Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Right Winger

Friends have told me consistently that they they think I am sort of a "right winger", which I find fairly amazing and irritating. To be fair I would probably be similarly irritated if I were called a "left winger" - but in any case I was thinking this morning at all of my views that must lead to this conclusion...

    anti-imperialism taking a heavy-handed approach and imposing on other countries, whether through economic hit-man style financial impositions or bombing is wrong.


    anti-corporatocracy yes, our government is in the pocket of large corporations. yes, this is bad for individuals.

    atheist most right wingers are atheist right?

    firearms for the masses is dangerous although I fully support our right to keep arms, I think packing a gat at the Costco is very dangerous - kinda like swimming pools and motorcycles.

    civil liberties as it turns out, I think all people - yup all types (even Scientologists, racists, and gingers) - have the same right to life, liberty, and property.

    anti-captial punishment Penn and Teller firmed me up on this one, but people do bad things for financial gain, compulsion, or stupidity - the death penalty is not much of a deterrent in any of these cases - it's mostly just to make people feel better. Killing is bad.

    pro-choice killing is bad, and killing babies is bad, but at the end of the day I support a woman's right to choose


So you can see where people would call me a right winger right? Actually, if you can maybe you can explain it to me. I think it comes down to this - if you believe in rationality, free trade, and fundamentally reject the idea that wealth redistribution (whether through corporate favors or high taxes on the most productive members of our society) - then you are "right wing". Am I right?

4 comments:

  1. Let me try to explain, with the caveat that I wouldn't call you a right winger, and I think the connotations of such are insulting.

    1. You strike me as someone who has fundamental views. That is, as far as people I know go, you see things more in terms of "black or white," rather than "shades of gray."

    2. You also have some outwardly conservative tendencies -- mostly in terms of personal finance, but also, perhaps in terms of your life choices. See your pro-choice bullet point. Some people will conflate your personal choices with your broader worldview.

    To me these two things don't add up to "right winger" at all. But I can see how someone who wasn't taking the holistic "you" into consideration might make that assessment.

    I think it comes down to rejecting wealth redistribution, when I think about it. That is firmly entrenched in the right.

    To me "right winger" lives in a world with "neocon" or "wingnut" Unfortunately, there's a huge lack of moderate, financially conservative but civil liberty-supporting republicans at the moment. I'd support a third party with those values, seeing as the current republicans are imploding with religiousity and don't tend to be financially responsible, to say the least.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the explanation.

    Moderate is kind of a loaded word too. It implies some middle ground - however I would not consider myself moderate in any way - as you pointed out I am quite black and white about fundamentals. For many aspects of our two major parties there is no middle ground between the two views. As a generalization both republicans and democrats are in favor of big spending and wealth redistribution (that's a reflection of the population as its what gets a person elected) - democrats tending to lean toward social programs and republicans leaning toward terrorism-paranoia as a cover for wealth redistribution from taxpayers to large defense contractors, and both take any and all actions to devalue the US Dollar (redistribution from the future to the present). That's stealing. Stealing is bad.

    The third party could be Libertarian, and it's happy and lovely to support that, but in practice we are pretty darn entrenched in our two-party system.

    ReplyDelete
  3. That's so right wing of you :) But lets reel in capital punishment. The difference between a prisoner and a free citizen is who pays for their food. Dont get me wrong -- we could use a sweet-assed reorganization of who we qualify for dying, but it should still happen. Or we go for a prison colony, but that's imperialism esp. if we use some place no one cares about like north korea or montana, both of which contain a similar embrace of technology. Oh and severe meth problems.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sure, a prison colony would be fine - or just buy them cheaper food. Or don't give them any food - just a big razor-wire fenced area with armed guards and a farm. They can figure out how to cultivate their own food.

    ReplyDelete