I guess alot of things have shaped the way I see things
I grew up in a non religous house hold, but have never had any doubt that God exists, I am a Christian.
My parents instilled in me a strong work ethic, don't depend on anyone else to take care of you especailly the government - so I have conservative tendancies
My thoughts on abortion, since I am Christian you would think that I am against it, but I feel that everyone has to make their own choices and answer for it one day. Don't point out the splinter in your brothers eye, while ignoring the plank in your own eye.
Gay rights same pretty much applies there, love the sinner hate the sin philosophy.
I don't want the government involved in every aspect of our lives, as a matter of fact I think they are way to involved now.
I guess when all is said and done ( and according to the political affiliation tests) I am a hardcore libertarian.

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For real coverage of the Iraq war see
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Conan! What is best in life?
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women

Did they look like psychos? Is that what they looked like? They were vampires. Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a **** how crazy they are!

When I was young, I always felt like that kid who was pointing out how the emperor was naked. It seemed people all believed in this or that, and often times with an absolute conviction, but whether or not those views were logical or consistant was another matter. It seemed to me that there was little rhyme nor reason to what people believed except that they were TAUGHT such beliefs. I started to examine the nature of belief, itself.

I still feel much like that kid today because it still seems most people go through life with little self-doubt, simply accepting their beliefs as sacrosanct and operating from the perspective of repeating dogma -- politics as an article of faith. Especially for those who have decided to conform to a specific ideology, the act of conformity reverses what seems to me should be the the essential nature of forming political opinions, namely that one has settled upon the ideology first and then rationalizes the opinions rather than deciding on the basic values first and then forming an ideology on one's own.


I guess I'm just not very socialized by nature, as I simply think about basic issues and then extrapolate from there. I try try to evaluate politics from the perspective that my right to swing my fist ends at your nose, as do the rights of many people doing so at once. I think people are neither evil nor good by nature but are certainly capable of both in action, so government should act in such a way as to limit the one and promote the other.

I guess if I were to describe my politics, I would say I operate more intuitively than most, and less doctrinaire. Moderate doesn't really describe me, but I do tend to have opinions that do not neatly fall into any of the categories people here are so very fond of using.

I know not to get involved in a land war in Asia. That, right off the bat, makes everyone who's ever seen The Princess Bride more qualified to be President than Bush is.

My dad's a conservative. My mom's not really all that big on politics but was disabled pretty early... which really gave me a distaste for the conservative purists.
But my dad was that breed of extremely intense conservative. I gained that intensity. When I reached political maturity I was also becoming Christian... so I was a hardcore social conservative... and at some point became anti-government.
Working a few jobs made me anti-corporate.
After a while I was pretty much anti-everything.
I went nuts for a while and got into conspiracy theories.

Then I got back on track and went to college and started to ease myself into reasonability. I kept my mostly left-leaning areas... but by then (somewhere in the conspiracy theory era) I ditched Christianity and tried to look at things through a realist/humanist approach.

The tragedy is that politics seems less intense these days to me. Much more involved when I think the world's on the brink of disaster.

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That information is classified and to be given only on a need-to-know basis...

And I do not need to know.

I've been trying to figure out how to describe my own political upbringing (ongoing of course), and man, the mind just boggles.

Let's see.

You have to go back quite a few lifetimes, really.

I like to think I am like the majority of Americans. My father, despite serving in the Marines and getting his Phd in industrial management, was disallowed to work by the time he was 35 because of severe complications from type 1 Diabetes. If not for the GI bill, available to me because my father was classified as a diabled veteran when he was diagnosed in the military with Diabetes, I would most likely not have been able to attend college. My sister was diagnosed with type 1 Diabetes when she was 11 years old, and has had a double organ transplant, multiple eye surgeries, toes amputated from poor circulation, and numerous other health problems. Lucky for her she has found a company that has allowed her to pursue a career, but I think that only became possible after the pasage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Yet despite all that I have generally voted Republican in the past, but not always! Without a robust capitalist economy, my sister and I wold likely have not been able to have successful careers like we do. Democrats seem to want to leach off the economy for pet projects more than Republicans, but they do it too! The Democrats just strike me as more than a little sleazy and greasy, and I cannot trust anything they say. The past two Democratic Party Presidents have been colossal failures in my opinion. Bush is not my favorite either, but I think Reagan got things about right.

Lately I am less impressed with the Republicans than I have been in the past too, but we are in a lesser of two evils situation right now with our political choices.

By my count, at least in the political forum most of those posting are socialists, which is what the perspective illustrated by this testimony.

But this testimony is typical of today’s US HS teacher. Most of them I've spoken with are socialist, who claim political neutrality but who are in reality, flaming Marxists and bring the unenviable baggage that comes along with that.

At the onset of the War on Terror we had a Brit teacher at one of our local High Schools print a letter to the local paper's editor spouting the vilest anti-American hate you can imagine. Due to no small amount of effort on the part of myself and several likeminded people, he was transferred to the worst school in the district and shortly after that he was fired. Three more have since followed him for the same reason.

I'm a member of a group of citizens that sniff out the worst of the socialist indoctrinators in this school district and I'm happy to report that it's very difficult to get a HS teacher around here to pass along a political thought while on duty.

It’s an interesting, if predictable trend where a large percentage of those responding to this thread have declared that they stopped using their minds in college when they first found the well traveled path and became socialists, liberals, progressive or what have you, which is understandable. Given that academics are not very bright people and they are incapable of competition. This is why they're so attracted to Marxism. Marxism transfers responsibility for their life onto someone else and vilifies competitors in the process. So Marxism just validates the existence of the weakest of the species who when the already dull-witted individuals get to HS or College (meaning the Marxist candidates), all it takes is an authority figure to validate their tendencies and presto, a MARXIST is born.

I'd say the US began its decline when the socialists managed to outshout Senator Joe McCarthy, who because he realized how compromised the US was by the communist insurgency and that he was not going to be successful in destroying it, he died in disgrace and alcoholism. Of course as it always will, history has proven Senator McCarthy right and testimonies such as those above are just a tiny fraction of evidence which keeps pouring in, to validate his worst fears.

And if more conservatives were like you, the right would not terrify me as much as it does.
Recognizing that the playing field is not level leads to mercy and the occasional helping of others.
It keeps you from villainizing all government employees or labeling all who work in the nonprofit sector as wastes.

As it stands now, I think most conservatives only help people because God says so.
I suppose that's why so many are scared by the concept of religion fading.
Hell, I'm scared of the rise in atheistic Republicans myself! People with contempt for the poor and no belief that some invisible patriarch wants them to help out anyway! Yikes!

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That information is classified and to be given only on a need-to-know basis...

And I do not need to know.

Being a small government guy, I think it becomes imperative that I help those deserving of help to the best of my ability. There is a very large food bank here in Atlanta that feeds thousands. www.acfb.org. They are seeing record demand right now and put out a call for help. I now send them money every time I get paid. You would be shocked what they can do with $50 or $100. I am a bit lucky in that things are great for me personally. But we just had yet another round of layoffs here, so I know how quickly that can change. So I'm glad to help out.

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

Gosh, how proud I am to be part of an America where teachers can be FIRED for expressing an opinion to their classes.

My daughter is 14 and my son is 10. We often talk about politics. My daughter told me this morning that her favorite class right now is her civics class, because they have one class a week called "Mr. Cartwright's Neighborhood" where they can ask him anything politically oriented, and he will answer it, with his actual opinion. They freaking LOVE IT because they think he is one of the few teachers at their school who is "real" with them.

If more parents would do their own jobs, including having candid conversations on every topic from sex to prayer in school with their kids, instead of abdicating this responsibility to the schools, perhaps kids would be less starved for real conversations with adults.

If an adult is humiliating or demeaning a child in class because of a particular view, that's one thing. But, the method used by many teachers is similar to the Socratic method in that it teaches kids to think FOR THEMSELVES.

God forbid we should have an America where people learn to THINK at school and express opinions.

p.s. Her teacher is a conservative. His views have lead to many interesting family discussions around the dinner table at my house.

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I'll get nicer when you get smarter.