Politics

[rowyn]

I am apparently a Republican, but not a very enthusiastic one.

69% Ron Paul
67% John McCain
65% Mike Huckabee
64% Rudy Giuliani
64% Mitt Romney
58% Fred Thompson
53% Mike Gravel
49% Tom Tancredo
49% Bill Richardson
46% Dennis Kucinich
43% Chris Dodd
38% Barack Obama
38% Hillary Clinton
37% John Edwards
33% Joe Biden

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

I don't know who Mike Gravel is either, nkcmike

In unrelated news: Happy Birthday, mister_wolf!

Comments

[circuit-four.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on being the first person on my friends list to have red above blue. :D

(And thanks for reminding me it's Charles's birthday!)

[howardtayler.livejournal.com]

You're more enthusiastic about the republicans than I am. They were the top of my list, but the high score was only around 51%, IIRC.

[octantis.livejournal.com]

We seem to be diametrically opposed. I'd like to know your answers and reasoning sometime, since I don't really consider myself especially informed.

I knew we were going to end up opposites on this one

[tahkhleet.livejournal.com]

...I just wasn't sure how :)

While your most prefered aren't my least (there's a few below) the same applies in reverse. I'm bemused. I'm trying to figure out where we differ and I hazard the following guesses

--> You're anti-Row vs. Wade because you're state's rights? (I don't think federal hospitals should be banned from performing them as long as its federally funded.)(This works out to killing women to uphold religous values and I follow "to save a life" here myself. The fetus isn't alive till the head is out of the womb and they draw the first breath, by Torah standards. Jews still don't condone abortion on demand, and I'm not wild about it myself, but I cannot value potential life over life that's already here.)

--> You're anti-minimum wage and unions because you're economically a neo-liberal? (For my part, I quote Dwayne "these sorts of measures force the rich to lower their savings curve in favor of putting the money in circulation. I can't see this as being a basically bad move given that the Depression showed the rich will be quite happy to see the rest of the country fall apart in the fight to maximize their savings.")

--> You're "hell or high water we stay" on Iraq (that I know for sure). (I respect your conviction even if I disagree, if this were Vietnam, I'd be anti-withdrawal. Things were actually going tolerably well towards the end of that. The Viet Cong were exterminated in 68 and most of the conflict after was the army of north vietnam covertly invading.) (For my part I'm unconvinced a fast civil war will be substantially more damaging overall than a slow one. Bosnia seems to have done relatively better than the Sudan, for example. The sooner peace is restored the better, and if its the peace of the grave, that's unavoidable at this point. The conflict will only end after enough combatants are dead (on the side that will eventually lose the civil war). There is no possibility of a political resolution. The Malaki gov't is in the process of breaking down as I write this. If somehow it doesn't fracture entirely I have strong doubts it will reflect any improvement in function.)

--> you're anti-gun control because you're libertarian (I'm pro gun control because I don't buy the "resist a tyrannical gov't argument" and they kill more people than they save. Scott might be willing to be a guerilla partisan, I doubt if 1 person in 100 would have the guts and the skills...and that's in places like Wyoming.)

--> you probably favor a non interventionist foreign policy because the US is so bad at foreign policy and the potential for corrupt influence is high (this I admit is my most irrational point of opposition. Somehow, I hope against hope, one day the US State Dept will not be a bunch of lame ass monkeyf*cks, aloof from ogliarchic patrons in the US. Rationally, I should be non interventionist too.)

--> You might be pro death penalty because some cases are clearly guilty and there seems little reason to spare a murder's life. (I just don't think guilty men dying is worth killing innocent ones, myself. They're caught, the recidivism rate on murder is low, and if you think they're the devil himself, just never let him out (afaik, there have been almost no hard core "devil himself" female killers.) (I'm not sure on this at all though. I'm clutching at straws)

--> You prefer a moderate position on environmentalism maybe? (which is not unreasonable, I'm just willing to take a hit to my standard of living (yes, I'd give up my computer for this) to rest assured everything that could be done had been done. This is an only partly rational position.)

(I expect I did agree with you on spending cuts, pro- free trade, and social security reform, marijuana legalization and gay marriage being allowed...)

[tahkhleet.livejournal.com]

Ironically, Judaism has strengthened the emphasis of my own positions in several places. Do you feel the same applies with Christianity and yours ?

I suppose our main difference comes down to the fact you're more principled than I am. I'm willing to argue means justify the ends. Provided there is sufficient reason to think the case isn't one of a slippery slope towards a negative change in normative morals. But I admit, you can make a tight, emphatic, counter argument that means justifies the end is never good and this is the source of the world's problems. I guess it comes down to me growing up in Canada and being basically happy with a much more paternalistic and inteventionist gov't and thus being unconvinced that a pure principles stand results in a good outcome in practice.

So the bottom line is I respect our political differences. I'm just curious if I understand them. You are a rare breed. There are not many sincere libertarians out there. I'd rather see voters like you than those smarmy "prosperity gosepl" upper middle class types spouting "hard work is always rewarded, if your life is bad, you just don't work hard enough" types. (I hope you prefer me to the wooly headed college activist "anything the establishment is for , I'm against, including breathing!" types (wry smile) )

A couple of Jewish bits to close on with Judaism and "consequentialism"...
--> Divorce laws. While there was no manner in which Chazal (the great teachers of 1st century BCE to 3rd or 4th century CE) could countenance a female right of divorce, they endorsed dragging a husband who was binding a wife in a bad marriage against her will to the religious court and beating him until he agreed. (but being very careful not to beat him to death!) So they had a de-facto right of female divorce. the only problem was this solution couldn't be implemented any longer after the Temple was destroyed and the religious court could no longer be convened.

(morbid humor image, man locked in cells, judge of the court talking to him through window on the door (with a couple burly guys nearby) "9AM Schmuely. Time for some more attitude adjustment. You ready to sign that Get yet, Schmuely?" [Get=bill of divorce]")(sad when you have to lock someone up to make them do the right thing)

--> there used to be this provision that a man who suspected his wife of adultry could demand she be divorced from him immediately. If she protested her innocence, the proceudre was to take her to the Temple and after a humiliating ritual force her to drink a page of Torah dissolved in a jug of water. The page enumerated the curse on her if she was lying. Unfortunately, the ink used for Torah scrolls has to be made to very precise specifications. It is also somewhat poisonous. A goodly number of women thus died from this. Witnessing this, and seeing that as adultry became more talked about and visible, that husbands weren't feeling reassured even _after_ their wives survived the ordeal, they concluded "This Law is no longer doing what it was intended to, we have to stop".

So for my part, I think it is possible to embrace ends over means...if you have a sufficiently rigid framework supporting the effort. Oddly enough, I'd say we mostly have that these days at least on the above issues.

Re: I knew we were going to end up opposites on this one

[rowyn]

I'm in favor of Roe vs Wade, or at least, I'm not so legally outraged by it that I want to see it go away. It was terrible jurisprudence but it had good results. Thus proving I'm not as down on bad means as you think. :)

Opposed to the minimum wage 'cause I'm a libertarian and I believe it harms more people than it helps.

Still opposed to withdrawal from Iraq, yep.

Opposed to gun-control; libertarian and I strongly disagree that disarming people saves lives; quite the opposite. Taking guns away from Americans is totally unfeasible overall and trying to disarm them just makes life harder on legal citizens. You can make a different case for countries that don't already have tens (if not hundreds) of millions of guns in circulation, but in this country, guns are not going away and the balkanized attempts to disarm law-abiding citizens do no one good.

You pegged me on foreign policy. I would be pro-interventionist if I thought there was a chance in Hell we would do any good at it, but we totally suck at it, everyone hates us when we do it, and no good comes of it. So yeah, feeling pretty cynical about that one.

I can't remember what I picked on the death penalty. I'm ambivalent about it. I think I picked "opposed". One reason: it's massively unevenly enforced. But I generally agree with you about the death penalty.

I oppose government-sponsored environmental intiatives. I think we're going to invent our way into a cleaner and better habitat (working so far, pollution in the US today is SO MUCH less than it was a hundred years ago). Most (but not all!) of the regulatory measures that Congress proposes to "protect" the environment will do, IMAO, more harm than good. No, I'm not willing to give up my computer to protect the environment, nor do I think it's necessary.

And yes, sounds like we agreed on the others you mentioned. :)

[rowyn]

I don't deal so well in absolutes these days, and I'm not as devout a libertarian as I used to be (or I'd probably like Ron Paul better.) Much as I'd like a One True Path, I have to admit one doesn't seem to exist.

I certainly don't believe in a political path so strongly that I'll fault anyone else for their choice. One of the advantages to not agreeing with anyone on everything is that I agree with almost everyone on at least *some* things. That's good enough for me. :)

[krud42.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I'll have to take this. I keep claiming I'm a Moderate, but I suppose this test will say for certain, huh?...

[krud42.livejournal.com]

I can identify with that statement.

[krud42.livejournal.com]

62% John Edwards
61% Chris Dodd
61% Mitt Romney
59% Barack Obama
57% Hillary Clinton
57% John McCain
56% Tom Tancredo
55% Bill Richardson
51% Joe Biden
49% Mike Huckabee
48% Fred Thompson
45% Mike Gravel
45% Rudy Giuliani
43% Dennis Kucinich
42% Ron Paul

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

[krud42.livejournal.com]

So, according to my results, if the final candidates were McCain and Hillary, I'd have to flip a coin... which is ironic, since personality-wise I don't much care for either of them. ':P

[rowyn]

Wow, you *are* a moderate. And hey, it hardly matters which of the three leading candidates get the prize, from your perspective. Well, assuming the quiz is accurate. =)