State & Discuss Your Political Ideology.

My own ideology is based on the ideology of Irish Republicanism. It is my belief that the thirty two counties of Ireland should be an independent republic largely due my strong sense of patriotism and Irish Republican heritage.

I am independent with a conservative bent, especially when it comes to economics and fiscal policies. I try to see if policies and decisions meet with the language and intent of the Constitution, since it is the document we have. Initially, we had the Articles of Confederation, those were scrapped and the Constitution was quickly written and passed to replace it. Be that as it may, I believe in limited taxation to support the government programs needed for our general security. So, I support taxes for the military and veteran's administration, and any program that can aid citizens in better education. I even think public education was a good idea, at least at first. I see plenty of times where it has failed but I think that is due to politics.

I believe in equal rights for all, regardless of ethnic or religious heritage, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. I don't care if you are black or white, gay or straight, christian or muslim, you are all equal under the law.

But if you had to put me in a box, I'm a conservative who sometimes sees the republican party as a little to wishy washy. Other times, I have seen members of our republican party try to influence local laws and set up a religious state by means of laws codified or denied based on their particular religious beliefs. I think that is wrong. I wish to live in neither a socialist state or a theocracy.

I am a peace-loving hippie that can kill in a heartbeat, if it is necessary. I would much rather talk something out and have everyone agree to it. If that can't be done then, to quote Shakespeare, "T'were better it were done quickly."

Additional info: I believe in education for everyone but I don't believe in lowering standards. I believe in the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness but not the right to equal results. Education is there to receive for anyone who will receive it. But the student has to do the work. That being said, I believe in the accomodations made for students for learning disabilities. Learning disabilities are not the same as being mentally retarded. It's simply due to the fact that not every student learns in the same way at the same pace. I have a number of students who would or have been labelled learning disabled elsewhere. Mostly the accomodation is more time during tests, as well as self-paced learning. When these students test, they receive no averaging curve. They get their grades the hard way, a straight percentage, no curving.

I guess I'm a Liberal, but we don't really have extreme political factions in Ireland. My party affiliations lie with one that would be described as center or center-right at a stretch, and some of my beliefs are decidedly Conservative, but overall, my belief in the rights of the individual being paramount leads me to consider myself a Liberal, at least in the classical sense

Libritarian, I mean if we're too stupid to govern ourselves, we're probably gonna die out anyways

Recent research and reading has led me to now consider myself an Irish Nationalist.

SunnyD wrote:Libritarian, I mean if we're too stupid to govern ourselves, we're probably gonna die out anyways

Sorry, just couldn't help myself =). Still working on my post.

Basically a dead centre Blueshirt. Though I do believe in the importance of Trade Unionism.

I've been having a real hard time with this post, as I don't like labeling myself. However, in simple, useless, American terms, I'm economically conservative and socially liberal. I think laissez-faire capitalism is ideal, but I'm also a huge believer in individual rights.

Since I didn't know what to say next, I'm going to state how I feel about various political and social issues here in the States and elsewhere.

I think hate crime laws are a huge abuse of our rights. The acts they specify are already illegal, so they make it illegal to think a certain way. I have a problem with people acting on their thoughts, but saying it is illegal to have a certain opinion is a violation to me.

I think affirmative action is legal racism.

I don't want to live in a world where abortion is illegal. I want to live in a world where no one wants an abortion.

Animal rights groups and environmentalists bother me excessively.

Collectivist systems of government, as well as organizations, scare me.

I hate censorship and I hate ratings systems. I have no problem with a product stating it contains nudity. But I do have a problem with the problem then stating that it's only for people aged 17 or older. I think our society is completely backwards with regard to nudity, as well as violence.

The "religious right" scares me as well. I'm a big believer in the separation of church and state. And that goes both ways for me. I feel that religion has no place in politics, but I also feel that our government should stop going after religious institutions.

I guess I'm agnostic, in a way. I think God exists, but only because people believe He exists. It's something that can be proven only to those that believe, and can only be dis-proven to those that don't believe. I'm not atheist, as I don't reject His existence.

I'm also quite opposed to anti-trust laws.

I'm probably alone in this regard, but public education also bothers me. I think it should be privatized. I think almost all government programs should. Well, either privatized or eliminated. Many of them are useless.

I believe the governments main role, should be to protect it's civilians; Law enforcement, fire-fighters, military personnel and judicial processes. Medical care is something I've gone both ways on, though I'm fully opposed to the current version of "Healthcare Reform" being proposed in the US Congress.

I can't believe that we spend millions upon millions of dollars on things such as bailing out private corporations while my local firehouse is fully volunteer (no salary), and had to merge with another local firehouse because of a lack of funding.

I'm opposed to any sort of conscription as well. That includes being forced to do community service, as well as being forced to serve in the military.

That's about all I can think of at the moment. If you've any questions, feel free to ask =).

Currently, I am reading "Liberal Fascism" by Jonah Goldberg. That term was actually coined by H.G. Wells, the science fiction author. Fascism, as defined in the book by the various roots of the actual fascist movement in Italy, is the religion of state. That is, the state is all there is and mythologies of policies are enough to carry the people.

Anyway, before that, I read "Liberty and Tyranny" by Mark Levin. Levin was an advisor in the Reagan admin has a juris doctorate from Temple University School of Law, with a specialty in constitutional law. I finally understood why the Constitution and even the Declaration of Independence (our nation was founded upon the Declaration and the Constitution is the laws limiting government's power) mention that the "Creator" has endowed man with certain unalienable rights. First, Creator is non-descript, not specifying the name of a deity in any religion. But more specifically, it is for a legal reason in order to protect the citizens' rights. Rights given by a creator cannot be undone by man. Rights given to a man by men can be taken away by men. The reason it concerned me before is because I think we should adhere to the document when it says the state shall establish no religion. I believe that goes for any religion, be it protestant, pagan, or in my case, frisbeetyrian. A frisbeetyrian dies and his soul goes up on the roof and you can't get it down. That being said, religion has had a useful legal purpose. And it doesn't matter what religion you belong to, or if you even have a religion. Saying creator gives the human rights give it legal precedence as a law of the Universe, so to speak, unrepealable by people who are "tired of the same old politics." Does that last phrase sound familiar? It should. A candidate expressed that notion in our last general election. Thankfully, for our sake, it is the same old politics, checks, and balances.

Back to fascism. Many connect it with the right because many mistakenly assume that Germany was fascist. The accusation of people on the right being fascist came from Russia, who wanted to say that anyone not involved in communism must be on the right with industry and used fascist as a dirty word. Mussolini was the quintessential fascist. Under his reign, they enacted a normal work day of no more than 8 hours, enacted child labor laws to protect women, lowered the voting age to 18, extend the voting rights to women. Re-did old age and pension laws to take care of the elderly. Not bad for a fascist, eh? However, things went bad, later. But both Mussolini and Hitler came from the left. They came up through the ranks of socialism. Hitler's problem was that he never stuck to one ideology. He used whatever was necessary to grow and protect his regime and whatever it took to rid himself of jews. That is one of the reasons he failed. His racism hobbled him. And his lack of program direction did him in. He was a great speaker, though. The problem is, he rose to his level of incompetence. He should have stuck with being in charge of rallies. He was a one-trick pony that went too far.

Key members of his cabinet were into holistic therapies and organic foods, Hitler, himself, was a vegetarian, never cheated on his girlfriend, always told the truth as he saw it. They also subscribed to pagan ideoligies, almost like a salad bar, whatever looked good on the plate.

Pres Clinton ate fried chicken and doughnuts, tried to get up every skirt that walked by and lied every third word. Which one would you vote for?

I know I have rambled but I thought it was interesting to provide some history of politics and how they inform me.

To me, half of the things you just stated as "good" that Mussolini enacted are in fact "not so good". Voting age lowered, thumbs up, voting rights to women, big thumbs up, the rest, thumbs down.

And I understand, too. The state run pension is like our social security program (and that's no accident). Mussolini was a role model and America was quite fascist under the leadership of Woodrow Wilson, the first modern fascist dictator, then under Franklin Roosevelt, who was the nicer, gentler fascist.

I miswrote earlier. I mean to say labor laws to protect children. Children were taken advantage of. All this did was require that a person only work them for so many hours so that they might have other hours of the day to learn. 8-hour work day, I kind of like that but in Texas, which is a right-to-work state (you have the right to work without belonging to a labor union), companies have it at their discretion. Often, you don't get overtime pay until you exceed 40 hours in a week, as opposed to exceeding 8 hours in a day. That being said, I still believe less government or even union intrusion the better. Labor unions in America extract dues from the workers to finance their operations, which include labor managament, pensions, insurance, and lobbying. As one anti-union co-worker put it, "I am not going to pay someone to keep my job for me."

In a free market capitalist society, you are free to work for whomever will hire you and they are free to hire you if they so please, at whatever wage you agree upon. And no one would have to make sure they have to right number of federally mandated political "minorities." The danger is a corporation becoming more powerful than the government. Therefore, the govt needs some measure of control to prevent a dictatorship by, say, Microsoft. So, we have criminal laws in place. If you wish to go out and be a competitor in the software market, Microsoft cannot prevent you and any criminal action on their part to stop you should be prosecuted.

But one thing that can exert control over a corporation or government is mob rule. When they people have had enough, it doesn't matter how much money you have or which mercenaries you can hire, you cannot fight off an overrunning horde of people. That's not to say that we must have unions. The other is quiet rebellion, where your best and brightest talent simply go away, leaving you without your most valuable resource, brainpower.

But often, I think, horror stories about labor conditions are colored to present a certain tale. It is often the practice to identify an "injustice" in order to create the need for more rules. For example, the healthcare debate. The democratic administration sees that x number of people don't have a healthcare insurance plan that is readily identified and decide that is a crisis. Though there is no language in the Constitution, they are politically saying that everyone has the "right" to healthcare. Ergo, crisis. But the numbers are skewed in their favor of creating new laws and taxes. Of the people who are uninsured at any given time, some are so because of being between jobs. Right now, I am uninsured and here is why. My wife has two jobs. The one we had insurance from dropped the coverage because she is working below a certain number of hours there. Her other job, where she averages over 30 hours a week, the insurance company won't allow enrollment (because of state and federal law) until April. My company won't allow me to enroll until May. And here's the kicker: my company is basically a private contractor operating a federal program. It is a program to teach at-risk students academics and a trade. We are funded by the Dept. of Labor. Even with some federal guidelines and everything in my building having a DOL stamp on it, I still work for a non-union employer and the rules governing insurance create this problem.

What is healthcare? Even when I have it, I don't go running to the doctor for every little thing. But many others would if they thought healthcare was "free". I've only used it for visits to the emergency room at a hospital, (broken toe that was bent, lacerated scalp from a fall). And I have used the dental insurance, which still costs me plenty out of my pocket.

Others not insured are young, healthy people who don't feel the need and elect not to have it. And working poor and homeless. The working poor could afford some if they didn't have to pay so much in taxes. Others, if a tooth needs a lot of work, they just pay a dentist to pull the tooth, which costs less. At a given point in time, they will simply get a set of dentures, which costs as much as an old, used car and then they are done with dentists for the rest of their lives.

Here's another effect of labor laws. My campus will take students as young as 16. With an average of 12 months to get through the program, they could graduate before they reach 18. And companies can't hire them full-time because of labor laws. This affects my performance rating, believe it or not. And I'm supposed to be able to fix that. That and the crappy economy. Well, I tried to fix that in 2008. I did the best that I could do. And the poor completion rate we've had is due to students who get kicked out for being AWOL or for disciplinary reasons, none of which I can control. Yet, I am suppose to fix it. I just came here to teach people how to mangle pipe, skin some wire, drop a few expensive light fixtures, wire things up backwards, all the stuff I know how to do.

Can people take care of themselves? Yes, and most people I know prefer to do so, rather than be told what they can or cannot do.

So, when I uphold freedom, it is for the individual, no their economic status. You are free to do what you can to make money. But the government cannot and should not guarantee your results. If the state takes over and mandates equal results for everyone regardless of how much work they put into it, then true inequalities arise. The hardest worker does not get the results of his labors. And the do-nothing is rewarded for doing nothing. And that's if socialism operates at its ideal. Which it doesn't. Because governments are corrupt. Our founding fathers knew that and that is why they chose to limit govt. All govts are corrupt so the best way to limit the damage of the corruption is to limit the size and scope of govt.

The political ideologies of the 20th century were often aligned against capitalists, leaders of industry. Not because those people were bad but because they had money. Part of Hitler's hatred of Jews was because some of the biggest bankers and industrialists were jewish. Nor am I stereotyping. There were people of other religious creeds and backgrounds. But there had been some anti-semitism for quite sometime arising from catholics who blamed the death of Jesus on the hebrew status quo under the occupation by Rome. And from the ever-increasing population and popularity of Islam, who see themselves as eternal mortal enemies of jews, and to some extent, christians. Also, when people are displeased with a given set of circumstances, they think to change everything and see if that makes it better. So, out with the "old" and in with the "new". Hitler was a revolutionary who cut his political teeth coming up through socialism and wished to throw off the german establishment, to take from the capitalists so that he could finance his regime. That is most decidedly not capitalism and is as far from the right, who prefer the status quo, or even wish to keep the advantages of the free market that they had. So, to compare the conservative right of America, who wish to keep the Constitution as it is and keep the free market we built as it is, is about as far from Hitler as you can get. Yet the american right are often called fascists. Fascism has come to mean to describe someone you don't like and connect, in an erroneous way, with Hitler, who everyone hates, (and they are right to hate him, as a matter of human decency.)

In fact every political movement that has sought to take more money away from the people, including leaders of industry, has been from factions on the left. Fascists, communists, socialists. And those appellations are essentially variants of the same thing.

The original definition of liberal in american politics was the arch-conservative, especially in the colonies. Those who wished to have a hands-off govt. Free trade, freedom to worship as you pleased, freedom to speak your mind. The quintessential free-for-all of ideas. But that was re-defined and liberal has now come to mean that one supports the powers of the state to grant "equal" results for everyone, regardless of circumstances. This necessarily results in fascism, the belief that the state is the savior, so to speak, capable of answering all needs and requiring the "power" to do so.

Now, did some of those arch-conservatives remain true the spirit of freedom? No. They codified into law their particular religious beliefs. Anti-nudity laws are unconstitutional. They reflect a religious opinion. And are classed as a crime against the "public peace." Who is public? We are all private individuals. The law criminalizes the human body that such fundamentalist christians claim is created by God. So they have criminalized God's creation. There is nothing inherently sinful about the human body, whether you think we evolved or if you think God created it. And such is the folly of man and the danger of democracy.

In Texas, we used to have "blue" laws. Things that couldn't be sold on Sunday because that is the christian sabbath. You could buy a pair of scissors but you couldn't buy panty hose. You couldn't buy prescription medication. Many businesses were required to be closed on Sundays. Nothing about Saturday for the Jews or Seventh Day Adventists. The govt. closed down for Christmas and Easter but not Rama Dan or Hannuka or Samhain or Beltane. All those, I believe, violated the separation of church and state.

Did I say "danger of democracy"? Yes, I did. My favorite author, Heinlein, called it "bread and circuses." Once people realize that they can vote that every house must have a loaf of bread and every town must have a circus, then the govt will try do so, even if it bankrupts the people and the country that voted it into law. Which is not to say that a dictatorship or monarchy is any better. Democracy is the idea that a larger number of people are more right, politically, than a few number of people. The monarchy or dictatorship thinks that one person is smarter or more right than anyone else. You can see the problems with both. Still, I would rather err on the side of democracy because it is more flexible to offer solutions.

America is not a democracy. For most intents and purposes, it is a republic. We can vote but our vote does not directly elect the president or our representatives and senators. The "electoral" college does. For the president, he must win a simple majority of an electoral district (51 percent) and then he wins the whole district. If he wins a simple majority of districts in a state (simple majority differs from state to state. Texas has 24 electoral votes. A candidate has to win 13 districts and he carries the state, even if the other 11 districts voted entirely for the other candidate.) then he wins the state. That leaves all the voters in the districts that didn't vote for one candidate in the political minority.

As inequitable as that sounds, it still works, though subject to corruption. Liberals would like to extend voting rights to non-citizens, hoping to stack the votes in their favor, even creating new additional electoral districts (one of the primary reasons for doing the Census every 10 years.) This is to help the political minorities in a state. Otherwise, with just two senators for each state, many a voice might not be represented.

And the system still works.

Consider the special election in Massachusetts. Sen. Kennedy held that seat for 46 years. Mass. almost always voted democrat. Even the independents did so. It was a large reason of why Obama won. And the voters of Mass., independents and some democrats, chose Scott Brown, a conservative republican. This is a foretelling of things to come in our mid-term congressional elections later this year, 2010. And possibly, a foretelling of the next general election in 2012. Because the people will have their say, regardless of what political notion is in vogue.The spirit of Boston Harbor is still alive.

Now, here's where I get a bit philosphical. I have studied some behavioral psychology, especially as it regards training my dog. There are similarities in the psychology of creatures, especially mammals. I get much of my information from a friend who is a certified dog trainer, CGC evaluator, has a BS in Psychology magna cum laude, and is part native american and believes in spiritual elements from her heritage. She is also a devout democrat.

Dogs do what works. They gather and guard resources. The most effective way to train a dog is to be the source of the resources they want. They learn to do what you want to get the resources they want. Humans are the same. It's called operant conditioning. What is rewarded is reinforced. What is not rewarded or is punished tends to not be reinforced. In so many words, dogs, and humans, are naturally capitalists. The acquisition and protection of resources to ensure one's physical and immediate survival. It works every time. My dog will sometimes chase the cat and I call "off", which means to disengage, and he will break off in stride and come to me, because I have grilled pork chop or something like that. I did it in various circumstances and it has generalized, even if I don't have a treat in my hand. Listening to me leads to stuff he likes that ensures his survival. Same with humans. Even the reach of the state is an example of the same thing. If a state reaches for your money and you give it to them, they are rewarded and will do it again.