As a new visitor to these pages I've been reading with amusement the strong rhetoric between the regulars on each side of the political fence. What brought me into here originally was the Space area so I had this impression most in here had a tendency to seek scientific and logical solutions to life and the universe. It's been my experience with my own friends and associates that as quest for scientific knowledge increases, the people generally become more liberal in their political views and more atheistic in their philosophical views. I was a bit taken back when I discovered that there were such strong right wing beliefs in here. My question here is to both sides though. I'm curious as to the relation of your religious beliefs or non-beliefs to your political leanings.

I'll certainly start out the discussion. Wouldn't be fair to ask others about their inner "secrets" (like there are any on the internet) without revealing my own. I'm an absolute atheist with regard to my own personal philosophy. In politics I hate both parties but generally, when presented with a lesser of two evils situation, default to the Democrat candidates. That default usually comes as a result of noticing that if a conservative goes bad it's usually in the form of corporate greed or mixing of religion and politics and when a liberal goes bad it's generally a sex or drug scandal. It always has seemed obvious to me that the closest we ever come to a solution on war, finances, welfare or the environment falls somewhere in the center of the political extremes.

I despise corporate greed but understand it's a driving force of free enterprise success. At the same time I despise most labor unions because, even though I know they were truly needed during the sweatshop era of our nation's growth, they are extremely prone to neglecting the financial health of industries they rail against and finding ways to keep themselves in power.

I truly believe that a strong society needs to be a compassionate one and take care of people that get blindsided in life even though they've been as responsible as they knew how to be. At the same time I have little sympathy for the breeders in our society that keep dumping offspring onto society and demand the government take care of them.

I am truly amazed that our government still believes, after absolute failure in nearly every try, that it can "nation build" and I hold the Republicans and Democrats equally accountable for that attitude. Every official ever elected to public office should be forced to watch hundreds of hours of old Star Trek reruns specifically dealing with the Prime Directive. Terrorists are generally horrible and evil people who are a major stain on human evolution and I would kill with my bare hands any one of them directly threatening my family but, they don't seem to be targeting Denmark or the Netherlands where the people there tend to stay out of other's affairs.

Religion needs to stay out of government. Taliban. Nuff said.

Anyway that's just a glimpse of how my philosophy and politcal slant go together. Am curious to hear how others have evolved.