ShelfariMy political leanings are toward liberalism. Since there are many flavors of liberalism I will do my best ot describe what I mean further.
Political leanings are sometimes simplistically measured on an graph. The two axis are morality and economics. Liberals, in general, feel that morality should not be legislated but the economy should be legislated, or regulated.
First, on the legislation of morality. I feel that there should be as few laws that how people should behave as possible. There are of course some exceptions that prevent the degradation into anarchy. Common example is ‘Murder is illegal’ and the 15th Amendment. However, I am a firm believer that one’s moral compass is held and nurtured from within and is not something that is or ever should be imposed by an outside force, organization or entity. I do believe that, as much as it is possible, that there should be a separation of church and state. Like much greater men before me, notably John Locke and James Madison, I feel that said separation will lead to a purer form of both government and religion…or in some cases, a purer form of Atheism. There are plenty of other subjects that I may write about later, but that seemed like a good start to explain a lot of my logic.
Second, on the regulation of the economy. History has shown that our economy needs to be regulated or people will get too greedy and the system will crash. Thus, the latest economic issues that we are having now. The legal prevention of Monopolies and minimum wage laws are prime examples of positive economic regulation.
There are many ways that Economic Regulation and Moral Legislation overlap. In that case, I often decide that it is more important to regulate the Economy than to keep hands off of Morals. The core of my reasoning behind my leanings in this clash of ideals stems from the existence of Corporations. Simply out, Corporations are non-human entities that are given the same economic rights as humans in the eyes of the law. Since Corporations are not human, they do not have a built-in moral compass. In fact, legally those working for the company need to consider the companies bottom line profit above everything else when it comes to corporate decisions. So most laws that regulate the economy at the expense of ‘litigating morals’ are applying morality to an otherwise inhuman entity. I have no issue with that whatsoever, in fact I wholly support that.