A post I wrote last week about President-Elect Obama generated several comments. That’s wonderful as far as I’m concerned — even though I would not agree with the political stance, I suspect, of the most vocal comment poster, I’m delighted he/she took the time to share comments with us.
For much of my life, I was a political and religious conservative and always thought of myself as center to right-of-center on most issues. Through a series of circumstances and acquaintances over the last 15 years or so, I have definitely moved politically to somewhere in the center to left-of-center range. It’s been a long and, I believe, carefully thought out “journey” for me.
So what about those of you who come here regularly? Where do you see yourself on the political (and/or religious) spectrum — left, center, or right? (If that bothers you, I’ll say “right, center, or left,” too.) I have no gift cards or membership cards to offer you for your response. I have no plans to applaud you or disrespect you regardless of where you seem to fall in the political spectrum.
I’m really just curious. I’ve heard many folks on the “right” insist the media is biased toward left-wingers and liberals, and that the only way you can find “real” news is via the Internet, talk radio, or Fox News, or whatever. I’ve heard many other folks on the “left” insist that Fox News, talk radio, and many Internet sources are infested with right-wing “nutcases” who spew ignorance and hate.
I happen to think you can find valuable information and insight just about anywhere if you look around and PAY ATTENTION.
So where do you see yourself politically? Right, center, or left? Leave a comment and let us know. Promise I won’t rave or ridicule anyone. Thanks.
Interesting. I am right of center and my religion is very important to me. But I am almost offended by being lumped into the Right-Wing-Christian-Conservative-Republican group. I resent being used as a tool of the RNC, and I believe it cheapens my beliefs. And I am a full-blown Born Again Christian. My change of heart came after reading a book by Tom Coburn called Breach of Trust. Coburn was part of the 94 Republican Revolution – and he actually kept his promise to step down after 3 House terms. In his book, he details how the “real” Republican party outspent the Dems and went back on their promises. Coburn is not too popular in RNC leadership circles, as he opened the eyes of many. None the less, he got elected to the Oklahoma Senate seat in 2004 by a wide margin, when many other Republicans were losing or winning by only a narrow margin. Oklahomans like Coburn because he is honest. One of the few.
I did not vote for Obama. But I also did not vote for McCain. I voted 3rd party.
I do not truly consider myself in terms of left right or inbetween. Rather, I review an issue and take an opinion based upon my life’s experience and perspective.
For example, abortion. Liberals blab on and on about the rights of women to control their own body. Yet they fail to speak about the babies themselves that are being aborted – half of them are women, by the way, and wouldn’t they, by the same argument, have a right to their own body, which the liberal is killing?
Except in the case of incest and rape, the female and partner made a conscious decision to risk getting pregnant. This is an imperfect, and harsh world, and you know what, sometimes you just have to accept the fact that you made a mistake and deal with it: and killing the baby inside of you is not solving the issue. Liberals then try to absolve themselves of feelings of guilt by saying, hey, life begins outside of the womb, pay no attention to that squirming little thing inside you, it’s not really alive.
Yet at the same time, I completely understand that if a woman is raped, she should not have to suffer the additional shame of having to bear then raise a child conceived out of that rape. So, in that case, I would repeat that yeah, this is a harsh, unfair world, and approve of the abortion.
So, I am against almost all abortions, yet I understand the need for a few to occur, in the event of a crime, or life threatening illness.
So, my opinion is not based off of a sense of religion, but rather a sense of fairness. In the first, the couple took a chance but got pregnant, in the second, the female was attacked and had no choice.
Some would attempt to label me as a conservative republican, but that would not be the truth.
I simply don’t like the idea of people not being held accountable for their decisions.
I don’t like the idea of bailing out every freaking industry, as that defeats the whole point of a free market system. If GM went ‘under’, they would certainly be bought out and every single business entity within the corporation would thrive under new, more responsible management. However, the government, which is something like ten trillion dollars in debt, is going to now try to manage GM into profitability while throwing billions and billions of dollars at the issue that it doesn’t really have. Right.
So, here come the Liberals to the rescue, spending hundreds of billions of dollars that we do not have on hiring people into government jobs, and trying to pay for it by decreasing the profitability of the rich and large corporations, instead of just stop freaking spending the money.
I got into financial trouble several years ago. Know how I got out of it? I tore up my credit cards and paid them off. To this day I do not have a single freaking card. I did not hire a tax consultant, I did not pay my wife 3K to spend 50K a year on her business, I did not ask for the government to give me a hundred billion dollars, I just stopped spending the damn money.
It is not that I do not like liberals or democrats, it is just that their policies are based on fallacies, on goals that are not at all related to what realistic solutions should be.
Liberals espouse visionary freedoms, yet they have no issue with killing children – simply because those children are still located within their mother’s wombs. This is just one of a thousand examples I could give that shows that the democratic platform is based not on thought, but on personal greed.
Change! As yet another Clinton administrator gets hired in to run the CIA. If the dems wanted CLinton back so badly, why didn’t they vote for his wife?! The fact that they did not vote for her should tell Obama that, you know what, maybe you should actually stick to your campaign promise and just give the positions to your campaign donors instead of Hillary’s.
I really want to be right in the center, but it’s really because I like to think I can see the merits of both sides. Radicals entertain and frighten me, but I preach to anyone that will listen that we “need” our radicals on both the right and the left so we can find the middle, which is reasonable, and full of common sense not tainted by hate or koolaid.
Here’s the problem – while that moderate view might solve some problems and serve to unite member of a group, it does absolutely nothing for the moderate thinker in terms of acknowledgment, attribution, or even smarts. Even the Gospel mentions spitting out the lukewarm.
So what’s a moderate to do? Beats me! I wanna be one, but I also want my 15 minutes of fame for being brilliant about some yet unsolved issue.