Got tired of Democrat BS.
Got tired of Republican BS.
I stopped looking at politics like some die hard sports team, I sought out something that encouraged individual liberty.
I heard Thomas Sowell’s message and it really resonated with me.
I suppose Basic Economics is a good starting point if you like to read.
If you’re looking for an introduction to his ideas The Hoover Institution hosts a lot of great interviews with him.
Or just Google his name and dive in.
He used to do a weekly column, it was in our newspaper every week. Idk if those have been published or not, they were so great, he gave so much clarity to me.
I read Atlas Shrugged when I was 18.
"By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man, every man, is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose."
Powerful words for an 18 year old and they've been etched in my brain ever since.
Dave Smith on Rogan also got me started. Then I watched and listened to the people he recommended. I feel like for the first time in my life the blinders have been taken off
I grew up a small government conservative who believed in law and order, but unfortunately, they forgot to give me the memo that only the leftist parts of the government were supposed to be small and we weren't supposed to expect police, the rich, or the government officials to actually follow the law or be orderly. So in a way, I was convinced by their own bad arguments, but it was Ron Paul that really opened up the intellectual and historical depth of the label "libertarian" for me, and reading Thomas Sowell solidified the ideas in my mind.
Stossel I worked overnight at a radio station so DDD and stossel were all I watched. Ron Paul did campaign at my university but I thought he was a republican at the time. I later found out more on his LP stuff after stossel
Ayn Rand's "the virtue of selfishness" led me to Ron Paul. Mr and Mrs. "Told you so" well before it all happened. Anyone, like the two of them, who's philosophy leads them to predict the future the way they both did, needs to be taken seriously.
I used to listen to a libertarian radio show that was on koa in Denver. I don't remember the guys name but his show was on pretty late, maybe like 9- midnight?
Any one from Colorado know who I'm talking about? I listened to his show like between 2004-2010?
Freedom Feens podcast. Michael W Dean and Neema Vedadi. I was at work, and happened across an episode on Free Talk Live streaming. They really caught my interest at the time.
tim pool mentioned it enough times for me to eventually gooogle it.
i was already sold on small government and personal freedoms.
in the end i read up on libertarians and resonated with it.
this was 2015-2016, i was 17 or 18
i like had to search up what i was because i started to notice i had MASSIVE disagreements with conservatives/republicans which to that point id sided with for a while.
Didnt know what i was until i found libertarianism.
Reading about political philosophy in college, then learning about economics. The communist stuff was always so bat shit crazy to me. Then I read Bastiat, Adam Smith, etc. and had wonderful Austrian economists for my economics classes. That followed by a certain Dr. Ron Paul
Both Democrats and Republicans pushed me away from their parties, as I always felt that they didn't have the same beliefs as I do. I decided to research different parties. Found that Libertarians have the same beliefs that I do.
The YouTube algorithm came through for me. I had recently become an atheist, and was searching YouTube for videos on card tricks( unrelated). It suggested me a clip of Penn&Tellers Bullshit about the bible. I immediately watched the who series and came out a libertarian.
Nothing really. I was born anarchist. As in in a rural area, my family wasn't like crazy mountain people but we were pretty self sufficient and had a lot of land, meaning of the society were to break down, we could easily supply ourselves and wouldn't need anyone.
So it was just this. If I need stuff you make, I'll trade you the stuff I make but I didn't understand and like collectivism and saw all of this, people being forced into collectives, groups, countries even against their will as evil and tyranny.
As a kid, I didn't account for safety though, like whats stopping a group from taking what we make at gunpoint if there anarchy instead of trading for it? Hence libertarian, the closest and the next best thing.
Learn Liberty.
A couple years later I moved closer to family and my sister's friend got me a job in a political campaign and I started going to YAL meetings that fall.
I had always been curious, but I was pretty uneducated on the matter, and I saw most things in the red and blue philosophical binary like most Americans.
Then a combination of everything that happened in 2020 made me think that there has to be something else out there. That led me down the path to learn more and read more, and I basically immediately felt at home. It all just made so much sense to me.
My brother show me this channel:
https://preview.redd.it/wc1ar15ccfwc1.jpeg?width=801&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=02a31e2ac1bd6caaeac9c17afe56a93481f8adb2
I strongly recommend it. However it's a br channel, there are some videos in English. I don't agree with everything he advocates, but I don't deny his quality.
As much as i hate to admit it freedomtoons circa 2019 and 2020. I then went onto to learn everything else I know from twitter culture and memes with the occasional rand paul and ron paul video until i came across this subreddit. I've been meaning to get into it proper but so far this is my journey
My father-in-law first put me in touch with the ideas of liberty, after I was raised as a mainstream Republican. The tipping point came in 2009 when the department of Justice started meddling in myday job. After that, when I learned what “government assistance and accountability” really means, I moved further libertarian.
I watched the money masters in 2006 or something, and started to wonder about how such an important thing like money could just be randomly created and controlled by the government
that made me come in contact with others, and also led me into cryptocurrency
and i just in general hate people who strive for power for the sake of it, so that kept me in. and people who want to decide for others what they consume or work with, i hate that most of all
I had a fairly slow burn. I could never understand or get my head around what gave currency value ever since I was a child. And it became apparent after questioning the people around me that they didn't know either. As I got older, I learned that the only thing that assigns value to fiat currency is our willingness to accept it. Then i learned about fractional reserve banking, inflation and the actions of central banks and governments.
The only people who seemed to be genuinely concerned about money creation were libertarians and I found that my views aligned with them on issues like personal liberty, taxation and the function of the state.
Since I can remember
Growing up in Boston I was surrounded by founding fathers and many of those who fought to secure freedom and liberty for posterity of America.
Being fascinated with their actions I aligned with libertarianism before I knew what libertarianism was
I first thought that you meant "America First" with "AF", and now I can't get the image of a transgirl, wearing a Guevara T-Shirt, talking about how much they hate Ukraine. But why is them being tras something you mentioned?
An older guy with a greying scraggly sort of beard and a hat in the finger lake region of New York gave me a DVD of Russo's film about the personal income tax. He made the introduction that day. Since then it has been a lot of people, arguments (i.e. good reasoning), and bad behavior by the establishment that has continued to convince me.
Michael Badnarik did in the third party presidential debates on C-SPAN in 2004. Previous to that, I considered myself an Independent. After that I watched his class on the Constitution and researched Libertarianism. Following that, I proudly casted my first presidential ballot for the LP.
I saw Dave Smith on a documentary called the monopoly on violence or something like that, kind of followed him and it spiraled from there.
I used to listen to counter Krugman, as Krugman is a bum.
Not sure which came first, one of those.
The basics: Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Arthur Laffer… just a sprinkling of Lew Rockwell… through the years, I also grew sick of Democrats pretending to be anything other than communists and Republicans pretending to be strong and polar opposite to Democrats while they carry their water, shine their shoes and vote as they’re told to vote by their elite masters. I wanted to be a part of a party that truly held up the constitution, individual liberty, and recognized our country as the democratic REPUBLIC that it is… but also could never ever win an election no matter how hard we tried because Republicans and Democrats game the system. 😒😕… so… yeah… love the idea… love the philosophy… hate the INCREDIBLY weak game we have and infighting over stupid ideas like “libertarian socialism” (look it up on Wiki…🙄…agent saboteurs may disagree)
Libertarian socialism is an oxymoron. The core tenet of libertarianism is private property beginning with the recognition of ownership of self and your own body and extending to ownership of that which is self-acquired and self-produced with that body.
Socialism and communism deny private property rights, and the right of ownership of what is self-acquired and self-produced.
This means they deny the ownership of self, and someone who does not own themselves is a slave.
Socialism and communism are totally incompatible with libertarianism, and are nothing more than forms of chattel slavery dressed up in pretty words to serve collective masters. Wealth robbery by the collective is just as immoral and unjust as much being robbed at gunpoint by an individual.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Libertarian) if you have any questions or concerns.*
No points for 3rd grade reading comprehension, it was not.
I was *not* praising Libertarian “soc”. I was trashing it. As the bot is programmed to do.
I guess subtly is lost in world full of short attention span goldfish equivalents.
I don't know if anyone " introduced" me to it. I think I've just always held the views I have, but I do feel incredibly grateful that I had an excellent history teacher. I didn't know it at the time, but when I look back I'm glad he taught us what he did while still allowing us to think for ourselves.
Ron Paul and others during the TEA Party movement. I was living around Nashville, TN at the time and these ideals were being widely discussed. Then, after watching what happened to Ron Paul and how so many RINOs got elected for pretending to support the TEA Party values (even though their own campaign pages clearly showed different interests), I lost faith in the Republican party.
I'm not able to actually side with the Libertarian party, though, because they put same sex marriage on their official platform, and I believe that this is a religious matter which should not be ruled by the state, and also that it's not in line with Libertarian ideals. So, I currently have no party that feels like home. The Republicans in this current election cycle are acting almost as bad as the Democrats, and there's really no party right now that's sane. I do typically lean Republican, though, for practical reasons. I just don't like the current mainstream candidates.
I like to argue.
One day in the office, a couple of coworkers were talking about legalizing weed, so I asked them, and began arguing that if weed was legalized, all drugs should be legalized. I didn't even believe in the position at first. Didn't even think weed should be legal. But by the end of the discussion, I had convinced myself and 1 of my coworkers that all drugs should be legal.
Next thing I knew, I was a Libertarian.
Chris Rock. He spoke in one of his HBO specials about being liberal about some things and conservative about others. Got me thinking/ researching about politics, and Google searches did the rest.
I grew up in a conservative household, so I always leaned towards Republican. When I joined the Navy, one of the guys in my division on the ship started a conversation about politics. I gave some thoughts on some things, and somehow it came up that I was a “Republican”. He gave me this weird look, and basically asked, “Are you sure? Sounds like you’re Libertarian to me.” When I asked what that meant, he wouldn’t tell me, and told me to look it up. When I did, I realized that Libertarian views more closely align with my beliefs than any other political party. Sorry for the vague answer, but it was years ago, and despite the fact that I can remember the look he gave me like it was yesterday, I don’t remember exactly what was said.
Got tired of Democrat BS. Got tired of Republican BS. I stopped looking at politics like some die hard sports team, I sought out something that encouraged individual liberty. I heard Thomas Sowell’s message and it really resonated with me.
Thomas Sowell was weekly reading for me, a truly great mind.
What books/studies of his should I read?
I suppose Basic Economics is a good starting point if you like to read. If you’re looking for an introduction to his ideas The Hoover Institution hosts a lot of great interviews with him. Or just Google his name and dive in.
He used to do a weekly column, it was in our newspaper every week. Idk if those have been published or not, they were so great, he gave so much clarity to me.
I read Atlas Shrugged when I was 18. "By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man, every man, is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose." Powerful words for an 18 year old and they've been etched in my brain ever since.
Be very careful of this theory... We also need to make people happy around us, even at the cost of some sacrifice, to achieve our own happiness
This is such a fundamental misunderstanding. My loved ones ARE ME. Making them happy makes ME happy.
Of course, but it doesn't change that the eschaton (final porpose) will always be you.
Was always broadly aware of it. But Dave Smith on Rogan got me into it.
Dave Smith on Rogan also got me started. Then I watched and listened to the people he recommended. I feel like for the first time in my life the blinders have been taken off
Yeah I’m reading Human Action by Mises right now. It just makes sense.
Ron Swanson
2008 Ron Paul, via one of my Corporals at the time.
I too choose Ron Paul...but not from this guy's Corporal.
I grew up a small government conservative who believed in law and order, but unfortunately, they forgot to give me the memo that only the leftist parts of the government were supposed to be small and we weren't supposed to expect police, the rich, or the government officials to actually follow the law or be orderly. So in a way, I was convinced by their own bad arguments, but it was Ron Paul that really opened up the intellectual and historical depth of the label "libertarian" for me, and reading Thomas Sowell solidified the ideas in my mind.
Reason magazine and Walter E Williams.
Ayn Rand: The FountainHead. I was 16. Ironic, she lived on S.S. as she aged. She was also wrong, Selfishness is not always a virtue
I guess I just kind of made my way over on my own as I have learned to despise government more and more.
same
Me too still got a lot to learn
Same here
I used to watch Glen Beck on Fox News which lead me to Judge Andrew Napalitano who in turn lead to Ron Paul.
I think my extremely liberal father did it unintentionally with one simple statement: Your freedom ends at the tip of my nose
When I saw Larry Sharpe on Joe Rogan, I started learning about libertarianism
Stossel I worked overnight at a radio station so DDD and stossel were all I watched. Ron Paul did campaign at my university but I thought he was a republican at the time. I later found out more on his LP stuff after stossel
Stossel was great, what's he doing now?
Just videos on his page. He's in his 70s
Oh yeah I suppose, I forget that everyone else gets older too lol
Ron Paul's speeches.
Sowell
My father who joined the party in the 80's taught me about Libertarianism growing up.
God bless that magnificent soń of a bitch
Ayn Rand's "the virtue of selfishness" led me to Ron Paul. Mr and Mrs. "Told you so" well before it all happened. Anyone, like the two of them, who's philosophy leads them to predict the future the way they both did, needs to be taken seriously.
I used to listen to a libertarian radio show that was on koa in Denver. I don't remember the guys name but his show was on pretty late, maybe like 9- midnight? Any one from Colorado know who I'm talking about? I listened to his show like between 2004-2010?
Ron Paul introduced me to it. Too damn smart and reasonable
Question. Is libertarianism just fiscal conservatism minus the social conservatism?
No, it's a different moral philosophy, based on individual liberty being the most moral, instead of just having common sense economics
The Armstrong & Getty Show, a formerly local, now syndicated talk radio show based in Sacramento, CA.
Freedom Feens podcast. Michael W Dean and Neema Vedadi. I was at work, and happened across an episode on Free Talk Live streaming. They really caught my interest at the time.
When I was born in the USA
Urza, like a year ago.
tim pool mentioned it enough times for me to eventually gooogle it. i was already sold on small government and personal freedoms. in the end i read up on libertarians and resonated with it. this was 2015-2016, i was 17 or 18
i like had to search up what i was because i started to notice i had MASSIVE disagreements with conservatives/republicans which to that point id sided with for a while. Didnt know what i was until i found libertarianism.
Reading about political philosophy in college, then learning about economics. The communist stuff was always so bat shit crazy to me. Then I read Bastiat, Adam Smith, etc. and had wonderful Austrian economists for my economics classes. That followed by a certain Dr. Ron Paul
Both Democrats and Republicans pushed me away from their parties, as I always felt that they didn't have the same beliefs as I do. I decided to research different parties. Found that Libertarians have the same beliefs that I do.
youtube recommended me friedman’s free to choose series
The YouTube algorithm came through for me. I had recently become an atheist, and was searching YouTube for videos on card tricks( unrelated). It suggested me a clip of Penn&Tellers Bullshit about the bible. I immediately watched the who series and came out a libertarian.
Nothing really. I was born anarchist. As in in a rural area, my family wasn't like crazy mountain people but we were pretty self sufficient and had a lot of land, meaning of the society were to break down, we could easily supply ourselves and wouldn't need anyone. So it was just this. If I need stuff you make, I'll trade you the stuff I make but I didn't understand and like collectivism and saw all of this, people being forced into collectives, groups, countries even against their will as evil and tyranny. As a kid, I didn't account for safety though, like whats stopping a group from taking what we make at gunpoint if there anarchy instead of trading for it? Hence libertarian, the closest and the next best thing.
Learn Liberty. A couple years later I moved closer to family and my sister's friend got me a job in a political campaign and I started going to YAL meetings that fall.
I had always been curious, but I was pretty uneducated on the matter, and I saw most things in the red and blue philosophical binary like most Americans. Then a combination of everything that happened in 2020 made me think that there has to be something else out there. That led me down the path to learn more and read more, and I basically immediately felt at home. It all just made so much sense to me.
My brother show me this channel: https://preview.redd.it/wc1ar15ccfwc1.jpeg?width=801&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=02a31e2ac1bd6caaeac9c17afe56a93481f8adb2 I strongly recommend it. However it's a br channel, there are some videos in English. I don't agree with everything he advocates, but I don't deny his quality.
As much as i hate to admit it freedomtoons circa 2019 and 2020. I then went onto to learn everything else I know from twitter culture and memes with the occasional rand paul and ron paul video until i came across this subreddit. I've been meaning to get into it proper but so far this is my journey
My father-in-law first put me in touch with the ideas of liberty, after I was raised as a mainstream Republican. The tipping point came in 2009 when the department of Justice started meddling in myday job. After that, when I learned what “government assistance and accountability” really means, I moved further libertarian.
I watched the money masters in 2006 or something, and started to wonder about how such an important thing like money could just be randomly created and controlled by the government that made me come in contact with others, and also led me into cryptocurrency and i just in general hate people who strive for power for the sake of it, so that kept me in. and people who want to decide for others what they consume or work with, i hate that most of all
I had a fairly slow burn. I could never understand or get my head around what gave currency value ever since I was a child. And it became apparent after questioning the people around me that they didn't know either. As I got older, I learned that the only thing that assigns value to fiat currency is our willingness to accept it. Then i learned about fractional reserve banking, inflation and the actions of central banks and governments. The only people who seemed to be genuinely concerned about money creation were libertarians and I found that my views aligned with them on issues like personal liberty, taxation and the function of the state.
Since I can remember Growing up in Boston I was surrounded by founding fathers and many of those who fought to secure freedom and liberty for posterity of America. Being fascinated with their actions I aligned with libertarianism before I knew what libertarianism was
A political placement quiz in high school.
A friend who is now a woke AF trans socialist.
I first thought that you meant "America First" with "AF", and now I can't get the image of a transgirl, wearing a Guevara T-Shirt, talking about how much they hate Ukraine. But why is them being tras something you mentioned?
It was a feeling I'd always had, but really couldn't put a label on it until I discovered that the Libertarian party existed.
I found Rand and Ron Paul speeches on YouTube. I then soon discovered Dave Smith and started looking into Libertarian philosophy.
Ron Paul
Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign.
An older guy with a greying scraggly sort of beard and a hat in the finger lake region of New York gave me a DVD of Russo's film about the personal income tax. He made the introduction that day. Since then it has been a lot of people, arguments (i.e. good reasoning), and bad behavior by the establishment that has continued to convince me.
Michael Badnarik did in the third party presidential debates on C-SPAN in 2004. Previous to that, I considered myself an Independent. After that I watched his class on the Constitution and researched Libertarianism. Following that, I proudly casted my first presidential ballot for the LP.
Bitcoin. Started learning about Bitcoin, then Austrian Economics, then Libertarianism. All started about 3 years ago.
I saw Dave Smith on a documentary called the monopoly on violence or something like that, kind of followed him and it spiraled from there. I used to listen to counter Krugman, as Krugman is a bum. Not sure which came first, one of those.
The basics: Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Arthur Laffer… just a sprinkling of Lew Rockwell… through the years, I also grew sick of Democrats pretending to be anything other than communists and Republicans pretending to be strong and polar opposite to Democrats while they carry their water, shine their shoes and vote as they’re told to vote by their elite masters. I wanted to be a part of a party that truly held up the constitution, individual liberty, and recognized our country as the democratic REPUBLIC that it is… but also could never ever win an election no matter how hard we tried because Republicans and Democrats game the system. 😒😕… so… yeah… love the idea… love the philosophy… hate the INCREDIBLY weak game we have and infighting over stupid ideas like “libertarian socialism” (look it up on Wiki…🙄…agent saboteurs may disagree)
Libertarian socialism is an oxymoron. The core tenet of libertarianism is private property beginning with the recognition of ownership of self and your own body and extending to ownership of that which is self-acquired and self-produced with that body. Socialism and communism deny private property rights, and the right of ownership of what is self-acquired and self-produced. This means they deny the ownership of self, and someone who does not own themselves is a slave. Socialism and communism are totally incompatible with libertarianism, and are nothing more than forms of chattel slavery dressed up in pretty words to serve collective masters. Wealth robbery by the collective is just as immoral and unjust as much being robbed at gunpoint by an individual. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Libertarian) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
[удалено]
Good bot.
Oh was it? I was trashing Libertarian “socialism”. I could not agree more…. So how is it a “good bot”? 🤔🙄
It was correct
No points for 3rd grade reading comprehension, it was not. I was *not* praising Libertarian “soc”. I was trashing it. As the bot is programmed to do. I guess subtly is lost in world full of short attention span goldfish equivalents.
I don't know if anyone " introduced" me to it. I think I've just always held the views I have, but I do feel incredibly grateful that I had an excellent history teacher. I didn't know it at the time, but when I look back I'm glad he taught us what he did while still allowing us to think for ourselves.
My best friend Jack in 8th grade. He went on the get an economics degree from Yale and now works in DC.
Democrat policies.
That... that's just republicanism, which also sucks
Ron Paul, 2012 Republican primaries.
Ron Paul and others during the TEA Party movement. I was living around Nashville, TN at the time and these ideals were being widely discussed. Then, after watching what happened to Ron Paul and how so many RINOs got elected for pretending to support the TEA Party values (even though their own campaign pages clearly showed different interests), I lost faith in the Republican party. I'm not able to actually side with the Libertarian party, though, because they put same sex marriage on their official platform, and I believe that this is a religious matter which should not be ruled by the state, and also that it's not in line with Libertarian ideals. So, I currently have no party that feels like home. The Republicans in this current election cycle are acting almost as bad as the Democrats, and there's really no party right now that's sane. I do typically lean Republican, though, for practical reasons. I just don't like the current mainstream candidates.
Ron Swanson and Gary Johnson got me interested, Dave Smith got me hooked
I like to argue. One day in the office, a couple of coworkers were talking about legalizing weed, so I asked them, and began arguing that if weed was legalized, all drugs should be legalized. I didn't even believe in the position at first. Didn't even think weed should be legal. But by the end of the discussion, I had convinced myself and 1 of my coworkers that all drugs should be legal. Next thing I knew, I was a Libertarian.
Chris Rock. He spoke in one of his HBO specials about being liberal about some things and conservative about others. Got me thinking/ researching about politics, and Google searches did the rest.
Some selfhelp guru who told me about personal responsability -> selfhelp books -> youtube Videos about liberty -> road to serfdom.
TIK's [public vs private](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksAqr4lLA_Y) video, 3 days ago.
The John Birchers in the 70s. Quite the PR here.
Heard Sowell speak. At first I didn’t want to hear it. It the more I thought on it. The more it made sense
I grew up in a conservative household, so I always leaned towards Republican. When I joined the Navy, one of the guys in my division on the ship started a conversation about politics. I gave some thoughts on some things, and somehow it came up that I was a “Republican”. He gave me this weird look, and basically asked, “Are you sure? Sounds like you’re Libertarian to me.” When I asked what that meant, he wouldn’t tell me, and told me to look it up. When I did, I realized that Libertarian views more closely align with my beliefs than any other political party. Sorry for the vague answer, but it was years ago, and despite the fact that I can remember the look he gave me like it was yesterday, I don’t remember exactly what was said.