I just like the idea of smaller government. I’m very much in tune with a lot of progressive ideas, but I like a small government. Even in bad governments, they start off with good ideas. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." If you don’t give the government the power over you, then they can’t kill you. The more you let people have their rights, the better society is off.
Something that would swing my vote would be guns. The Second Amendment. I think all law abiding citizens should be allowed to have guns. Also, freedom of speech and freedom of the press. I feel like if someone is trying to take my guns, or my speech, or my press away, I don’t like that. In every society that’s ever harmed their own people, the first thing that they will do is take away their speech and their guns. If you ever give any society the right to take that away from the people, we’re not safer.
FREEDOM OF SPEECH
Cancel culture is like piranhas, they’ll eat their own too. Jordan Peterson is someone I really like. He has a great quote that says, “In order to speak, you have to risk being offensive.” Just because someone is offended doesn’t mean something shouldn’t be brought up. Also, at different times throughout the world and throughout history, something is considered offensive. Just because the blade cuts the right way for you right now doesn’t mean that later it won’t cut against you the other way.
Without freedom of speech, we’ll never change. I think that’s really important because without it, I don’t think I would ever change any of my opinions.
LGBTQ+ RIGHTS
It’s sticky there. I have no problem with gays. My favorite uncle when I was a kid was gay. I grew up having respect for him and never even thought about it. I have no problem calling anyone the gender that they want to be called out of respect. I don’t have any problem respecting them as a person and calling them what they want. I’ve had this conversation with my friend before. I’m trying to be as open and progressive as I possibly can, but I don’t think it’s right to force me into dating a transgender. They can live their life, do all of the surgeries they want, I don’t care as long as they are paying for their surgery. You can’t force a state to pay for a surgery.
I want to get married one day and have kids. I need a woman, a biological woman to give me children. I want my own kids. I understand there is adoption, but I want my genetics passed on. Transgender is a very grey area. The world is full of grey areas. There’s no such thing as a black world and a white world, it’s all grey to me. I’m trying to be progressive. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I want him/her to feel like they are included and respected in society, but you can’t force me to do anything.
I am just trying to hop on. I want to hop on board but if people are forcing me to date a man, I don’t like it. I like straight women. My friend pushes me and tells me that it’s transphobic of me not to date a trans. I am trying to respect them as an individual if they want to be a woman, but they have to respect me as an individual that I am a straight man looking for a biological woman.
They all deserve to be treated with respect.
RACIAL MOVEMENTS AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM
I agree with the movement but not the organization.
I worry about the money trails going straight into the democratic party. They aren’t a completely independent movement if they have an agenda and I am not a democrat. I don’t want to fund democrats. I’m always for anything that is peaceful. I understand because I’ve had my moments when I was younger and been mad and do something really stupid. I think a lot of people inside that movement have done that and it tarnishes the movement.
I’ve never had a problem with the the Black Lives Matter movement as far as what it wants. They want more equality, which I think is great. I wish the movement focused more on realistic stuff that we can do, for example inside the criminal justice system. As a libertarian, if you talk to me about not having a police state, you are speaking my language. Let’s go there. Let’s talk about that. Let’s make sure the police can’t just do whatever they want to. That’s a winning topic for me. Talking about drug offenders, as a liberatarian I think we should legalize all drugs. At least decriminalize them the same as alcohol. It’s not a criminal thing to do unless you’re driving on it because you’re at risk of hurting other people. I think we should take everybody out of jail who is in there for drug related offenses, but only if they are non-violent. The only people I think should be locked up or put in a prison cell are violent criminals because they are endangering society. Therefore, we have to take them out of society.
As I liberatrian, you can even talk to be about getting rid of the death penalty, taking away a state’s right to kill its own people. If you don’t give the state the right to kill us, then they can’t kill us.
I agree with a lot of stuff with BLM, but when it gets to politics I wish they would leave that out. I think we should unite not divide. The more we can come together on stuff, the better off society would be.
CAPITALISM
I believe in a mixed economy 100%. I love a lot of the ideas of a socialized economy, but you need to find ways to pay for it. That’s where capitalism comes in. Each of them used 100% is bad. We have to find a way to make money to pay for the socialized side that we want. With Joe Biden, we can maybe see some of the military spending go down and put it into more subsidies for Obamacare or bringing more socialized medicine.
BORDER SECURITY
I believe that we are all nation states and a nation state has to have control over its own borders, but I am on the DREAMERs side. I think that’s fine. I want to encourage all of us to have more of a humanistic outlook on things. I still think that every nation has to have points of entry. There's somewhere in the middle between complete isolationism - conservative way of thinking - and progressive where they want no borders, no lines. As soon as we start saying there are no borders, that’s when the socialized stuff has to go. We have a hard enough time paying for American citizens. Paying for everybody else in the world that wants to come isn’t going to work. There has to be some sort of balance.
ABORTION
I have had very close family members that have had abortions. The libertarian in me likes the state not telling people what to do, but the human side of me says that I don’t want to live in a society where we are okay killing your own children. If people want to call it an embryo or a clump of cells that’s fine, but we all know what we’re talking about.
I do believe 100% that an abortion doesn’t just scar you physically, it’ll scar you emotionally. You will remember that for the rest of your life. I don’t like abortion. In a perfect world we wouldn’t need them, but I understand why we need them today. I understand why we have them. If you ask me personally, I am against them, but it is not a swing vote for me.
I think it’s an ugly topic. We are trying to mainstream it into it not being a big deal. I understand women saying “my body, my choice”, but also as a man I don’t want to give up my say. If I got a girl pregnant and she decided to abort it, to her it’s just a clump of cells. To me, that’s my kid and I want to be able to have the right to stand up for my kid’s life. In today’s society we don’t even care about that. We encourage men to be dogs. We tell them it’s not their problem and the woman can just go abort it so they don’t have to worry about it. That is just breeding more lazy men. I think that doesn’t help.
What if we actually made out men more responsible? What if we made them care more? What we are doing is encouraging them to care less. If we encouraged them to care more, we would have better dads.
This is the topic I’ve been told the most that I can’t have an opinion on, because I am a man. That doesn’t feel right to me, but I understand both sides.
