Greetings
Yes, shock of shocks. I am back amongst you, at least for now. You are probably wondering what compelled me to come out of "hiding," especially when I said I wasn't going to write here again for the foreseeable future. I'll explain my reemergence in my next entry. In the meantime, I shall start setting you up for that entry by writing this one.
My two or three regular readers (whom I’ll probably have to round up as long-lost strays since they probably think I have long since abandoned them), may not consider this entry to be their usual cup of tea. Nonetheless, I hope they will read all of it anyway, without skipping or skimming. I don’t have millions of regular readers, or even five, so I am basically writing it only for them (besides, who but they would bother to slog through this long, slightly off-topic intro?).
Cryptic Warning
I shall not be entirely forthcoming in this entry (actually, as the title states, it’s a survey). If I were to be forthcoming, I would ruin my reason for writing it. I shall also present it as a "what-if" scenario, even though "what-if" is not exactly appropriate in this particular case. I am doing so simply because, in spite of racking my brains, I cannot think of a "trickier" way to present the information
The Run Up to This Entry
A while back, I was poking around on the internet and found a few interesting (some might say "radical") quotes by a character who would probably be run out of most modern "conservative" communities (which means he and I would get along swimmingly ;-). In many ways, this character (who shall remain nameless in this entry) reminds me of one of my greatest heroes, Mahatma Gandhi (you may agree with me when you read the first four quotes below). In many other ways, he reminds me of myself. Some of his more -- seemingly -- "unrealistic" beliefs are identical to my own, down to the very words he uses to explain those beliefs. I thought I was one of the few people left in the United States who still adheres to such beliefs. I certainly didn't imagine that someone who has climbed the ladder of (relative) success -- as this man has done -- could have done so while continually making his "unrealistic" beliefs abundantly clear to the many conservative people around him. Yet that is what he did, and I think he even convinced many of them to agree with him. I, on the other hand, have been shouted down and ridiculed most of my life by most of my conservative friends whenever I stated these same supposedly "unrealistic" ideas.
But What If...
Trust me. There is a lot more substance to this "what-if" than you might imagine. It is definitely not a pointless, time-wasting "what-if," even though, by its very "what-if" premise, it may seem so. It is well worth your time to read on.
As I was reading this man's quotes, a "what-if" scenario suddenly occurred to me: What if he were to run for president of the United States? Would he stand a chance? Would he be able to attract even a small number of Americans to his supposedly "unrealistic" beliefs? Robert F. Kennedy (in 1968) is probably the last person to have run for office who might be similar to this man, at least in some ways. He is, without a doubt, totally unlike ALL of the bought-and-paid-for "top-tier" candidates who are presently running for president IN EITHER PARTY. He is totally unlike most of the minor candidates, too. In fact, if he had been born in a different generation and under different circumstances, I think he might have been perfectly at home in the hippie culture of the late 1960s (see if you agree with me when you read his quotes, especially the last one, which is something I’ve said with great enthusiasm and conviction since I was a kid).
"If" he were to run, how would the corporate media treat him? Would they ignore him and/or ridicule him, or blatantly lie about him, as they have so infamously done to so many non-traditional presidential candidates in the past? If this man were to run for president, and if his beliefs were reported IN CONTEXT and IN THEIR ENTIRETY (something the agenda-driven, corporate "mainstream" media is usually loathe to do, especially if they don't like a particular candidate, which is a crime, since they don’t own the public airwaves), how would the American public receive him? Would he appeal more to liberals and independents or more to independents and conservatives? Or to elements of all three? That may seem like a dumb question in light of what I've already written, but he simply doesn't fit very well into the ridiculously fictional left-right divide that most Americans have been thoroughly fooled into thinking exists.
Instructions
Please answer the following questions with a simple "Yes" or "No" or "Agree" or "Disagree" (or "Don't Know"). You are welcome to answer them in your head or on paper or however you may prefer. There is no need and no way for the computer to tally your answers. These questions and your answers are for your own benefit, not mine -- although I would enjoy knowing how you answered in an overall manner (mostly with "Yes" and "Agree," or a mix, or mostly with "No" and "Disagree"?).
I especially want you to decide if the man appears to be: A.) more of a mainstream liberal, B.) more of a radical liberal, C.) mostly independent, or D.) something else entirely.
Even if you figure out my little "game" right away, I hope you will keep reading anyway.
Disclaimer
I do not claim to be a good "survey" writer, at least not when I have a particular goal in mind. While the man’s quotations are nearly perfectly worded, the questions that I wrote in my own words are very simplistic (in the truest sense of that word); however, they weren't devised to win any contests for complexity or professionalism. Obviously, the statements in quotation marks are his.
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The Survey
1.) Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? -- "The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence."
2.) Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? -- "All initiation of force is a violation of someone else's rights, whether initiated by an individual or the state..., even if it's supposed to be for the benefit of another individual or group of individuals."
3.) Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? -- "Legitimate use of violence can only be that which is required in self-defense."
4.) Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? -- "Legal issues aside, the American people and government should never abide the use of torture by our military or intelligence agencies. A decent society never accepts or justifies torture. It dehumanizes both torturer and victim yet seldom produces reliable intelligence."
5.) Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? -- "I believe our troops should be brought back to the United States without delay." He goes on to say that he means the process of returning home should begin without further delay, but it should then proceed at a safe and realistic rate of speed.
6.) Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? -- "I have never met anyone who did not support our troops. Sometimes, however, we hear accusations that someone or some group does not support the men and women serving in our Armed Forces. But this is pure demagoguery, and it is intellectually dishonest... Cliches about supporting the troops are designed to distract from failed policies, policies promoted by powerful special interests that benefit from war, anything to steer the discussion away from the real reasons the war in Iraq will not end anytime soon."
7.) Do you agree that the U.S. government should stop threatening such tiny countries as Iran, Pakistan and Syria, countries that could not possibly threaten our freedoms or national security, even if they tried as a combined force?
8.) Ideally speaking, would you be in favor of withdrawing American military forces from all countries around the world, thus saving billions or even trillions of dollars a year and earning the immediate respect of the other nations of the world?
9.) Do you believe that continual U.S. military aggression (and mere presence) around the world makes us less secure because it invites hostility toward us?
10.) Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? -- "When one person [the president] can initiate war, by its definition, a republic no longer exists."
11.) Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? -- "Military force is justified only in self-defense; naked aggression is the province of dictators and rogue states. This is the danger of a new 'preemptive first-strike' doctrine."
12.) Do you agree or disagree with the following answer to the following question? -- Question: "What is the most pressing moral issue in the United States right now?" -- Answer: "I think it is the acceptance just recently that we now promote preemptive war. I do not believe that's part of the American tradition. We in the past have always declared war in the defense of our liberties or to aid somebody, but now we have accepted the principle of preemptive war. We have rejected the 'just war' theory of Christianity. And now, tonight, we hear that we're not even willing to remove from the table a preemptive nuclear strike against a country that has done no harm to us directly and is no threat to our national security. I mean, we have to come to our senses about this issue of war and preemption and go back to traditions and our constitution and defend our liberties and defend our rights, but not to think that we can change the world by force of arms and to start wars....
13.) Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? -- "The argument has been reduced to this: If we leave now, Iraq will be left in a mess, implying the implausible, that if we stay it won't be a mess. Since it could go badly when we leave, that blame must be placed on those who took us there, not on those of us who now insist that Americans no longer need be killed or maimed, and that Americans no longer need to kill any more Iraqis. We've had enough of both."
14.) Are you opposed to the United States becoming a police state, even in the name of "protecting the citizens"?
15.) Are you in favor of a president who would nominate judges for the Supreme Court who would promote and protect citizen's constitutional rights instead of further empowering an ever more dictatorial executive branch?
16.) Do you favor the return of habeas corpus (the right to know why you have been arrested and the right to an attorney, among other things)?
17.) Do you believe in repealing the Patriot Act, which abolishes a number of our constitutional freedoms?
18.) Do you believe in repealing the Military Commissions Act, which allows the president and other law-enforcement figures, at their whim, to declare U.S. citizens as enemy combatants, thus depriving them of all of their constitutional rights?
19.) Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? -- "America was founded by men who understood that the threat of domestic [government] tyranny is as great as any threat from abroad. If we want to be worthy of their legacy, we must resist the rush toward ever-increasing state control of our society. Otherwise, our own government will become a greater threat to our freedoms than any foreign terrorist."
20.) Do you believe in protecting the rights / civil rights of every individual, regardless of race, color, creed, religion, ethnicity, etc.?
21.) Are you in favor of putting an end to "corporate welfare" and other policies promoted by corporate lobbyists and enacted by congress and the president, "welfare" that enriches the wealthy at the expense of the middle and lower classes?
22.) Are you in favor of reigning in or eliminating federal agencies (and even private agencies masquerading as federal agencies) that abuse their positions of authority and infringe upon our individual rights?
23.) Are you in favor of severely limiting the unchecked power of the CIA in order to put an end to the evil deeds they have been committing around the world (and possibly in our own country) for the past sixty years?
24.) Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? -- "I am absolutely opposed to a national ID card. This is a total contradiction of what a free society is all about. The purpose of government is to protect the secrecy and the privacy of all individuals, not the secrecy of government. We don't need a national ID card."
25.) Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? -- "Monitoring the transactions of every American in order to catch those few who are involved in some sort of illegal activity turns one of the great bulwarks of our liberty, the presumption of innocence, on its head. The federal government has no right to treat all Americans as criminals by spying on their relationship with their doctors, employers, or bankers."
26.) Are you in favor of decriminalizing medical marijuana?
27.) Are you in favor of decriminalizing marijuana altogether?
28.) Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? -- "You wanna get rid of drug crime in this country? Fine, let's just get rid of all the drug laws."
29.) Are you in favor of a president who says the following? -- "I no longer believe in the death penalty. I believe it has been issued unjustly. If you're rich, you get away with it. If you're poor, and you're from the inner city, you're more likely to be prosecuted and convicted; and today with the DNA evidence [we've seen that] there's been too many mistakes [made], so I am now opposed to the federal death penalty."
30.) Do you agree with any elected official who would vote against a federal law banning same-sex marriage?
31.) Do you agree with any elected official who would vote against a federal law banning abortion?
32.) Theoretically speaking, do you agree or disagree with the following statement? -- "Justifying conscription [military draft] to promote the cause of liberty is one of the most bizarre notions ever conceived by man! Forced servitude, with the risk of death and serious injury as a price to live free, makes no sense. What right does anyone have to sacrifice the lives of others for some cause of questionable value? Even if well motivated it can’t justify using force on uninterested persons. It’s said that the 18-year-old owes it to his country. Hogwash! It just as easily could be argued that a 50-year-old chickenhawk, who promotes war and places the danger on innocent young people, owes a heck of a lot more to the country than the 18-year-old being denied his liberty for a cause that has no justification."
In Conclusion, I Repeat...
Does this man appear to be: A.) more of a mainstream liberal, B.) more of a radical liberal, C.) mostly independent, or D.) something else entirely.
P.S.
If you've guessed the identity of this person, please, for the sake of anyone else who "takes" this survey, don't reveal his name in your comments.
