As I was falling asleep last night, for some reason I was thinking about politics and how it differs so much depending on your point of view and basic assumptions. Let's take AD&D alignments. You have Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic on the law scale and Good, Neutral and Evil on the moral scale. You combine one law and one moral value to get your alignment. Simple enough, but it's still all in the way one views things.

Let's consider what I think is the most common interpretation. Lawful Good means you can't do any Neutral or Chaotic/Evil deeds, Chaotic Evil means you can't do any Neutral or Lawful/Good deeds, Neutral means you can do whatever you want. With this interpretation Neutral is the most flexible alignment and gives people carte blanche to do whatever they want. Such was that problem that later on AD&D explicitly made Neutral into "you must balance Law/Chaos and Good/Evil", making Neutral as restrictive as the other alignments.

An uncommon interpretation (one I've never seen used) is one where the alignments are maximums. So Lawful Good means you can be Lawful Good or worse, Neutral means you can be Neutral or worse (i.e. Chaotic/Evil), and Chaotic Evil means you can only be that. This make Chaos/Evil the most restrictive alignment and is Chaos/Evil-centric.

On the opposite end is what I tend to use. Lawful Good becomes the most restrictive alignment, Chaotic Evil the least restrictive. This is a Law/Good-centric view of the universe. It makes Paladins really restrictive compared to other classes, the way it should be (let's face it, with the other interpretations playing a Lawful Good Paladin is not as hard as playing other alignments. Another way to look at this interpretation is "how Chaotic/ Evil am I willing to be?" It doesn't mean you're going to ever do Chaotic or Evil things, but you are prepared to do them.

Hmm, I'm not sure what that alignment discussion has to do with politics, but we'll segueway anyways. To me the difference between Democrats and Republicans is viewed the same way I view Law/Good and Chaos/Evil (not that I'm comparing either party with Law/Good or Chaos/Evil). To me Democrats are always about ideals -- right or wrong I tend to associate such organizations as the ACLU as Democrats. Very much a "let's force the world to be better."

All well and good, but hard to accomplish. Republicans on the other hand I tend to think of being much less restrictive. Less laws, less government, let people and businesses do what they want. But whereas the Democrats enforce their ideals through laws, the Republicans sort of expect everyone to have the same morals that they do. So Democrats are "obey these laws and you'll be a good citizen" and Republicans are "no laws to obey but you better do the right thing." It's because I view Republicans as being more free that I gravitate towards them. Sort of the way I am, I expect people to do the right thing but don't try to force them.

So if I'm so Republican why do I not like President Bush? For me it's still about ideals. Republicans are for smaller government (except our military) because they expect people to be able to take care of themselves. Really, government is big because it tries to do everything for people, especially the few that can't (ideally). But that gets carried away and instead we have a government that tries to do everything, and it has to be big to be able to do that.

Smaller government implies people taking care of themselves and their world. A large and well-equipped military is not incompatible with small government because people by themselves can't create a military that's any good. Just like basic research and other things that are expensive (like NASA 20 years ago) that people by themselves don't have the wherewithal or resources to do, government has to do. Note that I think that NASA can almost support itself if it really wanted to, hence why it doesn't really need government funds.

Where was I. Oh yes, small government == people have more responsibility. This means that we should be more concerned about the environment and civil rights and abortion and religion and everything else. We should do more to support our causes and beliefs, but not by trying to create new laws or more government. We have to do it ourselves. So I don't think that Republicans == big business and the religious right. It just seems that way because all the idealists went to the Democratic side.

So I do believe in preserving our environment, in more taxes to pay off our debts (or alternatively, less taxes and smaller government and still pay off our debts), in a strong military and strong basic research programs. Of these, Bush is basically against three of the four (though I can be convinced that he has the right strategy on taxes and our national debt). Hence why I don't like Bush. Gore would have been a better President because he agrees with all four of my items (though once again I can be convinced that he had the wrong strategy for our armed forces). Ideally it would have been great if Gore had won the Presidency and Republicans had won control of the House and maybe Senate. That forces compromise and compromise almost always leads to better decisions.