What Is Your Political Philosophy?

Chinese Legalism

 

I am a moderate Democrat. My views are liberal on some issues ( gay rights, women's reproductive rights, civil rights, healthcare, ) and somewhat conservative on other issues (taxes, death penalty, the military) But my political philosophy is always evolving, so a year from now it could be a little different.

 

I would consider myself to be a “sane” center left leaning Democrat with firm beliefs in self-reliance and a moderate government.

I say “sane” because so many people today tend to jump off the bridge for their perspective party instead of thinking for themselves.

I “do” believe that we all need & benefit from government, I “do” believe we all need “some” government intervention from time to time, but I also believe that there is a limit to what government can do for us or help us with.

I "do" believe government social programs should be available to those who “truly” need it while simultaneously acknowledging that the present system needs to be revamped and all of the scammers need be purged from the system.

I believe topics such as religion, and women’s issues should be “off” of government’s radar as people will always choose what is right for them “without” the need of religiously biased politicians interfering into others people lives.

I absolutely “do not” buy into the notion that all republicans are mean spirited racists that want to white-wash the country and return to 1957 or that all Democrats are tree hugging hippies wanting nothing but free handouts and ample supplies of weed.

The problem (as I see it) is with everyone in the fringes that have tainted the well and made our political discourse & conversation toxic with their extreme assertions & craziness fed to them by people with political or financial agendas.

President Bush wasn’t the second coming of Satan and neither is President Obama.

Each man has/had his faults, and each his positive attributes.

I believe in the return of sanity…….(if that’s possible)

 

Basically, I'd like the USA to be more like Canada or Europe. Basically 95% of everything should be for profit capitalism. Certain things like health care, education, high education, infrastruction, mass transit, should be run to be a benefit for the people, the goal should be for it to be affordable and be available to ALL, CHEAP, even if nobody makes a buck on it. Period. And as for labor laws, Euro style all the way, favr the workers over the owner. I'd end welfare to, including corporate welfare, and have progressive taxes. Put people to work by any means necessary... not just wait for the market to create jobs at random!

 

My philosophy is that if we don't cut through the old-timey ideological morass sometime soon, we're gonna be fecked.

 

That's a little easier to say when the economy is strong and jobs are available.

 

All national level politicians of all parties are scum to one degree or another and so you simply vote for the most qualified piece of scum in possession of a voting record or productivity history most in line with your own concept of good government for the nation as a whole. This makes everything simple come voting time, eliminate party loyalty issues, and makes it less likely that any one politician is going to succeed in pulling the wool over your (or rather, over my) eyes. Aside from that I am a political independent and a contrarian as a poster.

 

Personally, I find something here compelling, yet the vitriol scum aspect repelling. Negative insulting or divisive commentary seems to serve no purpose beyond creating more of the same.

 

My philosophy oscillates day to day. The change is essentially down to my view of humanity as a whole. I see that human beings are not very intelligent, politically apathetic, prone to violence, and capable of truly horrific acts of many kinds. On some days I attribute this to the soul crushing effects of capitalism, the obsessive materialism and consumerism, and the negative effects of a wholly immoral state. If this is the case, it follows logically that with the removal of a restrictive state and the undermining of capitalist power, the advancement of human beings beyond that may be possible. On those days I would consider myself left-libertarian.

On the days when I believe the negative qualities of human beings are inherent, I tend to favor more of a European social democratic sort of system. One which seeks to optimize the potential of all people and create the conditions of possibility for their success, but has the capacity to control the negative behavior of people prone to the negative behavior I mentioned before.

So essentially I would define myself as a person who is highly critical of capitalism, but is anti-marxist. And who practically seeks to mitigate the flaws in capitalism with reforms to the system similar to those in Scandinavia.

 

In a political chat-forum plain talk is compelling if leavened with a sense of humor and an occasional act of mercy or discretion. On the other hand I seriously doubt that any national level politician is going to read my posting or would be thinned skinned enough to take serious offense over my opinion regarding their probable nature. Heck but if they did then it might just serve some good to prick their overweening egos, as arrogance is almost always an innate part of such a political personality.

 

I sometimes draw pictures of Unicorns.

 

. . . and that's better than drawing flies . . . though not nearly as easy. Drawing unicorns takes skill!

 

I am not a big numbers person. To me politics is about the general emotional state of the public and about the best use of resources.

I think people can do anything they agree on. If they are all working at opposite ends nothing gets done.

I think that everyone needs to work together to solve problems. The problems will not just go away if we all decide they are not important. If something is really not a problem maybe the public focus will change, but in general ignoring things makes them worse.

The thing is that any goal is better than none. If we are working only at keeping things the same we will fail. Because things are changing.

Doing anything means sacrifice. If none of us are willing to give up anything then things will break down. If we argue and point fingers at one another it serves nothing except all of our vanity and pride. We will end up winning all the battles to find our war lost. And still blaming each other.

Piddling over the details is what most of us do here. To our own discredit.

 

I am a moderate liberal socialist. I believe in maximizing the labor force with living wages and caps on wealth, believe if we are going to be a capitalist nation we make corporations be responsible for themselves without handouts, make the stock market full of parasites an illegal activity, make off-shoring accounts illegal, remove all regulations including caps on lawsuits, bring all US troops back to US soil & mind our own affairs, take control of all National Security items, restore the 2nd by repealing all gun laws & require a fire arm in every home, make intrusion on lifestyle a crime, and I could go on. Maybe later, but conservatives don't think corporations, stock market parasites should have to work for their handouts...

 

That pretty well sums me up.

 

It would be nice if it actually worked that way. But the way the GOP works the most extreme whackadoodle conservatives lead and the rest follow in goose step. So a vote for even the most moderate of Republicans is a vote for the WORST among them.

 

That is simply not true. The Republican party is controlled by the same interests it has always been controlled by. The big business wing of the party. The small government and/or religious segment of the party will always make more noise and the establishment will always pay lip service to them, but at the end of the day, the big business segment of the party has all the power.

 

We only have to go back to the government shutdown a couple of months ago to see just how true my statement is.

Since "Citizen's United" Republicans in Congress are scared to death that they will be primaried by the deep pocketed Koch brothers if they don't go along with the craziest crap the tea party extremists can think up.

 

Let's tweak that to fully encompass all aspects of reality: But the way the DEM Party works the most extreme whackadoodle leftwingers lead and the rest follow in goose step. So a vote for even the most moderate of Democrat is a vote for the WORST among them . . . witness the Political Rock star hype of 2008 for a fellow with Zero meaningful national level experience or viable leadership or management history.

 

What a bunch of crap! But I guess since Republicans can't field a candidate with any enthusiastic supporters (other than Sarah "Half Term" Palin) it must seem that way.

 

Help the helpless. As for those who haven't a clue, (*)(*)(*)(*) on em.

 

Yeah . . . because Barack has been a gooooooooood president . . . single-handedly rehabilitating both G.W. Bush's and Jimmy Carter's images as president simply by being so -- er -- g-o-o-d. Yeah . . . that's the ticket!

 

Carter wasn't nearly as bad as conservative propaganda spewers would like us to think. And Obama is about as good as we can get in this country the way things are. Look what the corporate media did to Howard Dean. Reagan and the Bush crime family and the other Republican Presidential candidates since Eisenhower are a sick f***ing joke!

 

Ah but until Barack came along to present a fantastic bad comparison Carter was not generally considered to have been a good president. But compared to Barack Obama? Carter's looking pretty good nowadays. My original point being that the national level politicians of BOTH parties are generally speaking ethical scum. You insist that the scumminess resides almost wholly on the Right, a perception that is naive at the least and indicative of extreme partisan bias at worst.

 

You must be lumping all "conservatives" in this context into the same bucket as religious conservatives. I'm a conservative, but I'm not religious at all, and I am not against abortion per se. Llike you, once the fetus reaches a certain stage of development, elective abortions are just murder of a small person. An elective abortion is one of choice, as in the mother simple decides, she changed her mind, so kill it. When the mother's life is in jepordy, an abortion is no longer elective, it's a life saving procedure for the mother.

BTW, you can be a far left liberal and still oppose late term abortions. Wanting to protect the life of a baby is not political.