My political views

Here are my political views. I am not officially affiliated with any political party. I used to think of myself as a "soft libertarian", but I've moved away from that, since I now believe that there are some things that government can actually do better than the private sector. I consider myself an independent now, and I think I'll stick with that, because in my view political parties tend to do more harm than good -- for one thing, they enforce an orthodoxy on their members which pressures you into agreeing with everything they believe in. I don't see anything wrong with saying "I agree with 80% of what you believe in, and I vehemently oppose the other 20%" If you do that in a political party, you'll either be leaned on to toe the line on the other 20% or you'll be made to feel like an outcast. I like the "big tent" model of political parties, but the existing parties do a terrible job at this.

Mostly, though, I hate the current crop of George Bush neoconservative Republicans, who are really just fascists with a good propaganda team. Therefore, I've been spending some time working with Democratic activists. Even though I'm not a full-fledged Democrat (the 80/20 thing again), they are vastly preferable to the current Republican party.

Some of my favorite politically-oriented sites include:

• Air America Radio (streaming liberal radio, a nice antidote to the Rush Limbaughs of the world)

• Daily Kos, a liberal blog.

• Crooks and Liars, another liberal blog which features video clips.

• Verified Voting, an advocacy group working to provide verifiable voting with paper trails in all political elections.