This is a time of year when political tensions are high, even between the closest of friends. It also just so happens that this time around the presidential racetrack, I've recently become more directly connected than ever to a lot of old and distant peeps through the magical slackerdom of social networking. Since profile data doesn't do a very good job of describing someone when it comes to issues that go a little deeper than Coke versus Pepsi, I've decided for the first time ever to attempt to write something comprehensive about my political beliefs.

Like anything I write here, it's wordy, disorganized, badly edited, and potentially self-contradictory. It is, however, presented for your amusement in exactly the order it fell out of my head. If this post serves no other purpose, it will give me something to look back on myself in a few decades, and for that reason alone (and some insomnia) it seemed a rant worth purging. So here ya go, if you ever wondered...

invasion of iraq
It was overwhelmingly clear to any reasonable individual in America that this was a mistake at the time, but the vast majority of Americans weren't thinking very reasonably. Riding a wave of fear, anger, and anxiety over 9/11, a group of very powerful and self-serving idealogs deliberately deceived enough folks in our government and governments abroad to make this happen. That's shameful, and we should all feel ashamed that it happened. Let me repeat that. The invasion of Iraq is something a patriotic American should be ashamed of, and doubly so if they personally ever supported the idea in the first place. Of all my "political" beliefs, I think this might be the one I feel most strongly. The fact that anyone alive today believes otherwise makes me feel sad for our nation.

war in iraq
There will never be a decisive conclusion to our active military presence in Iraq which can truly be called a "victory". It would be political suicide for anyone in power to admit this, but it should be clear to any American as it has been clear to any Iraqi for years now. It's foolish to generalize as to whether we've made Iraq a "better" or "worse" place because the only short answer is "both". What we need to focus on now is how to be honorable and responsible about scaling back our presence and letting the region recover from our mistakes. Iraq is a crime scene of epic proportions, and even if we claim an "insanity" defense or that we were duped, America retains a duty to clean up after ourselves as we remove ourselves from a region we have no right to control (no matter how important it may be to our fuel supply).

war on terror, anywhere else
One of the reasons that the march to war with Iraq was so swift is that it was paved with good intentions, and not all of those intentions were unethical or necessarily foolish. Many were duped into supporting action in Iraq because they were told by leaders they trusted that Iraq was an immediate threat, equipped with terrible weapons, and that Iraq bore a direct role in the attacks of 9/11. That all three of these beliefs have since been proven to be irrefutably false does not make any less legitimate the use of military power to combat terrorism. The United States and its allies should continue to take the fight "to the terrorists" wherever practical and effective measures are possible. However, extreme caution must be exercised by all involved to prevent perilous fundamentalism within our own societies from moving the battle front for their own purposes. Extremism only begets more extremism.

first strike doctrine
Proponents of "preventive war" as an acceptable means of securing America's continuity as a dominant world power are, by definition, traitorous to the intentions which created America in the first place. Before attempting to argue this stance it would be wise to consult several significant documents available for public viewing at the facility located between 7th and 9th on Constitution Avenue in Washington, DC. Admission is free.

our troops
I feel almost silly including this here, as it's not really an issue so much as a point of personal pride I feel like mentioning. I have ancestors who served in the U.S. armed forces. I have in-laws who have served in the armed forces. I have friends who have served in the armed forces. There were times in my youth when I considered service myself. I appreciate, respect, and absolutely "support" our troops, no matter where they are, no matter what they're doing, in the service of this nation. Every citizen owes a debt to these folks, and ought to recognize it. To claim that anyone, simply because they don't respect or support every decision made by our government, somehow automatically disrespects our troops is both illogical and disgusting. Furthermore, I might add that since the sworn purpose of our military is to defend the Constitution, that when someone claims that protected political dissent is automatically "unpatriotic" that they, themselves, are in fact disrespecting our troops.

extraordinary rendition and torture
The only thing more despicable than side-stepping U.S. law to use cruel and unusual punishment to get a job done is to take a public stance against doing so and then waffle under partisan pressure. Yes, there are times when critical information is needed in a hurry to keep millions of lives safe. An important question to ask, though, is what's more important - preserving lives, or preserving a way of life? How much hypocrisy is too much, exactly? Yes, to be perfectly clear here, I am saying that I would rather see a suitcase nuke go off at a football game than live in a version of America where we're okay with bending our fundamental laws whenever we're pressed for options. If someone with a wealth of life experience defending freedom in secrecy somewhere along the DC beltway wants to chuckle and label me naive for thinking this way, that's fine - but I get to call them unamerican at the same time. See I'm the sort of fruitcake that thinks if a society can't survive in the world without abusing its power, then it's supposed to be attacked or reformed such that the great experiment of civilization may continue to evolve. Lucky for us, some folks in the 1770's thought the same thing.

abortion
This is a really simple issue made complicated by folks who hate how simple it is. Choice is legal, and it ought to be. If you'd like to see abortions happen less frequently, then by all means I encourage you to take an active role in social service, medicine, or education and see what you can do to reduce their necessity. Otherwise, don't be pathetic and hide behind religion and stick your fingers in your ears like that solves something. This issue isn't about religion, it's about biology and ethics and practicality. Oh and just for the record, I'm quite opposed to abortion, personally. That's my choice.

capital punishment
Are there crimes against a society so despicable, so damaging, and so dangerous that their commission warrants, literally, the elimination of those who commit them? In my opinion, yes, absolutely. Is our legal system, such as it exists today, equipped to be a reasonably accurate and impartial way of deciding who should or should not be put to death? In my opinion, no, absolutely not. Let's focus on fixing an unfair legal system which poses a threat to all Americans first, and worry more about a particular sentence facing a very small percentage of our convicts second. In the meantime, if someone wants to suspend all pending executions for some sort of review that's fine by me - as long as they're ready to pay for it out of their own pocket. No? Okay then, back to the fixing the legal system part...but not one cent of my tax money needs to be sending food, shelter, and cable television to scum while somebody somewhere else starves.

economy
This is what I would love to see, I would love to see a highly circulated national magazine put out a cover with the headline "Who's Really To Blame?" with a mirror on it. Beyond that, I'm a little too angry about this issue right now to really write coherently about it so I'll spare the hyperbole. Suffice to say, I'm not at all pleased with either the current administration's proposal or what's likely to be the overly liberal compromise reached by its opposition. I loudly applaud the folks on either side of the isle who, in the House, voiced grave concerns and prevented an overly hasty and secretive "solution" from being pushed through with more speed and less attention than the PATRIOT act.

health care
In case you didn't notice lately, not one single person in America has reliable health insurance right now. Not one. Plenty of really rich people would be pretty much okay if something really bad happened to them, but that's not because they can afford spectacular coverage - it's because they can afford to survive despite how incomplete their coverage really is. Ideally, it would be wonderful if a completely socialized health care system could work in this country. I'd love to see it happen. I am, however, not even remotely convinced that such a system could be implemented in my lifetime. What to do, then? Well two things need to happen, health insurance needs to be better, and more accessible, and it probably needs to happen through a combination of government action and market competition. Any reasonable approach to doing so that actually has a chance of working given the realities of our economy and our corporatized health care infrastructure, I'm all for. I honestly think the plan proposed in the Blueprint For Change has a shot at that. I think giving the populous a chunk of change, whether it's five grand or fifty grand per household, won't change much for the better.

immigration
If legal immigration isn't made more accessible, practical, and affordable for those who seek it, then then critics have about as much ground to stand on complaining about illegal immigration as the RIAA has complaining about illegal file sharing. Just think about this for a minute - as screwed up as our country is these days, things are still so freakin' great here relative to other parts of the world than hundreds of thousands of people a year are banging down our doors to get in. The vast majority of these people would be willing to get legitimate jobs, spend money here, and pay taxes - if only they could! One might even go so far as to argue that in general, they have a stronger work ethic than many of those of us lucky to be born here (in our lovely post-FDR nanny state). What we need isn't a bunch of new laws to fail to enforce, what we need is massive reform of how our immigration services work. Oh and before someone goes all Rudy on me here, I have a question to ask. How many of the 9/11 hijackers climbed over a fence to get in?

climate change
It's happening, and man is an influence...but whether people buy that or not, we need to get over ourselves and start dealing with it one way or another.

alternative energy
It's not practical to demand everyone become a crunchy hippie overnight, but it's also simply not sustainable that every family in the country always have two large SUVs and a McMansion in the suburbs with a green yard. Cultural change is happening, but it's slow, and far too slow to have an impact before peak oil and other factors sink our economy completely (which don't kid yourself, will happen a lot sooner than nature revolting against us). Some "alternative" fuel technologies are completely impractical and don't scale, others make loads of sense and are getting closer to market every day. Misinformation and generalized labels like "biofuel" confuse the public, and electrical solutions are only partial solutions because we still make most of our electricity from fossil fuel. So in the short term while all this stuff gets sorted out and researched and developed, America is going to need an alternative from alternative energy.

nuclear energy
Safer, cleaner, and more efficient than any scalable or feasible immediate alternative. Do some research before arguing about this, and be willing to question fear/uncertainty/doubt based beliefs you may have former on misinformation.

creationism
If you ask me, folks shouting loudly on either side of this fence are missing the point. Of course religion belongs in school. Religion has been one of the most powerful forces in shaping civilization since irrigated agriculture. If you ask me, a lot of this nation's divisions and cultural misunderstandings about the world could be greatly soothed by teaching more about the founding principles of major world religions as a part of every public school's curriculum. However, religion has no place in science class. So here's a thought...teach every single kid about world religions and every single kid about evolution, biology, and reproduction, and don't let hippies or fundies opt anyone out of anything - see what happens a generation later.

GLBT issues
Seriously, with all that's going on in the world, there are really people out there who have the spare time to worry about how someone else likes it? As long as it's not involving minors, I honestly don't care if my next door neighbor, my kid's teacher, or someone carrying a weapon into battle to keep me safe is the freakiest superfreak the Internet has ever seen...just as long as neither they nor my government ever try to tell me how to conduct my own sex life.

taxation
You know, most of what I hear people on any politician's side say about taxation seems to amount to either repeating a television commercial or a sound byte from a talking head news show. Go read the detailed platform documents from either side, get out a calculator and your W2, and do the math yourself. I don't fall neatly in line with either party on this one, because personally I wanna screw the rich harder than any Democrat would ever have the stones to and I wanna screw freeloaders harder than any Republican could ever get away with. I can't win on this one. I will say this though, it sure would be nice to see a major political party in modern America that's actually for "small government". I'd line right up.

civil liberties and gun control
I lump these together because, philosophically, for me, they're one issue. Whether you're talking about the government "taking your guns away" or trampling on your human dignity for absolutely no reason at an airport, it's all like Ben Franklin said. Anyone willing to cave on liberty to feel safe should go start another country someplace else. Another way these issues are related is that most of the time when someone wants to write complicated new laws to "solve" something around them, chances are plenty of perfectly good legislation is already on the books and just not being enforced properly.

war on drugs
Anything less dangerous than tobacco or alcohol should be legal, appropriately controlled and regulated, and taxed to all hell. I don't really need any of it personally, so I don't really care how much the stuff costs. I just hate knowing somewhere, out there, right now, whether I want them to or not, someone is spending regrettable amounts of my money being completely ineffective at enforcing policy that makes zero sense and sentences burnouts and losers harsher than rapists or white collar criminals costing the nation billions.

black box voting
Computerized voting is what we in the IT profession like to call "a solution in search of a problem". What makes it even more annoying is, it's not even a difficult solution to implement! However, as anyone who's turned on a personal computer in the last fifteen years knows, there's nothing out there that technology can accomplish that business can't ruin. So sure, if counties or states or wherever want to implement electronic voting systems that's great. However, specifications should be open, solutions should be subject to public scrutiny, machines should be auditable, and absolutely should open standards be favored over proprietary spaghetti. Anyone who thinks we need a bunch of commercial code clogging up a voting machine to keep it "safe" should call up the NSA and ask them why they spend so much time contributing thousands of lines of code to the Linux kernel.

lobby reform
No party and no candidate stands with me on this, I'm a certified wingnut by modern standards no matter who you support or believe in. I not only challenge the degree of direct legislative control corporations have through powerful lobbyists, I challenge the very concept of "personhood" for business entities in a democratic republic.

social programs
I have to throw a blanket statement in here just so that nobody ever mistakes me for a card-carrying Democrat when I happen to support one in an election (in case anyone hasn't noticed, blindly voting along party lines doesn't accomplish a whole lot of good which is why I like to shop around). Yes, it's true and very obvious to anyone talking with me that I'm a strong opponent in many fundamental ways of the Bush-era "daddy state" concept of America that needs to go save the world from itself and lord over citizens private lives because it always knows best. However what some conservative folks might miss knowing about me (and what definitely earns me derision from bleeding hearts) is that I'm just as frustrated and saddened by what the "mommy state" legacy of FDR-style liberalism has turned this country into. Scratch beyond my ponytailed, necktie-less exterior and you just might be shocked by what you'll find.

Okay, if anyone's read all that I'm amazed...but by all means feel free to ask me about anything I haven't sweepingly generalized about above. I even invite open season attacks on my personal choice for the presidential election, why not. After all, while everyone knows pretty well who I'll be voting for, I bet a lot of people have no idea just how close a decision it's been for me and how differently I could have swung if the democratic primary circus had concluded differently.

Oh and just because I promised myself I'd say this when I sat down to write all this...PAUL / KUCINICH '08 FTW.

*exhausted*