Both Canada and the United States have federal elections looming. For this, I figured I’d chart out my political positions and give a basic overview of position.

Political Stances (-5 to +5, Against to For)

Privacy
The concept of nothing to hide is invalid because what there is to hide is dependent on the viewer.

Censorship
I don’t know why this should even really be contested. The silencing of ideas is pretty hard to justify. The only reason it’s only -4 is that for the sake of protected statuses such as race, I don’t see a problem with limiting hate speech. This, however, needs to be addressed very, very carefully in definition.

Free Trade
I’ll get mine is not a sound methodology for achieving anything. It’s more difficult to negotiate reasonable parameters for working with essentially business partners, naturally, but that’s to be expected. My limited knowledge in the field limits my feelings in any particular direction, however.

Capital Punishment
Deterrence Paradox: Some people can never be apart of society because they are just cold killers, so it’s fine to kill them. The death penalty is a deterrent. Only one can be true at once. Regardless, ultimately the basis of a death penalty is an emotional one, not a practical or altruistic one. it’s an emotional crutch on the basis of good versus evil.

Toughness on Crime
Precisely the same basis as the previous section. Of course there need to be laws, and with that punitive measures, but with the goal of an end result of a productive member of society and not of making another person suffer. Forgive me for thinking a criminal doesn’t perform risk-benefit analysis.  Prevention of crime comes  primarily from economic policy.

Universal Health Care
If you’re going to fund police to protect people from criminal harm, why not doctors to protect people for viral harm? Positions against are again of the “I’ll get mine” mentality. I don’t know what to say about it other than the concept of leaving people for dead as deplorable.

Gay Marriage
Marriage in the governmental sense is essentially a contract between two individuals. You can rent a lease from someone of the same gender, marriage has no reason to be any different. Meanwhile, federal benefits in Canada and the United States make withholding the right strictly discriminatory.

Secularism
No room to waiver here. Governmental policy must be independent of dogma, period. God said so isn’t a defensible position, sorry.

Abortion
This is the most difficult position that I haven’t really settled into any position due to the many complications. On a basic level, I don’t feel the idea of surgery as a post-hoc contraception as a “right.” Averting the argument of the beginning of human life altogether, the prevention of pregnancy occurs with regard to the conception itself and that is the choice. The problems arise with cases in which there are health concerns of the mother, and further difficult in cases of rape. How severe of health concerns? How do you determine if it’s rape and when? I’m fine with agreeing that an arbitrary cut-off line as determined by the courts is a reasonable solution.

Gun Control
Fighting fire with fire creates an inferno–all you’re asking for is escalation. Merely taking statistics of homocide to the ubiquity of firearms would be somewhat unfair, given cultural and economic climate direct the degree of crime and violence, despite them being in the favour of gun control. There is no practical purpose for any gun beyond hunting, which at this point in society is relatively unnecessary to begin with.

Interventionism
By this, I primarily refer to military interventionism. Many will say they see the military as a “last resort” but few seem to understand what that actually means. Under my personal ideology of realistic idealism, I take the position of that if there is noone to fight the wars, there is noone to die from war.

Social Liberalism
By most measures, I am actually socially conservative (though that’s assuming you don’t use the distorted modern concept of “conservative”). You can call this a narcissistic position, but perhaps because of my web programming background the best approach is starting from a basic assumption that the majority of your clients are morons (though obviously not you specifically, since you’re reading my blog :P). However a depressing thought, I think it’s hard to argue against that point, and to that end, we would at least ideally, be able to filter out moronic behaviour. A great example–ignoring practicality–is the immense harm that comes from alcohol consumption.

Fiscal Liberalism
Perhaps hand-in-hand with the “people are idiots” policy, representatives of the people should use the money of the people to make society better.