Political Orientation

[Oathbreaker]

Figured I'd drop by up in here since I've been reading politically heated stuff around here anyway.



Going by dictionary definitions, I favor a Democracy over a Republic but given the nature of nations a Republic is the only practical way to Govern. Going by actual current political practices, I'm a liberal.

One big thing that I support is the idea of Separation of Church and State. The people who came up with it were more heavily religious as a nation than we can say of ourselves today, and they recognized the necessity of it. Religion has a place in law, but only insofar as the freedom to practice that religion must be protected.

I definitely support gay marriage. I had a big huge paragraph here but my reasoning suffices with: because not allowing homosexuals to be married is segregation and that is unconstitutional, therefor marriage as a practice needs to be reformed within the religion itself for it to remain legally recognized. The notion that homosexuals aren't deserving of the same happiness as any heterosexual human is outdated, cruel, and unusual (because yes, if the couple is religious it will add very much to their happiness if their union is recognized by their faith).

-EDIT- Saw a mention of polygamy early on the very first page so I'm gonna go ahead and give my opinion on that too. Because of the general prudishness of the United States I don't think we're ready as a nation to be openly accepting of Polygamy. Given equal feelings between ALL parties involved (yes, ALL, meaning if there's 3, all three individuals must have equal feelings for the other two and the same applies to any number of people involved) then there is nothing wrong with it. So yeah, I support it so long as it meets that condition.

I am pro-Abortion/ Freedom of Choice. If for any reason at all abortion as a widely-available procedure cannot remain as it is then I still support a compromise allowing it under extreme circumstances (i.e. minor, rape, etc). If even that compromise can't be reached then I don't think the situation necessitating the attempt to compromise would be reached in the first place.

I am pro-Capital Punishment, or tentatively for anyway. Injections are actually the most humane way to go about it these days, however. There's no pain involved and the recipient doesn't have to deal with a funny smell.

Drug use... if they can find a way to effectively regulate weed/ pot/ marijuana/ whateveryouwanttocallitgodtherearesomanynamesforit then sure why not. It has a similar effect on motor functions as alcohol and is less harmful to the body than both alcohol and cigarettes (alcohol itself is a straight up poison and cigarettes have a number of chemicals poisonous to humans in them). Hell, making it legal and regulating it would actually create quite a few jobs, so that's a nice little bonus. Anything above and beyond marijuana is too dangerous to see legally accepted public use for a book's worth of reasons that don't belong here.


I'm so much more long-winded than most of you. D; Sorry.

[Wolf]

Capital punishment costs a [&@%!]-ton of money for a supposedly preventative (deterrent) measure. I'd rather sink that money into things that actually do prevent crime. I'm not sure what, but apparently every other country on earth has a better grasp of it than we do.

[Sloady]

Iran? The U.S isn't as awful. It's certainly not a beacon of functionality, but it's not the middle east - not yet, anyway.

[Derp53]

i'd say iran is one of the more founded countries in the middle east besides israel, jordan, and saudi arabia

[Wolf]

Iran? The U.S isn't as awful. It's certainly not a beacon of functionality, but it's not the middle east - not yet, anyway.

The U.S. has the most number of incarcerated people per-capita. This probably has a little bit to do with the fact that we don't default to execution, but we still have a lot of people in the U.S., and the number of incarcerates is really a bit of a sign that we need to be doing something else.

[Wolf]

I've never heard that saying. Is it saying that prisoners are hot?

And I was thinking more along the lines of actual rehabilitation.

[Dark Spark]

I've never heard that saying. Is it saying that prisoners are hot?

And I was thinking more along the lines of actual rehabilitation.

"Three hots and a cot": three warm meals a day, and a roof over your head when you sleep at night. Sure, there are certain lack of amenities, but you get what you pay for ($0).

[Wolf]

I've never heard that saying. Is it saying that prisoners are hot?

And I was thinking more along the lines of actual rehabilitation.

I think the main concern is preventing people from doing bad things in the first place, rather than planning to do after they get arrested. If we didn't have so many people in jail in the first place, that's lest money we waste on criminals who are bound to end up right back in jail.

3/4ths of prisoners are repeat offenders. They get released the first time, can't deal with life, and resort to crime in order to try to live. Or, they break a law intentionally to get back into prison.

[Derp53]

would guys agree with me when i say these guys make sense: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ANL2pHgJD0
o ya discretion is advised

[DorostheConqueror]

I've never heard that saying. Is it saying that prisoners are hot?

And I was thinking more along the lines of actual rehabilitation.

I think the main concern is preventing people from doing bad things in the first place, rather than planning to do after they get arrested. If we didn't have so many people in jail in the first place, that's lest money we waste on criminals who are bound to end up right back in jail.

The "main concern" is having a cheap labor force totally dependent upon the state. If keeping people out of jail was the goal, then the first thing to do would be to decriminalize petty drug use, which accounts for the greatest number of incarcerations and has no real ethical justification. And who's this "we" that's wasting money? "We" don't waste money on criminals. The state wastes money on criminals, money that it got by extorting the public. Why should they care? Money runs short, they just raise taxes, borrow from banks, and print more. Hell, they've got to spend that money, otherwise the rest of us might start wondering why we have to pay them at all.

As for capital punishment, the reason it costs so much is because of the way our legal system is set up, with it's intricate system of appeals. Bureaucratically speaking, killing someone is a lot more complicated than sticking them in a hole for fifty years; if you want the death penalty to cost less, you need to either streamline it or get rid of it completely. Trying to have things both ways- reserving the right to take a convicted offender's life, but doing so in a humane and careful manner- is what causes the problems.

[Rhyme Asylum]

ITT: People who think that the extra cost in legal fees for a case where the perpetrator could be executed (to ensure beyond all reasonable doubt that he or she is definitely guilty, even though the courts are still sometimes wrong anyway), compared to the same cost for a non-capital case, isn't greater than the amount of money required to keep that person alive in prison for the rest of their life.

ITT: People who think that prisons should be tortuous hell-holes, despite the fact that the entire point of incarceration is to prevent dangerous people from harming civilians, and then to re-introduce them into society when they are no longer a threat. The same people typically ignore that if prison was about removing them entirely from society and punishing them, with no re-introduction, you would just execute them (which would be cost-ineffective, if you didn't want to kill innocents). Also, centres which focus on rehabilitation rather than inane punishments have a much lower recidivism rate. (Typically 20%, compared to the standard of between 50% and 60% - see Halden and Bastoy prisons.)

[Wolf]

The "main concern" is having a cheap labor force totally dependent upon the state.

What labour, exactly, are we extorting from them?

Hell, they've got to spend that money, otherwise the rest of us might start wondering why we have to pay them at all.

This is something I already knew. However, it can be frustrating when you manage to run a tight budget due to a few miracles, and your bosses cut your funding completely expecting you to be able to do it again (and again, and again).

[DorostheConqueror]

Prisoners aren't just pressing license-plates and cleaning up highways anymore, they're also building furniture, staffing call centers, manufacturing solar panels, sewing clothing, running laundries etc. UNICOR, the "official" federal work program, "employs" almost a fifth of the total inmate population at any one time, producing goods and services for the rest of the federal government while paying out wages less than those of third world sweatshops. There's also been a sharp increase in the practice of farming out prisoner labor to private corporations- including many Fortune 500 corporations, like IBM and AT&T. This sort of stuff was SOP in historical prisons- in fact, some may argue that the only reason our modern "prison systems" (which are a fairly new invention, only coming into being within the past couple centuries) were created in the first place was so that the state could extort cheap labor from citizens it labeled "undesirable" (typically, those who were bad workers and proved unproductive in "free" society). Prison labor fell out of vogue with the growth of "prison reform laws" (read: new regulations made by bleeding hearts who wanted to keep the cake but not let anyone eat it) but it's been creeping back with a vengeance since the state realized what it had lost. Here's some rather sobering statistics. Many of our prison workers make less than starving Haitians, what fun!

However, it can be frustrating when you manage to run a tight budget due to a few miracles, and your bosses cut your funding completely expecting you to be able to do it again (and again, and again).

Not when you're the boss, and you're running a public, "non-profit" company. You don't need to finish on time and under budget. You finish under budget, you get less money next time. "Profit" is evil; you just spend and let someone else worry about sustainability and growth.

Besides, the international banking industry expects you to do your part, driving proles, Feds, and businessmen alike into their arms, looking for loans. Don't want to disappoint Haym Shecklestein, now do we?

[Sloady]

Iran? The U.S isn't as awful. It's certainly not a beacon of functionality, but it's not the middle east - not yet, anyway.

The U.S. has the most number of incarcerated people per-capita. This probably has a little bit to do with the fact that we don't default to execution, but we still have a lot of people in the U.S., and the number of incarcerates is really a bit of a sign that we need to be doing something else.

The death penalty doesn't decrease crime, just clears out a small number of prisons, which are quickly replaced anyway by petty drug users who can get upwards of 20 years. The U.S for profit prison system is the problem with the amount of incarcerated people, plus the fact that they seem to focus a lot more on "punishment" than on rehabiliation. That and the ridiculous "3 strikes and your out" system, which can have shop lifters getting decades in prison.

[Rhyme Asylum]

I'm starting to think that legal systems shouldn't be based off ball games.

[Wolf]

Iran? The U.S isn't as awful. It's certainly not a beacon of functionality, but it's not the middle east - not yet, anyway.

The U.S. has the most number of incarcerated people per-capita. This probably has a little bit to do with the fact that we don't default to execution, but we still have a lot of people in the U.S., and the number of incarcerates is really a bit of a sign that we need to be doing something else.

The death penalty doesn't decrease crime, just clears out a small number of prisons, which are quickly replaced anyway by petty drug users who can get upwards of 20 years. The U.S for profit prison system is the problem with the amount of incarcerated people, plus the fact that they seem to focus a lot more on "punishment" than on rehabiliation. That and the ridiculous "3 strikes and your out" system, which can have shop lifters getting decades in prison.

I'm not sure why you were directing that at me. You seem to be of the impression, lately, that I disagree with you no matter what I'm talking about.

Haym Shecklestein

[Frost Mage]

Government should be there to protect its people, not enforce and agenda onto them. The way we've been doing it just isn't working, plain and simple.

[Wolf]

Well, if you're Thomas Payne then you might disagree. He wrote a pamphlet back in the revolutionary period that stated that a government's sole domestic responsibility was punishment of crime.

[Frost Mage]

Well, if you're Thomas Payne then you might disagree. He wrote a pamphlet back in the revolutionary period that stated that a government's sole domestic responsibility was punishment of crime.

But what defines "crime"? Something that society as a whole considers wrong?

[Arch-Mage Matt]

I'm pretty sure the civilized world has the word 'crime' summed up nicely.

[Frost Mage]

Murder, theft, assault, etc., is what should be considered crime. Things that are an instinctual no-no. I can hardly say that about laws against gay marriage.

[Arch-Mage Matt]

In the US for example, those laws were put into place in a time where a single-digit amount of the country supported gay marriage. As times change, the government updates its laws, as you are seeing in a few states (What is it, 10 now?). Mandatory IMO

[Frost Mage]

My point is, things like this shouldn't be an issue in a country where there is SO much more to be addressed.

[Arch-Mage Matt]

But these are keys to getting elected. Republicans pander to their voter base on the social issues that people will remember while voting, Democrats do the same. And then there's Romney.

[Frost Mage]

Romney shall not be spoken of. To do so will result in less-than-stellar consequences, such as beheading, rough toilet paper interrogation, and child-on-child urination.