USA :: minguo.info

Jan already gave a quite specific overview of the issues he cares about: http://minguo.info/usa/node/97

It's my turn to attempt to make a list of political and social issues I care about. In my case, however, it is not as simple as copying and pasting a ready-made list from a third-party web site.

Let me try. The list won't be exhaustive and won't be in order of importance, but it'll be a start for our discussion.

The first thing I should mention is that I care about some core principles. Those principles are personal freedom, personal responsibility and the obligation not to harm others. Taken at face value, it may appear to some that those are the values extolled by right-wing conservatives, by Libertarians, even. However, my take on them often lead me to support traditional liberal, left-wing policies. I'll have opportunities later to explain what I mean.

We'll have to talk about the theoretical role of the government and its size.

In Jan's blog, we already mentioned electoral reform: that includes election method, electronic voting, voter participation (voter registration, or voter suppression).

We'll have to discuss the meaning of personal freedom and responsibility. To what extent should we pursue freedom? What about the freedom of other people, that of people who are not here to speak for themselves (citizens of other countries, future generations, etc.)

What about the rights of the many groups of people who are usually and routinely exploited?

The tax system is a topic that is also very near to my heart. As soon as we speak about government (mentioned above), we must speak about its revenues: what taxes are fair, and which aren't. And: why?

Workers are more often than not exploited. What share of the profits made by the enterprise where they work, are the employees entitled to? Profit sharing is the third issue I care most deeply about (the first two being electoral reform and taxation).

With all the above topics, we'll necessarily be speaking about environment protection.

Also, we can talk about other issues that are often hot-button issues in American politics: death penalty, abortion, pro-choice/pro-life, religions, etc.

As we can see, there are many issues to cover. We can take our time and cover all of this little by little over the coming months. However, to do things properly, we'd probably better try to cover them in some logical order. Two topics that I'd like to cover early on are: the role of government, and personal freedom. Maybe I'll use some Ron Paul quotes to offer a Libertarian perspective on those issues. But that'll be for another day.