I'm a voracious reader on politics and history and have developed a political ideology that doesn't seem to fit with a party. If you had to pick one, where would you place me?

Health Care - in favor of a German or French type universal system with supplemental private insurance

Abortion - pro choice

Gun rights - in favor with limited restrictions

Gay marriage - in favor

Death penalty - in favor only for cases involving multiple eye witnesses

social security - despise the current system, in favor or partial privatization

1st amendment - believe the language and judicial precedent does establish a "separation between church and state." I'm also agnostic.

economic theory - probably relatively neo-Keynesian with a few supply side components sprinkled in. Basically in favor of retaining a robust middle class otherwise seeing the devolution of our society and a repeat of 1780s France or 1917 Russia and think our Gini coefficient needs to be reduced.

Wars - for Afghanistan/against Iraq, though I disagree with how Afghanistan has been handled

Foreign policy - disagree with most of our history in the Middle East including installing the Shah in Iran and unrestricted support of Israel.

Obv pro internet gambling

War on Drugs - believe it has been an unmitigated disaster and a monetary sink hole, want to legalize drugs with certain limitations, clear our prisons of the non-violent offenders and use the savings to assist in rehabilitation rather than punishment in the penal system

Stimulus - despite being a neo Keynesian I'm against how it was handled and think it was a huge waste of money, prefer how Germany handled the economic crisis (I can elaborate more on this)

Taxes - believe in the Laffer curve thought quantifying the true optimal rate is extremely difficult and probably quite dynamic depending on the contemporary economic conditions of when you're trying to determine it. I def want my taxes as low as reasonably possible.

Spending - would like to see a 15% reduction in spending across all federal agencies and programs, no exceptions

Term limits - in favor, would like to see House and Senate both limited to 2 four year terms

Let me know if you want any elaboration or exposition or want to know any of my other stances.

tl;dr

WAAF

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/41...-party-905213/

Seriously though it sounds like you're a liberal libertarian.

Run of the mill liberal-tarian, possibly Green-ish depending on your stance on pollution/environment.

Huh? Eyewitness testimony is incredibly unreliable. Maybe by eyewitness you mean video camera.

It's pretty laughable to privilege eyewitness testimony over forensic evidence when you obviously consider the death penalty a serious issue.

I mean basically, you walked into a bank and shot 3 people and everyone saw you with no doubt. With the advent of DNA testing a fair number of people have been taken off death row because of new evidence coming to light. Before these tests were available, it stands to reason a fair number of innocent people were executed under the death penalty.

I don't particularly trust the government with people's lives to the extent that I want them putting people to death when there is even the slightest chance they are killing the wrong person.

.

I consider there are only 2 political parties. The worst thing you can do is go 3rd party and split the vote.

I would say you are a democrat, but you can go either way.
I would also say you are liberal on social issues.
I would say you believe in the right to pursue happiness (pot and gambling).
I would say you are conservative on fiscal issues (SS and cuts).

Yeah, basically "multiple eyewitness" testimony put people on deathrow that DNA got them released. Also its more expensive to execute someone than warehouse them for a life sentence. Tbh i dont know why anyone would consider it a positive on that second cost based point alone when there is no evidence at all that death penalties lower murder rates.

Are you American? If so you are basically an independent with Democrat leanings. Something like centre left. It doesnt help that you dont say what you feel most strongly about however. But yeah, id guess if you examined every candidate you can vote for and weigh it all up youd vote Dem the vast majority of the time, though likely whilst complaining about no third party options.

you are too inconsistent for me to classify you, imo. probably some sort of liberal-libertarian.

inconsistency is IMO a result of not understanding your own views on things.

Democrat

Why would you have to pick one? Given your stated positions, you apparently find huge flaws in both the democratic and republican parties, so why affiliate yourself with either one? I suggest you (and everyone for that matter) look at each candidate as a candidate (not a party) and evaluate them on an individual basis.

FYP

By inconsistent, do you mean inconsistency with regards to typical party lines, or simultaneously holding political positions that are logically inconsistent with one another? The former definitely does NOT by itself indicate a lack of understanding of owns views.

So without the fancy costumes and titles what do you call people who kill people in ways and for reasons that you disagree with? Do clothes and names matter enough to change that?

You sound like a statist to me, but it's curable. I think we were all statists once.

holding political positions which are inconsistent with one another, mickey.


I'd like to hear more about how Germany solved the financial crisis, though, too.

What is your cutoff though? Let's say that we have 1,000 convicted murderers on death row. And let's also say that we somehow know that one is innocent (God appeared to us and told us), but we have no way of knowing which one it is. Do we spare all 1,000 from execution because of that?

Not me. 99.9% is a pretty good success rate as far as I'm concerned. Just because an occasional poor slob gets executed wrongly isn't enough reason to give everyone a break.

Yes...although we should not kill them even if 1000 of 1000 were guilty. What's so bad about giving them life in prison with no possibility of parole?

Change this to: Death penalty - in favor if the burden of proof is raised from 'beyond a reasonable doubt' to 'clear and convincing' which is probably what you mean to get across anyway.

False. Your kind of "consistency" just portrays the lacking ability to expand your own views. In other words consistency mostly leads to ideological blindness.

How comfortable with this ratio are you if you are that 1 in 1000?

Democrat you care more about culture war stuff than actually fixing the economy

The financial crisis is far from solved.

In Germany we had these News that everything goes upwards from now on and the GDP growth is >3% this quartal - what part politics played there I don't know.

Probably some hidden short term stimulus.

One argument is to spare other prisoners and prison officials from having to live/work with these murderers/very dangerous individuals. In many(if not most) states, death row inmates aren't kept in solitary confinement and have access to a community dayroom.

As far as picking which political party best fits your ideals, I think it's necessary to assign those ideals a rank of importance considering here in the states, we basically have only three viable parties to choose from. It's unlikely all of your ideals will fit neatly with one of those limited choices.

For myself, 1st & 2nd amendment and tax considerations are way at the top, abortion and gay marriage issues are way down at the bottom.

GDP going up <> growth