It has come to my attention that even people who have known me since p.com days still don't understand that I affiliate with the republican party. Not just affiliate, I am an activist.
On the first days of p.com I registered on that board as a libertarian-leaning Republican. This is what I have always been. I believe in personal liberties and am a strong constitutionalist. Shoot when I was nine I hand copied the constitution and hung that copy in my room, along with hand written "The New Colossus" and (of course) the Declaration of Independence, many flags from the original with 13 stars to the current flag... I'm not kidding. This isn't something my parents did to me, it was something that I believed in...
When I say I believe in personal liberties it means I disagree with the platform on some issues, particularly:
I have always been for Gay Marriage, though I believe that the government should never have been involved with choosing your partners other than to ensure that nobody was victimized. Laws should be against involving minors in marriage (and no, "parental permission" is not good enough, children do not have the capacity to make these lifetime-altering decisions regardless of parental "permission"), or bigamy where one or more partners are unaware of the circumstances (married to two women/men, but the both or one of the women/men do not know of the other for instance). Laws shouldn't exist that give government gifts to one type of relationship over another, because it is none of their business and the constitution simply doesn't give the federal government that kind of power of the minutiae of our lives. This involves 1st Amendment freedoms as well, in that the government pretty much passed anti-bigamy laws to stop "Mormons" from taking more than one wife. If all involved are adults and know the circumstances it is not the place of the government to judge the worthiness of their relationship/s.
I am also anti-prohibition. I believe that such laws only generate the violence that always comes with black-market turf wars and that you should have the ability to wreck your own life if you are an adult. At best, government should involve themselves in helping people out of addiction, not cutting off safe and violence free supply while doing nothing about the demand side of the issue.
I am against the death penalty. I believe a lifetime in prison is enough without government directed murder. The simple reality that we have released so many prisoners since the advent of DNA should compel any intelligent being to understand that even with "confessions" innocents have been imprisoned and executed in the past. This isn't good enough.
While I do have some disagreements with the platform, I do not have the central disagreement that I have with the Democratic Party that cannot see an "issue" without trying to resolve it through laws and corrupted government bureaucracies. On this board, in my experience, and in political culture I see a fundamental divide with that party and my beliefs that cannot be overcome because in every circumstance the first reaction is to pass laws where less government would be the answer that I would work towards. For example, gay marriage... I believe that government shouldn't be involved at all as I explained before, but democrats work towards laws, court decisions, etc. that just add to a list of government-blessed specific and listed relationships. This conflicts with a central belief of mine that the government should not be involved at this level of my, your, or anyone's life.
This is all relatively simplified, but it should be enough to clear up any confusion of where I stand, have always stood, and have never hidden:
I am a Republican, albeit a libertarian (small l) constitutionalist Republican. I am an activist for constitutionalism, limiting the scope of the Federal Government (not to "bring back" any "good ole days" but because I believe that personal liberty is so valuable that it is worth some risk), and I will continue to be an activist for this particular belief. In this I supported candidates like Rand Paul when they are running. I did vote for Trump, but not because I like Trump but because I understand that the President appoints judges and justices and that no democrat will nominate a strict constitutionalist as a judge on any appeals court or as a justice on the supreme court and in no small measure because I could in no way support somebody who broke laws that would have had me still in prison had I taken the same action they did when I was a Russian Translator in the Navy.
Anyway, sorry for the wall of text. I haven't explained this often enough in the past if people I have "known" on this board are still confused as to what party I have always, from the beginning, affiliated myself with.
I can, of course, go more in depth when I have the time and inclination and will use this thread to go there. I hereby designate this as the "ask Damocles" thread where I will try to explain my stances. I promise you this: I will not denigrate or insult you, I will simply and directly try to answer your question honestly regardless of how you ask it herein.
Priceless.
