[jsalcedo]

I used to see gun owners as a fairly homogenous group.

After reading untold thousands of threads I've come to appreciate the myriad of political views and lifestyles.

Throughout it all a love of guns and shooting is what binds THR members together.

We have strict law and order types through libertarian and borderline anarchist.

Where do you put yourself?

[Jim March]

You're still seeing things in terms of a left/right spectrum, and then stick "Anarcho Capitalist" in there at the end. You don't quite yet understand where the boundaries of "Libertarian", "libertarian" and "Anarcho Capitalist" are exactly, or where they fit into anything else.

Good attempt. Still not a poll I can answer because I'm not fully A-C and that's the closest thing you've left me.

The best single question that would cover those three admittedly close items would be "Do you believe in the Non-Aggression Principle?" - to which I'd answer "yes".

A lot stems from that question: if robbery by one at gunpoint is immoral, robbery by a "collective" at same is too. This has implications for tax policy, to say the least.

[Ian]

Anarchocapitalist, that's me.

[MoNsTeR]

Hard-core anarcho-capitalist by night, pragmatic libertarian by day, enemy of tyrants of the left and right.

[Orthonym]

Which is why I'm registered as a Libertarian! Living in THIS den of Police-Republican Golf-Geezer Zoning Nazis, off and on for the last 34 years, has convinced me that the Repubicans [sic] are NOT the party of liberty. My views?

I'm all for:

Small business;
Small farms;
Small govt; &

SMALL ARMS!

Oh, and I have historical/ family reasons, too:My great-grandfather had an eyeball shot out by Repubs when going around on the left at Chancellorsville.(Yes, with Jackson)

[Hkmp5sd]

Less government, less taxes (preferably flat tax across the board), less "political correctness", pro-law enforcement, pro-military, live by what the constitution says, anti-affirmative action, indifferent to gay rights, abortion is not the prefered method of birth control, racial profiling by LE is not a violation of civil rights, pro-death penalty, all persons on welfare or unemployment have mandatory drug testing (if you have money for drugs, you don't need taxpayers assistance), drug addiction and alcohol addiction are not medical conditions or disabilities.

Instead of having a law for every imaginable action or idea, let people do as they please as long as they do not interfer with another's rights.

And everyone is responsible for their actions. If you smoke for 60 years and get cancer, it is not the tobacco company's fault. If you weigh 600 pounds, it is not McDonald's fault. Insanity is not a legal defense. Spanking your kids is not child abuse.

[Mike Irwin]

I'd vote for the current iteration of Ronald Reagan (essentially brain dead) before I'd ever vote for ANY Democrat for President.

[lee n. field]

Pessimistic Kritarchic Anarcho-Calvinist. Find a place for that in your convenient little categories. :)

(I answered the poll as anarcho-cap.)

[Orthonym]

I know some guys from Haiti.;) Hk, what you said. I'm going down to the Publix first thing tomorrow and see how much they get for Nicorettes (Tm)!:D

[Mike Irwin]

Grover Cleveland had, IIRC, a hidden soft spot for unions...

No dice.

[Tamara]

My favorite president?

Calvin Coolidge.

What did he do?

Not a damned thing. ;)

[10-Ring]

As I've gotten older, I've discovered that being conservative can be cool too!

[Jim March]

Weirdly enough, I'm not dead-set against unions. SO LONG AS they don't have any sort of government mandate.

OK, one of the points the A-C crowd misses is that without any government control of ANY sort, megacorps will take on as many tyrannical features as any government. We could talk all day about the well-documented "initiations of force" of Microsoft, including outright fraud and contract law violations.

Unions, at their best, are a counter to the political power of big money.

I believe that one of the biggest mistakes the US ever made was to try and suppress the union movement with illegally-applied police power during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That gave socialist/communist thought a major boost, and eventually led to that sort of thinking infiltrating the Democratic party and eventually becoming "mainstream thought".

In any case, once contract law is fully recognized and supported, the ability to do collective contracts on a voluntary basis CANNOT be suppressed. So something union-like is not only possible under a full-tilt A-C society, it's close to inevitable.

[Orthonym]

I remember the last time I voted in GA. The Libertarian candidate for Sec. of Labor was in favor of repealing the "Right to Work" law, on the theory that any person or group of persons can
make any voluntary agreement with any other person or group.
How does an employer making a contract with a union differ from that employer making a contract with one of these "Employee Outsourcing, We Do the Paperwork!" firms we have these days?

[Sylvilagus Aquaticus]

Being a recently unemployed 'contract employee' of a high tech company (think HAL) I'm not too wild about that sort of thing as much as I used to be. The company my group worked for decided to not renew our purchase order and let the 'experienced, high-earners' go while keeping the new-hires (who didn't negotiate as well as we did). The contract company still makes the same for all 'contractors'.

I still think it bites, Ornothym.

I consider myself a Libertarian, but by the layout of the poll I'm an Anarcho-Capitalist. I have to look out for myself because I don't expect (or want!) anyone else to.
An it harm none, do what you will.

BTW, anyone need a genuis hardware analyist/UNIX sysadmin/ registered nurse who knows how to manipulate the system? :D

Regards,
Rabbit.

[Jim March]

Rabbit: nobody is saying there aren't any problems with private contracts. As you've seen, things can go wrong.

But it beats the living hell out of the "chronic initiations of force" you get with government control :scrutiny:.

It appears that collective bargaining is more crucial when the skill level of the workers drops. High-end labor tends to get treated well by virtue of it's rarity.

In the late 19th century, it wasn't the railroad engineers that needed to unionize, it was the porters and rail-layers and such.

In high-tech or skilled-labor fields there may be more problems with collective bargaining than benefits.

The "scab problem" gets worse when the union strikes for relatively minor reasons. As the causes driving the strike get more serious, the odds of the company attracting scabs (people willing to work outside of the union, breaking the strike) get lower.

Which is as it should be. So long as government force isn't involved.

And yes, the guy doing the poll didn't understand the various "free market political movements" so we can't adequately define what we are in the survey. Classic case of poor survey questions pre-determining the results. In this case it appears accidental but you can be sure the "pros" do it deliberately. A LOT of such "warped polls" appear on THR, enough so that it's disheartening to see how many of us don't understand how poll data gets garbled this way.

[Orthonym]

I voted "varies/other".

[jsalcedo]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And yes, the guy doing the poll didn't understand the various "free market political movements" so we can't adequately define what we are in the survey. Classic case of poor survey questions pre-determining the results. In this case it appears accidental but you can be sure the "pros" do it deliberately. A LOT of such "warped polls" appear on THR, enough so that it's disheartening to see how many of us don't understand how poll data gets garbled this way
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The poll was meant for fun /some info

I don't pretend to be a political scientist or economist.
I just took 9 stereotypical labels and placed them for people to rate themselves.

The "none of the above" catagory and the ability to post
a different view negates possible ignorance or bias I may have had when creating the poll.

Make your own poll with the 16 choices
and lets see how you do.

[Chris Rhines]

I know where I am.
I'm guessing that everyone else does, too. :D

- Chris

[mercedesrules]

Ancap.

Whew, I'm not alone ;) In fact, could we get one more to even the score?

MR

[Greg L]

You got me MR ;) .

Greg

[Monkeyleg]

None of the labels fit. I belong to the Monkeyleg Party. Our platform:

1. If you can make money doing something without actually harming someone else, have at it. We won't stand in your way.

2. To pay for the limited services the Monkeyleg government will provide you, a tax of 15% will be imposed on your income. That goes for everyone, from the burger-flipper to Bill Gates. This 15% tax is the only tax that can be levied upon you. Your tires, cars, homes, booze, boats, savings, investments, bobblehead dolls and other property are yours, not the government's.

3. The Monkeyleg government will provide for the national defense, secure our borders, and perform other functions as outlined in the Constitution. It will not attempt to prevent residents of Nowhere, NV from building a road in order to protect a fish.

4. If you want to slather your spouse with Miracle Whip, insert small rodents into various bodily orifices, or copulate while listening to The Trashmen's "The Bird," that's your business. If you try to do so in public, you'll be arrested.

5. If you want to screw up your life, feel free to do so. Just don't ask to be paid for doing so.

6. In the spirit of compassion, the Monkeyleg government will provide financial aid to those who cannot work and whose families cannot help them financially. This aid is thus pretty much limited to quadraplegic orphans with no language skills.

7. If you had the fun of making the baby, you'd better stick around to pay for it.

8. If you have the money to buy an M1 Abrams tank, congratulations. If you use it to blow up your neighbor's house, we have more tanks than you and will use them on you.

9. Congress shall convene twice a year just long enough to answer the question, "why are we here?"

10. Congress shall be prohibited from attaching to any road, airport, building, tree, plant, fire hydrant, outhouse, or whorehouse, the name "Clinton."

This party platform is a work in progress. Check back soon for further details.

[Tamara]

...I could get behind the Monkeyleg Party as a vast improvement on our current tepid offerings. Where do I sign up? :D

[mercedesrules]

(Monkeyleg) ...a tax of 15% will be imposed on your income.
Tyrant!

MR

[Orthonym]

Sign me up too! What's so bad about a poll tax amounting to, say, about 10% of what I spend on my tobacco habit? The great advantage of poll and property taxes,IMNSHO, is that they don't require the government to be unnecessarily nosy. After all, who owns which piece of land and who's registered to vote are already in the public record, aren't they? Oh, and prior to the ratification of that odious 16th Amendment, the only direct tax allowed by the U.S. Constitution was a POLL tax! [Edit] (in the sense of counting heads, aka _polls_)

[Monkeyleg]

Mercedesrules: ok, how about a VAT (value added tax) or national sales tax in the vicinity of, say, 10%? In order for it to be really "fair," it would exclude food and medicine.

Let's be realistic. We need tax revenue to pay for bombers, bombs, soldiers and the like to make the French fear us.

Wait, strike that. We can get the French to fear us by air-dropping samples of Sure deodorant over their country.

But we still need to make real combatants fear us. So, we need to pay something in taxes.

Tamara, what's unnecessarily intrusive to you? The limitations on the use of Abrams tanks? :)

[dev_null]

I voted for anarchistic gnostic Thelemite. Or as close to it as I could find.

-0-

[roscoe]

Why is there no "liberal libertarian" category? I know quite a few, but somehow the only two liberal categories were pretty unflattering.

[Sylvilagus Aquaticus]

Would the Monkeyleg Government give me a grant to do it in public if I called it art?

Oh, most of the Thelemites I know are pretty decent folks, dev_null. Same goes for most of the Asatru around here, but they're a little more itchy, though. Not that much of a 'diverse' sense of humor.

:cool:

Regards,
Rabbit.

[Monkeyleg]

"Would the Monkeyleg Government give me a grant to do it in public if I called it art?"

Absolutely not. No government-funded "art" of any type. That's what patrons and foundations are for. If you can find someone who'll pay for you to play nookey in public, good luck. But do it at their house, not in front of mine. ;)

And no public-funded broadcasting either. ($300,000,000 may not seem like a lot to a congressman, but it does to me).

And no "franking" privileges for congressmen. If they want to send out thinly-disguised campaign literature, they can pay for it with their own money.