Summary of political beliefs

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War: No war but the class war. The United States should only respond militarily if it is attacked by another nation-state. End the War on Terror, withdraw all troops from abroad, and commit ourselves to a policy of non-interventionism. Embrace Russia and China (and welcome them into the family of nations) rather than hurtle toward confrontation with both of them.
Israel-Palestine: Strongly support the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. Remove all U.S. aid and support of Israel, break off diplomatic relations with the Israelis, and pass something like the Anti-Apartheid Act of the 1980s to end U.S. investments in Israel. Either the Israelis will come to the negotiating table and recognize Palestinian statehood, or it will cease to receive aid and protection from the United States. If it should refuse to do so, treat Israel as a rogue state and support all efforts to cripple it's internal economy and paralyze it's foreign trade.
Draft: Abolish the standing army in favor of universal military training. Graduation from high school should require that one undergo basic military training and be on reserve for call up for military service in the event of a war. Make no distinction between male, female, or genderqueer persons in terms of who is called up for service.
UN: Abolish the Security Council in favor of a unicameral global parliament, with resolutions applicable to all member states and the establishment of a UN armed forces.
Nukes: Seek international treaty banning nuclear weapons.
Foreign Aid: Cancel third world debt, give no aid to nations with marked human rights violations, and expand the Peace Corps.

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Identifying as a Democrat pretty well means you're not a socialist, no matter what you might claim to the contrary.

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So... you basically became a boring leftist.

Nice.

As opposed to a liberal dolt like yourself, yes?

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Political Philosophy: I consider myself an orthodox Trotskyist. This means that unlike the majority of ostensibly 'Trotskyist' groups in the United States (and elsewhere), I do not shirk from unconditional defense of the remaining deformed workers' states (China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea) against internal counterrevolution and imperialist attack, while also calling for the workers of these countries to overthrow their respective Stalinist bureaucracies. As far as I am concerned, non-support for these deformed workers' states against the imperialist powers is tantamount to stabbing the international proletariat in the back, and I don't consider persons who claim the mantle of Trotsky and don't support defense of the gains of the socialist revolution in these countries to be revolutionaries in any sense. At best, they're social democrats with goatees, and at worst, they're counterrevolutionaries.

Social Issues

Abortion: Abortion should be free and available on demand. All laws which discriminate against younger women, or require parental consent, or any other kind of invasive procedure in order to get an abortion (e.g. mandatory sonograms) should be repealed. The labor movement should mobilize to defend abortion clinics against attacks from far-right, anti-abortion terrorist groups.

Drugs/Legalization: All drugs should be legal. The War on Drugs is a war against the working class, specifically the most oppressed sectors of it, black and brown youth in America. All persons jailed for drug offenses should be released from prison.

Euthanasia: All persons should have the right to end their own life, should they see fit. I personally don't see any reason to limit that right to persons who are terminally ill, either. If you'd rather take an early exit from life than stay for the long haul, that's your right, and no one should be able to force you to stick around against your will.

Gay Rights: Nothing short of full legal equality should be the norm for LGBTQ persons. Of course, under capitalism, true equality is impossible, but we must move in the direction of enforcing protections against the use of what divides us (race, gender, orientation, age, etc, etc.) by the ruling class to cause infighting amongst ourselves and weaken our position. The labor movement must fight for inclusive contract language to protect LGBTQ persons and must stand for the defense of LGBTQ persons against homophobic or transphobic attack.

Gun Control: If guns are banned, only racist cops and the Klan (often one and the same!) will have guns. Gun control should be fought at every step of the way and the working class should arm itself for the defense of picket lines, its most oppressed sectors (e.g. the black population, which is subject to death by cop at any given moment in America), abortion clinics, etc, etc. There should be no compromise of the right to armed self-defense.

Immigration: Immigrants should be protected from discrimination on the job, in getting access to government services, and from deportation by a militant labor movement. The immigrant worker is not the enemy of the American-born worker, but his or her comrade in the class struggle. The real enemy is the boss, and there's nothing the boss fears more than multiracial labor solidarity.

Prostitution: We should demand nothing short of the full legalization of sex work. At the end of the day, all work under capitalism is a kind of prostitution, in which the laborer sells not only his or her ability to labor, but his or her dignity. Full legalization of sex work will not only make it easier for sex workers to organize, strike, and collectively bargain, but also make it harder for the kinds of abuses that occur on the black market to continue going on.

Separation of Church and State: The separation of church and state is a vital cornerstone of the bourgeois revolution that must be defended and extended in the coming proletarian revolution. I do not reject the defense of this vital gain of our first revolutionary upheaval in the United States, nor do I make excuses for religious fundamentalism or seek to build alliances with reactionary organizations that deal in religious opiate (which is more than you can say of pseudo-left groups like the ISO, which cheered on the Iranian Revolution and whose sister party, the UK Socialist Workers' Party, has formed alliances with Islamists in the past). Religion, whatever its origins, is now a component part of the capitalist system, and is used to confound and confuse, to divide and defeat. The labor movement must become a school for unity across religious lines, and ultimately, a movement united against religion, which will always act as the enemy of proletarian power when the hour of decision is near.

Scientific Research: This category was originally 'Stem Cell Research', but given that it is 2015 and not 2005 anymore and no one really still has any issues with 'Stem Cell Research', I figured that I would change it to incorporate my views more broadly on scientific research. I am not a 'green', nor am I an 'environmentalist'. I am a Promethean communist and want to see man conquer (not 'live in harmony with') nature, because only the conquest of nature can make communism a real possibility. I support all scientific research that furthers that goal, and reject the anti-scientific, romantic garbage of the 'environmental movement', and its pseudo-left apologists.

Smoking Bans: I am totally opposed to smoking bans and restrictions on smoking in both indoor and outdoor facilities. The anti-smoking campaign is fairly obviously a campaign against working class people, who are more likely to smoke than other segments of society, for obvious reasons. Its also interesting that the current bout of anti-smoking hysteria started in the late 1980s, a period in which capital began searching for ways to make workers more productive (how convenient then, that states would begin adopting workplace smoking bans!) and wring out more surplus value from them. I think you should be able to smoke wherever you want, whenever you want, and the liberal busy-bodies should butt out. Likewise, I oppose bans on public intoxication and having an open container of alcohol in public, and would obviously oppose any such bans on the use recreational drugs should they end up becoming legal.

Affirmative Action: I support defense of affirmative action, as affirmative action is one of the few methods whereby black Americans can continue on in higher education. However, I reject fundamentally the premise behind Affirmative Action, which is that education is a 'scarce' good that requires us to compete for access to it. The answer, then, is the nationalization of the university system, making education at every level completely free of charge, the abolition of the administration (let the students and their teachers manage their own education), and living stipends for all students.

Miscellaneous:

• I support the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.
• I oppose the security state and would like to see the whole of it abolished.
• I oppose all efforts to police the Internet, be it to remove or censor content (I oppose all censorship efforts by the capitalist state or it's lackeys, be it the Christian fundamentalist right or the feminist pseudo-left) or to prosecute copyright violations.
• I oppose attempts by the state to regulate what goes on in the bedroom. Like I said above, I support the legalization of sex work, but I'll go further and say that I oppose any and all laws which prohibit sexual activity in which effective consent is given by the parties involved. I oppose age of consent laws, am in favor of abolishing 'sex offender' registries (which are more or less designed to incite lynch mobs), and am completely opposed to locking someone up for viewing 'forbidden images', reading the wrong stories on the Internet, or offending the sexual mores of the majority in anyway. That said, none of what I wrote in this bullet should be interpreted to include any non-consensual sexual activity, which should obviously be punished with the utmost severity.
• I oppose the administering of the death penalty by the capitalist state.
• I support comprehensive, sex-positive sex education, from a young age. I am opposed to sexual prudery no matter how it's framed (and these days its more fashionable to clothe it in feminist garb than in that of the church) and oppose age restrictions on viewing and purchasing pornographic material. Sex is a normal biological process, and shouldn't be put on a pedestal or viewed as dirty. We all (well, this is Atlas Forum, so most all) of us do it at some point in our lives and most of the time we don't do it to have kids, we do it for pleasure. And that's fine.

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Economic Issues

Taxation: I oppose the capitalist state taking with the one hand what it allows us to keep from the other (in the form of pithy amount of value we're allowed to keep from our daily toil). Most egregious is the widespread use of regressive taxation (on things like booze, cigarettes, license fees, etc., etc.), because of its disproportionate impact upon working class budgets. I strongly oppose tax increases matted out by the bourgeois state on the working class in particular, and recognize of course that 'tax hikes on the rich' under capitalism are fundamentally not all that effective, given the ability of the rich to dodge taxation by moving their money overseas, bribing legislators to create loopholes, etc, etc.

Education: As I noted in the Affirmative Action section, I support nationalizing higher education, making it free for all, abolishing the administration, and giving all students a living stipend. Likewise, for public education, I support much of the same, absolving students and parents of all fees and educating students in a manner which prepares them for the rough and tumble of capitalist society, at least under our present epoch. Education should be polytechnical and democratic, and students should be encouraged to work with both their brains and their brawn, rather than falling neatly into one category of work or the other.

Environment: See Scientific Research. I am not an environmentalist or a 'green' in any real respect, and I support the ultimate subjugation of nature to human needs. I oppose capitalist-led climatic change and support efforts to rein it in, but I am not fundamentally opposed to 'climatic change' in general, and think that fundamentally altering the climate of the earth (and in the future, other planets) to suit human needs is a worthwhile endeavor.

Social Security: The Social Security system is designed, not as a kind of universal pension program, but as a stopgap measure to prevent extreme poverty among workers who have been given the opportunity to 'retire' for lack of ability to continue meaningful work under the capitalist system. I support defending the system against attack by neoliberal privatizers, but I also think the system itself is woefully inadequate. Every person should be guaranteed a pension and should be able to take it whenever they want, provided they've hit the age of at least fifty-five (55). Any such pension should guarantee a living income for the retired, so they don't have to go back to work if they choose not to (which is ultimately what Social Security requires so many of them to do).

Unions: The labor movement must become a school for communism. But before we can even get to that stage, we have to have a labor movement in this country. Only 6 percent of private sector workers are union members, which is a good part of why the whole country has gone down the shitter the past few decades. The unorganized must be organized, especially in the South, which is fast becoming the new industrial heartland of the United States. I oppose all efforts at state intervention into the internal affairs of unions or the class struggle, be it by hired thugs by management, the scab army (e.g. the police), or the National Labor Runaround Board. Unions should be internally democratic, with officers not paid more than the average worker, and should be organized along industrial lines.

Health Care: There's no excuse for anything less than full, universal health coverage. This should include all aspects of care (especially dental care, which is often neglected in existing 'universal' systems) and should be fully socialized, along the lines of the British NHS.

Energy: The energy sector should be nationalized and energy production shifted away from oil and toward nuclear power. Contrary to what the greenies might tell you, we don't have the capacity at the moment for solar power or wind power to run the entirety of the economy, and even if we did, there's no reason that we necessarily should adopt these kinds of power as the building block for our society, as both would (at the present juncture) result in a massive lowering of living standards for the population. Nuclear power is clean and will sustain our living standards while allowing countries in the underdeveloped world to catch up to those standards and provide for the ultimate eradication of poverty under a socialized economic system.

Miscellaneous:

• I strongly support the development of driverless cars and the use of automation (under a socialist system, of course) to reduce the need for human labor and extend free time for everyone. Likewise, I support a 30 hour workweek, with further reductions contingent upon the widespread adoption of labor-saving devices across the economy.
• I support the nationalization of the banking sector, which will of course make it a hell of a lot easier to expropriate the wealth of the bourgeoisie when the time comes.
• I support the establishment of workers' committees in every town and city that would have the power to regulate wages and prices. Ultimately, of  course, I support the creation of workers' councils that would not only regulate wage and price rates, but also act as the component part of a system of nested workers' councils whereby the working class would rule society itself.
• I support equal pay for women, paid leave, access to twenty-four hour socialized daycare, and ultimately, the socialization of domestic labor entirely. The individual family is the primary unit of women's oppression, and should be done away with under socialism, where cooperative living arrangements, free love, and the raising of children by the entire community would replace the individual home, straightjacket monogamy, and the parceling out of domestic labor and child rearing.
• I oppose union-busting schemes like 'workfare/welfare-to-work' and prison labor, both of which I think should be prohibited outright. No person should go without a job, and no one should be paid less than union wages on the job. Prisons should be abolished and persons subject to correctional authority be allowed to live in their own homes and continue their own lives while they pay back their debt to society.
• I support a ban on most forms of advertising.

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Foreign Policy Issues.

Military Spending: Shrink the military of the bourgeois state to the size that you can drown it in the bath tub. No, seriously. I oppose the massive military budgets enacted yearly by the U.S. imperialist state and would like to see the military dismantled, bit-by-bit. Military recruiters should be kicked off of campuses across the country and the working class should organize its own militias and self-defense groups to protect picket lines, stop police brutality, and defend abortion clinics, etc, etc.

Islamic State: The United States should withdraw from Middle East entirely, and should immediately disengage from its ongoing conflict with the Islamic State.

Afghanistan: See Islamic State. It's really too bad the Soviet Union was driven out of Afghanistan by religious lunatics funded by the United States in the late 1980s.

Ukraine: I support Novorossiya in its fight against the fascist-led government in Kiev, and reject all attempts to deny the Novorossiyans their right to self-determination. Russia is not instigating anything in Ukraine, the United States and its lackeys in Kiev are. We should respect the Crimea referendum as legitimate and allow for the integration of Novorossiya into Russia proper, if they so choose.

Diplomacy/Sanctions: Sanctions are war through the backdoor.

Miscellaneous:

• I oppose the 'War on Terror' and support the withdrawal of U.S. troops and closure of all U.S. military bases from every country in which there are U.S. military bases.
• I oppose Zionism and support the overthrow of the Israeli (and Palestinian) governments by an Israeli working class united with their Palestinian brothers and sisters. The only solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is a unified, socialist federation of the Middle East!
• I support China, Vietnam, Cuba, Laos, and North Korea against internal counterrevolution and imperialist attack. I support proletarian political revolution in all these countries to overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracies which currently run them and replace these with a dictatorship of the proletariat, committed to extending the gains of these countries' respective revolutions across the globe.

Electoral Issues/Government

Voting Regulations: I oppose all efforts by the bourgeois state at curtailing the ability of anyone in the United States to vote. Likewise, I support all efforts at opening up the electoral system, lowering the voting age, and making sure that all voices (even those I disagree with personally) are heard in political debates.

Elections: I think that the President's proposal for mandatory voting is stupid, and likewise I think that in the case of elections, at the present juncture, there's really no one worth voting for. I could see myself voting for someone on the basis of critical support, but nothing really further than that at this point. As a Leninist, I definitely support participation in bourgeois legislatures, but from a revolutionary oppositionist standpoint. Candidates should run to propagate the need for proletarian revolution, and if they win, they should gum up the works as much as possible from within the bourgeois legislature.

The Senate: I support abolishing the Senate, as well as abolishing the whole of the existing state apparatus. The working class should form workers' councils, which should move to take power from the bourgeois state and establish themselves as the sole political power in the United States, which should become something like a United Council Socialist States of America, or something like that.

Referenda: Depends on the issue at hand, but in general I don't oppose using referendum votes as a way of propagating a political line consistent with proletarian revolutionism. Often referenda provide a better means of propaganda, as there are no tendencies toward 'lesser evilism' in a vote of yes or no on a particular issue.

Electoral College: See The Senate. I support abolishing all executive offices of the bourgeois state and transferring all power to workers' councils.

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Why was this unpinned? Surely it's more relevant to this board than say, "Which Disney Princess' politics do you agree with the most? "