Seriously, what the hell is a "progressive conservative?" Every political compass test doohicky thing I answer always places me socially liberal, financially conservative. Or, up and to the right.

Now, these aren't scientific questions in the least: they're simply yes/no or agree/disagree answers to simplified questions (they're popularity polls for people who never really evolved past college level binge drinking). Let's be perfectly honest with ourselves: you cannot answer the question of troop withdrawal from Iraq with a simple "bring them home" as the process of bringing the troops home is far more complicated than packing up our shit and shipping out.

In these polls I, apparently, agree with Ron Paul the most. While I readily admit to supporting him (he does come the closest to expressing my views), I think he's really off base on a lot of other issues (immigration and border control to be specific). Nevertheless, I apparently do not relate to any of the candidates social or economic opinions.

So, since I don't know what the fuck a "progressive conservative" is, I thought I'd outline my positions on some generally important political issues:

Iraq - I want to pull the troops out, I really do, and I hate Mr. Bush for finishing up his father's dick waving contest; but, I can't help but have this nagging feeling that we now owe the people of Iraq more than just a "sorry, we're fucking stupid, good luck" and moving on to the next helpless country. I don't know what, exactly, could be done about this - Iraq has already failed to meet any and all goals given to its government - but we're the ones that fucked up the lives of millions of people, we've got to be held accountable in some fashion. I guess "stop the aggression, start the rebuilding" would be my motto: get the defense contractors out of there and bring in some construction contractors instead.

Iran - It's impossible to talk about Iraq without mentioning Iran. Look, I don't trust Ahmadinejad, but it was the opinion of the NIE report and the IAEA that Iran's nuclear program was for peaceful purposes - nuclear energy. While uranium enrichment could be used to further enrich uranium for weapons use, that doesn't mean it will be (hell, enriched uranium could be used to make the worlds largest glowstick, doesn't mean it'll happen though). But nothing is getting accomplished by Mr. Bush's dick waving contest. This situation needs to be handled diplomatically, not violently.

Gun Control - I can see how gun control could help in certain, niche, situations - but they are few and far between. Ultimately, I think gun control laws are, far and away, short sighted: anything can be used to kill someone. Flick an exacto knife at someone's jugular and they'll be dead in a few seconds, and the murder is practically untraceable since there is no ejected slug or shell for evidence collection. I say let everyone have guns and bullets - don't leave the people who need to defend themselves, defenseless.

"But what about school shootings?" To this I say: the schools have failed in protecting the students properly. They've also failed to identify social problems and mental disorders. Quite frankly I would've loved to see parents have the ability to remove their children from these schools and suing the schools for untold sums of money. But, I digress: there is pretty dramatic social failure when someone decides to just kill random people. We need to identify the problem (hint: it has nothing to do with gun availability or video games, parents) and then identify the patterns that leads to these problems. Once the problems and the problem patterns are identified we can better educate ourselves and possibly even treat people who fall into this category.

Environment - I've always kind of been concerned about the environment - Christmas used to have sub-30 temperatures in New York City, but recently it's been hovering way above that - but, I've also felt that the environmental problem could eventually be solved by the economy if big government didn't get in the way of everything.

Case in point: property rights. If people actually had property rights (that is, they owned the land, rather than being a temporary eminent domain lease) they could sue companies for creating health hazards. As it is, though, people don't have property rights, just a list of shit they have to take care of. Hence, companies only really need to care about the limits big government places on them.

If you give people actual property rights, they then have the right to sue companies creating the environmental problems. Enough lawsuit settlements will eventually cause the executives to take notice and take actions which will prevent future lawsuits, such as installing filters and scrubbing anything that might cause pollution (this is assuming that government doesn't pass legislation banning lawsuits of this nature).

Economy - While it's apparent that I agree with Ron Paul on the environment, it's even more apparent that I agree with him on the economy: dear god, get the government out of our way! The only thing big government can do to the economy is stifle it through legislation. Leave the economy alone, it will fix itself. While you're at it, get out of the economy now, because government has no right to be mucking about with it.

Under the right circumstances the economy is a lot like the Internet - a self-correcting platform. Yes, bad things are always going to happen - outages on the Internet happen, and so do monopolies - but the beautiful thing is that if you let it run wild, it'll always correct itself; but, you cannot control it in any way, shape, or form - this includes government granted/protected monopolies, fiat money systems and centrally controlled interest rates. Think of the economy and the Internet as a very complex algorithm which you don't have the source code to. Sure, you can usually guess what the outcome of any given input might be, but if you try to manually manipulate a complex algorithm, sooner or later you're going to introduce a series of uncorrectable problems, and shits going to hit the fan.

In other words: let the economy control every aspect of itself and it would be fine. Or, at the very least, it would have a much more solid foundation than it currently does.

Security - Benjamin Franklin is often attributed to this proverb (though it is inconclusive who really wrote it) but it rings true: "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." You cannot - and must not - relinquish your essential liberties in order to feel safe, because that action will cause a ripple affect throughout the years.

The role of national security should fall on the shoulders of local government and the economy - not a single, national bureaucracy. First, we need to understand that there are a lot of different people in this country with a lot of different opinions on how things should be handled: one group of people feel that there should be strict control over everyone, while another group feels it's only a fringe element and is better ignored. So, if we left local government decide what to do, in terms of security, then that allows multiple groups of people with different trains of thought to do things differently.

Second, if we leave security to the economy, rather than national government, there would be no protections for companies whose security procedures failed as spectacularly as the governments did on 9/11/2001. American Airlines, if it was their own security that failed so miserably, would no longer be a company today because of the economic reaction - and this would send one hell of a shock wave through the travel industry: companies would start to beef up their own security in response to the economic factors. Hell, given a really free economy, some airlines slogan might be "feel secure when you fly."

Instead of letting the economy decide what to do about their own security measures, the government stepped in and, in the wake of 9/11, almost single-handedly destroyed an entire industry. Remember those government programs to bail airlines companies out of their financial burdens? They dissolved investor confidence in the airline industry. Government intervention in an economic matter fucked things up.

Terrorists - I don't know what terrorism is. At face value it's a subversive act which kills a small group of people as a scare tactic. And, as a method of destroying a constitutional republic, it's very effective. You can't just simply go off and "fight the bad guys" - because the "bad guy" in this case could be a pissed off white boy in Oklahoma. It's not a battle of arms, but of ideologies - and that's simply something that cannot be, nor will it ever be, won (just ask Israel and Palestine). Instead of fighting an ideological war, we need to understand what exactly spawns terrorism, study it, and find ways to minimize it - preemptive wars are simply not the way to handle this issue.

Health Care - Universal health care is a good idea - in theory. In practice it has its own set of problems and, given the United States governments ability to fuck things up (see also FEMA, 9/11, education, unemployment, plummeting dollar value, social security, and a host of other government-caused problems) I just don't see this as a good idea. Hell, the health insurance industry has become a festering cesspool of outrageous rates and business practices thanks, in part, to big government mucking about in the economic system. So, instead of getting government out of the business, we want it to take complete control over an entire industry - with no way of opting out of this. This really isn't going to end well. If you thought the US government fucked up Social Security, wait until it fucks up health care.

Law and Order - I think we give far too much respect to people who, on a daily basis, are not legally obligated to serve and protect. We treat military personnel and police officers with so much respect that it's automatically assumed the officer is right (see also the "don't taze me bro" videos). I think police officers need to be held to a higher standard, rather than being held in a higher light.

Immigration - A hot topic for some Republicans, although I really don't agree with most of the Republicans and Democrats. Here's my take: they're here, and there's not a whole hell of a lot we can do about it. Instead of putting up more barriers to keep people out, the process of getting people in, legally, needs to be streamlined significantly. Once you streamline the process (so that the process takes a few days, rather than a few years) then you can move on to figuring out what to do with all of the illegal immigrants currently in the country - and I think the best option would be to have them on some kind of probation system, rather than kicking them out and telling them "try again."

Education - Would someone please axe "no child left behind" and the Department of Education? Please? While you're at it, axe the vouchers idea as well. If anything represents the governments ability to fuck things up by being directly involved in it, it's the current state of out educational system. Get the federal government out of the education system, please! Let the states deal with public education, and open up the doors for more private institutions (rather than restricting institutions to an archaic system that that they must follow). Thanks to government intervention we are now the dumbest developed nation in the world.

Homosexual Rights - This is a pretty hot topic for the, uh, paranoid crowd. If a church/temple/mosque/whatever wants to define marriage as between a man and a woman that's fine, as that's their religious right; but, the federal government should never discriminate against any human. All I have to say is: have we learned nothing from slavery or women's suffrage? To discriminate against another person is to deny them their humanity.

I think, ultimately, being a "progressive conservative" means letting people live their own lives without the government getting involved. Either that or I'm a libertarian and just don't know it.