"Despite their claims to be a Bibul-luvin' people, the Americans are causing baby Jesus to cry. They not only refuse to adopt a monarchic system of government, but rejected the divinely-appointed monarchy of George III. This is in direct conflict with Deuteronomy 17:15, in which God tells His people, "Be sure to appoint a King over you."
Thus, any American Republican, Tea-Bagger, libertarian, or otherwise who claims to be a Christian, is a filthy liar. If they are true Christians, they should be campaigning to appoint a King of the United States. Anything else is a foul, anti-Christian heresy."
--RationalWiki
Deut 17:15 says that when the Isrealites appoint a king, the king must be an Israelite. Further, he has to abide (abide!) by the Levitical law, he cannot (cannot!) amass a great fortune in money or horses, or generally set himself above those he rules.
That's actually a really cool passage, and as far as I know the oldest known statement of constitutional government.
To break up the awkward silence at the start of a recent Overcoming Bias meetup, I asked everyone present to tell their rationalist origin story - a key event or fact that played a role in their first beginning to aspire to rationality. This worked surprisingly well (and I would recommend it for future meetups).
I think I've already told enough of my own origin story on Overcoming Bias: how I was digging in my parents' yard as a kid and found a tarnished silver amulet inscribed with Bayes's Theorem, and how I wore it to bed that night and dreamed of a woman in white, holding an ancient leather-bound book called Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (eds. D. Kahneman, P. Slovic, and A. Tversky, 1982)... but there's no need to go into that again.
So, seriously... how did you originally go down that road?
Added: For some odd reason, many of the commenters here seem to have had a single experience in common - namely, at some point, encountering Overcoming Bias... But I'm especially interested in what it takes to get the transition started - crossing the first divide. This would be very valuable knowledge if it can be generalized. If that did happen at OB, please try to specify what was the crucial "Aha!" insight (down to the specific post if possible).