Eh, we all know I'm imbalanced anyway. :)

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so does that make me left or right? I'm closest to libertarian. I certainly want nothing to do with the nutjob religous right.

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because there is no fucking way in hell or on earth that my politics could be twisted into anything called conservative. Of course, I think the same could be said for Jeff.

Pat was a Libertarian when I dated him eons ago, and at that time political arguments with him made me want to thrust paint brushes into his eyeballs. (Now only philosophical arguments with him make me want to do that.) So the idea of being on the same team as Pat in a politicial fight is ironic.

I think it also shows how thoughtful and open minded Pat is, since his opinions have changed in time. Holy fuck - did I just say something nice about one of my friends. Shit.

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I do kind of wonder what the terms conservative and liberal mean, when applied to such a diverse grouping of people such as ourselves. Yes, to my amusement, on day-to-day political issues, I do tend to find myself agreeing a lot with Dubin and Marf nowadays. I'm not sure we agree too much on what things would
look like if we were able to consider the final shape of a more ideal society, but such forms are always contentious. Arguing about such high-level forms generally doesn't tend to be that interesting anyhow. I suspect instead of thinking of it as a left-right battle, we might instead imagine it dividing by our ideas about economics and perhaps big-versus-small government, in other words the socialist-versus-capitalist argument. Being someone whose views are sympathetic to Trotsky and hostile to big business, I certainly know where I stand on that divide.
Oh, Jeff, sorry about not getting back to you about a quick intro to Trotskyist/4th International Communism -- I was initially digging stuff up, but forgot to finish. Here is a good bare-bones intro, but really the best way to understand it is to first read Marx and Lenin, and then, naturally, read Trotsky's works and a bit of the history of the 4th International after Trotsky was assasinated by Stalin's agents. I do have to offer a qualifier -- while I would not oppose Trotskyist Communism, and don't think it's vastly incompatible with what I'd like to see, I would prefer to see a somewhat different path taken, based on slightly different values (an infusion of Buddhist, Nietzschean, and modern Science-centric culture) and innovations (and less dogmatism) in Marxism based on more recent history. Ahh, that's a mouthful of qualifiers.

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I'm the nutjob religious right.


Just kidding. I'm religious, I'm right (conservative, too), and I'm a nutjob, but theologically I'm quite liberal.

But if you think I'm stupid and incoherent in text mode (I can't imagine why you would), I'm five times worse in talk mode, so I avoid talking politics in person except with people who've already learned how to translate my unique idiolect.

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It's funny you mention...I just thought of how the whole time I knew you in RL, I don't think we ever debated politics. How strange.

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I really didn't have any interest in politics back then. I grew up in Ann Arbor, so I wasn't exposed to a plurality of opinions. At Earlham I wasn't exposed to a plurality of opinions either, so the most disputatious I got (outside philosophy classes) was snarking privately about some of the wacko feminist stuff or snarking publicly at M*** LeR** in the Word[*].

[*: You probably don't remember this, but I actually had an opinion piece published in the Word before I was a student at Earlham. When I was visiting as a prospective something in the then-current issue of the Word caught my attention, so I wrote a rebuttal. I learned the next year that it had in fact been published. Punch line: the piece I was responding to was a complaint about how intolerant Earlham was toward conservative Christian Republicans.]

I learned how to talk politics when a mailing list I'm on spawned an OT sub-list because certain people kept sniping at each other. I subscribed to watch the fireworks, and I ended up learning something: what questions need to be asked about every political(/economic) situation or proposal. I royally suck at answering most of those questions, which is why I often put forward ill-informed or ill-considered positions for nice people like Martha to flame at. But it means I have a pretty good shot at understanding anyone else's position by seeing which of the questions they're trying to answer and which they're not even asking.

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Hiding in every question is a set of statements of belief that can be read. For example, while it can be just a lingual remnant, when people ask "Do you believe in god?", hidden in that statement is a sign that, yes or no, the person thinks very much in monotheistic terms.

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"snarking publicly at M*** LeR** in the Word"

That guy was about as lousy of a representative as the far left could possibly ask for. I'd question whether he was even worth publicly snarking at.

When I used to be opinion editor he would send me these horribly written pieces that were a real bitch to convert into comprehensible prose.

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Fuck you, Jeff. Fuck you.

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