Has learning about history altered your political views?

Capitalism is literally the system that enabled the countries with the best standards of living to be such.

Was a lolbertarian/propertarian prior to really reading history / first reading (always liked it as a subject but never did stuff on my own until early HS).

Went the other direction into a social democrat the end of high school -- although desu the biggest thing that helped me move left was taking AP environmental and related bio/environmental classes in college over the summer my last two years of HS, after realizing the only real way to address climate and environmental issues is as a collective. By the end of HS I called myself a "socialist" but I wasn't desu. My reading and analysis of history was very shallow still -- I thought FDR was a good person, social democracy / reform is how history trudges forward to modernize, etc.

At that point I have a gf, she keeps pestering me about socialism, what it is, and proof of it. She wouldn't take big complicated/confusing answers (desu they were wrong and ill thought out too. simple is best and shows you know your shit) with lots of historical or economic blahblah so I had to master material and synthesize that shit. Became an ML at this point (4-5 years ago?).

Now I'm a fully ass blasted ancom with too many fucking readings under my belt with lots of fucking depression due to reading about capitalism, how it came about, what it's done to survive, etc. (unjustified) Hierarchy is the fucking root of many fucking problem humans face over the course of history and it's why it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that having democracy in politics but not having it in your culture or your economy means nothing. It's like taking the "democracy" some Greek city states had at face value.

The hierarchies formed in other areas can spillover into politics nigga, why the fuck would you not use your cultural or economic influence politics? Under the ideal conditions of capitalism, there is always a profit incentive to fuck politics over and to control and limit the market.

I believe that Nazis, Socialists and Communists are retarded now. So is Bill Clinton. Stupid bitch deregulated our banks

The more I look at Alina Li, the harder my peepee gets.

> less I trust authorities and capitalism.

alternative to capitalism is more authority or anarchy

reminder that if you are not a libertarian you have a retard tier political philosophy

I've become more radical not less, but not in any coherent direction. I'm sure it has a name but if it does I don't know it.

Veeky Forums is porn like you

Ive became more center leaning as well through learning history but ive also discovered a new love of the world a love of watching us slowly crawl are way from the start of agriculture to our modern era and gives me hope that while we struggle things progress and that we may one day reach the stars and beyond

Most importantly it has taught me that critical thinking is extremely valuable and people tend to avoid it a lot. People are willing to believe in fallacies that could lead to even the most inhumane conclusions simply because of how an idea has been passed down through time. Logic going "if our ancestors/predecessors saw it that way we can do it too!" Unfortunately what they end up doing is often a mistranslation of what was actually done in the past.
Example: trans-atlantic slavery was a mistranslation of the byzantine system of indentured PoWs.

In highschool I went from left to right, now I'm a moderate in most things, leaning conservative

Well first I thought the spanish were so superior to the natives who are inferior people for no having horses, no iron no gunpowder.
Thean when you learn you realize the spanish or even the great western european powers, France, England and the dutch did not domesticate the horse nor invented iron forging not even gunpowder but they were right next to the region that did. The isolation of the americas is what explains the lack of those things mentioned not that they were less capable humans.

I was a wannabe fascist when I was 14 without understanding much. I think it used to grate on my history teachers because they couldn't decide if they should debate (And therefore legitimize) the stance I took, decry it as foul (And thus censor a student's opinions and perspective on history), or laugh (And show everyone how little they think of kids having ideas of their own). I liked the idea of fascism because I liked the sense of identity and group unity it provided whereas things felt sort of distant and artificial in society growing up, with small little cliques having their own exclusive groups while still claiming to represent everybody. Ironically, fascism was interesting me because it was inclusive.

After I graduated, I tried to find absolutes in my beliefs, so I bounced around between a lot of ideals in an attempt to find some universal constant that everyone could agree on, sort of like a scientific proof. The only thing I found was that a) people are naturally exclusive with each other and b) this exclusion makes the included group more united and cooperative, a concept called "the other" or as Gengis Khan put it, "uniting the people against a common enemy."

So in a way, I ran full circle from rebellious fascism to actual fascism.

FPBP
It is your job to end this
Liberalism, SJWdom, militant feminism and anarchism are mutually exclusive. LGBT are sexual orientations/identities and have nothing to do with political views.
You make that sound like a good thing
Sounds a lot like me. Social anarchist/AWA now

Yeah. I used to be a libertarian but as I read (and live as well) about society I see some people literally transform if they think they can get away with anything, and became more of a moderate. I'd still revert to it, or even go full ancap before accepting totalitarianism. It is legit cancer and a threat to all of us. Granted I am a bit high on liberalism, I do consider it to be one of the best things to have happened to mankind. We just need to figure out how to use our unprecedented freedom properly.
Is she chinese? Or a viet?

>Liberalism, SJWdom, militant feminism and anarchism are mutually exclusive.
Your first mistake was thinking that internal consistency in ideological theory actually matters in ideological application.

So because you're lonely, you want to impose totalitarianism on everyone else.
Thanks a lot, bub.

I became a more religious person, as well as a monarchist.

I developed a dislike for the eternal Anglo after ww1, a hatred for fascists and communists.

I went from a Secular Libertarian/Market Liberal to Religious Traditionalist believing that the end times are coming and that we live in the ladder days.

I actually don't care about the totalitarianism or any sort of related economic theory that comes with it, so really any sort of ideology that comes with a strong social unity (Be it a religious, national, ethnic, or clan one) is fine with me. What I don't like is a society that promotes the idea that men are faceless individuals with zero ties to others, and that if a unit or group does display anything more than a superficial connection to one another that it's a dissenting force to be dispatched rather than a natural and normal consequence of society.

So the irony of a fascist ideal I had in my head when I was young was that I liked it because I thought it brought everyone together, when later I realized I liked it because it brought specific people together in small units. It's my realization that people will always self-organize in the sense they will always see differences in themselves and others and seek like individuals, be it physical, mental, or spiritual ones. It's that without difference, there can't be unity.

Sounds like social anarchism would be for you

>I actually don't care about the totalitarianism or any sort of related economic theory that comes with it
So if I understand correctly, you don't want the state to enforce your preferred ideology, you just find it attractive? I wouldn't really say that's "actual fascism".
>What I don't like is a society that promotes the idea that men are faceless individuals with zero ties to others
But we don't live in such a society in the West. Actually, in the West the media is full of images of community: sitcoms that show close families, etc.

>libertarian
>not delusional retard tier

Please provide me with arguments against libertarianism

Exactly the same desu, but replace Eternal Anglo with Eternal Kraut. If the G*rmans didn't support the Russian Communists, then it's likely the USSR wouldn't have formed. East Europe, including Russia, would be first world by now if they didn't spend the first half of the 20th century genociding themselves. After WWI the Krauts became literal Nazis and were the primary cause of Europe's devastation.

libertarian party supports open borders

>So if I understand correctly, you don't want the state to enforce your preferred ideology, you just find it attractive? I wouldn't really say that's "actual fascism".
I wouldn't say "enforce," so much as be based around the idea. If this were a carrot on a stick analogy, "enforce" would imply a whole lot of stick, where I'd rather just have more carrot for those with a traditional socially bonded lifestyle (IE prestige for those serving society via volunteer work, time off from work similar to American jury duty for up to X amount of hours per year, etc.). But the problem is by rewarding people for the establishment of beneficial practices within society, you're still unnaturally influencing behavior, and as soon as the benefits go away, so does the behavior, so it'll take some real nifty social engineering to create a closed, self-reinforcing loop of reliance upon one another.

>But we don't live in such a society in the West. Actually, in the West the media is full of images of community: sitcoms that show close families, etc.
I would argue that often those images of community become more of a product to be sold to a target demographic than any sort of ideal to strive for. It's not that things for sale is a particularly bad thing, it's just that it's first and foremost a work of profit rather than a reflection on life itself, more a means to an end rather than an end of itself.

At the same time, these same images are counterbalanced with opposing conditions that emphasis the importance of the individual as the first and foremost unit of society over the unique bonds and relations the individual makes within society itself. I don't mean to sound somewhat Chinese on the issue, some individualism is good, but as heavily as its promoted today, I feel like it implicitly makes interconnection with others out to be something to be despised.

Alina Li really has the nicest butthole I've ever seen. Would lick and fuck.

Chinese.

You spend way too much time on the internet.

libertarians

>we may one day reach the stars and beyond
I truly wish that this was the case, but I'm now convinced that we won't survive 1.000 more years.

There are many. Assuming you're ancap:

- lack of legal tender means any unpaid debt will virtually always lead to slavery
- no solid threshold for what constitutes property damage. If photons from my lighting causes your paint to fade on your car, can you sue me?
- no law against public nuisance. I can blast gay porn and slaughterhouse footage from my giant speakers and privately owned video billboards 24/7
- no age of majority means kids can run away at any age and do heroin, or be left to starve by parents (forcing them to feed their child is a violation of the NAP)
- all land is privately owned. anyone without land would just have to be thrown in the ocean or shot for trespassing. Or I could charge you a trillion-voluntarycoin entry or exit fee. Or buy up all properties surrounding your house and make you starve
- private cops would be hell. Choosing not to patronize aggressive ones would just lead to getting fucked up. Basically warlords but since nobody has a monopoly on force there's constant struggle for territory and "patrons"
- let private companies have nukes, what could go wrong
- no patents or copyright, little incentive to innovate (trade secrets are mostly dead in the online era)
- time bomb liabilities mean that if I put lead in your food that I serve, tough shit, there are no health inspectors and I doubt you'd prove it years later with no right to search my establishment
- homesteading is inconsistent and based on the.labor theory of value. If I kick up some sand do I own a continent? What if I want property that's undeveloped?
- good luck building a new highway when shithead Joe refuses to sell his property and there is no eminent domain
- environmental issues are an externality that nobody wants to pay for
- defence would be shit because those who don't pay in a defended region would still benefit
- expect tolls and fees everywhere. No taxes... So free
- Jamal and Cletus can buy HMGs, poison gas, flamethrowers and grenades. Yay.

Absolutely this. Won't post because blue board but recommend looking it up.

Ancaps BTFO

Though most libertarians are minarchists: desiring a night-watch state which enforces property claims and provides a judiciary and public domestic/foreign security.

Do what you just did to that

...

No, my political views changed how i see history

Libertarianism is the perfect philosophy for the shitty old man who ‘out of principle’ won’t sell his house to put in a highway a city needs for its growth. It’s the most empty, spiritually devoid, and and it absolutely fails to recognize that humans have always derived a horizon of meaning from existing in a community which they contribute to, and not from their striking individualism. The libertarian worldview is based on reducing people to a purely transactional existence, completely instrumentalized, without any source of meaning.

History is for retards. Seriously, it's all propaganda. Of course you've become a cock-sucking little yuppie after absorbing all that propaganda.

Minarchism mostly just eludes the ancap problems of cops and defense. However, many of the others would still apply, and I feel a minarchist state would become more statist over time naturally. Taxes, for example, require legal tender, which requires regulation of a money supply , systems to measure income or assets or land to set rates, and measures to detect/punish fraud. Large societies are necessarily complex, which is why we have complex laws.

>tfw literally an old man who wouldn't sell his house for a statewide highway, angering city folk everywhere.

Thank god the trans Texas corridor never went through, I would've lost 40 acres of land due to development. Enough people banded together to stop the damn thing.

What's humorous is that not 40 years ago, my family lost almost 50 acres of farm and ranch land that they held for over a century back when the state was formed so the federal government could construct a reservoir. Farmers were told to sell their land (For far below what it was actually worth and instead what it was evaluated for by a tax assessor) or have it condemned, and when the lake was finished building, the profits for selling the water off from it went straight to the US government, not the people of the county, and not even the state. It's probably the biggest black eye to the people of Jackson this place has seen, and had it not been for Ron Paul fighting like mad 20 years ago, it would've still been in Washington's hands.

So fuck you guy, whatever you believe, because private land is not for the public to decide what to do with.

Wouldn't a state be able to use an external source for currency, such as perhaps basing the value of something off of say the US dollar/British Pound? I know that's not technically a good idea because then another nation is controlling the value of your currency, but in practice everyone winds up trading in USD anyway at the end of the day, so why not start there?

Or perhaps a state could design and implement their own cryptocurrency to provide a semi-self-regulating currency to use.

So for the most part, the only history I "knew" was pop history of Ancient civilisations (Egypt, Greece, Rome) and Medieval Britain/France.
I was a massive reactionary fucking nerd, and not reactionary as in "Fascist" reactionary is in the way Marx used it, I idolised feudalism and saw Monarchy as the peak system. I was also a massive fucking contarian with a huge superiority complex. My friends were all progressives, so I had to be a monarchist conservative.
Then I started reading about the Cold War and modern history, shifted to a centrist liberal, read more about the atrocities of the west in Central and South America and finally landed on the Russian Revolution.
I don't think there is anybody who can read about the Russian Revolution and not come out of it thinking Lenin was anything but GOAT, even right wing intellectuals begrudgingly admit Lenin was fucking awesome.
I then read Lenin's works, then I read Marx, and I became a Marxist-Leninist in the actual Lenin sense, I fucking hate Stalin.
Then over time I found Leninists to be insufferable and I really feel Leninism just lends itself too much to centralised authoritarianism, so I read Anarchist works, and moved to more a "left-com" position since I found Anarchism naive at best.

Also another thing is that I'm a nature lover and climate change will never be solved under Capitalism, it just won't. For climate change to happen, we need massive collective effort and a collective conscious. Capitalism is not only wasteful in it's consumerism, it values the individual's greed above all else.

>a right wing totalitarian becoming a left wing totalitarian
brainlet ideologies for brainlet people

I'm not an authoritarian, I'm leftcom these days. Again, the reason I fell out of Leninism is mainly because I had a distrust of centralised authority.

>I'm leftcom these days

Foreign currencies are shit because then debt can actually ruin your nation, look at Greece. Manipulating the money supply matters in such cases. Also, deficit helps economic growth because GDP generally outstrips the interest.

I'm not as educated on cryptocurrencies but without steady and constant inflation they'd be fucked. Having a currency regulated via the state is also sorta what crypto hopes to avoid... seems impractical. The black market would be super strong and other countries could potentially have a tight grip on your currency, which is bad. It would also just not be as convenient as cash and more dependent on infrastructure, making it vulnerable in a large scale crisis. Tax law might also be hard to enforce.

I'm probably the only one in my group of friends from high school who hasn't really changed his beliefs. I haven't seen any of those guys in about a decade until recently when I met one by chance the other day, found out he was on a big Hearts of Iron kick and we elected to play a game together as our favorite factions. Apparently he became a big fan of communism during his time working towards his masters degree, and spent a lot of time playing as the USSR previously along with the PRC and various others. When we had started up a game, I told him I was surprised when he picked Republican Spain, to which he said, "That you'd choose the nationalists surprises me not one bit."

I know real life is more nuanced than two guys picking up old banners and slugging it out on a video game together, but I sometimes can't shake the idea that while neither of us are going to start goose stepping down the streets or violently seizing the means of production, our core beliefs are diametrically opposed from each other, and that we're still actively working to undermine the other's beliefs. It's a strange feeling that one might have to one day choose between his lifelong friends and his ideals for a better tomorrow.

>silly leftist, don't you know all the strong, virile, powerful men of our generation are all natsocs fighting for a white ethnostate?

>monarchism

but that is the point, not knowing everything is great because you can keep experience that feeling of getting more knowledge until your brain dies

Yes, learning history has made me long for an enlightened despotism.

> thinks capitalism is only possible economic system other than command economy
> learned this in high school
> is unaware that economies across the world functioned and flourished before capitalism's invention in 1602

I have come to regard Islam as roughly the moral and practical equivalent of Nazism. Just a lot older and more successful.

Both are totalitarian systems of ideas built for the purposes of militaristic and genocidal expansion, and the supremacy of a specific ethnicity(arab/german)

It is.

>Hapsburgs were the only monarchs

>trans-Atlantic slavery was a mistranslation of the Byzantine system of indentured PoWs

Never really cared for Byzantine history, but that sounds pretty neat. What are some good reads or maybe even podcasts about that?

You're spot on though.

Hey, honest question here. In nature we see hierarchies where the most powerful animal I that set gets to mate or nesting location. Given the fact that religion probably isn't true, we aren't created in God's image. Why is it unreasonable to think these hierarchies exist in mankind? They seem inevitable given some that people are more strong, or more smart, or more cruel than others

That ideologies dont matter if ruler is able and popular. People can give up on their beloved ideology in a second if it will give them peace of mind and security.

I've become a lot less compassionate to failed countries and certain religions and believe that some cultures are better than others.

It must be doing a bad job then, considering the majority of Muslims have been non-Arab for several hundred years and Arab Muslims have been under the aforementioned's rule for most of that time.

>reminder that if you are not a libertarian you have a retard tier political philosophy

fortune.com/2016/06/03/imf-neoliberalism-failing/

independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/neoliberalism-is-increasing-inequality-and-stunting-economic-growth-the-imf-says-a7052416.html

imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2016/06/ostry.htm

Both libertarians and neoliberals should be put into death camps to pave the way for a social democratic future.

Yes, it has made em aware of just how mind-numbingly complex everything is.

Seriously, it's a goddam rabbit hole. People like to boil shit down to retard levels like "Whites invented everything, niggers did nothing lol" or "The only reason civilization exists is because muslims", but those are gross oversimplifications that piss me off to no end.

History is a web with one million threads locking into each other, connecting to other webs which also have a million threads as well. The myriad of perspectives and situations one can look into is so astounding, I can understand why people don't do any historical research but prefer to just make shit up. Learning the truth is too daunting of a task.

And all the faggots in this thread saying things like "history tells us the libtards are cucks lol" just prove my point. They just take simplified histories and twist them to serve their own agenda, rather than read through all of the perspectives of a certain event, and debate it with others, and just sit and think through the mental states of all parties involved.

>TLDR
History is super complicated and that's why idiots exist.

Learning history made me realize that all this shit is transitory, everything you and your people have built will eventually collapse.

Well yeah but it won't be our fault, statistically a meteor will hit us

That there is no right or wrong in history. Eventually enough time will pass that your actions will no longer have any consequence to those living in the current time.

I have truly started appreciating my nation and my opinions on social issues have become very conservative since I started studying sociology.
My opinions on economics have shifted toward socialism, and I've started hating liberals and neoliberals.
I've fallen in love with democracy and government based on proper legal procedures.
I have started hating the dissolution of community and the social mores in the contemporary world.
Studying philosophy made me dance on the edge of faith.

What the heck became of me?

>the natural world can be used as an analogy for the way society functions
No. Hierarchy does fulfill a necessary function in society, but your post is retarded.

I am getting more leftist the more i see. I think its ok to contribute to your country and society and i don't think its ok to get eat the cake on the expense of others. There's plenty of cake for all.

i like roads, and not paying for them (directly)

Yea I've come to the understanding that every system is doomed to fail from corruption and incompentence.

Every single one is ultimately the same, a rat race to the other side of the scale until it becomes unsustainable and topples down to start over again in a long cycle.

>social democratic
you're next on the chopping block

I used to be vaguely libertarian but I've become increasingly right wing. History is basically one long case study on why might makes right.

Time to levelup and read Acquinas user

>the more moderate/centrist I've become
Literally a non-position. Being a moderate or a centrist simply means not deviating from the status quo too much. An utterly banal stance to take.

And extreme political positions attract angry, alienated, maladjusted weirdos.

For example /pol/ and /leftypol/

Not accurate at all. Here's why. Moderation is the only position that has any hope of accomplishing anything. While both far left/right sides scream themselves breathless and cry themselves to sleep, only the moderates can attempt to broker compromise policies that can address anything at all. Far left/right positions are so winner take all that they eventually cause the collapse if every system they infect.

Moderation is not about be living in nothing. Its about believing that actually governing and passing laws is the more important that irrational ideological purity. Some moderates are quite passionate about creating stable, functioning governments and economies where all stakeholders can haven concerns addressed and represented in good will rather than your prefered culture of hyper partisan boogy man making and silencing any opposition by any means necessary.

In his defense Libertarian isn't ancap, so perhaps just green text his quote with a brainlet wojak meme would have been more appropriate

>capitalism is pretty shit but it's the best shit we have and was instrumental in the foundation of our modern societies
>religion is pretty shit but it's the best shit we have and was instrumental in the foundation of our modern societies
>war is pretty shit but it's the best shit we have and was instrumental in the foundation of our modern societies
etc. etc.

The more I learn in general the more I support genociding hedonistic meatcucks

"it's the best shit we have" to me implies each of these is a constant necessity(and mean constant, not recurring) which doesnt seem appropriate for war.

Obvious answer, but it depends what you read and the state of mind you are in at the time; i.e. how receptive you are to the material, what is going on in your life, etc. History can be interpreted a million different ways and, at least for me, the political views produced from reading and studying history are for the most part contingent upon my way of thinking at the time, no matter how open-minded I tried to be. For instance, when I was an undergraduate I took a History of American Business class, with readings from economists, authors, journalists, and sociologists as course materials. Despite obvious societal ills resulting from Gilded Age capitalism and lack of worker representation, or other numerous flaws within the capitalist system, it is almost impossible to argue that the current standard of living could be attained through a system other than a market economy. Sure, there are arguments on both sides for regulation, social programs, etc, but one ultimately comes out on the side of capitalism insofar as capitalism is a market economy.

I had a similar experience when studying the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc; whatever the validity of proletarian grievances, a communist society is ultimately predicated on a gargantuan bureaucratic apparatus that plans economic production ad distribution down to the individual level. Such planning cannot possibly anticipate the needs of the populace and inefficiencies naturally result; i think it was something like 20% of USSR grain was rotting in silos, not because there wasn't demand, hunger was incredibly high, but because it could not be adequately distributed. This pattern repeats itself in every Eastern Bloc country, from the hardline commies to the mixed economies of Yugoslavia (not Eastern Bloc, I know), from Bela Kun to Gorbachev, and it's fairly difficult to support a communist state after reading an economic history of them.

>study history
>become white nationalist

who else?

>t. James Buchanan

Just a nationalist because whiteness is a meme

t. chang

>soc dem
>not dem soc

To the firing line with you

It made me realize that it's only a matter of time before things like modern international law breaks down and we just start jacking other peoples' territories through right of conquest again. None of us will probably live to see it.

I became an Americo-centrist honestly

I view any and all Americans as superior to anyone, regardless of who they are.

Still can't believe she left the industry just because of the fallout from getting blacked once. At least cash out with some gangbangs