What are your most extreme, honestly held views?

I think that the driving laws need to be redone. The cops shouldn’t be sitting out pulling people over for doing the same basic speed that the rest of us are going. This is mostly for highways and out of town. The other side is though that they should really be pulling people over for speeding in town where people try and cross the road and kids play.

Cops should not be able to get away with speeding well above the limit, especially on the highways. If I can get in trouble for going 10 miles over then so should you. That really goes for in towns, I don’t need to see cops going 50+ in a 30mph zone.

I think that getting a drivers license should be a lot harder. No more parallel parking for 10% of your driving class.

Drunk driving should not be tolerated at all. There should be severe penalties for it.

Everyone should learn to ride a motorcycle and be forced to ride them in traffic for at least one year. This way people can see how bad others drive and how to drive better.

How about instead of putting convicted criminals in jail, they have their crimes tattooed on their faces? The punishments would (theoretically) naturally follow, rather than hosting the criminal on the state’s dime for X number of months or years.

My extremist beliefs:[ul]

[li] Presidential elections should be 100% taxpayer funded. Each candidate gets ten million dollars. That’s it. No political donations from anyone. Not Omnicorp, not your grandma, not anyone. If that means candidates can’t purchase as much airtime or billboards…good! Everyone hates all this horserace bullshit anyway. Furthermore, Presidential campaigning of any sort shall be strictly forbidden until 3 months before the date of the election. The Fairness Doctrine should be reinstated and rigidly enforced throughout. Say whatever you want the rest of the time, but during those 3 months, every broadcaster and journalist should adhere to strict impartiality guidlines. The penalties for breaking them should be severe. PAC’s should be illegalised. [/li]
Congresspersons and Senators will be allowed to accept private donations. However, these donations should be capped at $1000.00. Congressional and Senatorial candidates must name all donors, corporate or individual, regardless of the amount donated.

Once in office, no politician should be allowed to accept any gifts of any kind at any price from anyone for any reason ever (excluding family members, obviously). The receipt of a $1.00 gift certificate should be enough to permanently disqualify any politician from office.

Large scale political corruption should be punishable by life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. I’d like to say ‘by death’, but I’m anti-capital punishment, although I’m sorely tempted to make an exception for corrupt pols.

Upon leaving office, congresspersons, senators, and Presidents should continue to receive their wages for five years. In return, they should be forbidden from seeking any gainful employment of any sort with anybody. If they don’t like it, they don’t have to run for office.
[li] The cane is an excellent way to administer classroom discipline. And corporal punishment is an excellent alternative to prison for petty criminals. [/li] Drunk drivers should have their licenses revoked for life. If they kill anyone, they should be charged with murder. No second chances. [/ul]

There is no contradiction there.

This has been a very interesting thread so far. Honestly, if some of these ideas were implemented on a large scale I expect that we’d all be trying to slit each others throat.

It’s a lot easier for me to shoot elk/deer/bear and fill the freezer than it is to earn enough money to buy a comparable amount of beef from a retailer.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s possible to spend a lot of money on hunting but it’s also possible to make a small investment for a much greater return. I love hunting but I feel anxious until my dad or I shoot something; it’s no fun to run out of meat in the summer and have no way to replace it until fall.

That said, I love hunting and I deeply resent the attitude that something is wrong with me because I enjoy it. I don’t think non-hunters are wrong or pussies so I don’t appreciate the bullshit assertion that I’m violent or fucked in the head because I like killing things.

People who abuse animals should be treated in an identical manner.

"You chopped off that dog’s leg? OK, now we chop off your leg.

And guess what; he still has three. You’re down to one."
mmm

It’s ok to declaw a cat under anesthesia using the laser method.

Anyone in power who suggests invading another country should be executed.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

George W. Bush was the (metaphorical) antichrist.

I do sincerely hope that you don’t ever experience some deranged junkie knifing one of your family, with the cops arriving too late, apologizing because they had to wait for 10 minutes while some 90 year old crossed the road.

I would assume he means when it’s NOT an emergency. Cops speed all the time without their lights and sirens on.

Yeah, it’s hard to imagine how liking to kill things could ever indicate a problem. If not liking to kill things doesn’t, then liking to can’t either. That’s how things work.

I rather like this one.

I believe that honesty really is the best policy, though not because of morality or any bullshit like that. If you don’t lie for a long period of time, you either learn to not make decisions that will embarrass you when brought up in conversation later, or you learn to just be confident in what you do and not really worry about what other people think. Both are great! Also, it’s fun to meet new people and see their reactions when you say “I don’t lie. Ever.”

I don’t want to bring up abortion again but most people tend to leave out opinions like mine in the polls. Back when I was young and much more philosophical, I was anti-abortion because I thought the supporters were making just making arbitrary distinctions to support their own purposes without good philosophical ways to back it up.

Then the book Freakonomics came out and I found out that the plummeting crime rate in America and other parts of the world is due, in large part, to likely felons never being born thanks to widespread abortions among the populations most likely to produce them. Practicality trumps philosophy every time in my book these days especially since I had children. Voluntary, selective eugenics is A-OK in my book and I am not just pro-choice but actively pro-abortion in most cases these days in a golf clap kind of way. End that socioeconomic and genetic line now so the rest of us won’t be dealing with the consequences for generations to come.

That idea is bullshit as abortion have decline since the 80s yet crime rates continue to go down tremendously.

I’m sure you have a study to back that up.

Why not fit young women with a chastity belt?

I believe it was precisely even sven’s point to question why the burden should be placed exclusively on the female gender.

I admire any man who can troll a ship full of people so hard that some of them die.

Edit: Also Fox canceled Arrested Development at pretty much the right moment. The show was getting stale, and Lindsay jumping on Michael was kind of a shark jumping moment.

I’ve always considered hunting to be roughly the same as gardening. It’s simply challenging yourself to gather your own food (and like gardening, the result usually tastes better).

I believe that anyone who has shown a propensity to act on this belief should be killed to save the future psyche of a child as they are a predatory animal incapable of understanding the need or pupose of protection of the most vulnerable among us. I also have no interest in what someone who thinks in such a way thinks about the way I think as they have already discredited their character to a point beyond the need to pay attention.