NOM

Anyone else seem to switch from conservative to liberal once your shelf has broken!!! I have seen that happen tto me . I am a very crazy Bernie supporter now as compared to a former Romney supporter. I have always been a little left leaning except for a few years when I truly believed !!! Beleiving liberal seems to go hand in hand with Christ !!! What do you NOMs think ??

Jesus, if he factually existed, was definitely a liberal. I doubt he would have been a Democrat.

For me what started to snap me out of a very conservative political mindset was Trump - I could not get around how people fell for him and I talked to a lot of people in the "conservative movement" at the time and it was such a divide between those who fell in line with Trump and those who fell out.

Then a few years later I find out everything about the church and maybe my experience with Trump helped me accept the changing mindset... I am not sure.

I wouldn't call myself liberal though - just not nearly as conservative as I used to be by a longshot.

I used to be very conservative. Now I would say I am very neither.

I have come to see Democrats and Republicans as two sides of the same coin. Both trying to solve the problems we have in all the wrong ways. To me they both seem to play to the same groups, just in different ways. Both sides seem to be content to make slaves of the middle class. Neither seems to be doing anything meaningful to get rid of the wealth gap.

But yes this attitude definitely came as a result of my disaffection from the church.

i was never really conservative anyway. so i didnt change to speak of

Seems like some change and some retain their previous Mormonian politics. One factor for change comes when former members start thinking of their own pocketbook rather than the pocketbook of their previous top authorities. Of course, it is hard to tell whether some former members might still go into the voting booth and enter a Pavlovian/Mormonian trance when they see the red R on the ballot screen, then upon exiting, leave their trance and think they voted their own conscience rather than the patterned Mormon response.

I think changes in my political beliefs happened just slightly ahead of my changes in religious beliefs and it was that ever so small change that led me to consider how wrong I could be about other things. When I first became disaffected, I swung from far right to far left politically. I stayed there about a year, realized I'd replaced toxic right wing views (and religion) with toxic left wing views (and other beliefs tied to those views) and that's when I came a very similar view as slavereeno. I see a lot of value in both sides. I think both liberals and conservatives are biased/blind to very large problems within their ideologies. I've come to embrace moderation.

I didn't swing hard or far, but I have definitely shifted from right toward center. My Mormon friends at work would call me a liberal now, but mainly because now I care about the earth, gay people, etc., And am much more self aware of my own tribalistic patriotism. I also married a Canadian- that probably helped the shift.

Now, this is just a guess and perhaps a wild guess at that, but I think former Mormons would be less likely to declare Donald Trump to be the prophesied One Mighty and Strong who would lead them to the best-darned cheeseburger joint in Independence, Missouri.

I used to be politically conservative. My faith crisis turned me into a rabid moderate.

Reading Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind further cemented my extremist central views.

My faith crisis started in 2007. Back then I was active on the old NOM board and the now defunct FLAK board. I witnessed most NOMs and FLAKers start worshipping Obama. It was very unsettling because it sure looked a lot like how Mormons talk about Joseph Smith. Over the course of my faith crisis I swung from very conservative to liberal to center right conservative. Mainly I got sick of being scapegoated for being a white male. Even though I’m gay, I got sick of the liberals forcibly “tithing” 33% of my income to piss it away on people who hate me for my skin color and genitals.

And this marks my exit from lurk mode on the new board.

I went from fairly conservative to solidly "None of the Above." I'm pretty centrist, but none of the current major parties reflect my views. In theory I could be Libertarian, but the people running the Libertarian party tend to be nuts. I'm socially liberal, fiscally conservative, environmentally moderate, thoroughly anti-stupidity.

I do find it interesting that a lot of people tend to have major swings in their politics, but even after such swings, neither side is able to see where the other side is coming from without contempt for it, despite that they were on the other side just a few years ago. Back during the 2016 election, the Infants on Thrones podcast basically turned into "why Trump voters are the scum of the earth" for a few months before the election. They worked off the conclusion that anyone who wasn't voting for Clinton was a horrible person and went on some long tirades. Even had a full episode basically devoted to how great Clinton was. That rubbed me the wrong way. They never even considered the fact that many people had looked at things and had reasonable reasons for why they were voting the way they did. That kind of stuff is driving a lot of the political divide in the county. If nothing else, it looks like that was the 'Jump the Shark' moment for the IOT podcast and they have never really recovered from the listener exodus that it caused.

And for the record, I voted for Ron White for President. Since West Virginia was going to go for Trump by such a wide margin that my vote literally didn't matter at all. So if I'm going to throw my vote away, why not do it with style and gusto?

My political views transition happened around the same time as my faith transition. I had recently become an adult, so I shifted my radio listenership from music to talk radio. I considered myself a conservative republican and had embraced the fiscally conservative ideas initially pushed by the tea party. I started listening to Rush, Hannity, and Beck. I am proud of how quickly I was turned off by their biased, self-aggrandizing, straw-man attacking BS. My views on Obama switched from "he is such an awful liberal scourge" to "he's pretty ok" because I realized my basis for judgement was sandy. I was lucky to have a coworker who was as liberally biased as my conservatively biased family and friends in Utah, so I could see the left is not perfect either. I consider myself center-left now, and wish people on both sides would stop and be more open to each other and why they think the way they do.

BriansThoughtMirror wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2019 7:29 am I didn't swing hard or far, but I have definitely shifted from right toward center. My Mormon friends at work would call me a liberal now, but mainly because now I care about the earth, gay people, etc., And am much more self aware of my own tribalistic patriotism. I also married a Canadian- that probably helped the shift.

I'm somewhere in the middle as well. No political party affiliation. I actually left the Republican Party a few years before I left the church. If you are in the middle in Utah you are considered a liberal. I'm not a fence sitter, I do actively look at the candidates and what they are trying or saying they represent but I find it really difficult to find anyone that lines up with my current views well enough to support them, even the independents. So basically I just try to vote out the incumbent and keep the change rolling. I think the good old boys club is a lot of the issue in politics.

I think this is a great topic. I have become way more liberal on some issues, and way more conservative on others. I used to be down the line kind of person.

I am a registered D, but think more like a classic R most of the time. Maybe I am finally accepting the doctrine of getting off the fence and picking a side

Now, I think and research more before concluding more than I did before my faith crisis. I see the many unjust wars as horrible and I see tending to environmental concerns as common sense, but I still believe in the right to life - no matter the age (so I’m generally against abortion) and I see the benefit of society encouraging children to be raised by a mother and father & healthy behavior (so am against SSM).

It seems herd mentality plays into politics as well as religion and atheism. There’s no need to embrace or reject any set ideological package 100%. It makes more sense to study & think through each issue for oneself.