Rate Posters' Political Views(Opt-in Required)

Maybe it's cos you don't express your economic views properly.

Anyway, on economics, the point of left wing politics is that the government should persue policies that help people. I believe in social welfare, free universal healthcare, free universal education, and redistributive taxes. If you were to just list the sheer quantity of things we agree and disagree on, I'm sure we'd find more we disagree on. But if you were to weight them by how important they are to society, you'd find that our views overlap much more significantly. Furthermore, on point of fact, I believe that liberal markets help people, and that governments should pursue policies on this basis; again, you disagree with this factually, but not on the principle that governments have a responsibility to help people. Right wingers don't believe that the government has a responsibility to help people at all, to be clear.

On foreign policy, I'm not pro-Western, I'm anti-Authoritarianism. That means being anti-Russia, anti-Venezuela, etc. But again, those things aren't really significant. The war in Iraq is significant, and we both agree on that.

In terms of civil liberties, you are much more authoritarian, and I doubt we agree on much at all there.

RedRalphWiggum said:

Basically a good guy who happened to grow up in the wrong place. I bet deep deep down you are a lot less right-wing.

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you believe in personality being genetically rooted?

because if not, the place he grew up in is exactly what made him a good guy.

Hm. I'm surprised, I would think of people like you and Noncon some of the people here who I disagree with the most. We may agree on the ends goals, but we disagree so fundamentally on the methods to achieve tham, I think our respective views are totally incompatible. Maybe I'm not expressing myself well properly, that may be true.

holy king said:

you believe in personality being genetically rooted?

because if not, the place he grew up in is exactly what made him a good guy.

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I think it's a combination of nature and nurture, mainly nurture.

OK fine, I'll succumb to ego.

For the record I consider myself an environmental capitalist and pretty agnostic about economic policy beyond that (call it militant economic centrism perhaps). Socially I am fairly extremely anti-traditionalist and socially libertarian and have somewhat radical feminist sympathies. On foreign policy I'm almost nihilistic, don't expect much consistency there from me.

I can see I am not that special .

CivGeneral said:

I can see I am not that special .

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If you ask to be rated and then put in the proviso that no one can accurately describe you, no one is going to rate you.

Arwon: YYY

Open season on the mutual masturbation thread for the ages.

RedRalphWiggum said:

If you ask to be rated and then put in the proviso that no one can accurately describe you, no one is going to rate you.

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To be honest, it gets very annoying to be called a "flip-flopper" to the point that I consider it a trollish word.

Anyway here are the basics of my views: I describe myself as a moderate. Though I tend to be on the left on financial, foreign, and social issues. Most everyone would agree that I dislike George W. Bush strongly.

stolen from mise:

There are a lot of people in this thread, so I've made a key. Y means yes, N = no, D = don't know, sometimes, or other.

The first letter answers the question, "When I see that this person has posted something, do I generally expect something worth reading?" People with Y are people whose posts I therefore always read, D I mostly read, while those with an N I more often than not regret reading.

The second letter answers the question, "Does this person have well thought out political views?" People who have demonstrated a strong, well reasoned understanding of the general issues of politics, democracy and liberty, as well as specific issues such as economics, welfare and education, have a Y next to their names. People with an N next to their names are either ignorant of some or most of these things and/or have got them completely arse about face.

The third, more bluntly, asks whether or not I generally agree with the poster. This is probably the least important of the three, which is why it is last, but I think it's useful to know nonetheless. In the cases where I don't really know a poster that well, I'll go solely by what they've said in this thread about their views.


my ratings:

Positive view of poster | Well thought out | Agree with poster

Lone Wolf: DDD
Taniciusfox: NNN
RedRalphWiggum: YDY
Richard Cribb: YYD
west india man: DDD
Mise: YYY
BSmith1068: DDD
VRWCAgent: YNN
Tekee: NNN
Bill3000: YYD
Integral: DDD
Japanrocks12: DDD
stormbind: NNN
leonel: DDD
downtown: YYD
mariogreymist: DDD
Ekolite: DDD
Owen Glyndwr: DDD
Shekwan: YYY
Truronian: DDD
aelf: DND
aimeeandbeatles: NND
civver_764: DDD
nonconformist: YYY
The Imp: DDD
Cutlass: YND
Karalysia: YYD
JohnRM: NDN
cardgame: DDD
madviking: DDD
Domination3000: DDD
JollyRoger: YYD
CivGeneral: DND
Merkinball: DDN
Traitorfish: YDD
Cheezy the Wiz: YYD
MagisterCultuum: DDD
Kennigit: DDD
I'm Cleo!: YYD
Yeekim: NDN
Mad Man: DDD
Snorrius: YDD
classical_hero: DNN
Arwon: YYY

Gee, thanks alot for rating me N for the second slot Mise and Holy King .

CivGeneral said:

Gee, thanks alot for rating me N for the second slot Mise and Holy King .

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You should have put "can only post positive ratings about me" clause along with your opt in.

my ratings:

Positive view of poster | Well thought out | Agree with poster

Richard Cribb: DYY
Mise: NYN
BSmith1068: YYD
VRWCAgent: YNN
Tekee: NNN
downtown: YYD
Ekolite: NNN
Shekwan: YYN
Truronian: DYD
aimeeandbeatles: YDD
nonconformist: NNN
JohnRM: DYN
CivGeneral: DNN
Merkinball: NNN
Cheezy the Wiz: YDY
I'm Cleo!: YYY
Yeekim: NDN
classical_hero: DNN

Don't pop your head up over the parapet then CivGeneral No-one forced you to.

Do me if you like I don't mind.

holy king supports Liverpool and beats me at Scrabble too often for my liking so he's going to be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

RedRalphWiggum said:

CivGeneral: DNN
N

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Really, what is it that we disagree about?

CivGeneral said:

Really, what is it that we disagree about?

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Well, it's sort of hard to say, CG. You do generally tend to change your views frequently, and I dont, so we disagree on that, for a start.

Look, I don't want to hurt your feelings, so let's just leave it at that.

I doubt I'm well-known enough on the forum for anyone to describe my views accurately, so here is how I would describe myself:

I would describe myself as mildly authoritarian and generally left leaning. I'm a supporter of CCTV cameras in public places, the NHS (in theory but not currently in practise) and the benefits system. Very much in favour of strict business regulation too.

I believe that to ease our bursting-at-the-seems prison system we simply need to build more prisons. The amount of money we spend on them each year is trivial and we can easilly afford a few more. I believe that crime cannot be ''cured'' by training programmes, anger management etc in the majority of cases. Our prisons serve primarilly to keep criminals out of society to decrease the level of crime that society has to live with. Following this line of thought I support the death penalty for a range of crimes including serial murder, the murder of a person unknown to the killer, rape, sexual abuse of children, and all acts of terror.

I support the labour party and generally approve of the direction they have taken the country. I generally support the Afghanistan war, but not the Iraq war (although if they really did have nuclear weapons I would have).

I believe in the development of green energy, but I believe that in the mean time we need to replace the nuclear plants which are coming to the end of their lives.

I believe in EU-federalisation. I very much support the idea of EU reform to make it more democratic and to cut bureaucracy and I hope to see a constructed language such as Esperanto taught in all EU schools as a mutual second language during my lifetime. I believe in a single EU defense force and nuclear arsenal, a unified foreign policy, and fiscal and monetary unity for the entire union.

ParadigmShifter said:

holy king supports Liverpool and beats me at Scrabble too often for my liking so he's going to be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

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you are only going to kill a man.

@Ekolite: I gave you a DDD cos I didn't know much about your politics. After reading your post,, though, I think I know enough to change your rating to a DDD

ParadigmShifter: YDY, cos you don't post in enough detail to answer the 2nd one properly.

Yeah I tend to jump in ninja-like and make short points or rebuttals.