Political Ideology

Kia Schluetz

AP Government

October 10, 2011

                                                My Political Ideology

        1.    I consider myself to be more of a liberal (if I cannot be independent), because I support many freedoms. I believe that people should be allowed to do as they wish, if it does not hurt someone else. I would not say I am very liberal, however, because some extreme liberals are also socialists, and I support capitalism. There are also issues that I care about that do not agree with the majority of either side.

        2.    Areas in which I have strong interest are animal rights, the environment, population control, and keeping gun rights. Animals I am concerned about, because I believe that they should not suffer from living in cages their entire lives, as they often do in corporate farms. Chickens are treated especially horrible, and cages with far too many birds are often stacked on top of one another, allowing feces and the limbs of birds who have attacked each other to fall down into other cages. Lab animals, who are often seen as victims, are treated much more kindly than this. Laws for animal testing are very stringent compared to those regulating the health and happiness of the food we eat. Hunting is a much more preferable method of getting meat, because the animals are not crammed in small areas, and can live life in a more natural setting. It also helps keep certain populations under control, since, for example, the natural predators of deer have been nearly eradicated. If laws made to support hunting, healthier and happier corporate farm animals, or even funding given to educate people about animal rights became more prevalent, I would be more satisfied. This ties into my concerns about gun rights, because if regulations become too strict, it will discourage hunting.  For example, a misguided and uneducated attempt to protect animals could involve restricting hunting seasons, which could lead to an overpopulation of some animals. Also with gun rights, I think that people have the right to protect their homes.  The environment is a concern because while people should be able to do what they want, there is a line between using nature and destroying it. People need to be educated about harm to the environment, and there need to be laws against harming it in any significant, long lasting way.This is the planet we all must live on, and it is not entirely our world to kill. Other species live here just as we do, and some were here before us. Population control for reducing the number of people putting pressure on the Earth ties into this as well. If there were not such huge hordes of people living on Earth, we would not need to have as many laws to protect the environment and humans, from humans. I would propose a law to heavily tax anyone with more than two children, in order to ensure that humans do not over-burden the planet with our needs.

         3.    The quiz Political Compass said that I was a left-leaning Libertarian, with the coordinates left/right:-3.75, and Authoritarian/Libertarian:-4.97. I think it was mostly accurate, because there were some really good questions, but it did leave out some of the issues that I care about. For instance, not one question asked about the rights of animals in corporate farming, or even the rights of animals in the wild. I would have answered that animals have rights to live in their natural spaces or to at least have enough room to move.

      4.   The quiz World’s Smallest Political Quiz said that I am a very liberal Libertarian, with my score for Personal being 90, and my score for Economic being 60. A Libertarian seems to be a person who values fewer rules and more freedoms to choose what they wish to do, outside causing someone else harm. I think this quiz was fairly accurate, but it did not go into nearly as much depth as the other quiz did. There were no questions about animal rights in this one either.

       5.    The Political Compass quiz was probably more accurate, because it was more in-depth, asking thought provoking questinos with specific meanings, as well as including a range of answers. It also had more questions. It had four answer options instead of three, and there was no neutral answer, which forced you to pick a side. I liked that the questions were not phrased in the usual, cliched manner, and I feel that the different wording would tend to draw people's thoughts away from the views of other people who have used a particular phrase over and over and associated their own biases with it. For example, the phrase "all life is precious" is a phrase that has strong ties to pro-life views, and does not simply mean to most people that living organisms are valuable.

        6.    The less accurate one seemed to be the World’s Smallest Political Quiz, because, really, how accurate can a quiz that asks just 10 questions be? When judging something as large as a person’s entire view of the political world, there should be a bit more depth in the criteria being judged (meaning the questions). I would have appreciated a larger range of questions. As in the case of David Stark, if one or two questions do not line up with the ideology that a certain person belongs to, then that person will probably get a result that does not match them. David ended up with results that showed him as a liberal, while he viewed himself as a conservative. He might have answered one or two questions in a liberal way, but the small number of total questions gave these few a large amount of weight.

      7.    I learned that I would probably agree with the Libertarian Party on many things, such as freedom to make choices in abortion, freedom from government interference in the market, and freedom to make choices in sexuality, though I’d never really thought about being a Libertarian before. I also learned that I am liberal, but on some issues I might take a more conservative view, like on issues concerning gun laws. I may not understand the need from conservatives to protect "traditional" families and ways of life, but I do understand the importance of having the opportunity to own a gun. Guns are just as important to me as to many conservatives, and not only do they respresent the freedom to protect one's home, but many of my family guns will be passed down as heirlooms. I learned that just because many of my ideas line up with liberal views does not mean that I agree with everything that liberals think.

       8.     After searching through absolutely every single person on the list of possible people to agree with, I have decided that the only Ohio politician that I agree with is Sherrod C. Brown. He has good ideas for reasonable limits on things that should have limits, and seems to want people to be well-informed, whereas opponents of his do not seem to want people to make informed choices, but instead seems to want to make choices for people. For example, Brown wants every woman who wants an abortion to be made aware of every option before choosing, and Govenor Kasich is pro-life, giving no choice to people who could be educated and then allowed to choose for themselves. He also seems to support gay rights, and policies that strengthen education. Brown wants to improve educational funding. Many other politicians have decided to place higher importance on things like the military than education, such as Senator Steven Chabot. Chabot has said that educational funding should remain the same, while favoring higher spending on weapons and military intelligence. Brown supports reasonable gun laws, including ones that require them to be produced with child safety locks, but does not restrict the opportunity for citizens to own one more than Federal laws already do (such as in cases of people who have committed felonies, and are not allowed to own a gun), as well as supporting laws that benefit the environment. I agree with many of the stances he has taken on these issues.

       9.    The politician that I like least of those representing Ohio would be Jean Schmidt. She is pro-life, which means that shedoes not support the right of women to make their own descisions with their bodies. She also does not support gay marriage, which I think should be allowed for anyone who wants to take that path in life. She supports heavy gun restrictions, which is the chief reason I find her to be worse than other conservatives, as most of them I agree with on this issue. Schmidt also does not wish to allow illegal immigrants a legal pathway for becoming citizens, which is unreasonable because the only problem with illegal immigration (in my opinion) is that aliens are breaking the law. If they can remedy the problem by becoming legal citizens, then I see no problem. Clearly, denying aliens a way to become legal makes no sense. Lastly, Schmidt supports the use of Federal money to interfere with the economy, which I disagree with because the economy is supposed to stand on its own in a capitalist nation. The government's idea of a stimulus plan is distributing money to wealthy corporations, which is unbeneficial to the American economy. Jean Schmidt is nearly the polar opposite of Sherrod C. Brown, since she supports many restraints to freedom, and does not want things that would increase freedoms Brown would likely support.