{"id":1112,"date":"2005-01-12T22:12:00","date_gmt":"2005-01-13T04:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/?p=1112"},"modified":"2005-01-12T22:12:00","modified_gmt":"2005-01-13T04:12:00","slug":"my-politics-at-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/?p=1112","title":{"rendered":"My politics at last"},"content":{"rendered":"

So here’s my quick blurb about my politics, reciprocating ‘s earlier answer.<\/p>\n

Society is formed of norms. Beliefs about the world. Practices for performing important tasks like maintaining safety, acquiring food, shelter, bringing up the next generation, and so forth and so on. But sometimes norms aren’t enough. This is particularly true as societies get larger. The need for more sophisticated and often more powerful systems of organizing people and maintaining order take over.<\/p>\n

What matters to me in society are the big ones: safety, food, shelter, water, health, and the ability to keep things going smoothly for the next generation(s), and maybe just possibly hand them something better than what we have.<\/p>\n

Correspondingly, education is probably my top priority. I’d like smaller class sizes, more participatory, and project based learning. I’d like kids to learn initiative, cooperation, and cultivate all the various abilities they possess, at the levels they possess them. I’d like kids to learn how to learn on their own. I want to see greater adult involvement in the educational process, and less age segregation. I’m not nearly as concerned with shoving more money at schools as I am with making sure the schools do things in a different and better way. See also Howard Gardner on this one. If our citizens are going to think for themselves they have to start young. A few years of mandatory military or civil service also seems like a good idea to me (it shouldn’t be too easy to duck out of the military service though, no more national guard draft dodges).<\/p>\n

People do a better job when they are not worried about their health care or that of their loved ones. Further, people are society’s most valuable resources. Society should cultivate their well-being accordingly, including strong increases in preventative healthcare. Subsidize Total and tax frosted flakes. Gym memberships should be a citizen right. Healthcare, including mental healthcare, should be provided free or nearly so (ala public transit) to everyone. I recognize and appreciate the choice concerns of . I also recognize that some choices aren’t really choices. When choosing among competing health care plans, where my only input into the process is to change to a different provider with a set of benefits lacking substantive differentiation from any other set of benefits, in the selection of which benefits I have no say, I think I’ll put the benefits under the political process, thanks.<\/p>\n

I think privacy should be vigorously protected, not by continuing to deny that the government collects information on us, but by making every effort to secure the information they already have on us, and putting strong controls on how that information is distributed, as well as full information on how it is used and accessed. I see one’s right to pursue whatever religion, philosophy, or personal perversion one likes as intimately tied to this. Anything two consenting adults wish to do is fine. Marriage is a religious institution. Legal relationships for co-parenting, co-residence, and co-ownership of property ought to replace civil marriage. People should be able to bundle them. Making any of these relationships more than two citizens should be kosher. Allowing any of them to be performed by same sex couples ought to be fine. Allowing sisters to coparent, or a bunch of buddies to establish a co-residence deal should be a no brainer. There should be a waiting period on such civil arrangements. Just to reduce commitment in haste.<\/p>\n

I think all citizens should be equal in the eyes of the law in terms of race, gender, sexual preference, religion, and cultural affiliation. I’m not sure what to do about age. Almost no one is competent to live independently at 12, some still aren’t at 40. Sex should only matter in terms of reproductive law. Discrimination of the basis of relevant characteristics is fine. (Hooters shouldn’t have to hire men, chippendales shouldn’t have to hire women, but sex isn’t relevant in picking surgeons, secretaries, or shelvers)<\/p>\n

I think we as the governed ought to know (and ought to fucking care) about what our government is doing for us, to us, and with us, down to the last dot of ink. I think willful attempts to deceive the public, or deny a citizen their rights, including access to information, ought to be considered treason, and those guilty of it ought to have their citizenship revoked. Negligent deception or obstruction should merely remove one permanently from office, and bar election to any public office down to and including county dogcatcher. Leaders ought to be held to much higher standards than the rest of society, but not for their private perversions. I don’t care that Clinton got a blowjob. I do care that he lied about it. I care more so that he may have used his office to coerce an intern. I care much more that Bush manipulated military intelligence to fabricate a justification for war to serve his political purposes. <\/p>\n

Voting rights for everyone, including ex-cons. Including voting from prison. Attempts to dick around with this fall under my previous statement about denying citizens their rights. Flexible voting policies (not a single voting day, easy vote by mail, etc)<\/p>\n

I am, as you can probably tell, an idealist, and I’m fine with that. <\/p>\n

I don’t give a shit about hunting as an argument for allowing gun ownership. I care about safety from criminals (better served by banning guns, than by universal gun ownership, we can chat about that if you disagree, but far better served by preventing the motivation for crime), and safety from the government, which may be better served by allowing gun ownership. <\/p>\n

I care a great deal about how I’m going to leave the world when I’m dead. My veganism and aversion to cars is as much if not more political [as] than personal. Most of the problem is that people are spread way the fuck out because we are afraid of our fellow citizens. Because we don’t know our fellow citizens. Because we are spread way the fuck out. Note the vicious cycle. Think about it, long and hard. Particularly if you’re thinking about buying suburban real estate. Also note the effects of transience, disposability, and consumer culture. Disposal costs ought to be included in the purchase price of an item. Urban forms ought to be contracted. Our cities ought to be rebuilt to better suit biking and walking. Efforts should be made to encourage people into mixed culture communities and engage in their communities (and get the hell away from the TV).<\/p>\n

I think the UN should be scrapped and replaced with an organization structurally capable of making a decision. I think that the US should reprioritize away from military endeavors and western europe should build up its militarily capabilities. I don’t think we should be the world police. If we choose to be the world police, we shouldn’t bitch about protecting the world. Playing the martyr for choices one has made is one of the prime forms of drama queen. <\/p>\n

I think our current criminal justice system is beyond retarded, as well as inhumane. Pot and all other drugs should be legalized, and smoking (anything, including pot) should be banned in public. Education and rehabilitation (for the willing!) should be the norm. Prostitution should likewise be legal and regulated. Deliberatly allowing rape to go on in your prison should put you behind those same bars, with the rapist. Negligently allowing it should get you your own cell. Sticking convicts in an environment where their dominant contact is with other convicts, and expecting it to cure them of criminal tendencies is the “beyond retarded” part. The goal should be to turn them into useful members of society on exit. Minimal standards of living guaranteed. And not just to criminals, to remove that motivation for criminal behavior.<\/p>\n

Abortion. I actually forgot about this one, because as a gay man it has never directly involved me. I am fine with abortion. I’m honestly not as deeply bothered by infanticide as many people are either. I view the killing of an adult as a much bigger deal, though I would never do either. It is killing, certainly. <\/p>\n

Yeah, there’s more, but that should do for now. <\/p>\n

Mine don’t really fit on a bumper sticker either. And, yes, I do change my positions when confronted with countervailing evidence, some are more mutable (whimsical) than others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So here’s my quick blurb about my politics, reciprocating ‘s earlier answer. Society is formed of norms. Beliefs about the world. Practices for performing important tasks like maintaining safety, acquiring food, shelter, bringing up the next generation, and so forth and so on. But sometimes norms aren’t enough. This is particularly true as societies get … Continue reading “My politics at last”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}