Based on these political positions, would you call me a conservative, a liberal, or something else?

Politics & Elections
1

I am against gun control. The Second Amendment means what it says, in my opinion, and if people oppose its provisions they should work to repeal that amendment, not pretend it means something else. I’m very tempted to say that every adult should be strongly encouraged to know how to use at least one sort of small arm safely.

I am in favor of abortion rights, at least up to very late in the pregnancy, and at any point in the pregnancy if the mother’s life or health is at risk.

Ideally I’d want the government to have no say whatsodamnever in who may marry whom solong as all parties are adults, but if government is going to stick its nose in, same-sex marriage should be allowed. I can’t think of a good reason to prohibit polygamy but I think it’s a bad idea, at least as manifested by the likes of Warren Jeffs.

I’d like there to be considerable federal involvement in education, both funding it and setting standards. I don’t want those standards tested only or even primarily by standardzied tests, though. And I think charter schools are often a stealth attempt to defund the public schools, which I don’t like; it’s in society’s interest to provide competent K-12 education for as many people as possible.

I think the death penalty is theoretically just but, practically speaking, impossible to administer justly and at a reasonable price, so I’d ban it.

I think anyone who wants to teach creationism or intelligent design in the public schools is either a nitwit, a liar, or an ignoramus.

Vaccines for diseases like measles, chicken pox, and so forth should be mandatory.

Seat-belt use should NOT be mandatory; nor should wearing a motorcycle helmet.

Single-payer universal health care is probably the best way to go.

While I concede the power to tax is the power to destroy, it’s silly to think that lowering taxes is always the correct response to an economic situation, and people who say so are either disingenuous or fooling themselves. And a tax code that allows General Electric to pay zip in taxes on billions of revenue is broken.

Medical marijuana should be legal in all states. In fact, marijuana should be legal; it’s no more dangerous than alcohol, and clearly of greater benefit that tobacco (which, incidentally, should nnot be banned.)

Prostitution as it exists in the United States is almost always the result of very unpleasant exploitation, but it shouldn’t be outlawed so long as both parties are adults. It should be regulated to control STD spreads and to ensure that any prostitute is working of his or her own volition, supported by taxes on the exchange. Prostitutes should be licensed in teh same way insurance agents are.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is fine the way it is; the EPA should have more power; there should be more regulation of certain dangerous industries.

No Xmas trees, menorahs, crosses, or Decalogue tablets in government buildings; no religious symbols at all. And remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance.

A brief stint in government service should be required to obtain the franchise, at least in theory. In practice that may well not work, so I don’t insist.

My votes in presidental electiosn have been thus: Bush I, Dole, Gore, Kerry, Obama.

How would you classify me politically?

2

You’re kinda hard to pigeonhole. Got some good conservative/libertarian ideas in there, but you’re also willing to cede more power to the feds in certain areas. Guess I’d call you a centrist overall, with some positions that shade right or left depending on the issue.

3

Though the other items on the list are in no particular order, it’s not an accident that I list gun rights first; it’s the most important one to me. Does that change your assessment?

4

No. I find that to be consistent with other libertarian-leaning positions like marijuana, abortion, gay marriage.

5

I’m not sure what you are either, but you’re very, very similar to whatever I am.

6

Other than my belief that the death penalty is theoretically AND practically flawed and my utter indifference to people being versed in the use of guns, your beliefs match mine pretty closely. I consider myself a liberal.

7

Which reminds me: I’d meant to encourage others to list political positions they find important so they too could be assessed.

I also realized that I left out my vote in my very first presidential election, which was for Bush I. I only voted for him because I was trying to get laid, though. I should also add that I’ve never smoked marijuana, either as recreation or as medicine, and think doing so is silly; I’'m just not willing to ban it.

When I say that the death penalty is theoretically justifiable, I mean that some people need killing. For instance, somebody (Annie Xmas?) started a thread some months back about a couple of guys who invaded a family’s home, raped & killed the mother and her daughters, and set the place aflame. Those guys deserve death. But as I cannot construct a system in which I believe the DP would be administered justly and without any possible error, I have to oppose it in practice.

8

It looks like guns are the only issue on which you fall solidly on the conservative side of the American political divide: All of your other views are either low-profile points that neither side really makes a big deal about, or distinctly liberal (by American standards). So the question then is basically whether you put a high enough priority on guns to outweigh everything else combined.

Note, by the way, my usage of “American political divide” and “American standards”. I know of no particular reason why, say, support of guns, opposition to abortion, and opposition to taxes should all be associated with the same political party, but for whatever reason, that’s the way it’s worked out.

9

To me your a classic liberal with some libertarian leanings (not unlike myself).

It’s pretty obvious that with respect to current political parties you would be much more likely to support a Democratic candidate than a Republican one. This is clearly pointed out in your actual presidential votes.

10

Well, I’d have voted for McCain in 2000 if he’d won the Republican nomination. I was voting against Bush II both times. And I think his father is quite underrated as president.

11

You’re pretty close to what I am politically. In fact, if you were to move to my county, you would find a lot of kindred spirits in the county Democratic Party (this is TN, where many Dems tend to be more centrist).

I consider myself a moderate.

ETA: Other than voting for Nader once, I’ve voted straight D for president since '84. Local elections there are a lot of Independents (we all know which way they lean anyway. :p) and congresscritters have an occasional R or L among them.

12

Yes, and I have to say I’m not sure I can reconcile your stated positions with a vote for Dole over Clinton (unless perhaps the gun control issues was primary - but I would think that the anti-abortion stance would outweigh any marginal gun control measures).

It’s a bit hard to evaluate your political alignment without seeing a “relative weighting” of your positions - is medical marijuana more or less important to you than gay rights, for example? Nobody can find a candidate or party that agrees with them on everything, obviously…

I would agree that GHWB was and is underrated, but it is equally clear that he has no place in today’s GOP.

I just find it hard to believe that a proponent of abortion rights, gay marriage, universal single-payer health care, increased environmental regulation, and a complete removal of religion from the public sphere could vote for anything other than the Democratic candidate these days.

13

You seem to be assuming that my positions have been static. They haven’t been, and that election was 15 years ago.

14

I have a method for fairly administering the death penalty, though I can’t say how effective it might be. Make it voluntary – you can have a choice between life in prison with no chance of parole, or you can choose to be executed. You can also decide this at any time during your sentence – if you wake up with a bad hair day, you can choose to be dead by the afternoon.

I think I might choose death as preferable to life in a box, but of course you can never really know that in advance.

15

I’ll give it a shot then.

This is the only point of yours that I disagree with, and even here I might neither support nor oppose it, depending on how ‘A brief stint in government service’ is defined.

As for other issues: I think the government should take a large role in supporting renewable/alternate energy sources.

I think our military is bigger than it needs to be, and that it should be slowly reduced so we can spend that money elsewhere.

This is an interesting idea. I’ll have to give it some thought.

16

People sentenced to death kind of do have this option already. They can stop appeals after they’re convicted, and hence end up being executed decades earlier then otherwise. Timothy McVeigh, to cite a famous case, did this.

My impression is that McVeigh is something of an outlier though, and that most people end up fighting to the bitter end. So I suspect under your plan, the vast majority would choose life imprisonment.

As to Skald, the OP is kinda weird, since it seems to me your pretty clearly liberal. You have one view thats a mild oulier (gun control), but that seems to be a pretty common one amongst liberals (which is why Dems have largely dropped it as an issue, at least at the federal level).

To use my homestate as an example, Vermont tends to be strongly in favor of gunrights, but I don’t think anyone would call Vermont anything but a liberal state.

17

Of course… :smack: sorry about that.

Seeing as how when I was a younger man I voted for GWB (the first time around, and my first presidential election), I certainly understand how opinions change as time goes by.

A rundown of my current political position preferences is rather dull - it’s pretty standard liberal fare, with an isolationist and free-trade side, and libertarian stances on things like recreational drug use. Economically perhaps a bit more free-market oriented than some liberals, in areas where free markets have proven their worth (i.e., I’d support cap and trade over a straight CO2 cap or tax but am not at all convinced that a free-market solution exists for health care).

18

Under my plan, no one is sentenced to death. So all those pricey death sentence appeals go away. And everyone who is sentenced to life without parole has an option of death instead, so there is a MUCH bigger pool of people who might choose it.

But you’re probably right that it won’t be a popular choice.

19

Yea, I get that. I’m just saying that using the number of people who don’t appeal their death sentences is probably a semi-decent proxy for the percentages of people who would choose death over long-term imprisonment.

Actually, the rate of choosing not to appeal not to appeal is around 12%, higher then I would’ve thought. So as a first guess, I’d take that as the percentage of lifetime inmates who would choose death over life imprisonment, though of course the population on death row is probably different then the general population of life-sentencers, so its only good as a rough estimate.

20

Kind of a conservo-liberalitarian.