Tuesday, July 17, 2007

How Kinja Labels My Blog 'Conservative'

Kinja occasionally drops on me the blog label of 'conservative'. I find this annoying. I wish I could go back and reclaim the old title of Progressive Republican, but that first word has been coopted by the frakkin wackos in Berkeley. Generally speaking I have to say I am somewhat middle of the road with liberal tendencies - or I so like to delude myself. There are some points though that Kinja is definitely right. Let's visit them.

1. Preemption or the so-called Bush Doctrine. This I have absolutely no issue with. For pete's sake, if you see someone winding up to clock you, why not clock them first? There are issues about if the price will be too high - like just nuking the Soviet Union - but wrt problematic things like bin Laden, why not? I'd be as happy with Clinton having done this back in the 90s as Shrubbish having done it since. Shrubbish has just done it badly.

2. Go It Alone-ism. There are far too many times in this world that I have seen things that need to be done - whether in politics or in day to day life or at work - where things that need to be done, do not get done because someone objects right now. Far too often then things get worse and fester. Then there's the whiny attack of why didn't someone do something earlier. So, I am emphatically just rolling up the national sleeves and getting it - whatever it may be - done. There will always be objectors to a course of action, including by those that are powerful and even more so by our friends. Some times you have to do what you gotta do even if it makes you the least popular person in the room.

3. Expansionism. I believe, strongly, that the US ought to be trying to be another European Union. I do not mean that goofy rightwing, nut case version of it called the North American Union. I mean that the US has sorted out so many of the issues wrt annealing smaller and larger states that it would make for a great, no fantastic kernel for a hemispheric state. What is to be American has radically changed - culturally - in the last two hundred and thirty-one years. There is no reason why it couldn't in the future while still maintaining our core. The Roman Empire died on May 29, 1453. It spoke Greek and no longer occupied Rome. Yet it lived. There's no reason that the last American must look like me.

4. Berkeley Annoys Me. A lot. With blink tag. The politics of San Francisco bother me, but not as bad a Berkeley does. Greens - with a capital G - really annoy me too. Alright alot.

5. The fact that I am not terribly pro-union doesn't help either.

6. Very Second Amendment pry gun from cold dead hands, but with caveats.

And I am too tired to continue. If you have some good additions, my readers, from my own writings, by all means, feel free to add them in the comments section. I'll write up the counter-arguments hopefully tomorrow. Why I consider myself liberal. ish.

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