How have your political views changed over time?

[Redalgo]

I suppose my values changed a lot less than my political-economic leanings over time.

Back in high school I was pretty populist and had something of a Trotskyist bent to my ideas, feeling that the United States was imperialist and just as "evil" in its character, if not more so than the Soviet Union during the Cold War. I was troubled by the impact of greed in American society and loosely centered my convictions on an amalgam of influences from early liberal thinkers and mediocre attempts to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of Soviet democracy. Given a greater emphasis on human rights, I felt a similar social experiment someday would work out quite well.

That outlook was rattled by introductory studies in a number of different fields during my first two years in college. It basically killed the culturally-imperialist part of me that wanted to see many mainstream traditions and religious institutions crushed and cast aside as obsolete and obstructive to the advance of civilization. It also swayed me to embrace social democracy as a "third way" compromise between socialism and capitalism that would convey some of the two systems' boons without such nasty setbacks as under either extreme. Parts of Europe seemed worthy of imitation.

Later, after transferring to a university, more studies revealed flaws in my perspective that drove me to the Nordic Model. I became pretty pragmatic but was too socialistic to fit in well with most Democrats, and too much a liberal to get along well with most self-described Marxists. I was also more diplomatic and collaborative than most folks I met on the left, who often seemed mired in conspiracy theories and directed a lot of anger at certain out-groups. Incidentally, I soon took to avoiding party politics because I valued integrity more than victory and even in my small town saw both major factions using their objectives to justify amoral and often distasteful campaign tactics.

To some extent I am still naive, stubborn, and a bit preachy but try to make an honest effort to listen to others, discover new ideas to synthesize into my worldview, and have become a lot less concerned with getting my way in politics than in trying to amass enough wisdom to write about virtue politics and constitutionalism with some shred of credibility - though I seriously doubt I will ever be very influential, must less an academic heavyweight. My views will keep on evolving with time but for now I am tinkering with how social democracy might transform into market socialism without bringing about a number of unpleasant, very significant side effects. Otherwise, I juggle and intuitively draw from too many schools of thought to succinctly explain how those positions fit together right now. Maybe someday I will try to distill it all into an ideology.

Edit: In regards to international relations I basically got less militarist as an internationalist for awhile, then hopped over to a cosmopolitan outlook. I fancy seeing countries voluntarily organize into regional unions before eventually negotiating a settlement to abolish national armies and establish a federalist union of republics under an overarching constitution and global government. My views on social issues are increasingly influenced by the harm principle and secular humanism.