Liberal or Democrat

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What type of Democrat or Liberal are you? (continued)

Well, I wouldn't call me a bonified Democrat because I don't agree with everything they want to do or believe in but I would say I lean more toward their way of thinking than the Republicans. I am pretty conservative in most things and don't believe in giving things away unless you work for them but I just can't agree with the Republicans on these 3 big things: Guns, Their hatred against gays or people who are a little different than they are; wanting to spend our social security money on War.......oh, and the "leave no child behind".

I am completely against guns and do not understand why Republicans want to protect the right to own an assault weapon...do they hunt deers with these? I am completely against killing deers, rabbits or any innocent animal and don't understand what thrill it gives a hunter to kill one of these animals but I know there are democrats who hunt, too....I personally would do away with all firearms if possible but I know that is unrealistic at this point... just my personal view.

I am for equal rights for everyone...including gays. I hate it when someone gets on TV and blasts the life-style of a gay person and uses the bible to tell me they are going to hell......but, at the same time...they can forgive Tim McVieigh for killing 168 innocent people if he repents his sins or protect pedophile priests when they molest hundreds of kids in the name of the church.

I support people who are respectful of others and act with decency in life. I was against the War from the start but did not protest openly in marches and such but maybe I should have ..maybe if more of us would have gotten involved we would not be in this mess now. I even felt a surge of pride when the troops went marching into Iraq and were greeted with waves and smiles from some of the down-trodden, poor Iraqi farmers along side the road...but that quickly changed to seeing body bags coming home ....now things are in a terrible mess and we can't get out of it.

I was completely supportive of going after Bin Laden and his gang. I wish we would have finished that job before we went to another War. I do not think Saddam was involved with Bin Laden but I think Saddam is a bad man/maniac but basically kept it in his own country. I think Saudi Arabia is a bigger threat than Saddam ever was.

California: I don't really understand all that is going on out there. The pitiful shape they found themselves in with the recall vote. Is it Gray Davis fault? But I do disagree with Gray Davis when he wants to pander to the Mexican vote and pass a law giving driver's licenses to the illegal immigrants since he voted against it two other times and now all of the sudden wants to pass it to get votes is reason enough for me not to respect him.

In general, I really don't like politicians at all but we have to vote for somebody it is too bad the independents can't actually run for office and get enough votes to win and too bad you have to be rich to run for office.

Abortion: I can go either way on this issue but support abortion for rape and incest and do not support it as a birth control method. This issue would be very heart-wrenching if you found yourself with a pregnant teenage daughter.

I do not think of myself as a democrat but would let fire take the earth before I lost enough morals to be a republican.

-April, Portland, OR

Responses to April:

I love seeing women's political viewpoints because we always speak from the heart as well as the brain and there is nothing better than that. Whatever your feelings about parties, it sounds like you're on the side of human beings. That's the main thing that makes me consider the Democrats as my party of choice. Yes, I know, they both love money, but Republicans seem to love money more than people and that's, to my mind, the main difference.

But I'm not entirely a knee jerk liberal...it may shock you to hear that although I wouldn't have a gun in my house, I'm in favor of the NRA's interpretation of the second amendment. Why? Because I think if guns were ever outlawed in this country we would have a total police state. You remember those bumper stickers that said "If guns were outlawed, only outlaws would have guns"? I would like to have a bumper sticker that said "if Guns were outlawed only the police and the army would have guns". (Not that we'd actually put it on our car or anything...hey, talk about asking for tickets.) To me, that's a lot scarier. I think if the Jews in Germany during Hitler's era had been armed, Hitler would not have had such an easy ride. And I think that the first thing real dictatorships do is gather up the guns owned by average people. It's kind of ironic that in this country, the people in favor of free gun ownership (those NRA types) are also the people most likely to support a Hitler-like dictatorship. But there it is. It's part of what makes America so interesting to the foreign press.

And, if they should ever outlaw guns, we'd be at the gun shop at 11:59 before the law went into effect buying his and hers something or others. Uzi's maybe. Just for the pleasure of rebellion.

Re abortion, I don't know what to say. I grew up a Catholic and I got all the training (they used to focus on this particular issue in our Monday morning religion classes at Notre Dame Academy (sounds snootier than it was...a diocesan high school...the rich girls were doctors and lawyer's daughters, not corporate moguls' princesses...but I still felt out of the loop, growing up in a housing project)...which led us girls to call the little indoctrination sessions "abortion Monday"... I've never been pregnant but I know that if I had been and some jerk tried to force me to stay pregnant against my will, I'd see it as something approximating rape. Control of one's body. That's the issue in both cases. I don't think anyone has the right to force another person to stay pregnant against her will.

I agree with you, (as you might expect) re gay rights. I think both men and women who are gay bring a sensibility to the discourse between the sexes that bridges the gaps. I think that if there ever comes a day when gay people and straight people see each other as just humans, we'll all be a lot better off. (And yes, despite my cringing when that little blond guy does his thing, I think Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is a great Cinderella show).

I definitely, however, (as you might suspect) disagree with your immigration issue. I'm half Cuban and at one time in her life, my mother was an illegal alien...she went to New York City as a visitor in 1946, loved it, ran out of money, went out and got herself a factory job, overstaying her visa. Naturally, the INS found out and gave her two weeks to pack her bags and go back to Cuba. But when her taxi dropped her off at her hotel in Havana, the cab driver was so rude as to leave her and her bags at the sidewalk. A nice older man, an American newspaperman living in Cuba, sitting on the veranda enjoying his evening cigar, saw her predicament and helped her carry in her bags. My mother, at 35, thought of herself as a skinny and unattractive old maid but the guy in question thought she was just fine. My parents were married four months later and two years later, in the U.S., when my mother was in her late thirties and my father 55 or so, I was born (shades of David Letterman).

But the thing about immigration is this...the country can't do without all those illegals. Nobody else will do the work they do for the price they'll accept (as if they had a choice). And if they weren't coming in anymore, everything, from the price of the fruits and vegetables we buy to the price of the homes we buy to the lawn maintenance for our houses to the taxes we pay for the contractors who build our roads, and on and on, would go through the roof. We think they're taking advantage of us but it's actually we who are taking advantage of them. The Republican's stance re illegal immigrants is sheer hypocrisy. They'll talk about it but they'll never do anything about it. Their party's contributors are making huge money from having that helpless, unprotected, willing-to-work-for-practically-nothing workforce arriving in droves.

RE Driver’s licenses...gee, I'd rather anyone who's going to be on the highway be required to drive well enough to pass a test and be able to prove they had. What, you think they're not going to drive just because they can't get driver's licenses?

But I sure don't know what to say about California except that we in Florida are very grateful to have the pressure off.

The war? Dear Lord, I wish we smarty-pants anti-war folks had been wrong. For a while I thought that maybe this would be like Kuwait, the war equivalent of "gone in 60 Seconds". At least, in my heart of hearts, given that the war seemed unstoppable, I secretly hoped so. But war's just not like that; wholesale death is an uncontrollable monster, once unleashed. In WWII, we participated because the people being invaded by the Nazi's were being slaughtered and begging us to go there. That wasn't the case in Vietnam and it wasn't the case in Iraq. What gets me is that everything was a bait and switch selling job...no WMD, no Hussein, no Bin Laden, no connection to Al Quaeda or 911, no nothing except oil and Cheney's old pals at Halliburton getting rich...and in the meantime, the reservists are there for longer and longer extended periods, their families are filing for bankruptcy, their jobs will be gone when they come back, if they come back...and, as you point out, they're dying every day and the papers don't even talk about the wounded or the extent of their wounds or whether they'll ever be able to function again because the Pentagon won't talk about that. I think if Americans had a way of finding out what's going on there, not just the dead but also the wounded, this war and Bush would be over.

On the other hand, Jessica's intended is Latin and his folks may have been illegal aliens (actually, I don't have a clue as to what his parents' nationality is, I'm just rubbing my hands together in eager anticipation ...what a hoot if they were illegal crossers of the Rio Grande...America's sweetheart setting another example...I can't wait for the special issue of People.)

Making the email rounds in the last few days is a 7(- whatever the measure is of big) file attachment which shows heartbreaking pictures of the bombing of the Twin Towers, all the emotion that all of us felt surrounding it, lots of patriotic music and then...brace yourself...Bush's pictures, a voice over from a Bush speech, and a caption near the end saying "Bravo, President Bush..." etc.... Somebody at work was looking at that today and I said, hey, that's part of Bush's campaign propaganda. The people looking at the screen said, no it's not, it's about 911, look at me I'm crying. I said, yeah, that's the idea. You're supposed to make that emotional connection when you see his name at the voting booth.

-Mary from Florida

I think we all are conservative in many ways. It's hard not to be when you are surrounded by so much chaos. I am conservative on many issues but liberal on just as many.

I am liberal when it comes to personal freedoms but think the community should be able to revoke those same freedoms when individuals harm or infringe on other peoples freedoms.

People must be held accountable for being destructive. Corporations are being protected by our government for their destructive behavior. They outlaw drugs that would be in direct competition to the pharmaceutical and alcohol companies. The government places extra taxes on the purchases of cigarettes and alcohol and plays the part of the mafia by taking their cut.
I'm not against these taxes per se but I am against what they choose to spend it on.

Bush wants us to give him 87Billion dollars for Iraq. Last year we spent a total of 53Billion on education in the good old US.
Now that's a big disconnect. We will spend more on them than our own kids. And don't talk to me about the terrorist. We cause a lot of these problems with our imperialistic behavior. And I think it's been proven that IRAQ was never a real threat. What's a bigger threat to our national security is graduating a bunch of illiterate citizens who care more about the MTV awards than the health of their own communities.

Apathy is running rampant in our schools. Now that's a threat to our security.

Big companies also get huge subsidies. The agricultural companies, Dairy, Meat all get massive government support. These means the real cost of the product is hugely misunderstood. Plus how can independent companies that do not have government connections compete with such market manipulation.

The oil companies got it real good. We spend so much money on the military to protect our oil interest that we have no idea how much a gallon of gasoline really cost. Would we still drive big huge cars if gas cost $7-8 a gallon.

I am very conservative when it comes to environmental protection. It's real simple. I want future generations to have an environment.
I even want them to have a better one than we do.

As far as guns go, I think we should ban them. The NRA talks about our rights to own guns like we were still living in the 18th century.
Our militia at that time was regular people with guns. They also say we need to have guns so we could defend ourselves from the government if they get out of hand. Sorry. Me having a rifle of a semi-automatic rifle is not going to bring down a Tomahawk missile or a helicopter gunship.
Our military is so big weapon heavy that we have no chance of ousting the government with guns.

Health care is a no brainer too. All the other industrialized countries have universal healthcare. What's stopping us?
Big Business. Clear and simple. We let corporations control us. They benefit from this chaos.

I want to make everyone aware of something about our current system.
These companies control our energy sources because we do not rely on real time energy. We are dependent on energy sources that were created millions of years ago. Millions of years ago a bunch of plants died, decomposed and after a long process of pressurization became oil deposits.
The original source was sunlight. Now we dig into the ground to get old sunlight energy.

What about REAL TIME energy. Sunlight. It’s beating down on us right now. We put up a solar panel and we get it right now.
No middle man, no waiting a million years for it to turn into black mud.
Why? Because they can't control our real time use of it.
It's all about CONTROL. They don't want us to have control of our lives.
They want us dependent on them for our food, energy and our information.

Go ahead and try to build a solar home that is off their precious grid system. You will have a hell of a time.
You won't be able to pass the codes. They have locked in the whole system.

We have to pick our doctors from a catalogue of acceptable providers.
You want to benefit from a proven 2,000 year old medicinal practice. Not on our plan. We will not help you. You gotta pay for that by yourself.
We don't want people to be preventative with their health. That's what allopathic medicine is all about.
NON-HOLISTIC. I call it Dumb medicine. A pill based medicine brought to you by the big pharmaceutical companies.

If we really want to be FREE we will have to take back our freedoms from all the big corporations, the liars and the stupid people. The stupid, non-compassionate people are in charge.

What's great is that there are a good number of smart compassionate warriors ready to take their place.
But we will have to demand it. It doesn't matter if you are a dem or a rep. What matters is that you care about the freedom and the integrity of all people, animals, and ecosystems.

We have to become unattached to our things and get more ZEN about life.
Care less about maintaining our debt ridden and destructive lifestyles and care more about living in the moment. LIVE IT REAL TIME.

-Derek from California