I was a very serious libertarian in my youth. I grew up deep in red country. I had no positive intellectual influences in my life whatsoever. It was Christians versus everyone else. I was the only atheist I knew.

The best friend I have ever had in my life was college educated, deeply intelligent, deeply flawed, but a very beautiful, loving, and brilliant person. He was the only atheist I had ever met. I was 18 years old, he was 15 years my senior.

He introduced me to all of the objectivist/libertarian thinkers and their works. I had never had anyone in my life who had any kind of serious intellectual interests. He gave me a place to start when I wouldn’t have otherwise had one.

I went all in.

It’s funny, because he told me when I was 20 years old. “I promise you, 20 years from now you and I are going to have a conversation and you will have become a bleeding heart liberal, 100%. I promise you. I can tell by the way you think about almost everything.”

He was right. It’s funny because he is as liberal as I am today. His son and my daughter are very close, very political, and very gay. They’ve moved the needle for him big time, I think.

For me, the moment that put me on this road was a very simple one. I was driving to work one day and I stopped at a red light. I seen this man struggling to walk, his right foot was turned around backwards. It just hit me like a ton of bricks, we are not on an even playing field at all. This man cannot help that his foot is on backwards. I can’t help if I’m dumber or smarter than the next guy. I can’t help what opportunities I have or have not had. I can’t help my bad luck or my good luck. It isn’t my fault that my dad is a junkie and doors are closed to me that are open to people with connections that I don’t have.

Why do two brothers from the same family with the same moral upbringing take such radically different paths? One becomes a junkie and the other becomes a preacher. Is there something beyond our control that guides us? If there is, should we not look out for one another? Should those of us at an advantage help those of us at a disadvantage? Surely we can’t leave them to die.

It was Bernie Sanders who finally flipped me completely.

Someone who was passionately empathetic, who was guided by the thought that we as a species can be better. It was before he ran for president, just some videos I seen of him on YouTube.

Most libertarians I have known are good people. They believe deeply in individualism, to the point that as long as any individual is living a life that brings harm to no one else, that person should be free to live how they choose.

The problem is, they idolize success, and fail to see how a successful person takes advantage of everyone else to get there.

When I meet a libertarian now, I trust that person. Maybe it’s because I shared that view so deeply at one point, but they all really do mean well. The ones that I have known have been very idealistic and believed that people would choose to do good for goodness sake.

Obviously, some very shitty people can grab onto any ideology, but anecdotally, the ones that I have met are just misguided and most of the socially liberal libertarians I knew when I was younger are now very progressive people.