I was raised by a European immigrant and the daughter of a shop steward who went on to do some great labor and public health work herself. I've been a liberal since before I knew what the word meant.

[LibraLiz1973]

2. I'm like you

For as long as I can remember. I guess because I was raised this way. 99.9% of my immediate family are Democrats. The only non-dem is my uncle.. a card carrying member of the NRA. Overall a smart guy, but no matter what I say to him he can't believe that the Dems don't want his guns. It's pretty frustratiing.

[MrScorpio]

3. I was born that way

My first political thoughts were those that hated Nixon.

It was easy after that.

[Bullwinkle925]

4. The morning I awoke in Kansas in 1968 - finding out that Richard M. Nixon

had won the Presidential election. I headed out for California that very same month.
And - the rest is History!

[skygazer]

5. My immediate family were all Repukes

But I always felt like an oddball because even as a young kid, I didn't agree with my family's views, particularly about Vietnam. I knew I thought differently than they did from the time I was maybe 9 or 10 - they just didn't make sense to me. However, I didn't know I was a liberal; I thought I was a damned hippie radical because that was what my father called anyone who disagreed with him.

[Beware the Beast Man]

6. I've always been left of center, but the past 2 years cinched it for me.

I paid a high price for 12 years of Gen-X style political apathy. We all did, I'm sure.

[Katidid]

7. When I was 13 and caught reading

'The Prophet' by Kahlil Gibran, and my parents confiscated the book and told me never to bring that kind of trash into our home again. A memorable day.

[Droopy]

8. I've always been liberal but

didn't realize what the label meant until about 5 years ago. I was liberal before I knew I was liberal.

[Lady Effingbroke]

9. Confession time.

I became a liberal when I got a computer with access to the Internets and awoke from the corporate media brainwashing which, until then, had me firmly in its grip.

Five years ago I was a Faux Snooze watching dittohead moran. I cringe when I recall my former beliefs, however, I formed many of them based upon the best information available to me at the time - mainstream cable TV, newspapers, and radio (as I believe many well-meaning people do). My family has traditionally supported repub candidates, although recent discussions with my father have given me hope - he has sworn never to vote repub again, and realizes that the mess in Iraq is rapidly becoming worse than Vietnam.

I am so grateful for having Internet access and wonderful sites such as DU to visit for information.

Please forgive me my former conservatism. I was an idiot.

[Solly Mack]

10. Since birth

Honestly. There was never a time when I was anything else. Ever. Early on in my childhood I knew the difference between how I was being raised and how others were being raised. There came times, while growing up, when I asked myself if "this" was what I really believed and the answer was always "Yes."

[CaliforniaPeggy]

11. From birth...lol nt

[gratuitous]

12. Growing up, I always knew I was different

Other kids were infatuated with going off to war or bad-mouthing poor people. I thought war was kind of a stupid exercise and the use of force was more likely to indicate that you didn't have a valid position than anything else. Being poor myself (though I was largely unaware of it at the time), I knew a lot of poor people, and they all seemed to be hard-working folks many of whom had gotten a bad deal out of life. The old saying "There but for the grace of God go I" resonated with me.

As I got older and exposed to more sophisticated political thought, I found that unlike a lot of other people in my small town I was attracted to finding out how unfamiliar and people alien to me thought and acted and lived. I would often sneak a peek at The Nation or New Republic when I thought no one was watching.

Although I was sort of out in high school, it wasn't until I got to college that I really came out of the closet and acknowledged myself for who I was. Many good-hearted and well-meaning people were alarmed, and some tried hard to change me, but nothing really worked. My brain just kept thinking, and my compassion for other people kept growing. There was nothing I could do about it, even if I'd been so inclined, which I wasn't.

I learned to hide my liberal thoughts in certain crowds and "pass" so as not to offend my conservative friends and acquaintances. But when the truth came out, and it was clear that I wasn't going to change, that being a liberal was just the way I was, a lot of people who were formerly my friends began to shun me. It was a painful time.

Since then, I've learned to love myself and even found a community of like-minded persons with whom I can unabashedly share my liberalism and be myself. I've even found a church that fully accepts liberals, and I have a position of responsibility in my congregation and in its district.

[Left Is Write]

13. It was born in me.

And there was a bit of nurture also. I was raised by Democratic parents. I absorbed my mother's feelings about Ronald Reagan when I was teenager much the way my children are undoubtedly absorbing my feelings about Dubya.

I always knew that other people counted - the forgotten, the poor, the pushed aside. I always felt that what was good for all was more important than what was good for me, personally.

I was raised in the state that brought us the irreplaceable Paul Wellstone.

[GreenPartyVoter]

14. Mostly born one. Fundagelical friends and family got hold of me

but the brainwashing didn't take.

[philosophie_en_rose]

15. I was born in the South.

I immediately started crawling towards the Mason-Dixon line. :)

[alittlelark]

16. At 13 or so years old, while hanging out w/ my Nana,

a very liberal librarian. I realized I had more beliefs in common w/ her than w/ other family members. She taught me a lot. She died 4 days before 9-11, which is why I was flying on 9-11. She was 92, and I think she chose the right time to go.

[demnan]

17. I was weaned on secular humanism

and the first President I remember was John F. Kennedy. I loved to hear him speak. I was four when he was shot.

[JohnKleeb]

18. I realized I was a democrat very young at around 3-4

watching CSPAN with my grandmother who told me that dems stood up for the little guy and I liked that, i realized I was a liberal in 8-9th grade.

[El Fuego]

19. I was naturally liberal

I feel like I was born a liberal, though I didn't know what I was as a kid. Growing up, I just believed in what I thought was right, not thinking about whether it was liberal or not.

During the reign of Bush the First, I woke up and smelled the coffee. And I had a political Epiphany, and knew that I was, and always would be, a Democrat.

[DeposeTheBoyKing]

20. After Reagan's first term started

And my very Republican dad said he was going to vote against him in 1984 because Reagan "wasn't for the little guy." Unfortunately he died in 1983 and didn't get the chance. Mom was always a liberal; she ADORED FDR. Guess I got the liberal gene from her.

[Maat]

21. I'm in the minority here ... but I've had my ups and downs.

From my teenage years through university and until my first job, I was a liberal.

Then I went to work for aerospace and was brainwashed for about ten years.

Then, in the early 90's, I became enlightened and came over to the good side. Being a therapist-intern, and, subsequently a social worker, woke me up.

I agree with a DU poster who stated that interacting with people from other cultures and income levels is very good for the soul.

[xmas74]

22. I didn't know what it was for many years.

I was the kid in school who always supported the underdog no matter what the other, more popular kids did. In high school, I broke a cheerleader's nose w/ a field hockey stick when she called a fellow classmate a f*g. I invited the girl w/ Down's Syndrome out to lunch on quite a few occasions(they were awful to her and she needed to know that not everyone was like that). I took classmates through the backdoor at the local Planned Parenthood, even though I didn't need to use it(I wasn't active in high school at all). I went w/ one classmate over the state line when she needed some support over getting an abortion.
I didn't know it until my debate coach stated that I was one of the biggest liberals that he had ever met. He said it in a very nasty tone of voice (I remember his love of everything Goldwater and how often he would tell us to quote him in debate). I started reading up on liberalism and realized that I was one, stuck in a state full of conservatives.
And my best revenge on the debate coach? I made sure that every one of my speeches was chocked full of Truman quotes which really pissed him off (even though Truman is our native son). He hated everything about Truman.

[SKKY]

23. I definitely absorbed much of my ideals and opinions from my...

...surroundings (friends and teachers mostly), since I was way too young to have any meaningful experiences that would sway me in either direction. But, I also took a hard, long look at the other side as well and just didn't feel like I belonged. I didn't become politically aware until the Dukakis campaign as that was my first official vote cast for a president, so I'd have to say around that time.

[ClintonTyree]

24. 1960....

Kennedy vs. Nixon. One look at the nervous, sweaty, shifty eyes of Tricky Dick was enough to push me into the Kennedy camp. I had just turned 10 years old. Then of course I grew up during the Viet Nam era and was considered prime cannon fodder (two of my high school pals never made it back alive), I was lucky enough to cop a 4-F draft classification and the rest is history. I first registered as an Independent but came into the Democratic Party in the late 70's. I hated not voting in the Primaries.

I can proudly say i have NEVER voted for a Republican in my entire life, and I've voted every time there were General or Presidential elections.

[zbdent]

25. I would say that it was when

we taped Nixon's resignation speech on a cassette recorder - and I marked it "Watch out for an 18.5 minute gap". I believe that I was 11 at the time.

There are other key points:

My cousin's funeral (killed by a bullet fired from a rifle being cleaned - during Vietnam)

My mother asking me if I would be so against abortion if it were my sister who was pregnant - MY CATHOLIC MOTHER WHO MADE US GO TO CHURCH.

Ford pardoning Nixon (to "heal the nation")

Reagan unofficially accepting the Ayatollah Khomeni (sp?) as his running mate to defeat Jimmy Carter.

I think that the last one officially sealed it. I also remember being angry that Reagan got re-elected - the first Presidential election I was old enough to participate in.

[graywarrior]

26. When my dad came home from work at GE after JFK's assisination

and said that some guys he worked with thought JFK had it coming. I was 14 and I realized then that I was a total liberal.

[Arugula Latte]

27. 1980. Me 14. Reagan elected.

Haaaaated it! (Remember that from "In Living Color"?)

[izzybeans]

28. It didn't have a name until I met my first republican

and at a tender young age I was perplexed by the creature.

"How could a young boy question emperor Reagan? Your parents must be sum' of dem' librul kine'. I must talk wit' ur mother." replied the man.

I asked him "what is a liberal?" His response, "I don't know but it's pretty much communist."

"YOu mean like a commune?" I asked. "A place where people share stuff?" "My mommy and daddy taught me to share. I must be a communist. It means community. That's what my teacher says. Does that make me a liberal?"

"Yes it does." replied the ever angrier man.

"Pastor, doesn't Jesus believe in sharing? My grandmother taught me that. She must be a communist because my grandparents are farmers and they share all kinds of stuff with their neighbors. They bring food to people, just like Jesus." <laughter from Sunday school children>

"Let's not bring Jesus into this."

"Huh?" I asked.

"Okay back to the Song of Solomon..."

<pitter patter of little feet o' mine, door open, door shut>

That was the first time I skipped Sunday school. I think I must have been 9 or 10. Identity formation complete.