Did you ever have any REALLY idiotic political notions when you were young?

[El Pinko]

When I was about 16, I used to think that drunk driving was tantamount to attempted murder, and that anyone caught with a BAC over .1 ought to be jailed for a year, and that anyone who killed someone while DUI ought to be EXECUTED.

Luckily, I was too young to vote then. I've moderated and evolved a lot since then, but I'm just curious if anyone else used to have rather extreme views that they later reconsidered?




PS - for the record, I think the present DUI laws are just about right, just as they are...

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. I will disagree with you regarding them being right

but I speak as a medic who had to dig broken bodies out of totaled cars due to drunks behind the wheel

I'm not talking execution here... after all I don't believe in the Death Penalty, but first Offenses in the US do get a slap in the wrist.

They should serve longer in jail, but that is my opinion... and I do not limit it to drunks... anybody high behind the wheel

[El Pinko]

6. I could go along with that for first offenses with very high BAC.

But a person who had a drink or two and blows .08 probably just made an error in judgment and felt that they were still sober enough to drive.

I think that the "slap on the wrist" for these first offenses would probably be enough to scare most people out of ever doing it again.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Again I will disagree with you

I have tended to the injuries of more than one idiot with a BAC of 0.8, or the injuries of those they crashed against.

Part of the reason why DUI is a slap is because drinking under the influence is still socially acceptable. Compare this to Sweeden where NO alcohol is tolerated and people do some hard time.

They also have a very low rate of DUI... gee I wonder why?

[Irreverend IX]

26. I say anyone caught with a BAC over .05 should lose their license permanently.

There's no reason drunk driving should be tolerated. DUI wouldn't seem like such a casual thing if the penalties for it were proportionate to the damage it causes. And anyone who gets caught driving after having a license revoked for DUI should get a 20-year mandatory minimum sentence. If someone drives drunk and causes an injury or death, give them the 20 years right off the bat.

[fed_up_mother]

44. Coming from an alcohol culture my thoughts have changed in reverse

Even though I rarely drink, I wasn't very strict about drunk driving.

Now, I think anyone caught with a high BAC should lose his license for at least two years, anyone in an accident should lose his license forever and serve a two year sentence, and anyone who maims while driving drunk should be put under the jail for at least ten years. At least twenty years for murder.

I'm not a big believer in the death penalty.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

2. You mean, like. oh... say... supporting Goldwater

in 64?

Like that?


Just sayin....

[CoffeeCat]

3. I grew up in a rabidly conservative...

...household full of sadistic wolves. As a consequence, I adopted some of
their "beliefs" because I didn't know any better. While I was growing
up, I rejected a great deal of it--but some of the social issue stuff, I
absorbed--I guess because I didn't know any better.

Then I went away to college and realized that the entire world wasn't racist, homophobic,
misogynistic, elitist, heartless and lacking a conscious.

If I told people some of the radical crap that was spewed at our dinner table, I
swear, no one would believe me.

[laststeamtrain]

4. First offense: One year suspension of license. Second offense: Life time

suspension of license. Third offense: Life in prison.

People who drive drunk seem to have no idea the effect their action can have on many, many others.

I HATE drunk drivers.
*
I still dream of a just & peaceful world. I guess that's somewhat idiotic.

[El Pinko]

8. I hate drunk driving. I don't hate people who made an error in judgment.

Granted, a person who gets behind the wheel after guzzling a 6 pack is an asshole.

But somebody who had a couple drinks over a couple of hours, gets pulled over for a slight swerve and blows a .08 is just someone who made a mistake.


IMHO.

[laststeamtrain]

13. Yeah. "A little mistake" that can kill or maim & change people's lives forever.

Whatever.

I just don't see taking other people's lives in your hands as a 'little mistake'. People can be right in the way of a 'slight swerve'. It happens everyday.

[El Pinko]

19. I didn't say little.

But it's also not the same as climbing behind the wheel when sloshed.

[uncle ray]

35. would you support that same sentence

for someone who was talking on a cellphone while driving? that's a similar "little mistake" that is just as deadly.

[laststeamtrain]

40. I completely agree. Also eating, shaving, putting on make-up, etc.

I've seen all of these. I was almost killed in a crosswalk by a guy in a Mercedes talking on a cell phone. He had no idea what he'd just done.

A 'little swerve' next to a bike lane or a shoulder where's there's no sidewalk is deadly.

Get idiots off the road. Whatever it takes. It's got to become social anathema to drive while stupid.

[Canuckistanian]

5. When I was 14, I read Ayn Rand

And thought it was pretty cool.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. ...

[Warpy]

7. Yeah, I thought all the old bigots would just die off

and we'd have a country of equals.

[sandnsea]

11. Yeah that was a pretty stupid idea

I thought we were making some real civil rights progress in the 70's. *sigh*

[stillcool]

18. I was thinking about that the other day...

the music brings me back there, so much energy. I wonder what the fuck happened. Sometimes when I read what people write, I think that no one else was breathing the same air I was.

[ColbertWatcher]

9. I used to not care at all.

Didn't think politics mattered at all.

Until I heard about Amnesty International.

Changed my life.

[Graybeard]

12. I Like Ike.

Of course I was only 11 years old at the time, but I thought the buttons were cool.

[El Pinko]

22. As republicans go, he was all right. He was more economically progressive than many dems today.

He spearheaded the Interstate Highway System and warned about the Military Industrial Complex.

I wouldn't feel too bad about liking Ike. The last decent republican president.

[Art_from_Ark]

14. If I could have voted in '76,

I would have voted for Ford
:hide:

[splat]

15. Yeah, hope and change. Been hearing it for 40 years. I'll settle for FDR now.

[csziggy]

16. I had a theory that anyone running for public office was a megalomaniac

who should be excluded from any position of responsibility. I formed that opinion after watching Claude Kirk as the first Republican governor of Florida since Reconstruction and Richard Nixon with his Imperial White House.

Wait - I was right, wasn't I? :tinfoilhat:

[stillcool]

17. I grew up thinking that..

all things government should be run from as fast as possible. In High School I read about Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and Malcolm X, and both books had a big impact on me. I guess it was the time...early 70's.

[Swamp Rat]

20. Yeah, I thought Nixon was an asshole, and Jimmy Carter was great.

Oh, wait. :think: I have always been politically savvy. :D

[slackmaster]

21. Yes, I thought most people who hold elected offices were honest

I was pretty naive.

[El Pinko]

23. Even now, I wouldn't say they are "dishonest", more like "compromised"...

...they all have to make a bunch of huge concessions to moneyed elites in order to get into office, so they learn to spin the truth to make horrible actions seem palatable, and eventually they start to believe their own spin.

Then once they get ensconced into power, they are totally invested in the bullshit beltway view of America, rationalizing the selling out to lobbyists as "a pragmatic way to get things done for the people", and are totally out of touch with the people who put them into office in the first place - if they were ever in touch with them at all.

I really think that Washington circles are like an alternate-reality matrix where very little of the reality here on the front lines ever seeps through their layers of luxury and sycophants.

[Solon]

24. I still believe that about drunk drivers, except the death penalty part...

Having seen people get maimed by Drunk drivers, and friends who were almost killed, for the same reason, I say drunk drivers have it too easy in this country, and "lapse of judgment" is no excuse to be lenient.

[Horse with no Name]

25. I believed from a very young age (and have absolutely no idea where I got the notion)

That our government was run by agencies that were so secret that they didn't have initials and I was convinced that all of the missing pets and kids were hauled off to some secret lab somewhere in the mountains for secret experimentation.
I realized those were really stupid paranoid thoughts and then I woke up.:scared:

[wildbilln864]

27. I thought I could trust my government....

to do the right thing. Pretty idiotic it's turned out. :cry:

[orleans]

43. i thought we could trust the government too.

and then i hit about 11 or 12 years and thought: fuck the system!

[silverojo]

28. I was for gun control.

As if criminals couldn't get hold of guns illegally!

[Eurobabe]

29. I thought hippies were scary freaks, hey I was 8 in '68

I didn't like their protesting, it frightened me. My parents who were diehard
Dems should have explained it to me. They didn't. :shrug:

[Blue_In_AK]

30. I thought we could change the world...

HAH! Was I ever wrong...

[and-justice-for-all]

31. I had no political notions...nt

[Arctic Dave]

32. I never had any ambitions for it but

my family used to say to me, when I was young, I would grow up to be the governor of California. You couldn't pay me enough to live in that state again.

[Blue_In_AK]

33. Hey, Dave, I used to live in California, too...

I guess we BOTH wised up. By the way, do you know what happened to KUDO? My husband is devastated.

[Arctic Dave]

34. What happened to KUDO? I just got back into town.

[Blue_In_AK]

36. All the local people are gone.

CC, Aaron and Shannyn are no longer on the air. We're trying to figure out what happened to them.

[Arctic Dave]

38. They didn't give any type of warning?

This is bizarre. I said on another of your post, I thought KUDO was owned by IBEW. I don't understand why they would stop with local news.

edit: This wouldn't have anything to do with the other two knuckleheads who got themselves in trouble. Possibly a strike?

[ruby slippers]

37. I used to think my vote REALLY counted......and I did, too

[zeos3]

39. I remember arguing issues on a more emotional level.

Sometimes the teacher would ask us to group ourselves based on beliefs about a particular issue (science class: nuclear power; english: flag burning/freedom of speech; etc.) I remember one year, arguing against social darwinism in one class and arguing for jail time for anyone burning the flag in another.

I was actually on opposite sides of the debate about capital punishment from high school to college. I like to think I'm more rational about these positions now, rather then emotional.

[LeftishBrit]

41. Well, impractical ones anyway...

I was really worried as a child about the atom bomb, and ideas that I came up with included (1) that if I got to be really rich one day, I could bribe all the soldiers not to drop it; (2) that some bomb demolition experts could just go around the world and destroy all atom bombs and that would solve the problem forever!

Mind you, no one really has come up with a practical solution to the nuke proliferation problem

[Lorien]

42. When I was a kid in the 1970s I thought that sexism and racism would

be a thing of the past when I grew up. I thought that the environment would improve because of all the new regulations and things like the new Endangered Species Act. I also thought that there would be no more idiotic wars after Vietnam.

:shrug:

[CBGLuthier]

45. Yeah, I thought america was a democracy

Instead of a corpororate driven oligarchy.