Who Are You?
I was recently, in a roundabout way, tagged as a leftist.
First, I'm not a lefty, I'm a centrist. Which means that, if you are an arch-conservative (or even a conservative), from where you're sitting, I'm left of you, so I look lefty. But I'm no tree-hugging, commie pinko, buddy. :) (Why is it those of us who work so hard to preserve our American, constitutionally-endowed freedoms from encroachment by the state are labeled anti-American socialists? That, I'll never understand.)
Also, I'm a more traditional conservative in that I think the government should mostly mind its own fucking business, in just about everything. You'll see that kind of pervades my writing in a subtle, but vaguely paranoic, way.
The only thing I think the government should pay attention to is (1) infrastructure, (2) crime and (3) potential abuses of power, mostly in monopolistic situations (which means I'm bullish on some regulation, or at least watch-dogging).
Second, it was suggested that I'm politically motivated. I'm not. I am, in fact, selfishly motivated, in that I want to be able to read what I want to read, watch what I want to watch and say what I want to say. That it even has to translate into politics is annoying, because I hate politics. I'm miserable bad at it. But I'm good at thinking, so you'll see a lot of thinking-things-through posts here.
I'm also logically motivated, in that I like to find the core axioms and/or rules behind something. I hate hypocrisy (hence my hatred of politics, which I regard as just the advancement of a personal agenda using whatever tools are handy at the time, regardless of logic and reason). So, you might read my blog as anti-religion, but it's not. I'm all for religion (I'm raising my children Catholic after all), but I'm against the hypocrisy that seems to surface in religion and the "moral majority" that would deny the advances of science and rule our lives for us (see point #2a).
So, that's a bit about who I am and where I'm coming from. This was kind of off the cuff, so I reserve the right to update this as I see fit. I do plan to keep growing after all.
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Some comments:
Hmm... no insult intended, but I don't see a lot of issues that you are right-leaning on, while on most issues (the ones you discuss at least), you do indeed share the position with the left.
There's nothing wrong with that. But I don't see you as a "centrist" as I define it. The truth is, I'm not really sure what that word even means.
The whole conservative/liberal definition changes over time, so it's more of a feel than anything else.
Anybody who is not totally far left or totally far right will always be more centered than somebody else out there, somewhere. There may be only 2 people out there who AREN'T centrists, technically speaking.
If that. Because it's not a single dimension or continuum. Every issue is different, so a thinking individual such as yourself will fall left of some people, right on others, depending on the issue.
And that's what it should be, and that's admirable. At the same time, I don't think that simply thinking the issues through puts you in the center, if your positions tend to fall consistently in with the left side of those issues.
Again there's nothing wrong with that, but a centrist as I define it is on the perceived left of the majority about half of the time, and right the other times.
Maybe talk some more about the issues where you ARE conservative as you claim? I'd be real interested to hear your take on those, honestly.
- z
Hey your first paragraph was mangled by blogger or something.
try this: http://www.politicalcompass.org/
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