The makings of a Freeper

Freeper conversion stories!

For huldah1776 it was God

I grew up in the Baptist Church and thought because the Democrats were for helping people and the evil Republicans were only for big business that I was a Democrat. When the pro-life issue came to the fore I actually started looking into politics and learned the truth and it made me free.

Truth is what cuts through the darkness of evil and shines the light so all may see. Opening eyes and ears is only done by the Almighty, so prayer is also required. That is why today’s education is warped and clouded. Truth is a necessity.

muir_redwoods went with a religious tract of a somewhat more secular nature:

I was a typical leftist college student in the ‘60’s until I read Ayn Rand. There’s not a lot of drama or mystery in my conversion; I simply read a rational presentation of a defense of capitalism and I havent looked back.

For Hootowl, and many others, it was the 1980 election:

Born and raised in a staunchly Democratic, pro-Union family, I tooled along in a military career believing all of the happy progressive horsecrap, even voting for Carter’s first term. When Reagan ran against Carter I suddenly realized that Ronaldo Magnus was voicing the things I truly believed. I haven’t looked left since.

Wow, what was it about 1980 that made people not only vote Republican but then go nuts?!

For Beelzebubba read about how AIDS is a hoax, and got hooked:

I was raised a strict atheist and liberal. Liberal through college, and beyond. In grad school people tell me (later) I was deep-down a conservative, but I was still voting and arguing liberal.

Then a smart friend told me about a science author names Michael Fumento, who wrote about bogus environmental issues, and AIDS.

His book “Science Under Siege” showed me (using the kind of irrefutable scientific evidence and logic process I was raised and trained on) that the liberal politicians and the media had been lying to me all along.

I learned to think critically, and to trust the media no more. Which inevitably leads to conservatism.

Soothesayer realized people are evil, and stopped raping women:

I used to be a radical leftist back in college in 2004. I was very egotistic and self-centered although not particularly hateful of others. Also, naive and exceedingly idealistic. I believed that human beings were naturally good and that evil didn’t matter anyway because in my new age religion “the energy would return to the universe”.

I converted to conservatism very rapidly when I started studying the news. I discovered very quickly that evil was not an anomaly and that it was the default tendency of human beings. I also started for the first time in my life to internalize these events and to view the suffering and deceased as real living beings and not some theoretical abstraction to be created and sacrificed for the “greater good”.

Liberalism is at its core anti-life. A person meant nothing to me. Only ideas and feelings had value. There is no need to talk about the economics because everything revolves around the value of a person. Freedom and rights cannot exist unless a person is a real thing and not an abstraction to be manipulated by academics and politicians.

Fortunately the seed of conservatism was always there to facilitate this rapid conversion. I had never been fond of the hedonist world, not even as a child. Therefore, I became the type of college student who was far more interested in studying the realities of the world instead of spending all my free time partying and raping women.

Josh Painter didn't hate liberals till the Thomas hearings:

Tipping point: Confirmation hearing for Clarence Thomas. The liberal Dems tried to destroy this good and decent man with their lies and sealed it for me. I began to truly despise the left.

dagogo redux went crazy in Vietnam, and has been a tin-foil hat Freeper ever since:

As Saigon fell, and with it the entire charade of that war, and as the helicopter evacuations began, they finally cancelled our mission. I recall feeling, not relief, but betrayal, a sense of being a mere pawn in global, not national, mechinations, and a clear sense of the betrayal of all the troops used by these people over there. That day I learned on some intuitive level that our leaders were traitors to the people, elitists serving global masters. The execution of the many wars since then has done nothing to diminish that belief - only to reinforce it.

Retired Greyhound's wife just hates taxes:

I’m proud to say I was never a leftist.

But my wife was. Voted for Carter in ‘80 and Mondale in ‘84. She didn’t pay much attention to politics, but believed what the media said that Reagan was scary.

When she became a nurse around 1990, and saw how much of her paycheck was taxed, she became a Republican.

She now loves Reagan and regrets not supporting him. I tell her it’s ok, he didn’t need you anyway.

Steel Wolf has no real reason, but liberals are all retarded or evil!

the Army taught me to appreciate things that work, and dislike things that don't work. Not just on the physical level, but on the intellectual and strategic level. Idealism is a great wellspring of motivation, but it needs practical tools to 'draw the water' of changing the world.

The deeper you delve into the practical application of liberalism, the more you discover there are really only two kinds. One is the shallow, slogan-slinging, knee-jerk, feel-good, bumper-sticker philosophies of emotionally stunted but well meaning fools. The other cloaks itself in well meaning rhetoric, but it is anything but. It is a soulless, calculating, power absorption machine that is not bound by any moral authority other than the naked will to power.

Lots of uncritical book reading there. Also lots of "I watched the news."