I will put it this way when I think of a liberal or a left leaning individual this is what enters my mind.
> Tax payer funded abortion
2. supports bigger Gov or welfare state
3. gun control in other words doesn't like the 2nd amendment
4. politicle correctness
4. anti religion in the public sector
5. opposition to full private property rights
6.Thinks that the constitution is a living and breathing document.
7.income redistribution through progressive taxation
I could keep going but I think you get my point.
As far as D.Kucinich goes yeah he's definitly far left in my book, open boarders ( co sponser of HR 500),progressive taxaton But he does support the decriminilzation of marjuana so that's a good thing even though I personally don't smoke anymore,but we wasting to much money on the war on drugs when it comes to herb.
I want to take a shot at these and then you guys can label me. I think I fall center of the road on a lot of stuff.
1. I am Pro-Choice, but I don't really agree with tax payer funded abortion, except in certain cases like rape, threat of death to the mother, etc. That being said, I personally don't like them. I wouldn't recommend one to my wife or daughter. But I don't believe in forcing my belief system on the rest of the country either. I would rather spend money educating people how to avoid unwanted pregnancies or to help out with adoptions, but the final choice belongs to the woman in question.
2. Not sure what you mean by bigger government. The size of government has been growing since its inception right? And if we didn't have government intervention in business, then we would still have lead in our paint and who knows what in our food (if we don't already). Businesses are about making money and not kept in some kind of check, who knows how far they will go to make that bottom line. I think we've all seen what happens when you take the reins off and try to let the "free market" dictate things. Welfare state? My personal belief is that the government should use tax dollars to assist people who need it, to a point. I got laid off back in 2003. I was out of work for 6 months. I am not a bum, but I am glad as hell I had unemployment to fall back on until I was able to get another job. So we shouldn't do that? Or we shouldn't do it perpetually?
3. Guns. OK, to me this is like a lot of other issues. I have no problem with people owning guns. I do think the line should be drawn somewhere though and assault rifles and above makes sense to me. Does anyone really need an M16 or and AK47? I do not own a gun and probably never will. But if my neighbor wants 5 handguns and a couple of shotguns and some rifles (he's a big hunter) then more power to him. Personally I think it is too late to do anything about this. You can't just take away something people have been used to having for the last couple of hundred years. I think I would have preferred that we turned out like people in Europe or Canada where handguns have always been forbidden for the most part and other guns are heavily regulated. I mean, they simply do not have the gun violence we do. But like I said, I think we would never be able to do that now. I do think it is ridiculous that a lot of my friends thing Obama is coming to take their guns away. No he isn't.
4. I think freedom of speech overrides this. I would think a liberal would be against political correctness because the idea infringes upon freedom of speech. I think political correctness serves some purpose, but has been ridiculously overblown. Like when Rahm Emmanuel said a plan was "retarded" and everyone got up in arms (Palin) but then don't when Rush says it. It leads to too many double standards.
5. Absolutely against any and all religion in the public sector. Again, because where do you draw the line? You can't allow one and not allow others. So ban them all. Religion belongs in church and has no place in school, courtrooms, etc.
6. Property Rights - Are you talking eminent domain? Yes, I am against eminent domain. I believe in the sanctity of private property. Not sure if that make me conservative or liberal though. Texas is one of the largest practitioners of eminent domain in the country and we have a virtual Tea Party member as a governor. They even use eminent domain to promote private business down here and I thought it was only for public use. You know why? To promote business. See, some extreme right-wingers get up in arms about eminent domain until Jerry Jones wants to build a football stadium on top of a neighborhood. What? The homeowners don't want to move? Well, hell, that's bad for business so eminent domain their asses out of there. Texas is the most conservative state in the nation and our leaders have no problem eminent domaining some lady off her ranch so a fucking toll road can go through there.
7. Constitution as a living document. It is. This is another one I don't understand. How far back to Tea Partiers want to go? To the original? What about the Bill of Rights? The other amendments? Things change over time and you have to account for that. Look at Prohibition. They thought that was a great idea at the time and then not so much. Slavery, woman's suffrage, etc. What is wrong with updating the rules to reflect current values? If we didn't do that we would still be locking people in stocks for adultery and cutting off hands for stealing.
8. Progressive taxation. I wish we could go to a national sales tax. I will admit, I am no tax expert at all. But what is wrong with a national sales tax? You buy something (maybe food and medicine excluded) and you pay taxes on it. I'd like to hear the right and left argument on that one. Personally I understand we have to pay taxes. Roads, police, farm subsidies, illegal wars, etc. All that stuff takes money.
So, which I am I? Right Wingnut or Leftist Socialist Progressive Liberal?
the thing that prfctlefts points out aren't generally used to define political leanings ... he's focusing on specific issues as opposed to the broader contexts ...
the thing that prfctlefts points out aren't generally used to define political leanings ... he's focusing on specific issues as opposed to the broader contexts ...
Always considered myself a moderate, here's my scores:
Economic Left/Right: -3.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.54
I don't consider myself christian, but that's what bothers me about the Teabaggers. They do yet they seem to be unable to follow the teachings of christ.
If the "right" is for full private property rights should they not then be pro-choice as to what a women wants to do with her own property i.e. her body.
also, doesn't many states in America have a death penalty which can be said to be a very, very, very late term government payed for abortion.
i am not saying this just to pick on the right. the problem is that many people don't think before they talk. the "left" does it a lot too.
i just heard that there is a tea rally in my area this week...i can't wait to get my grammatically incorrect protest signs, some tea bags to throw, and my misunderstanding of the issues at hand and load up my new ride and go raise a little hell...YEEEEE HAWWWWW!!!
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
i just heard that there is a tea rally in my area this week...i can't wait to get my grammatically incorrect protest signs, some tea bags to throw, and my misunderstanding of the issues at hand and load up my new ride and go raise a little hell...YEEEEE HAWWWWW!!!
It would be GREAT if you came!
“We the people are the rightful masters of bothCongress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” Abraham Lincoln
Black presidents and women MPs do not alone mean equality and justice
Representation is a start, and an important one. But equal opportunities should be pursued above the photo opportunities
Gary Younge
Guardian.co.uk
Sunday 14 March 2010
During a recent playdate, one of my son's white four-year-old friends looked up from Thomas the Tank Engine and pointed out the obvious. "You're black," he told my son. As a parent, these have never felt like particularly teachable moments. Toddlers have plenty of time ahead of them to acquire anxieties, affiliations and attitudes about race. But what they see primarily at their age is not race but difference – a fact that need prompt neither denial nor panic, rebuke nor rectification, unless some derogatory meaning is attached to that difference.
When my son looks to me for a cue, my aim is not to interrogate or chide but to acknowledge and deflect. In the past, I have said: "And what colour are you?" or "And you are white". But this time new material came to mind. "That's right," I told them both. "Just like the president."
This was the long-presaged moment I had been warned to prepare for. My son was born on the weekend that Barack Obama announced his candidacy. Since then, people have been telling me that his presidency would mean great things for my son. Indeed, this was one of Obama's privately stated aims. When his wife Michelle asked what he thought he could accomplish if he became president, he said: "The day I take the oath of office, the world will look at us differently. And millions of kids across this country will look at themselves differently. That alone is something."
True, it is something. But when Thomas is safely back in the station and the moment is over, it is not very much. Because for all the white noise emanating from the Tea Party movement, it has been black Americans who have suffered most since Obama took office. Over the last 14 months the gap between my son's life chances and his friend's have been widening. Unemployment, which has held steady in the rest of the country, is still rising among African Americans and stands at almost twice that of white people. For black teens, unemployment is 43.8%. Meanwhile, foreclosures among African Americans are increasing almost 50% faster than for whites. At this rate, my son will certainly look at himself differently after Obama's presidency – and not in a good way.
This could legitimately be the starting point for an indictment of Obama's presidency. Certainly if a Republican president were behind statistics like this, few liberals would be offering him or her the benefit of the doubt. But like most other criticisms of Obama, particularly regarding the economy, you would have to make the case that another viable contender could have produced better results in the same circumstances. He entered in a moment of freefall. Calling on him to provide a softer landing or a parachute is one thing. Demanding that he suspend the rules of gravity is another.
I think that case could be made, but it is not the argument I'm making here. The fact that the first black president is presiding over deepening racial disparities is just one of the more potent illustrations of how the relationship between identity and electoral representation has become untethered from broader social, political or economic advances and rendered purely symbolic. The corporate model of diversity, which seeks to look different and act the same, has firmly stamped its imprimatur on a kind of politics that owes more to Benetton ads than black advancement. Where we used to seek equal opportunities, we have now become satisfied with photo opportunities – a fact that satisfies some liberals, annoys most conservatives and does little, if anything, for the lives of those whose interests are ostensibly being championed.
"We have more black people in more visible and powerful positions," Angela Davis told me before Obama won the Democratic nomination. "But then we have far more black people who have been pushed down to the bottom of the ladder. When people call for diversity and link it to justice and equality, that's fine. But there's a model of diversity as the difference that makes no difference, the change that brings about no change."
This is not just true for race. India's upper house last week passed a bill to reserve a third of all legislative seats for women. Given that India ranks 99th in the world for female representation, this would make a significant difference to the Indian parliament if it becomes law. The prime minister, Manmohan Singh, described the vote as a "historic step forward toward emancipation of Indian womanhood".
Not necessarily. There is no absolute causal link between gender representation and gender equality. Six of the countries that rank in the top 20 for women's representation are also in the top 20 for per capita rapes. Meanwhile, a global gender gap index, compiled by the World Economic Forum, which assesses how countries distribute resources and opportunities between the sexes, reveals glaring discrepancies. Angola and Nepal, which stand 10th and 17th respectively in terms of representation, are 106th and 110th in terms of equality. Ireland and Sri Lanka, which rank eighth and 16th respectively for equality are 87th and 125th for representation. In 2008, two female party leaders locked horns in elections in Bangladesh, producing the second female prime minster for the country in a decade. According to the WEF, gender inequality in Bangladesh is bad (it is 94th) and getting relatively worse (in 2008 it was 90th).
This does not undermine the campaigns for more diverse political representation but should sharpen the arguments that support them. Representative democracies that exclude large sections of the population are not worthy of the adjective. Nor should the power of symbolism be underrated. Black Americans may have fared worst under Obama, but they are also the most likely to approve of his presidency. A Pew survey released in January showed the highest number of African Americans believing they are better off now than they were five years ago – even though economically they are not.
Moreover, in most cases difference does make a difference. While there may be no black or female experience, evidence suggests that a critical mass of certain groups can have an affect on outcomes. A 2008 study in the Columbia Law Review discovered: "When a white judge sits on a panel with at least one African-American judge, she becomes roughly 20 percentage points more likely to find" a voting rights violation. A 2005 Yale Law Journal study revealed not only that women judges were more likely to find for plaintiffs in sexual harassment cases than men, but that the presence of female judges increased the likelihood that men would find for the plaintiff too.
The fact that five of the 10 countries with the highest female representation are also in the top 10 for gender equality is no mere coincidence. Since the push for parliamentary parity is often part of a larger effort surrounding equal rights, greater representation is more likely to be the product of progressive social change than a precursor to it. The relationship between identity, representation and equality is neither inevitable nor irrelevant, but occasionally contradictory and always complex.
It's comforting to know there are simple words of racial reassurance I can tell my son when he's three. It would be even better to imagine that he would not be in need of that kind of reassurance by the time he reaches 23.
Firstly, many of the things on this list have no baring on "left" or "right" and are merely done by both Dems and Reps in government. The growth of government, the rise in the budget and deficit to name a few.
In terms of #2, just because someone is for the right to abortion, doesn't mean everyone is for the tax payers funding the costs. That's simply nonsense and you have no proof or statistics that can correlate such details. I've never read or heard a pro-abortion person make such claims in my life...ever.
In terms of #3, "gun-control" can be something as simple as regulation and checks in enforcement of the 2nd amendment.. not simply the notion that no one can bears arms as the law states. This is merely the slippery slope argument - if person x does actions y.. it will automatically lead to action x and z... but it's assumptions and panic, not practice or fact based.
In terms of #4, political correctness is not really a politically leaned item. There's people on both sides who are for or against this.
In terms of #4a, "anti religion in the public sector" - the simple way you termed this item shows how biased the thought is. The notion that people want a separation of church and state or society's freedom to practice religion in the home and not plaster it all over every ounce of viewing site is not "anti-religion". There are plenty of people who are religious who practice and keep it to themselves. The public sector is not a breeding group for the proselytizing of society and transforming it into a theocracy -which is the deep seeded message of all these holy-rollers pushing these agendas.
In terms of #6, the US constitution has been viewed and interrupted a variety of different ways throughout our history and each side (dems/left or reps/right) has never had one standard view of that...so to simply throw this type of message out there is not factual nor historically correct.
In terms of #7, the notion that "redistribution of wealth" is somehow going to be implemented into our nation is simply and utterly ridiculous. This is merely a catch phrase and anyone using it, doesn't understand it's actual meaning in practice. And quite frankly, if push came to shove, it could be more accurately describing the socio-economic patterns of our nations as the rich and elite separation themselves on the backs of the working classes... ie pyramid scheme via corporate america and military industrial complex.
I will put it this way when I think of a liberal or a left leaning individual this is what enters my mind.
> Tax payer funded abortion
2. supports bigger Gov or welfare state
3. gun control in other words doesn't like the 2nd amendment
4. politicle correctness
4. anti religion in the public sector
5. opposition to full private property rights
6.Thinks that the constitution is a living and breathing document.
7.income redistribution through progressive taxation
I could keep going but I think you get my point.
As far as D.Kucinich goes yeah he's definitly far left in my book, open boarders ( co sponser of HR 500),progressive taxaton But he does support the decriminilzation of marjuana so that's a good thing even though I personally don't smoke anymore,but we wasting to much money on the war on drugs when it comes to herb.
CONservative governMENt
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis
Comments
I want to take a shot at these and then you guys can label me. I think I fall center of the road on a lot of stuff.
1. I am Pro-Choice, but I don't really agree with tax payer funded abortion, except in certain cases like rape, threat of death to the mother, etc. That being said, I personally don't like them. I wouldn't recommend one to my wife or daughter. But I don't believe in forcing my belief system on the rest of the country either. I would rather spend money educating people how to avoid unwanted pregnancies or to help out with adoptions, but the final choice belongs to the woman in question.
2. Not sure what you mean by bigger government. The size of government has been growing since its inception right? And if we didn't have government intervention in business, then we would still have lead in our paint and who knows what in our food (if we don't already). Businesses are about making money and not kept in some kind of check, who knows how far they will go to make that bottom line. I think we've all seen what happens when you take the reins off and try to let the "free market" dictate things. Welfare state? My personal belief is that the government should use tax dollars to assist people who need it, to a point. I got laid off back in 2003. I was out of work for 6 months. I am not a bum, but I am glad as hell I had unemployment to fall back on until I was able to get another job. So we shouldn't do that? Or we shouldn't do it perpetually?
3. Guns. OK, to me this is like a lot of other issues. I have no problem with people owning guns. I do think the line should be drawn somewhere though and assault rifles and above makes sense to me. Does anyone really need an M16 or and AK47? I do not own a gun and probably never will. But if my neighbor wants 5 handguns and a couple of shotguns and some rifles (he's a big hunter) then more power to him. Personally I think it is too late to do anything about this. You can't just take away something people have been used to having for the last couple of hundred years. I think I would have preferred that we turned out like people in Europe or Canada where handguns have always been forbidden for the most part and other guns are heavily regulated. I mean, they simply do not have the gun violence we do. But like I said, I think we would never be able to do that now. I do think it is ridiculous that a lot of my friends thing Obama is coming to take their guns away. No he isn't.
4. I think freedom of speech overrides this. I would think a liberal would be against political correctness because the idea infringes upon freedom of speech. I think political correctness serves some purpose, but has been ridiculously overblown. Like when Rahm Emmanuel said a plan was "retarded" and everyone got up in arms (Palin) but then don't when Rush says it. It leads to too many double standards.
5. Absolutely against any and all religion in the public sector. Again, because where do you draw the line? You can't allow one and not allow others. So ban them all. Religion belongs in church and has no place in school, courtrooms, etc.
6. Property Rights - Are you talking eminent domain? Yes, I am against eminent domain. I believe in the sanctity of private property. Not sure if that make me conservative or liberal though. Texas is one of the largest practitioners of eminent domain in the country and we have a virtual Tea Party member as a governor. They even use eminent domain to promote private business down here and I thought it was only for public use. You know why? To promote business. See, some extreme right-wingers get up in arms about eminent domain until Jerry Jones wants to build a football stadium on top of a neighborhood. What? The homeowners don't want to move? Well, hell, that's bad for business so eminent domain their asses out of there. Texas is the most conservative state in the nation and our leaders have no problem eminent domaining some lady off her ranch so a fucking toll road can go through there.
7. Constitution as a living document. It is. This is another one I don't understand. How far back to Tea Partiers want to go? To the original? What about the Bill of Rights? The other amendments? Things change over time and you have to account for that. Look at Prohibition. They thought that was a great idea at the time and then not so much. Slavery, woman's suffrage, etc. What is wrong with updating the rules to reflect current values? If we didn't do that we would still be locking people in stocks for adultery and cutting off hands for stealing.
8. Progressive taxation. I wish we could go to a national sales tax. I will admit, I am no tax expert at all. But what is wrong with a national sales tax? You buy something (maybe food and medicine excluded) and you pay taxes on it. I'd like to hear the right and left argument on that one. Personally I understand we have to pay taxes. Roads, police, farm subsidies, illegal wars, etc. All that stuff takes money.
So, which I am I? Right Wingnut or Leftist Socialist Progressive Liberal?
BOS-9/28/04,9/29/04,6/28/08,6/30/08, 9/5/16, 9/7/16, 9/2/18
MTL-9/15/05, OTT-9/16/05
PHL-5/27/06,5/28/06,10/30/09,10/31/09
CHI-8/2/07,8/5/07,8/23/09,8/24/09
HTFD-6/27/08
ATX-10/4/09, 10/12/14
KC-5/3/2010,STL-5/4/2010
Bridge School-10/23/2010,10/24/2010
PJ20-9/3/2011,9/4/2011
OKC-11/16/13
SEA-12/6/13
TUL-10/8/14
try taking this test ... http://www.politicalcompass.org/test
i'm sure obama falls somewhere in the centre ... my score is:
Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: -7.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.62
bottom left grid ...
Economic Left/Right: +0.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -0.87
I asked Coach Green what his opinion was and he responded that I am who he thought I was.
Economic Left/Right: -3.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.54
I don't consider myself christian, but that's what bothers me about the Teabaggers. They do yet they seem to be unable to follow the teachings of christ.
also, doesn't many states in America have a death penalty which can be said to be a very, very, very late term government payed for abortion.
i am not saying this just to pick on the right. the problem is that many people don't think before they talk. the "left" does it a lot too.
Economic Left/Right: -4.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.56
so i guess i am like Gandhi.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -diversity
Black presidents and women MPs do not alone mean equality and justice
Representation is a start, and an important one. But equal opportunities should be pursued above the photo opportunities
Gary Younge
Guardian.co.uk
Sunday 14 March 2010
During a recent playdate, one of my son's white four-year-old friends looked up from Thomas the Tank Engine and pointed out the obvious. "You're black," he told my son. As a parent, these have never felt like particularly teachable moments. Toddlers have plenty of time ahead of them to acquire anxieties, affiliations and attitudes about race. But what they see primarily at their age is not race but difference – a fact that need prompt neither denial nor panic, rebuke nor rectification, unless some derogatory meaning is attached to that difference.
When my son looks to me for a cue, my aim is not to interrogate or chide but to acknowledge and deflect. In the past, I have said: "And what colour are you?" or "And you are white". But this time new material came to mind. "That's right," I told them both. "Just like the president."
This was the long-presaged moment I had been warned to prepare for. My son was born on the weekend that Barack Obama announced his candidacy. Since then, people have been telling me that his presidency would mean great things for my son. Indeed, this was one of Obama's privately stated aims. When his wife Michelle asked what he thought he could accomplish if he became president, he said: "The day I take the oath of office, the world will look at us differently. And millions of kids across this country will look at themselves differently. That alone is something."
True, it is something. But when Thomas is safely back in the station and the moment is over, it is not very much. Because for all the white noise emanating from the Tea Party movement, it has been black Americans who have suffered most since Obama took office. Over the last 14 months the gap between my son's life chances and his friend's have been widening. Unemployment, which has held steady in the rest of the country, is still rising among African Americans and stands at almost twice that of white people. For black teens, unemployment is 43.8%. Meanwhile, foreclosures among African Americans are increasing almost 50% faster than for whites. At this rate, my son will certainly look at himself differently after Obama's presidency – and not in a good way.
This could legitimately be the starting point for an indictment of Obama's presidency. Certainly if a Republican president were behind statistics like this, few liberals would be offering him or her the benefit of the doubt. But like most other criticisms of Obama, particularly regarding the economy, you would have to make the case that another viable contender could have produced better results in the same circumstances. He entered in a moment of freefall. Calling on him to provide a softer landing or a parachute is one thing. Demanding that he suspend the rules of gravity is another.
I think that case could be made, but it is not the argument I'm making here. The fact that the first black president is presiding over deepening racial disparities is just one of the more potent illustrations of how the relationship between identity and electoral representation has become untethered from broader social, political or economic advances and rendered purely symbolic. The corporate model of diversity, which seeks to look different and act the same, has firmly stamped its imprimatur on a kind of politics that owes more to Benetton ads than black advancement. Where we used to seek equal opportunities, we have now become satisfied with photo opportunities – a fact that satisfies some liberals, annoys most conservatives and does little, if anything, for the lives of those whose interests are ostensibly being championed.
"We have more black people in more visible and powerful positions," Angela Davis told me before Obama won the Democratic nomination. "But then we have far more black people who have been pushed down to the bottom of the ladder. When people call for diversity and link it to justice and equality, that's fine. But there's a model of diversity as the difference that makes no difference, the change that brings about no change."
This is not just true for race. India's upper house last week passed a bill to reserve a third of all legislative seats for women. Given that India ranks 99th in the world for female representation, this would make a significant difference to the Indian parliament if it becomes law. The prime minister, Manmohan Singh, described the vote as a "historic step forward toward emancipation of Indian womanhood".
Not necessarily. There is no absolute causal link between gender representation and gender equality. Six of the countries that rank in the top 20 for women's representation are also in the top 20 for per capita rapes. Meanwhile, a global gender gap index, compiled by the World Economic Forum, which assesses how countries distribute resources and opportunities between the sexes, reveals glaring discrepancies. Angola and Nepal, which stand 10th and 17th respectively in terms of representation, are 106th and 110th in terms of equality. Ireland and Sri Lanka, which rank eighth and 16th respectively for equality are 87th and 125th for representation. In 2008, two female party leaders locked horns in elections in Bangladesh, producing the second female prime minster for the country in a decade. According to the WEF, gender inequality in Bangladesh is bad (it is 94th) and getting relatively worse (in 2008 it was 90th).
This does not undermine the campaigns for more diverse political representation but should sharpen the arguments that support them. Representative democracies that exclude large sections of the population are not worthy of the adjective. Nor should the power of symbolism be underrated. Black Americans may have fared worst under Obama, but they are also the most likely to approve of his presidency. A Pew survey released in January showed the highest number of African Americans believing they are better off now than they were five years ago – even though economically they are not.
Moreover, in most cases difference does make a difference. While there may be no black or female experience, evidence suggests that a critical mass of certain groups can have an affect on outcomes. A 2008 study in the Columbia Law Review discovered: "When a white judge sits on a panel with at least one African-American judge, she becomes roughly 20 percentage points more likely to find" a voting rights violation. A 2005 Yale Law Journal study revealed not only that women judges were more likely to find for plaintiffs in sexual harassment cases than men, but that the presence of female judges increased the likelihood that men would find for the plaintiff too.
The fact that five of the 10 countries with the highest female representation are also in the top 10 for gender equality is no mere coincidence. Since the push for parliamentary parity is often part of a larger effort surrounding equal rights, greater representation is more likely to be the product of progressive social change than a precursor to it. The relationship between identity, representation and equality is neither inevitable nor irrelevant, but occasionally contradictory and always complex.
It's comforting to know there are simple words of racial reassurance I can tell my son when he's three. It would be even better to imagine that he would not be in need of that kind of reassurance by the time he reaches 23.
In terms of #2, just because someone is for the right to abortion, doesn't mean everyone is for the tax payers funding the costs. That's simply nonsense and you have no proof or statistics that can correlate such details. I've never read or heard a pro-abortion person make such claims in my life...ever.
In terms of #3, "gun-control" can be something as simple as regulation and checks in enforcement of the 2nd amendment.. not simply the notion that no one can bears arms as the law states. This is merely the slippery slope argument - if person x does actions y.. it will automatically lead to action x and z... but it's assumptions and panic, not practice or fact based.
In terms of #4, political correctness is not really a politically leaned item. There's people on both sides who are for or against this.
In terms of #4a, "anti religion in the public sector" - the simple way you termed this item shows how biased the thought is. The notion that people want a separation of church and state or society's freedom to practice religion in the home and not plaster it all over every ounce of viewing site is not "anti-religion". There are plenty of people who are religious who practice and keep it to themselves. The public sector is not a breeding group for the proselytizing of society and transforming it into a theocracy -which is the deep seeded message of all these holy-rollers pushing these agendas.
In terms of #6, the US constitution has been viewed and interrupted a variety of different ways throughout our history and each side (dems/left or reps/right) has never had one standard view of that...so to simply throw this type of message out there is not factual nor historically correct.
In terms of #7, the notion that "redistribution of wealth" is somehow going to be implemented into our nation is simply and utterly ridiculous. This is merely a catch phrase and anyone using it, doesn't understand it's actual meaning in practice. And quite frankly, if push came to shove, it could be more accurately describing the socio-economic patterns of our nations as the rich and elite separation themselves on the backs of the working classes... ie pyramid scheme via corporate america and military industrial complex.
Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Louis Brandeis