Politics

[Fall_Child42]

Man, all the presidents and prime ministers are to the right of me.

[macchinainterna]

Politics at their finest...

[trythil]

I think green energy has alot of possibilities but its way too early to do anything other than fund research for it right now IMO.

Your opinion is wrong in the face of reality. Check out my post for why.

[Shin-AMV]

[ngsilver]

It's been a while since I last took that test. Many things have changed since then. I consider myself very much Libertarian (though I'm registered independent) so lets see what the graph shows:



Seems I've centered myself a bit in comparison to the last time I took the test. But then again, as much as I am for a small government, I do support things like National Healthcare and social security, mostly due to being beneficial to me. Healthcare is not so much beneficial to me now that I have a job with a wonderful benefits package, but I spent a good 6 years of my life living without any type of medial insurance and hoping I wouldn't get sick or hurt badly because I just couldn't afford the bills. Social Security is beneficial to me purely based on the fact that I have been paying into it for 12 years already and I want to see a return on this money I have lost. If the government were to abolish social security and pay me back what I've put into it then I'd be fine with that, but as long as abolishing it means I loose what I put in, I'm gonna support it.

I also took the side with test, and low and behold the two frontrunners in this year's election are at the bottom of my list as I expected:

Gary Johnson 83%, Jill Stein 76%, Rocky Anderson 66%, Mit Romney 65%, Obama 63%

I, like Oto, strongly appose choosing the lesser of 2 evils. I have only voted once in my life, previously when I lived in Kentucky I wanted to stay out of the Jury pool, but always said I would vote if a Black Man or a Woman were to be candidates. So with that knowledge the first election I actually voted in was the last presidential election. I sided with the Libertarians on every subject, but when it came to the presidential vote, the only 2 names on the ballot were not who I wanted to vote for, even if supporting one or the other into office would be a great milestone for our country. I wrote in Mickey Mouse. Honestly, if Mickey were to win it'd be Disney that would ultimately be in charge and I can say I put more trust in Disney then I do in any politician to keep their word.

I now choose not to vote based on the lesser of two evils argument. I can't choose either. Honestly, I wonder what would happen if no one went out to vote. I'm curious as to what we would do in this case. Our government is too big, taking away too many of our rights, and yet the majority of people are fine with this. I just can't get behind this kind of system, or support it. Voting in any candidate would be supporting the government as it stands and I just can't do that. True, not voting can also be seen as letting the establishment get it's way, and also giving up my right to complain, and if you feel that way all the more power to you. Personally, I'm all for rising up against the establishment, but I also realize that I would need a lot of support in order to do that, and I don't have that right now, so I'll continue to live my life as I see fit and not pay attention to this political game.

HALO 4 also comes out that day, sounds like a much better use of my free time to me.

[Flint the Dwarf]

I'm also perched on the fence for basically the reasons George posted, with some differences.

Until we as a society can move past issues like gay marriage and abortion, we're not going to fix the important issues. I am pro-choice unquestionably, but my ideas on marriage are a little different. No potential president could run while exhorting my views on marriage, which is basically that I think marriage should be done away with. I think we should institute civil partnerships which carry the same connotations that marriage does, and can be dismissed in much the same way. It sounds like semantics, but it dissolves the bond between a partnership and religion. And if we can't get rid of marriage, we get rid of divorce. You can marry once, and it's for life. It's still just as socially acceptable to separate and form another partnership, but marriage will no longer be an option. People don't seem to take marriage seriously anymore, and it's apparently still a big issue, so we've got to do something about it.

As for green energy, I'm still amazed and disgusted that it's still receiving such strong opposition by some people. I live right next to Northland College in Wisconsin, which gets the majority of its energy from wind, solar, and thermonuclear energy. It's not cluttered with generators, it's all barely noticeable and totally reliable.

And honestly, I'm just far too cynical and pessimistic to bring myself to vote. I don't see much of a future for us, and it's not just because of silly social issues and energy problems. We have a big population vs. production problem. It seems like (and I don't have facts to back this up, so correct me if I'm wrong) we are producing less and procreating more. I used to live in a highly populated area with a pretty low density of businesses, and it was damn near impossible to get a job without going to Chicago (a 45-minute commute on good days, or about 70 minutes by train) even for people with degrees. We have to find a reasonable way to curb our population growth and, at the risk of sounding like an asshole, especially in unstable, poorly educated families. I support everyone's right to raise a child, but too many people are doing a shitty job of it. Over and over and over. And I know part of the reason is because of government support. I've known unemployed couples that keep breeding because the government keeps paying them for it. They don't live well, but they don't need to. They've got a roof and they've got food, and I guess that's enough for some people. But it's an awful way to raise children, an unhealthy way to live your life, and it's just generally parasitic.

But no candidate could run under a flag that boasts population control and the eradication of marriage.

[Flint the Dwarf]

Also, and I think this was implied by my last post, but I believe in freedom of religion, and I think we should be free of it. It needs to stop getting in the way of social progress.

[Qyot27]

The last couple of times I've taken the Political Compass, it was somewhere in the area between the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela. Or about where Shin's was above, just slightly up and more to the left.

The ISideWith test came out to:
96% Jill Stein
79% Barack Obama
75% Rocky Anderson
46% Gary Johnson
5% Mitt Romney
4% Virgil Goode
51% Florida Voters (surprise, surprise)
54% American Voters

By party:
95% Democratic
86% Green
21% Libertarian
6% Republican


However, I'll note that even with how nice it was to take a quiz with more nuanced answers and an importance scale feature, some of those answers and questions were either not how I'd phrase them, or still really inadequate. But on the whole, it is fairly accurate of an assessment.

I'm not affiliated with a party, though. I was when I initially signed up (I was a registered Moderate), but that party dissolved and Florida's elections laws dictate that in such an event, affected voters are automatically switched to Non-Affiliated (Independent, except that that isn't the word used); they can switch to a different one on their own. I just never bothered.

Ideologically, I'm basically a Classical (aka "Bull Moose") Progressive, only distilled against modern concerns*. This basically means that I'm in favor of restructuring (not 'growing' or 'shrinking') government and social programs for efficiency and transparency reasons, distributist economics (which also includes some things like strong support for credit unions and local cooperatives), anti-corruption measures, civil libertarianism (which also draws in remix culture, FOSS, and strong support of consumer's rights and advocacy on its periphery), social justice, better financial regulations (like implementing a new form of the Bretton Woods system), reforming elections to proportional representation and/or becoming a straight-up consensus democracy, campaign finance reform to allow smaller donations and explicitly sever corporate influence from government, and so forth.

*I specifically put this here because some of the things Roosevelt (that's Teddy, not FDR) and his contemporaries supported I definitely do not, as time itself has proved they weren't wise decisions. Most significantly, the Imperialist parts. However I do still recognize the need for a strong central government and at the very least, the illusion of having a big stick. I also hate nationalism with the undying passion of a thousand suns, as cognitively dissonant as that might be considering the statement immediately before this.

[Fall_Child42]

Nobodies political compass is even close to mine. That's sad.
I'm all alone here.

Who am I to agree with?

[Emong]

Nobodies political compass is even close to mine. That's sad.
I'm all alone here.

Who am I to agree with?

I see what you did there =_=



If there's any truth in the locations of various known politicians on the political compass, I'm a little bit surprised about Alexis Tsipras's location on the scale, only a little bit left from Hollande (somehow I've got the impression he should be leaning more to the right). Not that I had any great expectations about Syriza but I was nonetheless rooting for them to win the latest elections in Greece. Unfortunately the Troika got what it wanted