Positions on the opposite Political side you hold.

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Hello just wondering but do many of you hold political viewpoints on the other end of the political sphere. Despite being Center Left, I for one do. Here are just a few.

Brexit: I am a lukewarm supporter for leaving the EU.
Foreign Policy: I am far more hawkish than many left leaning people from what I have observed.
Education: Oppose free tertiary education.
Labor Laws: A mixed bag really.

But what about you lot. I am mostly standard left wing on most issues.

I believe in free tertiary education. But I believe one must pass an entrance examination to get into a "4-year" college.

I believe in unions in order for there to be an advocate for workers, who can easily be exploited by their employers.

I believe in BASIC national health insurance--especially for catastrophic conditions.

I don't believe in Marxism, Leninism, and most "communistic" ideologies.

I don't believe in Ayn Rand's sort of ideology.

I guess I'm probably closest to the European "social Democratic" model in my beliefs.

Despite being a horrible socially conservative "right-winger", I'm in favour of nationalising some sectors of the market, if a decent case can be made for it. I'm not in favour of free trade, nor, in principle, against some forms of national wealth redistribution. It's the bread and circuses methods of wealth redistribution that I dislike. I have no problems with trade unions squeezing employers for more cash or better working conditions (within reason).

Paradoxically though, I don't like the minimum wage. While I like the idea in theory, I think it has made things worse for many people, companies suddenly found many low skilled people not worth the expenditure to hire (which means less work experience, which makes them even less employable in the future - the bread and circuses welfare state picks up the slack and makes things even worse).

I hate abortion with a passion and am a card-carrying Pro-lifer.

Having said that, I do think if carrying a child to term would 100% without a doubt kill the mother, I do firmly believe she should have the option to save her own life. It’s bad enough one might have to choose to kill a person. Don’t make it worse by forcing her to forfeit her own life.

And by that I mean kill her DEAD, not this “my life is over because I have to take care of a baby for the next 25 years” crap. Abortion should be difficult, rare, but NOT illegal.

If you are centre left or centre right, surely you will hold some views on the other side, that's why you're centre left or centre right, and not just plain left or right.

I'm pretty liberal, but I think smoking marijuana should be illegal.

I want to clarify, though: I don't mean the substance itself, just the actual act of smoking it. People use it medicinally in tablet form and there are other edible forms of it. If someone wants to use it recreationally or to help them deal with a medical condition, then that's completely fine. It doesn't really affect anybody except the user.

The problem is, I CAN'T be around smokers. Not only does secondhand smoke affect other people when they may not necessarily want to feel the effects of being high, but there are some like me who are very allergic to the smoke. For the same reasons, I think cigarettes should be banned because of the secondhand effects (and firsthand effects).

Probably really controversial, but oh well.

^^^ Just curious:

In your area, how well known is a guy named John Daly. He's a famous golfer who once married a girl from Jonesboro.

As a conservative

-Organized prostitution should be legal

-Abortion should stay legal, but I wish the people who say "banning abortion only bans safe abortions" could apply that logic to guns

-Healthcare should be free. College shouldn't, but needs to to be lowered a lot. Minimum wage can also be bumped a bit

-Police brutality is a thing and minorities deal with racism.

-Being patriotic to the point you won't acknowledge this country isn't anywhere close to perfect helps nobody.

I believe a person can have a perfectly good reason to own five or six guns. However, none of them need to be military-style assault weapons in my opinion.

His first wife was from Jonesboro.

For some reason, I sense you are a good golfer.

In the 1990's, I was a big fan of his.

I still am.....but not to the extent of 20-25 years ago.

I don't know if I hold views that could be considered to be politically diverse or not . I mean some center-left liberals might deem some of my opinions to be conservative , but in actuality I just identify with being a left-libertarian . So I hold a range of views which might on the surface seem to be conservative , as it pertains to limited government . In addition , I also tend to favor communitarianism , which can sometimes coincide with some tendencies of traditional conservatism .

I believe that as long as personal guns are legal [for non-felons at least], that they need to be totally legal [including possession of machine guns, silencers and the like]. that doesn't mean I LIKE such a state of affairs, it just means that IMHO the law should be about clarity, above all. the present state of having over 50,000 [often] conflicting laws nationwide concerning guns leads to a lack of clarity. either make them totally legal or BAN THEM TOTALLY. AFAIC, the wishy washy way we've been handling it hasn't been working too well for way too long. just my opinion.

I wouldn't know. I always find politics complicated and I think some people take politics too seriously. I would imagine most of my views are left but I don't mind if a Republican wins if they are nothing like Trump. To me as long as they are decent human beings it doesn't matter what party they are even though I do vote democrat.
I'm neither for or against guns but I do think the ones that are more lethal should be taken away. I think I'm indifferent about a lot of things but there are certain issues that I feel strongly about.

I'm probably pretty close to dead-center at this point so it's really tough to do much more than perhaps consider where my views might be on opposite ends and how they reconcile.

Someone mentioned legalizing prostitution - pragmatically I think it's a great idea OTOH I do think it's one of those sneaky issues where studies need to be done to see whether it clears the lines for marriages to be marriages and causes there to be fewer pick-up bars in the areas where it's legal or whether actively breaks down the family structure. On one hand this would help significantly clean up the shady things that go on in illegal prostitution but it would also quite likely even clean up the shady things that go on even at the places where singles meet to hook up, what happens in the bedroom, what can happen as a consequence - ie. the professional element of it might score a lot of net positive effects by diffusing some of the worse cultural complexities occurring at present.

I'm also strongly in favor of legalizing marijuana for medical and recreational use but I'd also add almost any psychedelic and dissociative including psilocybin (mushrooms), LSD, mescaline, DMT, and whatever 4 and 5 substituted tryptamines might have been banned inadvertently due to recreational patterns. The main reason I'm particularly hawkish on my dovishness about these is that IMHO they're work chemicals, they're substances people can use to clear away a lot of their own BS, essentially they're high-grade psychologists in a paper, plant, or powder form. As far as safety though i would consider this - making legal accessibility to substances such as these, for personal use, a bit like getting a CCW permit where one has to go through a series of classes, pass examinations, and show that they're well-informed enough to have custody of these chemicals as well as having legal accountability for what happens to anyone they might give it to who has not passed such examination.

I'm pro 2nd amendment (although I do agree on full-auto ban) but i also see a lot of foolishness in how certain things like CCW only authorize you to carry a gun but not something like a retractable baton. I know that in the US the state of Tennessee has legal carry for batons and I think blunt weapons of that sort which can't really be used to rob people, the way a bladed weapon more easily lends itself to, should be fully legal to carry every where and stopping short of that I at least think CCW holders should have the right to carry other conventional weapons on their person and even have the right to say that they're for self-defense without confiscation.

Another thing - I'm really starting to think that UBI may well be worth looking at. Done right it's an income floor without all kinds of government red tape, in fact with fewer bureaucrats, and in a situation where we'll likely see some significant increased combination of job loss to automation and significant loss of job stability (where it could get to a point where people have to invest in training in a new field, that field is only good for a few years, they have a month or two off between jobs, it's on the next field, and finances stay precarious). The later is particularly dangerous IMHO because if everyone feels like they're living paycheck to paycheck or has a very uncertain future consumer spending gets heavily modified, for the worse, and it does nasty things to the economy. The good news on UBI - there are pilot studies on it going on both in the US and Europe and they should be able to help bust some of the myths, both for and against UBI and really I'm only for it in terms of what I think it could do - not so much if the side effects were worse than what they solved or partially solved and if it turned out to be painful but eventually necessary we'd want to hold it off until such a time where the unemployment and economic math made sense.

As someone who's very left-leaning/socialist, I have some opinions that diverge from the party line and get me into trouble with left-wingers. It mainly concerns social/foreign policy, rather than economic policy:

* Support Nordic model for prostitution. Prostitution is paid rape, in my opinion.
* In favour of secularism always at the expense of multiculturalism. I would ban face veils and faith schools. These ideas extend to being in favour of Western countries having robust counter-terrorism programmes. Also, as a feminist, I really hate patriarchal religion and want to stop it from making so many people's lives miserable. I take that to its logical conclusion and don't hold back because some people confuse religion with ethnicity.
* Also, as a feminist, I have the same attitude to 'traditional culture' when its practices infringe on human rights.
* I believe the UK needs a nuclear deterrent.
* I believe in interventionist wars in case of genocide.
* While I sympathise with Palestinians, my opinions on the Arab-Israeli conflict are not exactly textbook left-wing.
* I am really quite cynical about identity politics. I am massively in favour of gay rights and I am an ardent feminist, and I also see how evil racism is...but. I don't know; I prefer solidarity over 'intersectional' back-biting. I can't stand how identity politics has come to stifle free speech and even free thought.
* I used to be a radical feminist, but I got tired of the refusal to work with males - the general separatist quality of that movement, even where it's not intended. I also got tired of the sex negativity, which is also not always intended. I like men, on the whole. I've become more of a socialist feminist, but even that movement in general has suffered from an identity politics crisis.
* I'm not hugely keen on uncontrolled immigration in all cases. If we had an international socialist paradise, then the impact on the local working classes wouldn't be negative - however, in the real, capitalist, world it leads to some problems that left-leaning liberals would prefer to ignore.
* My opinions on gender identity reflect the fact that I used to be a radical feminist (i.e. they haven't changed, and I still think gender is nonsense.)
* I hate that whole 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' line of thinking when either side of the political spectrum do it. It especially irritates me when the left do it, though; they should have enough principles not to get into bed with dictators and theocrats just because they're anti-Western.