{"id":1652,"date":"2008-09-18T15:45:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-18T15:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=1652"},"modified":"2019-11-22T16:54:47","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T16:54:47","slug":"some-political-confessions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=1652","title":{"rendered":"Some political confessions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I thought I&#8217;d throw up some bullet points on my political perspectives, because, although <a href=\"http:\/\/elizaphanian.blogspot.com\/2006\/11\/why-i-am-conservative-and-what-i-mean.html\">I would describe myself as a conservative<\/a>, there are various ways in which that might be misleading, particularly in the US context.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_h8lco0yxl-k\/SNJ9nGi52nI\/AAAAAAAACWo\/NdjLPDVnHcw\/s1600-h\/libertarian.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_h8lco0yxl-k\/SNJ9nGi52nI\/AAAAAAAACWo\/NdjLPDVnHcw\/s400\/libertarian.png\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I was (<a href=\"http:\/\/elizaphanian.blogspot.com\/2006\/09\/ante-bellum-thoughts-on-iraq.html\">with caveats<\/a>) in favour of the invasion of Iraq, and on balance I still think it was the right decision<\/li>\n<li>I think the Bush administration has been culpably incompetent (and radically anti-conservative) and Bush and Cheney should be impeached<\/li>\n<li>I think the Bush administration has been actively evil in its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hrw.org\/english\/docs\/2004\/06\/07\/usdom8778.htm\">support for torture<\/a> and that Bush should be excommunicated from the church<\/li>\n<li>I firmly believe that <a href=\"http:\/\/elizaphanian.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/9%2F11\">the truth about 9\/11 has not been told<\/a>, though I am not persuaded that Bush was personally involved in that (I have only come to negative conclusions about this subject, not positive ones)<\/li>\n<li>I do believe that <a href=\"http:\/\/elizaphanian.blogspot.com\/2007\/08\/lubh-9-vain-deliverance.html\">radical Islam<\/a> poses an existential threat to Western Civilisation. I see the standard left-wing consensus &#8211; such as it is &#8211; as manifestly inadequate for defending western civilisation, and <a href=\"http:\/\/elizaphanian.blogspot.com\/2008\/02\/cloverfield-obama-and-islamists.html\">this is one of my main objections to Obama<\/a> (for an example, see the treatment of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali\">Ayaan Hirsi Ali<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li>By the way, in case it isn&#8217;t obvious, <a href=\"http:\/\/elizaphanian.blogspot.com\/2006\/02\/scandalous-cartoons.html\">I believe very strongly in free speech<\/a><\/li>\n<li>I believe that the Bush administration, whether by active design or inadvertence, has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/views05\/0331-33.htm\">laid the foundations for a new feudalism<\/a> in the United States<\/li>\n<li>I think there is <a href=\"http:\/\/elizaphanian.blogspot.com\/2006\/08\/american-theocracy-persecution.html\">a non-trivial possibility of a far-right Christian fascist autocracy<\/a> forming in the United States within the next ten years, and a similarly non-trivial possibility of Civil War. My main reason for thinking that those things won&#8217;t happen is that the suffering will hit the cities more than the countryside, but I could easily be wrong<\/li>\n<li>I find <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nysun.com\/national\/obama-facing-attacks-from-all-sides-over-abortion\/84059\/\">Obama&#8217;s vote on abortion<\/a> abhorrent, unconscionable and unfathomable<\/li>\n<li>I am in favour of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stem_cell\">stem cell research<\/a><\/li>\n<li>I find <a href=\"http:\/\/firstread.msnbc.msn.com\/archive\/2008\/08\/11\/1259345.aspx\">McCain&#8217;s position on Georgia<\/a> (shared by Obama) unrealistic and seriously frightening. I would certainly not invite Georgia to be a member of NATO (an institution that is now past its use-by-date)<\/li>\n<li>I think the United Nations is, by and large, a waste of space<\/li>\n<li>I am strongly in favour of full secular equality for homosexual couples (and I&#8217;m phrasing it that way because &#8216;marriage&#8217; raises theological questions that are a red herring here)<\/li>\n<li>I don&#8217;t expect any politicians to be saints; it&#8217;s just a question of the degree of corruption. I find it remarkable how little investigation there has been of Obama&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/02\/26\/AR2007022600720.html\">background<\/a>, competence and <a href=\"http:\/\/nj.nationaljournal.com\/voteratings\/\">voting record<\/a> which seem to me to be <span>much <\/span>worse than Palin&#8217;s<\/li>\n<li>I don&#8217;t think either candidate has a clue about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rgemonitor.com\/roubini-monitor\/253618\/the_worst_financial_crisis_since_the_great_depression\">the nature of the storm engulfing the US economy<\/a>, nor do I think <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fcnp.com\/index.php?option=com_content&#038;task=view&#038;id=2290&#038;Itemid=35\">there is much that either candidate can do about it<\/a>. I still think <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fourthturning.com\/\">the fourth turning is a very good guide to what we are seeing<\/a><\/li>\n<li>For all his faults &#8211; and his faults aren&#8217;t lonely for long &#8211; I see McCain as more able to exercise an independent perspective than Obama. I&#8217;m not convinced that there is anything <span>there <\/span>with Obama, that is, anything which marks him out as something other than a product of his context<\/li>\n<li>I think that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theoildrum.com\/story\/2006\/3\/6\/135437\/7111\">George Romero is a prophet<\/a>, particularly of the US<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I thought I&#8217;d throw up some bullet points on my political perspectives, because, although I would describe myself as a conservative, there are various ways in which that might be misleading, particularly in the US context. I was (with caveats) &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=1652\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29,33,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crisis","category-palin","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3npsc-qE","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6764,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652\/revisions\/6764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}