Bumped up from thread below:

Barring sidetracks into socialism/communism, blanket statements about the "leftists", free marketeering and taxes of course ;-)

In other words, it's okay as long as I don't actually support conservative viewpoints over liberal ones... ;)

I have been discussing issues of individualism vs. collectivism with friends, relatives, BBS posters, and those odd people who sit at tables at the student union, for over thirty years. I'm not yet at the point where I corral total strangers like the Ancient Mariner, but hey, I'm young yet.

I don't think I have even convinced a dyed-in-the-wool liberal in all that time, and certainly not any dyed-in-the-wool leftists.

What I have done is learned a few things about their positions, learned a few things about my own position, and maybe enlightened a few onlookers for whom politics is very low on their list of things to think about.

Radical leftists have become conservative or libertarian, but like most radical conversions of any kind, not from anyone convincing them, but only when they themselves have run into something that makes the issue so obvious they can't get around it any more.

With the old Left, it was the revelations on Stalin. With more recent converts, it was other things. You can read about these things in books by converts to conservatism like David Horowitz, Linda Chavez, Tammy Bruce, and many others.

With Horowitz, it was the discovery that the Black Panthers that he supported had killed a friend of his, and more importantly, the Left's reaction to his outrage.

With Bruce, it was the discovery that the "women's movement" had very little to do with real women's issues, and never did.

Each has their own story, and in each case, they were not "convinced" by someone, but were convinced by their own experiences. Heck, I'm a lot more libertarian now than I was in college. Back then, I even believed in zoning laws.

With more moderate liberals, sometimes it's as simple as leaving college and suddenly finding out exactly how much Uncle Sam wants out of your paycheck each year.

The other thing they all have in common is that after their change in viewpoint, many of their liberal and leftist friends do not treat them like friends with a difference of opinion, but like demons from the pits of hell--the ultimate traitors. This, too, is revealing.

So, I'm not looking for Bowser, Davin, Robert, Mary Anne, or anyone else to pop up and say, "Holy smokes, Brosz, you're right! The scales have fallen from my eyes!" I'm looking for new ways of looking at things, and facts and viewpoints I didn't know about before. Geez, just looking stuff up to back my positions has taught me a lot all by itself.

And if some lurker learns something new, great.