Building a Platform

I think some of my links have miscommunicated my thoughts. I am a reader/thinker. I jot notes of stuff that I may not agree with so that I can take it into account when I'm synthesizing more final thoughts. My recent links don't indicate my recent thoughts. They indicate my recent reading. I read Jordon Cooper exactly because he is more liberal than I am. He challenges and sharpens my thinking. I don't listen much to Rush Limbaugh because he isn't saying anything I don't know. Mainly he says that the liberals are complete idiots and we should be afraid of them and that just isn't so.

So we are going to have to do this one piece at a time. What are the issues we want to address? Foreign policy, morality, taxes, racial issues, ...

I started my discussion with Gil like this:

The Democrats seem to be two distinct pieces -- liberal morality and liberal fiscal. These are backed by two separate political groups. Liberal morality is backed by homosexuals, abortion proponents, and often the artsy crowd. Liberal fiscal issues are backed by union workers, civil rights activists who are looking for us to help revitalize areas devastated by racial issues. These two separate groups don't have a lot to do with each other. I don't think your typical union worker is your typical pro-gay marcher.

The Republicans are two distinct groups -- conservative morality and conservative fiscal. The morality people are typically evangelical Christians. The fiscal people are typically business people who want to keep more of their money and want less government regulations on their businesses. There is some overlap but there is a lot of separateness between these two groups as well.

My thinking is to become morally centrist conservative and fiscally centrist liberal. Now don't read these words conservative and liberal to the extremes. I don't want to outlaw homosexuality. I'm not ultra-conservative. But I am for the preservation of traditional marriage. I don't want to tax people at 70% and make all programs government controlled. I'm not necessarily for public healthcare, but there are areas where we need to continue and improve those programs such as medicare, medicaid, and kid's programs. We need to begin to reverse the trend of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. But not to the extreme of making everyone equal.

I haven't yet touched on Foreign policy. I think this is the trickiest area. My fear is that we are in a lose-lose situation today. We will have to have a policy that is more dynamic than the static "Big-hammer" that we have today. Our current policy seems to be something like, "If we don't like it, we reserve the right to invade it, break it, and put it like we want." I'm also not one to say, "Let's see what the UN thinks." I think we need to remain independent and dynamic doing what we can, protecting ourselves, but realizing the world has changed and there is no simple way just to "be safe." The main question in foreign policy is going to be security vs freedom. How much freedom are we willing to give up for security? It is a balance but I'm leaning toward freedom.

Well, I've talked like I know what I'm talking about. I know nothing. I have no idea if all this holds up. Help me out.