proximoception | (no subject)

I think everyone active here who hasn't unfriended me is at least broadly left-wing. Are there any respects in which you deviate from what's taken to be the liberal party line?

I ask because I can't think of any, for me, and it's making me feel pretty boring. Guns, drugs, military size and role, taxes, abortion, gay marriage, free speech, human rights, emission control, centralized education, socialized medicine etc. - same side on all. I think I come closest to illiberal on capital punishment, but not very - I think it's not an issue that needs much shouting about, compared to, say, prison reform, but the evidence that it's significantly preventative is pretty weak. It's just only killing a few hundred already probably quite miserable people a year, while other things are killing larger numbers of (initially) happier ones.

Oh, I do reject the criminalization of hate speech and adding prison time for specially identified hate motives. But that's an area where people define 'liberal' differently, surely? There's plenty of liberal in-house disputes.

Threaded | Flat

I more or less agree with you on capital punishment -- I loathe it, actually, but see why people don't, and certainly I think it's not where political, ahem, capital should be spent.

I am for a two state solution and not against Israel being a "Jewish state." But for that to be just there has to be a two-state solution. Lots of my friends hate this view. But I guess it is standard liberal but not standard leftist.

I tend to take issue with the liberal platform for what it excludes rather than what it includes. But demilitarized, decriminalized bourgeois-liberal welfare state would be an awesome thing. I'd vote for that in a second.