Your political outlook, in a nutshell

[His Noodly Appendage]

Inspired by the Political Compass thread.

Like the title says.

As concisely as possible, state your principles and priorities in politics/governance/economics/etc. Bullet points, by preference.

If you were running for office as He Who Decides How The World Is Run, what would your party platform be? (cynical votemongering aside, of course)

If you had one shot at setting a bunch of Prime Directives that governments would be obligated to follow, what would they be?

What matters to you about how the world is run?

I'll fill mine in later, when I have more than 30 seconds at a time to spare.

Oh, and could people please keep the majority of generated discussion out of this thread? I'd like this to be more of a hit list ready-reference, strawman-prevention and conversation-opening tool than an ongoing back-and-forth. By all means rip hell out of the people you disagree with, but please, in a peanut gallery or separate thread.

Thanks!

[Esocyn]

An international, but localized libertarian brand of socialism.
A fierce commitment to bottom-up democracy mixed with a heavy emphasis on green politics.

Industrialism may work for some, in which case, a more centralized, rigid, but still democratic and bottom-up structure (probably formed by communal councils) would work well. For those who prefer rural, then a decentralized direct socialist democracy would work adequately.

Basically, a green left communist.

[His Noodly Appendage]

Could you expand that out to its defining precepts? There's an awful lot of dispute as to labels and their meanings, with most having as much latitude of interpretation as 'christian'...

[Esocyn]

Could you expand that out to its defining precepts? There's an awful lot of dispute as to labels and their meanings, with most having as much latitude of interpretation as 'christian'...

You mean things like "libertarian brand of socialism" and "left communism"?

[His Noodly Appendage]

Yep.

What I'm really aiming for would be the set of statements that you'd tick "Hot damn, absolutely agree, nailed it in one" to on a well-constructed, non-retarded, political compass quiz.

[Esocyn]

Yep.

What I'm really aiming for would be the set of statements that you'd tick "Hot damn, absolutely agree, nailed it in one" to on a well-constructed, non-retarded, political compass quiz.

Well, that's hard to do because all political compass quizzes are retarded and ill-constructed. There's no precedent to go off of.

But, in any case, I'll define my terms;

Libertarian socialism is a branch of socialism that emphasizes exclusive bottom-up control of the political and economic landscape and takes a less authoritarian view than that of what a Leninist would, where they support of democratic centralism. Under it's umbrella are a variety of differing ideologies, which include anarchism, libertarian or left communism and the like. The word "libertarian" is used in the classical sense, and the sense which is used outside most often of the realm of American and UK politics - which a lot of people equate mostly with socialist anarchism, though you can be a libertarian socialist and not be an anarchist. Notable examples include Noam Chomsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Guy Debord, Pitor Kropotkin, Errico Malatesta.

Left communism is, essentially, an umbrella term to denote different thought-lines like libertarian Marxism, council communism, Luxemburgism, Situationism. This certain ideology is a half-way between anarchism and Leninism, essentially - with healthy critiques of either ideology. It was popular with Italy and Germany in the 20s - 40s, and France when the 1968 uprisings happened. People like Anton Pannekoek, and organizations like the Spartacists League, which Rosa Luxemburg started, represented this current most vigorously. This pattern has had a substantial influence on many current revolutionary and socialist movements that are happening today, like the Zapatistas in Mexico and, to some extent, the Bolivarian revolution in countries like Venezuela and Bolivia.

Green politics more have to do with putting an emphasis on ecological preservation. This is really not exclusive to the left, as a lot of the right are into green politics, but it's basically taking care of the environment and looking for better ways to energy situations (to me, the really short, incomplete definition.) Different people and different movements have different reasons. In relations to the left, a lot of anarchists are really into the hippy-dippy one-with-nature holistic stuff - including the people in ELF, Earth First! and other organizations. The emphasis is mostly on finding decentralized, but efficient, ways of obtaining energy and preserving resources, with this group. There are also another group of leftists who aren't scared of energy sources that take a bit more specialization and centralization to organize, like nuclear energy, realizing that it is increasingly becoming a safe and viable way (though having some questions still) to come up with energy. These are usually Marxists who take a hard-line on trying to take complete control of your material surroundings - and they tend to apply an human supremacist approach to it. There are others (like me) who are in between...

Is there anything else I need to define?

[His Noodly Appendage]

Yes. A practical list of "thou shalt"s, or at least "there should'st"s - what all of this would entail in real terms.

I'm sorry to be a pain, but you're primarily comparing labels to labels, while I'm after direct statements like "The state has the responsibility to provide X and Y, but not Z, except to Q, who can fend for themselves.", "Individuals should have the right to M, no right to N and a responsibility to O." and "Responsibility for K comes from (above | below), and society as a whole should (not) make ensuring that L their problem. F should be unilaterally banned, and G should be mandatory. The military's role is H...".

You position may be fairly well-defined, but reccall the issues with just WTF 'liberal' and 'libertarian' actually meant back at II, and the innumerable politics threads titled "why do libertarians think that...".

I'm looking to *replace* labels with explicit statements of what they represent - and to get people to identify with their own custom set of statements rather than a wedge-fit into the nearest ill-defined term.

I just thought it might be interesting.

[Ian Nerr]

The simplest way to describe my viewpoints is that I am a very liberal scientist/atheist/hippie.*

General
- Everyone should have the right to do what they want as long as they don't infringe on the rights of others. For example, the idea of some drugs being illegal is just stupid. There's also no reason for prostitution to be illegal.

- The market should be mostly free but the government should regulate for the public good. Competition is generally good for the economy and the consumer, but companies need to be restricted to protect the environment, etc.

- Separation of church and state is an important issue. Churches, etc. should not get any special tax privileges. There is no reason to limit stem-cell research.

- We should not be invading other countries. We should not be in Iraq.

- The government should provide the basic necessities, including education and health care.

Specifics (how I would change the U.S.)
- drastically reduce the defense budget

- raise education to a real priority (increase spending and raise educational standards, especially scientific literacy)

- reform the tax system by making it simple: few or no deductions, no more loopholes and tax shelters for corporations and the rich

- stop subsidizing crops like corn (we should be growing lots of hemp) and profitable companies such as Exxon, etc.

- the government should be funding research into long-term solutions to global problems like global warming, energy, etc.

- we should be using nuclear power plants and researching solar energy, fusion, etc.

- the welfare system should be redesigned more in terms of getting people into better situations so they can help themselves rather than receiving handouts forever (teach a man to fish principle)

- the prison system should focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment

- reform political lobbying and campaign financing - politicians should represent the interests of the public, not the big corporations

- Bush and co. should be impeached and tried for war crimes



I'm not really very knowledgable about many of these issues so I haven't thought everything out in terms of precise details. In general, I think our country is in a bad way due to the way the system is set up as well as many other factors. The two-party system sucks and I would like to see proportional representation. Problems with the two-party system are compounded by the way politics is based on money. Both parties are owned by big-money interests and the military-industrial complex. Pharmaceutical companies own American medicine. Banking and credit companies need to be regulated to protect the poor. Their current business models are fucked up. Corporations and wealthy right-wing individuals own the media, which they use to manipulate and distract an ignorant and gullible populace. The issues that separate the Republicans and Democrats are not really the issues that I care about. Of course I think abortion, gay marriage, etc. should be legal, but we really should be dealing with more important issues.

I don't know what to do about many of the problems I see and I don't think there are easy solutions to many of them.






*The term hippie represents some political ideals in terms of individual freedom, war, the environment, etc. and does not describe my lifestyle. I shower every day and don't do a lot of drugs or anything. I'm not into any weird new-age shit like my parents.

[Monad]

I'm actually a Communist in the sense of believing in "From each according to their ability - to each according to need" and basing a lot of my political thinking and activism on Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, Lucacs, Mehring and many others. I'm not a Stalinist and am opposed to Stalinism; if anything I'm closer to Trotskyism in that I admire Trotsky's writings immensely and the stand he took but am not affiliated with any particular splinter group or a fan of sectarianism or dogmatism (which is contrary to what Marx's ideas stand for imho) and see Marxism as a constantly evolving analysis and philosophy. I am attracted to Ecological ideas and as a naturalist am of course not a believer in what Esocyn referred to as those Marxists who want to humanise the planet - however I would argue that those beliefs are based on a huge misinterpretation of Marx and Engel's views anyway - Engels in particular (see for example his excellent paper "The part played by labour in the transition from ape to man") argued very strongly against seeing humanity as outside of nature and for an essentially modern ecological politics - I would refer people to the excellent book Marx's Ecology (http://www.monthlyreview.org/marxecol.htm)for more on this.

I am very politically active in my everyday life - take part in anti fascist actions and activism (got my war wounds to show for it) and at one time even wrote a few things for various publications and at the moment am actively using Marxist ideas in my research interests (specifically therapeutic approaches to dementia based on concepts from Vygotskian psychology and Activity Theory).

However I have to admit I have little time or stomach for political discussion and debate on the internet for several reasons - one I don't see it as a place for activism really - people need to trust and engage with real persons not a web persona (web persona's are often masks) and I think most internet based discussion tends to get hung up on semantics and nit picking much of the time; two I primarily use the internet to relax and socialise and learn about things I'm interested in; not spend my whole time arguing with people who I often sadly find tend to have a very skewed and ignorant view of Communism most of the time (I'd argue at least as skewed by ideology as Creationists have of Darwinism - particularly in the US due to decades of red baiting propaganda and misinformation); - and thirdly if I really got into Net political arguments I would probably get angry and worked up and I really don't want to get into a position where I get worked up about stuff on the net when there are far more important things to get worked up about in real life. I thought though if I posted this explanation people who identify themselves with the left would know that I am with them even if I do not choose to participate much in debates on the net but also that I will ally myself with them over specific issues. I hope people will understand my reasons.

[Ray Moscow]

I supposed "Goldsteinism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Goldstein)" might be a one-word summary for me, though "Social Democrat" works, too.

[Esocyn]

Yes. A practical list of "thou shalt"s, or at least "there should'st"s - what all of this would entail in real terms.

I'm sorry to be a pain, but you're primarily comparing labels to labels, while I'm after direct statements like "The state has the responsibility to provide X and Y, but not Z, except to Q, who can fend for themselves.", "Individuals should have the right to M, no right to N and a responsibility to O." and "Responsibility for K comes from (above | below), and society as a whole should (not) make ensuring that L their problem. F should be unilaterally banned, and G should be mandatory. The military's role is H...".

You position may be fairly well-defined, but reccall the issues with just WTF 'liberal' and 'libertarian' actually meant back at II, and the innumerable politics threads titled "why do libertarians think that...".

I'm looking to *replace* labels with explicit statements of what they represent - and to get people to identify with their own custom set of statements rather than a wedge-fit into the nearest ill-defined term.

I just thought it might be interesting.

Well, I was never good at picking out individual questions. Most of the questions on those quizzes are retarded, some are decent, but the main downfall is the "Strongly Agree/Agree/Disagree/Strongly Disagree" radio buttons.

If you can throw together an open-ended form, I'd be a lot better at answering that - which seems to be what you're aiming for.

[His Noodly Appendage]

Open-ended you want?

==================

I Strongly Agree that [_________________________________________]
I Strongly Agree that [_________________________________________]
I Strongly Agree that [_________________________________________]
I Strongly Agree that [_________________________________________]
I Strongly Agree that [_________________________________________]

==================
:D

[Ian Nerr]

I strongly agree that pie is better than cake.

[tjakey]

I'd vote for Ian...

[nygreenguy]

Well, from the sounds of it i agree with ecocyn quite a lot.

Since HNA asked for specifics, here i go.

All social requirements/social services should be fulfilled regardless of ability to pay.

This means healthcare, food, water, housing, transportation, education, etc...

I believe in public control of essential services. This would be energy, water, trash, cops, fire, military, education, health.

I also believe in strong funding for public media like NPR and PBS.

I believe in an isolationist type of policy with limited trade. Any item traded which is produced here would meet a tariff and any products coming into this country must meet our labor/environmental standards.

Education and research funding should/would increase 10 fold.

Thats all i care to write right now.

[Pavlov's Dog]

In a nutshell? Mixed economy. Certain industries privatized, others controlled by the government, i.e. the people.

Less regulation for people
More regulation for businesses
Government provides basics (healthcare, education, heat, electricity, water, food, clothing, shelter, etc.) for all citizens, and beyond basics (bikes, toys, parks, sporting goods, etc.) for children

[BWE]

In a nutshell? Open access to facts promotes better decisions and pragmatism is important but not more important than idealism.
I'm weak on nutshells.

Plus What Pavlov's Dog said.

[Pavlov's Dog]

I would like to add a system for better government accountability, but without the fear of mob rule. I think expanding the Bill of Rights, could allow this, so that there are certain things that it would take a very super majority to do.

[hecaterin]

A hard question, I'm not sure that all my caveats allow my views to fit into a nutshell. My general leaning is "democratic socialist" or "social democrat" or something like that.

Personal liberty. If you're not harming anyone, you should be allowed to do whatever you like. (But harm is more than mere physical violence. Verbal harassment can cause harm to the vulnerable, including children.)

Responsible sustainable economy. No corporate welfare. Regulate business to require decent minimum standards for workers, and to avoid harm to the environment. But don't strangle in red tape.

Public ownership of essentials. But 100% public ownership is disastrous. (I'm not sure where the boundaries lie, as to what is essential and what isn't. Sewerage and water, yes. Internet? Hospitals?)

Welfare for the basics (hmm, define basics) for all, but the implied social contract means the recipients should feed back what they can. Volunteer work - including acting as carer for dependent relatives - could cover that. I'm not opposed to "work for the dole" as a concept, but some of the real-world implementations have been horrible.

That's a start.

[Esocyn]

Open-ended you want?

==================

I Strongly Agree that [_________________________________________]
I Strongly Agree that [_________________________________________]
I Strongly Agree that [_________________________________________]
I Strongly Agree that [_________________________________________]
I Strongly Agree that [_________________________________________]

==================
:D

I Strongly Agree that this is the lamest way to collect information about a persons political positions

Or something like that.

[His Noodly Appendage]

What, asking them what it is?

Howso?

[Esocyn]

What, asking them what it is?

Howso?

No - asking them in a "I strongly disagree/disagree/agree/whatever the fuck ever" format is.

I just assumed that you were being humorous... and I assumed I was, too.

[Plognark]

Libertarian Socialist.

[Oolon Colluphid]

Basically left-ish (on the UK scale, which I sometimes get the impression means I'm marginally to the right of Stalin on many Americans' scale), but eclectic. I see little but humbug coming from all the UK political parties; and non-humbug nuggets in them all. I have found sense being talked, depending on the topic, by Ken Livingstone, David Owen, Tony Benn and Enoch Powell... and plenty to dislike about all of them.

Where I do know anything about a topic, I see swings and roundabouts to each side's proposals, but am not often in a position to decide which is better. 'Cept when it involves religion, or someone's faith is informing their decisions. And there's faithheads on all sides, so no position is immune.

So I tend not to vote, but instead watch in amusement from the sidelines.

[Zebulon]

From each according to their ability . . . to ME!

Just kidding. ;)

As a quick summary: freedom, responsibility and accountability.

Freedom to do what you want, unless it harms others.

Reason, not religion, should determine public policy.

We need social safety nets, which aim when possible to help people to be self-sufficient.

We need regulation to ensure as far as possible that businesses play by the rules and don't dump the consequences for their bad or greedy decisions onto the public.

We need accountability in all areas of life -- both the public and private sector. With both individual freedom and delegated state power come responsibility.

Government decisions should be made at the level closest to the individual citizen as practical. But there must be safeguards to ensure that individual rights are protected from abuse by the majority.

I'm strongly in favor of the separation of powers. Given recent history, I prefer divided government (legislative and executive controlled by different parties) as an additional check and balance. No party should have the power to bulldoze through legislation that a supermajority of the citizenry opposes.

[Stout Drinker]

IMO deficit spending is stealing from future generations. As such I would want any spending that increases public debt to require a super majority. The same should apply to tax cuts.

Private consensual relations should not be regulated by the state.

End the war on drugs.

Eliminate any raced or gender based preferential policies.

Military should only be used for self defense.

No foreign aid.

Restoration of Habeas Corpus.

[His Noodly Appendage]

Okay, my own viewpoint:

The state has the responsibility to provide adequate basic infrastructure and services to the populace. These include (but are not limited to) food, education, medical care and housing.

To provide these, the state should tax the populace as required on an income-linked sliding scale, with higher-income individuals and organizations taxed at a higher rate. The differential scale should be adjusted at the 'best fit' point to minimize the load on low income earners - whether from direct taxation or from economic fallout from throttling the top end of the economy.

The state has the responsibility to provide welfare sufficient for any genuinely job-seeking or unemployable individual (including carers, etc) to afford an adequate standard of living, and to ensure that basic infrastructure and services are affordable by even the lowest income earners, both by subsidy and by setting an adequate minimum wage. (again, as high as the economy will stand without losing people more overall income through lost jobs/etc)

The state has the responsibility to ensure that it (and its industry and populace, etc) have a neutral-or-better environmental impact, as its future populace are just as much its problem as its current populace. Environmentally unsustainable practices should be prohibited, and any absolutely unavoidable practices offset (via carbon trading and other schemes)

The state has the responsibility to protect its populace. Law enforcement should be the exclusive responsibility of the state; guns and other weapons should not be permitted to private citizens, with exemptions for farmers, animal control, etc. Law enforcement (and passive features such as subsidised home security measures) should be funded to cover any shortfall.

Possessing recreational drugs for personal use should be legal. However, the sale of highly addictive substances should be controlled (in some way) to prevent gratuitous exploitation of addicts. Serious addiction should possibly be considered self-harming behaviour, and state intervention may be appropriate where the welfare of an individual is at risk.

International trade should be free - but only to states or companies ensuring greater or equal worker protection/rights/conditions (recursively, for any part of the labour / supply chain outsourced by the target company)

That's my commie pinko side - there's some rather more alarming stuff to come when I have time.

[His Noodly Appendage]

Here's where I start to get lynched:

No communication of the commission of a crime shall be subject to privilege of any kind. No person shall be prosecuted, dismissed, demoted or otherwise disadvantaged for revealing such information; conversely, withholding it shall make them accessory after the fact. If withholding this information from your attorney/doctor/priest/wtfever inconveniences you unduly, tough. Oh what a tangled web, &c.

No genuine evidence, from whatever source, however obtained, shall be inadmissible in a court of law. However, improperly obtaining evidence in the first shall be grounds for anything from disciplinary procedures to criminal prosecution, both for the officers involved and their relevant superiors, with increasing severity for repeat or egregious violations.

Internal profit distribution of corporations (after tax) shall be subject only to contracts between employees, management and shareholders. If nobody has a prior contractual claim to profits, management can pay themselves as much as they damn well please out of those profits.

Abortion and adoption shall be legal. Either parent has the right to disclaim financial responsibility for any child that may result from sexual activity. In doing so, they also renounce any legal rights of a parent that would otherwise result.

[Ray Moscow]

This might not be the place to debate views, but to briefly do so anyway:


No genuine evidence, from whatever source, however obtained, shall be inadmissible in a court of law. However, improperly obtaining evidence in the first shall be grounds for anything from disciplinary procedures to criminal prosecution, both for the officers involved and their relevant superiors, with increasing severity for repeat or egregious violations.



What's to prevent police, or hired thugs for that matter, from breaking into one's home to "obtain" just about any evidence they want? Or to torture confessions or whatever out of a "suspect"?

Yes, as you say we could punish the cops later, in theory, but our civil rights to privacy and due process would be gone anyway.

[His Noodly Appendage]

I've started a new thread (http://talkrational.org/showthread.php?p=30726#post30726) on the subject. :)

[Preno]

Socialist here. If you are fond of pleonasms, you could call it democratic socialism.

In short, I would like to see public decision-making including the economy done democratically, negatively, I think each and every defense of capitalism based on the idea of voluntariness is circular.

The negative part is simple - voluntariness is always voluntariness relative to some set of rules, and unless you have justified those rules in some way, any considerations of voluntariness with respect to it are irrelevant. The relevance of considering whether some action is voluntary or not depends on the rules constraining the set of choices one has, i.e. on whether the society is free, not vice versa. For some reason, however, people seem to be fond of trying to justify capitalism by saying that people exchange goods voluntarily - voluntarily, of course, given such and such rules and distribution of property.

To justify a particular economic structure, one has to look at what ownership is preferably without any normative preconceptions, and to 'derive' the norms pertaining to ownership as generalizations of some other, less disputed norms. Ownership is nothing more and nothing less than the right to deny other people the use of something. There doesn't seem to be any clear a priori reason why individuals or small groups of individuals should have the right to deny the use of something and to say that denying them the right to deny others the use of something is somehow infringing on their natural rights (in fact, at first glance it would seem to be something to be avoided rather than actively supported), so people have no right whatsoever to simply assume that not allowing people to do so is coercion. Some plausible principle on the basis of which to decide between these and other options is needed.

I think the most fruitful way to approach this is to view ownership as 'merely' a special case of decision-making in general, and to apply the general laws one might apply to all decision-making. In particular, the most sensible principle to me seems to be that decisions should be made by people who are affected by them (which is to say: insofar as they are affected by them). I think this is a sensible over-arching principle, limited only by the potential incapabalitiy of the people involved to make decisions (such as drugs or depression, which is hardly controversial) or the inaccessibility of relevant information (which is, of course, why one should hand in hand with this place requirements on the structure of public communication).

The problem is, clearly, that what affects whom is a function of the social system, so it can be used only negatively to exclude certain types of societies - many types of societies, in fact. One could argue about what exactly is means to be affected by something, but at least it clearly excludes capitalism, i.e. the private ownership of publicly used facilities, and undemocratic systems, including parliamentarianism, where the public not only doesn't have a decisive say in public decisions, but in fact usually has a negligible say. Only in the cases where can be demonstrated empirically (not by a priori apologetics) that the decisions made democratically can be emulated well enough and more quickly by a system of private ownership should publicly used facilities be owned privately. Similarly with democratic vs. parliamentarian decision-making.

As for the mechanisms of allowing the whole society to make decisions, a structured tree or more likely several parallel trees (for example, a regional, an occupational, and possibly a consumption-based tree), the level at which decisions are made being determined by how large a segment of society they affect. For practical reasons, actual representatives would need to be elected at each level, and by actually representing I mean that they are recallable by them, can have bound mandates, their decisions can be cancelled or modified by their electorate and the electorate can make decisions themselves via referenda. (By the electorate I mean some level of the subtree corresponding to the representatives, the decisions of lower levels obviously taking precedence over higher levels.) The important points are that the decision-making is bottom up, that recallability and accountability is transitive and not merely restricted to the level immediately above or below, and that it would no longer be necessary to decide between a small group of pre-packed policy bundles (which is by definition undemocratic, regardless of the possible good intentions of anyone involved).

The only open problem (i.e. open question) I see with this is that the formal process of democratic decision-making needs to be accompanied by the means to lead genuine society-wide discussions about issues, and it is yet unclear to me how this should look like. For starters, though, private ownership of privileged means of mass communication appears to be contrary to this aim, although clearly less so in a system where there would be less wealth disparity. But, of course, ownership is but one facet of this problem.

As for more details, to be perfectly honest, a lot of the issues mentioned in this thread so far seem to be merely fine-tuning to me, and it doesn't make much sense to me to fine-tune a car unless you have actually, you know, settled on which model to buy. Sure, fine-tuning and searching for local maxima is alright, but one has to make sure he looking at the right part of the space, so to speak, which one cannot do without some sort of global criterion. (In all fairness, though, sometimes the fine-tuning is the same for all systems, like with drugs or gun laws.)

ETA: sorry, this post was a tad longer than I wanted (as these kinds of posts tend to be).

[crazyfingers]

*Snip*

That describes my position almost exactly

[Jimmy_Mack]

I lean to the left and vote dem. But I'm not absolute in such terms. I have defined my own philosophy and it has taken me outside the box of taking on any such labels as communist, socialist, libertarian, market evangelist or such. We only get to choose the lesser of two evils in America and I usually see that as the Democrat. Nutshell over.

[Lanakila]

Social liberal and fiscally pretty damn conservative although I do agree that regulation to protect the environment and health of employees is necessary. I do agree with HNA on the search/seizure ideas to a degree with many reservations. (I've never heard this before btw) As a federal employee I don't find the government to be evil by nature but agree that it's : bureaucratic in the extreme and needs some fixing. (dems and repubs all promise to do this and it doesn't happen) I'm also a skeptic of both parties and all politicians by nature because of the power corrupting philosophy.

[RAFH]

Benign Tyrannical Anarchist.

Put me in charge and I'll make you regret not doing it sooner.

Fiscal responsibility, leave people the fuck alone. Send those that can't keep their fingers to themselves to someplace where they won't have time to worry about what other people have or what they are doing. Representative democracy is about the biggest joke there is, though until recently it was a necessary evil. That's no longer the case. I like Oz's mandatory voting, but all ballots should have to include, "I don't fucking care". Not in favor of secret balloting. There should be a police-police that all they do is investigate the police and are themselves immune to police investigation (perhaps somebody keeps an eye on them). Not in-house as in an Internal Affairs Division, but a separate External Police Affairs Department, they don't carry guns, they just have Chuck Norris who will hunt a bad cop down and bring the pieces back for trial. Penalty for fucking up as a cop, 5 times that of ordinary citizens. Professional Judges and Prosecutors. Not just ambitious lawyers with connections.

[Mason]

Ban the government. Anarchism is the solution. We don't need paved roads or rules for society.

[RAFH]

Ban the government. Anarchism is the solution. We don't need paved roads or rules for society.

"We"? Speak for yourself you tyrannical despot. I may need roads and I may need rules for society.

You don't need roads, fukengruven, one less twit on the road to piss me off.
You don't need rules for society, fukengruven, one more target on the range to vent my frustrations upon.

[Mason]

Nope.

[nygreenguy]

I do agree with HNA on the search/seizure ideas to a degree with many reservations.
I wouldn't. If you study the law you realize the need for these protections and how the idea of accountability of the police is just a joke.


With all due respect, the idea of allowing all evidence to be presented is a naive, uninformed opinion.

[Lanakila]

I have many reservations, but I do think that if you did the crime you should pay the time no matter if the police make mistakes.

[Goldie]

I have no way to put it neatly in a nutshell, because it all depends on what you are talking about. Like almost everyone here I was on the lower left of the political scale that was posted.

[SteveF]

Some of the things I believe in very strongly:

- Near absolute freedom of speech

- Liberal interventionism

- Seperation of church and state

- Equality and human rights.

- Protection of the environment

At this point I start to become a bit more woolly. I've always been left of centre, vaguely socialist. I actually thought the New Labour (i.e. Tony Blair) project was quite a good idea. Basically taking a middle road of wealth distribution married with the pragmatism of the markets and Thatcherism. In British political terms, a bit of left and a bit of right. Struck me as a great idea. Didn't go terribly wrong, but hasn't been a huge success (although I still like Blair).

I now wonder about our third party, the Liberal Democrats. They are supposedly first and foremost a party of social liberals. They have an economic liberal wing and a more socialist side. The latter have traditionally been stronger in the party, but the former have gradually gained ground and now have one of their own as leader of the party. I think instinctively I see a strong role for the state on matters of welfare, wealth redistribution, taxation and so on. However, I'm intruiged by this new direction from the Lib Dems and think I'll vote for them next time round. This is the book the new Lib Dems wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ora...ing_Liberalism

So, this is broadly where I am. Some strong commitments and some woolly aspects. Possibly a bit socialist but pondering some alternatives.

[JamesBannon]

Three words: Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (I think the spelling is correct except for the accent marks).

Didn't go terribly wrong, but hasn't been a huge success (although I still like Blair).
Blair is a lying piece of shit! I will never forgive him for lying to the people and then using his great sky faerie as a justification for sending our young people to war on a false pretext.

[damian]

I am a capitalist semi-socialist.

[SteveF]

Blair is a lying piece of shit! I will never forgive him for lying to the people and then using his great sky faerie as a justification for sending our young people to war on a false pretext.

When did he do that?

[Febble]

Education
Education
Education

[JamesBannon]

Blair is a lying piece of shit! I will never forgive him for lying to the people and then using his great sky faerie as a justification for sending our young people to war on a false pretext.

When did he do that?
During an interview on TV.

[SteveF]

Blair is a lying piece of shit! I will never forgive him for lying to the people and then using his great sky faerie as a justification for sending our young people to war on a false pretext.

When did he do that?
During an interview on TV.

Do you have a link? I ask because I'm not aware of Blair ever having done this.