I apologize in advance. I'm in a hurry and this won't be the best OP. But, as an icebreaker, I was thinking it might be interesting to hear from different people some of the most basic ideas that inform their political philosophy.

For me, I think I refer back a lot of John Rawls' Theory of Justice, and some of the big ideas from that book

- Justice as Fairness

- The idea of designing political institutions from "behind a veil of ignorance", i.e. as if one did not yet know what social location they would occupy in an actual society. That is, without knowing whether they would be rich, poor, nor what nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, and so on. The idea being that trying to design institutions that you think would be fair despite not knowing any of those details about yourself might lead to institutions that more people would agree are in fact just.

- The arguments for equal liberty

Also I think the problem I think about a lot is the balance between individual liberty and social cohesion. That is, like most westerners I value a certain sense of individualism and individual liberty, and I prefer a politics which emphasizes that idea of freedom. But I often ponder the fact that a society which creates the conditions of individual freedom also requires a certain kind of collectivity: namely social cohesion around the parameters of that same individualism. We can't guarantee fairness and equal liberty in the Rawlsian sense if we don't also recognize ourselves as a collective; that we're all in this together; and that we have certain responsibilities to each other. Hence, my location: esse est coesse. To be is to be together.

So that's a little bit about where I'm coming from. How about you?

I’m starting from scratch.

<- wandering acid head searching for a good cult

Live and let live.

An interesting route to take for discussion like this would be to formulate a template for people to fill out. I also think it would interesting and entertaining to see what others guess your position would be. I think it would remain in good-natured fun if people stick to talk about what peoples beliefs are and not fall to the temptation to criticize or argue against them (here).

Here's a rough outline. Feel free to add to it, fill it out, or if you have opinions on what mine would look like, feel free to guess my answers. If I'm familiar with your posting I could do the same. Could be an interesting experiment

Abortion

Guns

Borders/Immigration

Affirmative action

Free speech

Climate change/ environment

Health care

Education

if we really want to get to the bottom of things quickly you should add:

Thoughts on confederate statues


The Civil War: what was it really about

My politics are:

1) largely based on the veil of ignorance, justice and fairness

2) democracy is required for any moral legitimacy in supporting the imposition of my political views over other peoples political views (and vice versa). It is not enough to believe or even enough to be right.

You should be free to do what you want as long as it doesn't harm others. This applies to the rulers as well as the ruled.

By position I'm assuming you mean party affiliation or ideological identity (e.g. "liberal", "conservative", "libertarian", etc.)?

I have no problem with this, but I will say what I was hoping to get to was not so much individual opinions ("I hold position X on Y") but what kind of thought processes people tend to use when arriving at a position on some topic Z that they haven't thought about much before. And I was hoping for more than just "I'm libertarian". It's more like -- how do you go about evaluating ideas on an issue that is previously unfamiliar? What considerations do you think are the most important? That sort of thing.

I think what you suggested might provide some insight into that, but it might also obscure it a little, I think. But if folks want to try it I don't mind.

I don't post enough for anyone to guess, so I'll just fill it out.

Abortion--pro choice

Guns--pro 2nd Amendment, we need to do better enforcing the laws we already have, and I'd be open to the idea of more legislation but skeptical.

Borders/Immigration--a wall is pointless. Not for amnesty. Immigration is vital.

Affirmative action--I dunno--not educated enough about it to have a strong opinion.

Free speech--this is the most important freedom people have, I guess I'm a purist.

Climate change/ environment --of course I believe in man-made climate change. How can you not?

Health care--U.S system is very flawed, but I'm not a fan of single-payer.

Education --what's the debate here?

I'll add a couple:

Drugs--legalize pot, reform laws so that getting caught for recreational drug use won't ruin someone's life.

Capital Punishment--against it.

Edit: I filled this out then read WN's post above. Maybe this should be ina different thread?

Justice prevails over equality sounds ok to me as a slogan for my belief system.

No I mean to state your position. Simply or in depth, up to the poster

For example. I'm pro choice and believe the women's right to choose up to the point of birth vs I'm pro choice through the first trimester vs I'm pro life vs etc etc

People are welcome to elaborate on how they got there. I don't find party position interesting and barely informative but people can share whatever they want

Drugs and capital punishment are good additions

People like Warren and Bernie are in favor of free post secondary. Also wiping out student loans. There's also a lot of talk about reforming primary school

We'll go ahead and keep this here, why not?

disgusting. slavery. period.

The bolded:

My conclusion, as before, is that a strongly egalitarian society populated by reasonably normal people is difficult to imagine and in any case psychologically and politically out of reach, and that a more real possibility lies in the first alternative. Intolerance of severe poverty at least receives lip service in most liberal societies, and it ought to be possible to develop it into insistence on a higher and higher social minimum, until it becomes intolerable in a rich society if anyone does not have a decent standard of living and a fair opportunity to go as far as his natural talents will take him above that. Even this would be an extraordinary transformation, but it would be compatible with great inequalities and a strong class structure which the absence of obstacles to social mobility would do nothing to destroy. I therefore think it is not a result we can be content with. Rather, it illustrates the difficulty of bringing together personal and impersonal standpoints and encourages the belief that an acceptable combination of individual and political morality remains to be invented. (Nagel, Equality and Partiality)

Ah, ok.

Wiping out student debt seems political to me. These are grown ups entering into a contract, why should they have their debts paid for them as opposed to any other debtors? They're clearly motivated to get young people out to vote, and this is pandering to that bloc imo.

Free post secondary--see above re: pandering to an important bloc. I don't think it's a good idea.

Reforming primary--there's clearly a problem with our education system. I'd be interested in reforms that attack the problem, but I have no idea what those would look like. Blindly throwing money at the problem won't work.

I thought in politics you shouldn’t reveal your stance on a topic until it benefits you.

Didn’t you all just fail to learn anything due to your differences?

This isn't politics, this is a discussion forum about politics. There is actually an important difference.

Later. Thanks for the lessons.

I am an individualist libertarian who thinks people are best viewed as individuals with strong sovereign rights that override all group considerations, albeit within the framework of self-defending and regulating nation states.

Abortion--pro choice with caveats. The belief that women should be able to kill children with a meaningful brain (20 weeks+ or so) on a whim is evil.

Guns--I hate America's gun culture, I love countries with blanket gun bans. The notion that people walk around with the ability to simply murder someone with a finger twich is insane to me. That said, I think guns wouldn't matter with different demographics in the US as I think gun danger is largely a demographic problem. Ultimately I think the second amendment is correct however and guns are a protection again tyranny. The people who think that is crazy have no idea of how and societies can and do go wrong over time in ways never imagined.

Borders/Immigration--A wall is a great idea and important. US immigration should be like Canada's - skilled and capable migrants with a minor humanitarian intake. The notion that laws can be broken at will with benefits for the breakers is a crazy one. The law should be vigorously enforced.

Affirmative action--Nuke it. It puts incompetent people in jobs they don't belong in and doesn't solve inequality. It also harms black people, preventing the development of a robust meritocratic base with undeniable merit.

Free speech--Say what you want on issues of politics with no recourse, social or governmental. Bigotry (meaning: intolerance of different opinions) and fundamentalism is a disease and shouldn't be encouraged.

Climate change/ environment --The projections are obviously wrong and there's an insane groupthink culture that has infected the field and self-selects for environmental warriors. Numerous major lies are and have been told by proponents of global warming, undercutting credibility. Peer review and replication is broken in the field (like many fields of science, actually). Scientists in the broader field of atmospheric physics are the least believing of climate change narratives, coming in at ~50% belief in the major tenets of AGW in professional surveys. The whole thing is a farce. And even if you accept everything that global warming proponents say, the best thing to do about is absolutely nothing, and it's not even close. The cost-benefit analysis is hard science and anyone who thinks we should do anything to mitigate global warming is a denier of science and economics.

Health care--I think single payer should be at least tried in the US.

Education --There is too much of it and it's both an intellectual and economic drain on the US. It should be defunded as much as possible. Higher education is a wonderful thing but there's a point of decreasing and then negative returns for higher education in a country; the US is past the point of negative returns. Perhaps 1/3 of university places should be cut.

Nice job, Tooth, even with the encisement . To be clear, sure would like to see what was "encised". lol I prefer the word "encise", another lol.

The best to you.

Was it ever worthwhile? If you say no, how do you counter the argument that black people were caught up in a vicious cycle that needed to be fixed by temporary outside influence?

Abortion--pro choice. 98.7% of abortions occur before 20 weeks. if you actually wanted to see fewer abortion you'd vote democrat.

Guns-- no reason to own an assault style rifle or have large capacity magazines. dgaf about handguns/shotguns.

Borders/Immigration-- let them in, get them to citizenship. its been thoroughly proven as a benefit to the economy.

Affirmative action--needed

Free speech--1st amendment. wtf else is there to talk about

Climate change/ environment -- duh. stop letting corporations lobby and pollute for a small bump in job numbers.

Health care--single payer is the obvious answer. cheaper, more people covered, protects the least fortunate among us, obvious..

Education -- public schooling and university should be free. a society benefits from an educated population, so society should invest in it.

Drugs--all simple possession should be legal.

Capital Punishment--state sanctioned murder should be abolished. no pro arguments hold water.

Understanding that my rights end where other peoples begins, and live and let live. Also who am I to judge......

I am less interested in whether one should be on team donkey or team elephant, and more interested in meta social conversations.

It seems most people’s sociopolitical beliefs are for the most part arbitrary and a function of the environment they are from. I think it is more interesting to explore how and why such belief structure came about and why they may be Pro adaptive or mal adaptive.