Liberal vs. Conservative

[Corrosion of conformity]

We just recently took a test in school to show what side of the political spectrum we fell under, and that just got me curious on other people's political views. I scored very liberal by the way, which kind of surprised me because I agree with some conservative values. (while I strongly disagree with others)

[Murph]

Don't vote.

 

Just ........

 

"Cough"

 

I'm very weary of this........

 

Just sayin'.....

[FennRx]

fiscal conservative, more socially liberal

[The Mick]

Nether but Eye certainly lean left allot.

[AXE®]

[Murph]

Moot.

[The Fool on The Hill]

Neither, Ideologies are for people who cant think for themselves.

[callen3615]

 

Oh, I get it. :D

[milod]

I think a lot of us today would be considered quite "liberal" in a 19th century sense even if today we're considered "arch conservatives."

 

I don't think there's a good definition nowadays of "liberal" or "conservative" in the US - or in other Anglophone nations, either. There are too many variables and variations.

 

I'm in the "I don't care what color you are," group, but my travels have convinced me that there are a lot of odd cultural differences one never quite "gets" - and that's not just with folks from Sudan or Bolivia, but even from different backgrounds living next door. So I wonder about some cultures in this world and I wonder about folks who move here because it's a better life, then try to change things to make it like where they're from.

 

(Parenthetically, I find it rather comfortable to hang around on a Siouxan/Dakota/Lakota reservation and uncomfortable with the Crow. Can't quite figure the Cheyenne yet. But then... I was brought up around the "Sioux." Korean and Japanese cultures can be extremely comfortable and yet on occasion very frustrating. Germany's comfortable, France much less so. Seoul is super if you've got some cash and keep your nose clean.)

 

I think the governments of most "western" countries give away too much to people who are perfectly happy not to work - and are too easy on illegal immigrants while making it Hell on a lot of good folks who want to immigrate legally even from among other "western" countries. That's especially true in the US. I'm not saying "root hog or die," but don't understand why some folks who don't work and don't want to work have the same disposable income I do.

 

I think anybody who can buy a firearm has the right to carry it for whatever reason whatsoever. If he or she can't handle it responsibly, hang 'em. As Isaac Asimov noted, an armed society is a polite society.

 

I'm very prejudiced in favor of the Anglophone concept of representative government and yet... I've seen it turn almost into a mobocratic scene.

 

But I'm also prejudiced in favor of such as Teddy Roosevelt in his "trust bustin'" era and dislike bureaucracy and tend to dislike bureaucrats whether in government or corporate structures.

 

I dislike discourtesy. I dislike violence unless one is paid for it. I love music. I love the way computers can give us more power to do stuff we want to, but I dislike the way they track us like livestock for various governmental agencies. I don't particularly like big cities although the music tends to be pretty good and in wide variation.

 

I like the idea of a car that will take me to the state capital some 250 miles away at -30F in a snowstorm and not worry about a two-foot snowdrift or having to overnight in it in a blizzard. That means a real internal combustion engine since the trip has several spots where in the daytime you're 60-70 miles between gas stations and there are lots of areas you drive quite a while without seeing a ranch light at night.

 

I like old corrals and sagebrush, ponderosa pine, wide open spaces where you can see mountains in the background and good guitars. Oh, and pretty girls wearing wranglers, ropers and driving Jeeps are awfully nice to be around. Green mud on my boots never bothered me, but neither has wearing a suit and tie and (yuck) shoes, which I've done when I've had to live in a city.

 

I dislike "aristocratic" arrogance and the anti-everything folks. I dislike the very concept of "from each according to his means and to each according to his needs." It don't work. Neither will socialized medicine in an environment of people with widely different views of medical ethics. In environments where everybody agrees, it's likely a piece of cake, but I don't live there.

 

Conservative or liberal?

[SolidGuitar]

I wanted to pick both but that wasn't an option so I went with neither.

[NeoConMan]

I'm about 5,000 miles to the Right of John Wayne - I'm closer to Genghis Khan than I am to Ronald Reagan.

[G u e s t]

.

.

 

I'm with SolidGuitar.....

I wanted to pick both but that wasn't an option so I went with neither.

.

[Bender 4 Life]

For 30 years I ran around w/hair almost to my a$$, drinking enough whiskey to float the Titanic

abusing any substance that I could smoke,shoot,drop,snort, or rub into my belly button, and yelling

"SCREW THE MAN!!!!!!!!"

Then a well intentioned friend pointed out to me, that even though my back, hips, and knees

are crippled, I've not missed a days work in 25 yrs........My wife & I are buying a nice house in

a nice neighborhood........I carry a lawfully permitted firearm for protection......I pay my taxes

every payday, so that others can sponge off the U.S. Govt.........Hell, I even VOTE!

My friend told me........."dude, you ARE the man"..........

so, my employer started drug testing 2 years ago.......i've been drug free for 3 yrs.

I've completely lost my taste for alcohol.........

I even got my hair cut off, and now wear a "crewcut", mainly because Alabama is rediculously

HOT in the summer.

But, I still, and always will, love playing my guitars !!!!!!!!!!

 

Oh yeah, I voted neither.......because I consider myself a liberal conservative.

[FirstMeasure]

I've never classified myself as anything but a Guitar Player. When I refer to myself as a Liberal, it's because I've been labeled as such by someone with a label given them by someone else, who decided they were something someone else said they were.

[bol316]

I am quite liberal socially. I draw the line at all this PC crap though. Thats for the birds. A real liberal believes in true freedom of expression within legal reason (like that newspaper ad idiot who inferred hoping Obama is assasinated. Thats wrong and horrible). However I believe that if someone says something you deem offensive you should suggest to them why they shouldnt think that way. But if they choose not to, oh well get over it.

 

I also have zero tolerance for about 90% of these "groups" who act so picked on. Left or right. Cry me a river. Everyone has problems (more or less). All kinds of people get "picked on". It's not just you and I'm sure you dont get "picked on" nearly as much as you think you do.

 

Although I think it is an overblown topic, I believe welfare needs to be tightened up big time. Also, on a personal level, i dont know if I would want my wife having an abortion, even if I didnt really want a child. Though if it came to voting on its legality, I would vote to allow it.

 

I am absolutely for gay marriage. First off the Constitution doesnt prohibit it. Secondly, for all the Christians who get their panties in a bunch over it, no church will be forced to perform the ceremony. Its merely a legal matter. If the state/fed tried to force churches to perform the ceremony, I would be VERY against that (so much for me being a God hater).

 

Another way that I believe I am quite liberal is defense spending. Its wildly out of control. I'm also tired of constantly worrying about every single country's little problems and policing the world. I also haven't heard of anything quite as stupid as building a wall along the Mexico border. Just start enforcing the law regarding hiring illegals. Heck, triple the current fine. Then these illegals cant find work here because businesses will be terrified to hire them and they will run back to Mexico on their own. But nooooooo that would be terrible because then the mega-rich wont have cheap, slave labor.

 

Anyways there is my set of beliefs. I would say I am overall left-leaning but far from firmly entrenched.

[Notes_Norton]

All things in moderation.

 

The extreme Liberals and Conservatives are too extreme for me and I find I disagree with them more often than not. On the other hand, I do end up agreeing with certain points of the moderate end of both political factions.

 

And one more thing, when one faction constantly bashes the other, emotionally I tend to side with the underdog.

 

So for me the propaganda is counter-productive, it leans me a little to the opposite side.

 

So I guess I'm slightly towards the liberal side of center.

 

Notes

[milod]

Okay... I probably shouldn't do this, but...

 

RE: "Gay marriage" and its constitutional status.

 

No, it's not in the constitution, but the concept would have been as foreign, or perhaps more so, to the founders and writers of the constitution as finding a constitutional status for XMan mutants.

 

Remember that these guys were all pretty much classical scholars and were quite aware that male homosexuality or at least bisexuality was as common in Greek and Roman eras of ascent as the concept of wine.

 

Yet in those days of acceptance, never was there apparently a written thought that perhaps two males might "marry." Marriage was, by definition, for a male and a female.

 

I can find nothing documented in antiquity suggesting otherwise. Nor of study of more than a few major societies over the past 2-4,000 years.

 

Definition: Marriage = one male and one female. Even during times of acceptance of polygamy, marriage remained a contract between one male and one female. Period.

 

For the founders to have considered marriage at all - which they did not, leaving that to the states - it would have been as unthinkable to suggest anything else but a contract between a male and a female. It would have been as if the constitution might have stated that the sun would be called the moon and vice versa.

 

I think they were quite capable of comprehending some era of space travel and certainly of air travel, because that would mean simply an advance in science technology, something with which they were quite familiar.

 

So... while I personally don't care at all who does what with whom, nor whether there might be a way in which law might provide a parallel....

 

It seems to me a horribly bad precedent to overcome virtually all human history to redefine what each culture has called "marriage" as meaning a contract between a man and a woman. That's big-time "cross-cultural."

 

Granted, words and a degree of semantic conservatism are part of my being, but I do honestly fear that such redefinition of a word such as this is truly horrid and has huge, huge potential for many long-term legal difficulties and additional redefinitions.

 

Heck, I'm so "liberal" in some ways that frankly I'm not particularly bothered by polygamy nor even various definitions of "incest" that different cultures have adopted. Heck, according to the Koreans, when my great grandfather married the sister of his deceased first wife, that was "incest" by their definition but not by my own nor that of most "westerners."

 

It's the changing of a word used commonly in all major world cultures for thousands of years that bugs me.

 

BTW, among the Lakota, at least, there was a way around this, but it required one of a same-sex couple to adopt the clothing and overall persona and "duties" of the opposite sex, something not at all that difficult given both modern surgical techniques and law in general.

 

m

[Homz]

Do you have something in a mesh. I like mine to breath and flex.

[KSG_Standard]

AXE, I've warned you before...fence sitters get splinters in their taint.

[Homz]

Especially if wearing mesh underwear.

[bol316]

Okay... I probably shouldn't do this' date=' but...

 

RE: "Gay marriage" and its constitutional status.

 

No, it's not in the constitution, but the concept would have been as foreign, or perhaps more so, to the founders and writers of the constitution as finding a constitutional status for XMan mutants.

 

Remember that these guys were all pretty much classical scholars and were quite aware that male homosexuality or at least bisexuality was as common in Greek and Roman eras of ascent as the concept of wine.

 

Yet in those days of acceptance, never was there apparently a written thought that perhaps two males might "marry." Marriage was, by definition, for a male and a female.

 

I can find nothing documented in antiquity suggesting otherwise. Nor of study of more than a few major societies over the past 2-4,000 years.

 

Definition: Marriage = one male and one female. Even during times of acceptance of polygamy, marriage remained a contract between one male and one female. Period.

 

For the founders to have considered marriage at all - which they did not, leaving that to the states - it would have been as unthinkable to suggest anything else but a contract between a male and a female. It would have been as if the constitution might have stated that the sun would be called the moon and vice versa.

 

I think they were quite capable of comprehending some era of space travel and certainly of air travel, because that would mean simply an advance in science technology, something with which they were quite familiar.

 

So... while I personally don't care at all who does what with whom, nor whether there might be a way in which law might provide a parallel....

 

It seems to me a horribly bad precedent to overcome virtually all human history to redefine what each culture has called "marriage" as meaning a contract between a man and a woman. That's big-time "cross-cultural."

 

Granted, words and a degree of semantic conservatism are part of my being, but I do honestly fear that such redefinition of a word such as this is truly horrid and has huge, huge potential for many long-term legal difficulties and additional redefinitions.

 

Heck, I'm so "liberal" in some ways that frankly I'm not particularly bothered by polygamy nor even various definitions of "incest" that different cultures have adopted. Heck, according to the Koreans, when my great grandfather married the sister of his deceased first wife, that was "incest" by their definition but not by my own nor that of most "westerners."

 

It's the changing of a word used commonly in all major world cultures for thousands of years that bugs me.

 

BTW, among the Lakota, at least, there was a way around this, but it required one of a same-sex couple to adopt the clothing and overall persona and "duties" of the opposite sex, something not at all that difficult given both modern surgical techniques and law in general.

 

m[/quote'] Well in this case Neo is becoming the woman when we get married on the reservation :-)~

[milod]

Hmmmmm..... Well, regardless of ongoing considerations of law on reservations, one needs consider that it's rather unlikely in today's world to see such a wedding. <grin>

 

BTW, just one additional note from an old newspaperman.

 

I will admit that one thing that bothers me here and in general about current politics in the US is an increasing unwillingness to identify with either of the major (usually two) political "parties."

 

Party identification gives one the opportunity to participate and, without educated participation, we are putting at risk the entire concept of a representative form of government that actually might work.

 

As it is, it seems to me from some years of interviews and writing about stuff, that in a two, or even three party system, one has the structure to form alternative solutions to problems and to set about putting into action a wide range of possible alternatives to legislation of all sorts.

 

This is especially important to me on a national basis, if not a state-provincial sort of representation.

 

The independent voter or elected representative lacks standing in forming potential legislated policy.

 

That can result in happenings taken for granted under a weak "partyless" form of legislature that would be considered quite horrid in even a legislature with a multiplicity of political "party" groups.

 

I'll never forget some 30 years ago when I was covering the state legislative race in a district of Nebraska's "non-partisan" unicameral. Two friends, one from each of two counties in the district, one a female Republican and one a male conservative Democrat, each were the top two winners in a nonpartisan primary and had begun campaigns for the fall general election.

 

But some "powers that be" representing urban interests first closed the Unicameral legislature, then sent out highway patrolmen to return a quorum for one additional bit of legislation: They simply dissolved the district of these two friends of mine and gerrymandered the longtime rural district so urban interests increased by a seat in the legislative body and rural interests effectively decreased.

 

Now, had there been overall political "Party" interests involved, there would have been an additional layer of protection for the district. As it was, there was no organized party structure whatsoever and the "majority" simply put a strong rural district out of business. Frankly either of the two candidate friends of mine would have well-represented the district of small towns and farms.

 

Instead... they both functionally were guaranteed they'd never be elected nor would any other "rural interest" candidate from that area.

 

Worse things might easily happen without the structure of party to better protect a more broad set of interests and concerns. I do believe in a party structure, not just individual and independent political philosophies floating around with no real input into the realities that affect each of us regardless where we live.

 

In fact, one concern I have with an overwhelming monopoly of a national government by one party - such as we have now and have had at other times in our history - is really lousy legislation put forth by people who take on faith proclamations of their own party leaders and don't even bother reading proposed law.

[bol316]

 

No' date=' it's not in the constitution, but the concept would have been as foreign, or perhaps more so, to the founders and writers of the constitution as finding a constitutional status for XMan mutants.

 

For the founders to have considered marriage at all - which they did not, leaving that to the states - it would have been as unthinkable to suggest anything else but a contract between a male and a female. It would have been as if the constitution might have stated that the sun would be called the moon and vice versa.

 

 

It seems to me a horribly bad precedent to overcome virtually all human history to redefine what each culture has called "marriage" as meaning a contract between a man and a woman. That's big-time "cross-cultural."

 

Granted, words and a degree of semantic conservatism are part of my being, but I do honestly fear that such redefinition of a word such as this is truly horrid and has huge, huge potential for many long-term legal difficulties and additional redefinitions.

 

 

It's the changing of a word used commonly in all major world cultures for thousands of years that bugs me.

[/quote'] First I forgot to say earlier, I was worried that you might go all Rick Santorum "Man on dog" on us there in the 3rd and 4th parts. ;) ha ha.

 

Seriously though, culture is ALWAYS changing and redefining itself. Sometimes in more subtle ways then others. The inherent idea of change is just considered so evil to some people for some reason. Not sure why. I guess just stuck in their ways. As they say, the only thing constant in life is change

[James Allen]

Hardcore conservative. We're a dying breed. Hell, even our "party" has thrown the conservative philosophy out the door to become more moderate. It's like they fear the whole ideology of self reliance, small government, charitable works . . .

[bol316]

Hardcore conservative. We're a dying breed. Hell' date=' even our "party" has thrown the conservative philosophy out the door to become more moderate. It's like they fear the whole ideology of self reliance, small government, charitable works . . .

[/quote'] Ya, charitable works was working great before FDR . Basic self-reliance (we all need help sometimes) and small government are all fine and relatively realistic ideas. But charity? Please. In this tightwad country? Aint gonna work