Moderate. Maybe a bit left-leaning.
I support bringing back public flogging…
…of rich Tea Party types and celebrities who make who make public nuisances of themselves.
What does that make me?
Conservative, but I vote Libertarian. As this board has grown more and more liberal over the past 10+ years, I visit less and less. I enjoy the factual discussions on science, and tend to ignore the political posts.
I am a poster child for Liberal in today’s world. Although I would prefer that the word Progressive had more cache nowadays. That is what I would rather be.
Yep. Conservative growing up and then took a left turn.
I’m more fiscally conservative but want to take it from the defense budget so I can’t really claim true conservatism.
And social issues such as, racial, LGBT and abortion issues, definitely liberal.
Liberal, bleeding heart division.
In previous days I’d have identified as moderate if slightly left of center … but current times have demanded picking sides, too much at stake: Liberal it is.
Of course what my views are are still the same fairly moderate/centrist views, the political world is just now shifted such that they are placed in a more solidly liberal camp.
FWIW I seem to be in good company. Conservative identification is steady but a fair number of “moderates” are moving into the “liberal” camp.
This is it, exactly. I was always mildly left of center, but now I’m considered a flaming liberal (and happy to be).
My views didn’t change much. But how the conversation is framed has. A lot.
Unabashedly conservative anarcho-capitalist and anti-statist. I’m just to the right of Attila the Hun.
In the real world I consider myself moderate but lean conservative. Here in the SDMB, I suspect many think of me as very conservative, which I am not.
I think a redefining of the terms is in order. I don’t see anything conservative about right wing nut cases, I am also confused about being a democrat or a liberal or a progressive. We need to stop lumping all these issues together for the sake of a party line.
I identify as conservative but recognize the same issues as the liberals as being of great importance. I just see a different approach to solving the problems. I favor universal healthcare and am leaning toward the same for education. Gay rights, I don't see a distinction between human rights with a couple of issues being an exception such as marriage.
I think social issues are in large part due to lack of opportunity and believe we need to do more to provide opportunity. Once the opportunities are there I say let pain be the motivator.
I didn’t answer the poll since it asks for Americans. As a Canadian, I’m pretty moderate maybe a bit on the conservative side although I think I’m starting to become more liberal. As an American, I would be an ultra-liberal.
I voted moderate. I’m a moderate that leans heavily conservative, but as other posters have said, it’s difficult to just nail it in one sometimes because on some issues I can lean in the completely opposite direction. So, if I get one choice, moderate conservative.
This board skews liberal. In the 2016 election, according to exit polls, the results were thus:
26% liberal
39% moderate
35% conservative
Which is a change from 2004, when only 19% of people identified as liberal in the presidential polls (conservatives were 34%, moderates 47% in 2004).
So liberals are a growing group, but still only 1/4 of voters in presidential elections.
…and that’s why I’m turning you in. 
Liberalish Moderate/Moderate Liberal
The primary reason for conservatism, I think, is that communism didn’t work that great. It’s even in the name - conservatives want to do things like they were in the past.
The problem is that today, something about how our economic system operates is rapidly creating a teensy number of people who will own everything on the planet, and everyone else gets the scraps. This is, in my opinion, unjust, because essentially none of the contributions by anyone else matter.
Obviously, communism isn’t the answer, but something must be done. One reason communism didn’t work is that if you paid everyone the same, no one has incentive to excel. What doesn’t follow from that is that if you pay some people twice or 5 times as much, sure, they have a greater incentive. That’s good. But if you pay them 1000 or 1 million times as much? I don’t think human performance scales like that. I don’t think corporate executives actually do better if you pay them 100 million a year instead of 1 million a year.
What it comes down to is the CEO’s 100 million salary is actually just robbing the shareholders. Anyways, I’m a liberal over that issue, and most others.
Except immigration. I don’t think the U.S. government should force us Americans to pay vast sums of money to go to school and then allow almost unlimited numbers of foreigners to come in and take our jobs. The H1B system is a scam, and the Federal government shouldn’t permit companies to keep scamming them.
That’s a big reason I’m becoming more liberal. Wealth inequality is getting out of control. I’ve always been pretty liberal on social issues but now I find on fiscal issues I’m much more open to higher tax rates on the ultra-rich to pay for a better society than I used to be.
90% of what we could discuss I’m fairly far left. The exceptions seem to be guns and religion; basically I’m in favor of both but perfectly happy with people who disagree.
In general, most liberals are ok with people practicing whatever religion they like in peace. However,
a. Most liberals don’t see an arbitrary cluster of Protestant sects as institutions that should get more rights than everyone else. To most liberals, it’s all a bunch of , *private *mumbo jumbo. Protestants are no better than Catholics who are no better than Buddhists who are no better than Muslims.
b. Because it’s all private beliefs, government policy shouldn’t be influenced by them.
This affects a whole bunch of things :
a. Abortion. If you stop seeing the world religiously, an early fetus is just a collection of cells, no different than any other part of a person’s body. It doesn’t have as much brainpower as animals we routinely kill for food, so what justifies giving it special rights? There are no justifications that don’t reference religion, that don’t require a “god” like being to have marked that fetus in some intangible way that makes removing it different from removing some other tissue.
b. Crime and punishment. Some edge case crimes that have no victim are only crimes because of arbitrary rules borrowed from religion. Punishment for crime is as much based on inflicting suffering on the guilty (similar to how a certain religious sect views the afterlife) as it is based on some purpose to protect society from further crimes.
c. Medical ethics.
And so on.