What Is Your Political Philosophy?

I have always been and remain an American. That is my Philosophy. I live by the US Constitution and the Ten Commandments. And every leftist/Liberal can thank their lucky stars that I do.

 

I would describe mine as less is more.

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Lawl. So now the ten commandments, at least five of which are far from secular in nature, are officially American?

 

Yes, the Ten Commandments are very American. And universal.

 

I just wonder about people who need (or think they need) an old list of religious commandments in order to behave themselves. Not that practically everyone isn't a giant hypocrite anyway.

 

There are these things -a military for example- that are so called 'public goods'. That means that all people in a certain area benefit by them even if they do not want to pay for its upkeep. What would happen with a voluntary government, which by the way is kind of an oxymoron, is that people would opt out of paying for many things but still enjoey the benefits of them as long as others would pay for them. Needless to say, such a system wouldn't work too well.

 

Free riders are always a consideration but the U.S. government operated on about 5 percent of its GDP for the first 150 years of its existence. I don't think that level of funding would be difficult in a place where the majority find value in what the government is funding, such as roads and military. Pay for service for those things that would be appropriate to that system would pay for themselves easily and less tangible public goods like defense, could be supported with profits from pay for service functions.

Every church, private school and civic organization has voluntary funding and governance. Its not as much of an oxymoron as you think. As for free riders, we have more of that now than we did when our government wasn't as big, intrusive and authoritarian. Just as in any voluntary charitable or civic organization, as long as there are enough contributions to support the minimal required funding, the system works. The Methodist Church and Harvard University have both managed to accumulate impressive levels of funding without force or coercion.

 

Churches and private schools are not in the same business as government. Apples and oranges really.

What you are proposing is a system in which the self-interest of the individual lies in letting everyone else pay and not pay himself, but in addition to that you want to remove the thing that keeps most in place -the threat of violence- and you think that system wouldn't collapse?

 

How are the differences relevant? A church provides little to no tangible value to its members and they collect enough in donations to provide for their own existence, infrastructure and works. A school provides a service for pay that students and families spend beyond their means to attain. Why would that same functionality not be the same for a government providing services the citizenry recognizes as valuable?

If the individual's self interest reached no further than keeping the money in his pocket today, no one would contribute in church or send their children to college. Churches thrive and colleges are packed with students paying dearly to be there.

An entrepreneur or business will pay to use a port, road or canal to get goods to market, anytime a bond or tax increase vote wins, the majority of the voting citizenry are volunteering to pay that increase because they find value in the project. Why would people suddenly find no value in defense or infrastructure without the threat of force?

 

All liberals want to be Robin Hood. Follow the arrows.

Steal from the Rich and give to the poor. Then ruin the economy! LOL. they are such genius'.

 

It's for those who feel the need to beat up 80 year old women walking down the street, and taking their fixed income money. Or the goof that comes into your locked house to take what's yours. Naw we don't need anything. LOL at jokers like you.

 

Heh. People who do that aren't likely to give two sh*ts about religion and its preaching, either.

 

Wow, how about that. But for those who do follow those doctrines, laws were developed to deal with those idiots, and, OBTW, they were made with the religious commandments in mind. Thou shalt not.........or else this happens. It's called a belief system. Which many more believe in than those who don't. There are so many different religions with similar if not the same ideologies.

 

And religious commandments were made with social functioning in mind. So what? What religion does differently is claim divine authority for the rules it codifies. That may work on children and the simple-minded, but it's hardly a good basis for moral reasoning or for making society work in general.

 

Then why do they succeed? Why do so many contribute their hard earned cash to them? Take their children to their schools vs the free public ones? The fact is you're jealous of them. You have no idea how a failure like yourself can have a belief system. You've been crapped on over and over in your life, that you have to bash those who do believe. You have hate bottled up inside and use message boards as your release. You long for people to believe how you believe and punish those who do not. BTW, in some countries the religious divine authority would put to death people who didn't follow the commandments much more swiftly then the US has. I don't feel sorry for you. I just pray you don't reproduce.

 

They don't succeed, if you're referring to religious commandments and moral imperatives. They don't prevent crimes in the real world; just in the la-la land that believers like to live in as much as they can.

Interesting rant about my personal motives, by the way. It's like you're abusing me for not sharing your beliefs and using the message board as a release for some bottled up hatred or something.

 

Oh Contraire! It wasn't I who wrote the initial bull that you published. Again, those doing the complaining are the ones sitting in their own..........

 

And there you are, complaining.

No need to get all ad homie here, homie.

 

complain, no, just pointing the thread in the correct direction.

 

My philosophy is simple.....

The government has three legitimate duties...

1; Protect the sovereignty of the United States of America from foreign and domestic threats. (This does not including forcing states to remain in the Union if they wish to secede but does including preventing a minority to force their views on the people through violence)

2; Provide for the general welfare of the people and country. This includes giving assistance to disabled and children, and those who are unemployed or underemployed for reasons beyond their control, as well as upkeep on infrastructure.

3; Passing laws to protect non-consenting persons from being forced to live with the choices of others, and to protect those who can not consent, such as children and animals.

 

Tea Party/traditional conservative with slight libertarian leanings. I'm a government minimalist, and I believe God helps those who help themselves. In other words, people don't remain in crappy situations indefinitely unless they (usually subconsciously) continue to make choices that keep them there. I respect people who strive to become or remain independent, and I pretty much ignore the excuses made by those who don't.

I think abortion is just slavery version 2.0. Another stupid law that grants one arbitrary group dominion over another and egregiously violates human rights.

I believe that history has proven Judeo-Christian principles tend to produce a better foundation for a free society than any other philosophy. And thus attempting to remove such principles is detrimental to prosperity.

And I think that society would probably benefit from decriminalizing/legalizing marijuana in order to free up more jail space for violent criminals.

 

I would probably be called a Liberal Social Democrat. I'm not a member of any party but I certainly would be more inline with the Democrats today. What I find really troubling is how many people appear to assume that liberals want people to be able to use abortion as birth control, which is totally false, and that they don't expect anybody to work to obtain welfare benefits. Nobody ever advocates using abortion as birth control, so that's a completely false assumption. As for working to obtain welfare benefits, that depends entirely on the individual circumstances, such as whether the person is disabled in some way. Is the person a single parent that although working needs assistance to feed her child? We have an economy that has now reduced unemployment to 7.0 % which is better than it has been, however there are many jobs that are poverty level. So a person taking a job at that level is working, but is still not able to survive. What then? Should they live in a box under the freeway? Not be eligible for food stamps? There are those that would do away with the minimum wage, and at the same time cut $40 billion from Food Stamps, and of course do away with any possible access to affordable healthcare. So...the idea appears to be able to pay people a subsistence, and deny them access to food and healthcare.

I'm not a religious person, but this seems hardly in line with the Christian values espoused by the usual suspects. It seems strange to me that most liberals that are generally viewed as atheists and not the least bit religious are more closely aligned with the views of the new Pope than the conservatives that claim to be Christians. I'm totally opposed to economic reductionism. For me, the question is whether we should value freedom because freedom is valuable or because it is profitable—whether we should regard it as an end in itself that is valuable for its own sake, or as a means to economic prosperity that we may dispense with if and when it no longer works to achieve its end.

 

I believe in doing what is most right for the most people and don't care if the idea comes from the left or the right or the middle. I just don't care. I simply want the government to be as small as possible while at the same time providing essential protections and services.

 

My Political Philosophy is that Politicians only respond to media attention give to Attack Groups which express their demands for real action.

Politicians are merely pawns in the game.
Attack Groups organize and gain financial capital to support the competition in elections which either motivate incumbents to acquiesce to the demands or face strong opposition in re-elections.

These attack groups are the real Political Force in the Institution of Law and Order.

When the main stream begins to speak out with their feet, as seen with the Chick' O Fil episode against Gay Extortionism and in the Arab Spring, then the true democracy of this Attack Group Politics will force America to do what people, by and large, know ought be done.

When we see polls that claim 69% of the public do not believe Iran honestly will cease Nuclear Enrichment after they get relief from sanctions, the only thing that allows Sec State Kerry to grand stand is that they do not march in what would be equivalent to A Gay Pride Parade which stops traffic on main street for a day.

 

All essential goods and services should be nationalized or heavily regulated.

For everything else, there's capitalism.

As for government, it should be run by the people, for the people, with direct democracy whenever possible, as much as possible. And no, corporations are not people.

 

Government is a racket. Politics is a circus.

I do not consent to be governed, therefore no government has any "just powers" over me.

My participation in politics (mostly local level but I have been an alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention) is merely a defensive action to try and mitigate the evils of the racket.