The Preasure of Internet Quiz

I’ve been told I’m full of surprises. I recently took a “for fun” quiz to identify where I fell on the political spectrum. The questions were in no way in depth enough to make an accurate assessment, but hey it was for fun. The end result, I am a far left liberal. This struck me as kind of odd because I fancy myself as a conservative person. From what I gather around my friends and work friends they too consider me a conservative person. So that got me thinking what makes me conservative?

I guess my long history of viewing myself as a conservative came with how my parents raised me. Most notably my parents worked me into the ground. I remember countless times hauling longs on my back, bailing hay, installing sprinklers, digging up stumps, and all sorts of things that required a lot of work. You would think that all this work created a good work ethic in me. It didn’t. I’m lazy, real lazy. What it did do is destroy any sense of entitlement in me. I felt that the world owed me nothing. The rewards I go t for my hard work was usually a Pepsi and a ham and cheese sandwich. I’m not saying that liberals don’t know work, or have a sense of entitlements, but that is just the way I perceived the world when I was developing my identity.

I got this image of the world as place that had no duty to me; it was just someplace that one worked in. The world didn’t have a moral obligation to me in anyway. My success for failure was due to the sweat of my own brow, or lack thereof. I have a much more complicated view of duty and relationships now, but fundamentally I still think that there is no inherent love due you by the world. Love and the duties that come with it are a gift of the individual. Due to the tugs and pulls of my life I became an extremist. So that is a very vague sense of what I mean by conservative and how I got there. I do realize that on some key issues I have some confusing results. I can think of three examples of me having what people might consider liberal stances, or liberal reasoning for conservative stances.

The first and strongest of my liberal stances is the current state of the war on drugs. I think we need to fundamentally rethink this one. First I’m for the legalization of marijuana. I’m also open to the idea of legalizing cocaine. There are a number of reasons people oppose the legalization of drugs, but they boil down to they are bad for you. Agreed they are bad for you. There are a lot of other things that are just as bad or worse that are legal. Cigarettes and alcohol are by far much more dangerous than both marijuana and cocaine. Additionally by criminalizing these products we have essentially given the criminals an endless supply of fiscal resources. By decriminalizing we can decriminalize the fiscal trail and structure of the drug industry. That by itself will increase stability and safety both abroad and in the United States. I noticed also that conservatives are all about minimal government until it is something they oppose, and then they want a whole lot of government. I’m not saying just drop all laws regarding drugs. In fact I’m for heavy regulation. I just think the decision to do drugs of the listed types I mentioned are a personal one which government should be the absolute arbiter of. Government should have a significant say, but that say should be relegated to consumer and public safety, not individual choice. Once again I’m not advocating the use of drugs, just its legal status.

The second issue that seems odd for some is my stance on gun regulation. I’m against gun regulations in general. I know that is a very conservative stance. However, my reasoning is odd to most people. Most gun advocates claim that guns are a positive force in society. I make no such claim. Most objective studies I’ve read are pretty inconclusive about the effects of guns in a society. What I do know is that guns and our right to have them are a part of our constitutional system. That’s right it doesn’t matter if guns are good or bad, they are a part of our system of laws on the highest level. If you want to regulate guns on the level that anti gun advocates want then make a constitutional amendment. Also this is one area where the liberal side confuses me. The goal of gun legislation has been to reduce gun violence. I would say that most anti gun advocates don’t see guns as being inherently evil. I totally agree gun violence is a bad thing. However we have the law thing I mentioned above. Also I have yet to read a report that conclusively proves that gun bans reduce gun violence. This is what I have seen. In areas where there are high levels of gun violence there are three factors that are almost universal: the presence of a drug cartel or gang, local government corruption, and poverty. Gun violence is a symptom of those factors. One of the things liberals do well is they point out that we shouldn’t treat the symptoms of a problem but try to get at its root. They seem to ignore this when it comes to gun violence. Fight poverty, government corruption, and legalize drugs as the method of gun control. I guess where I depart from the standard conservative stance on this issue is that I don’t consider guns a positive force for society. I honestly don’t know if it is or not.

Third is health care. I’m open to the idea of a national socialized health care system. Wow, I’m a pinko commie. My reasoning for this is actually pretty conservative based. The biggest factor in a successful capitalistic system is healthy competition. Healthy competition is increases as entry levels for a particular sector are low. Thus if an entry barrier to a sector is high then the likely hood of healthy competition is low. One of the sectors that are killing healthy competition in other sectors is the entry level barrier that health care places on any given sector. Somewhere along the line we made this assertion that healthcare is tied to employment. What that did is and an entry level barrier that makes large scale business very difficult. Ford Motors should be in the business of making auto products, not in the business of providing healthcare. Likewise any new business should be in the business of making stuff, or whatever they do, not providing healthcare services. Another factor to economic well being is that healthcare tied to employment is also a large risk enhancer. This by far prevents innovations because it makes the risks so high for new small business that one can’t quit their job and try something else because the risk has been increased. Lets separate this mutilated thing of our current healthcare system where care is tied to employment.

That’s about it. I’m sure there are a lot of other confusing stances I have. But in case anybody doubts I’m a conservative, I have been seriously considering adopting the stance that we should abolish social security. I have a lot of caveats to that but that stance should make me a right wing nut job right?

Sign of My Times

About two months ago I made a fitness deal with a friend of mine (lets call him Legs of the Oak). The deal was we would both lose 50 pounds and he would run in the Layton 4th of July 5 k run, and I would run my fastest 5 k in one years time. Enough time has passed where I can make some evaluations about these goals. First thing of note is that I have not lost as much weight as I thought. Apparently the scales need to be rebalanced. I weight 210 pounds not the 195ish I was looking at on the scale. I have this feeling the next 30 pounds will be much harder to drop. I know 50 pounds sounds like a lot of mass but being down to 180 isn't so bad. I don't know how I'm going to get below 19 min 30 secs for a 5 k. I just don't think it will happen. I remember the days when I would plan a month in advance for an athletic event, now it a year. I guess that is a sign of age.

The people at my work also made me realize how aged I am. None of them knew what the heck buck buck was. Needless to say we had a lesson on how to play buck buck. A couple of sore backs later all my work buddies know the wonders of buck buck.

People at my work keep on asking me for advice to "how to get in shape". This usually translates to hey I want to get bigger. I am always at a loss of words as to how to approach the issue. Since the perspective of my age I can see the problems of wanting to get big later on in life. But my friend, I'll call him Mr. Atom, said it best, getting mass is a downhill battle, once you win its hard to stop.