How awkward.

Part of my problems making and keeping friends are that so many aren't comfortable with the reality behind personal responsibility.  I've learned not to tell friends and family that I hold little sympathy for their plights that they manage to get into through their own dumb decisions (my mother and sister, for example, "stuck" in a town where my mom is certain she has a "reputation" built on lies told by my male genetic donor; or for people wailing about being broke while they faff about with their iThings, and smoke Marlboro Reds). 

The rest?  It's because I am too conservative on some things (i.e., fiscal and foreign policy) for a lot of people, and too liberal in the classical sense on others (social policy). 

I think Congress should be limited to their responsibilities enumerated within the Constitution.  Davy Crockett said something about the forcible distribution of wealth from those who earned it to those who did not.  Yes, there is now written into the contracts of all soldiers that they're entitled to medical services and some education costs reimbursed.  I do not, however, recall that we as a nation have a contract like that to provide for the leeches that could get a job, but prefer not to. 

Does that mean I think welfare is wrong?  Yes.  Is it necessary?  Only very occasionally, and much of the time, if the government wasn't forcibly robbing all of us at gunpoint, we would all be willing to help pitch in with helping those who truly need it. 

I don't have a problem with tax breaks for parents, or for tax breaks for certain things.  Despite benefiting from the Earned Income Tax Credit, I'd also like to see that go away; it is, despite its name, simply more welfare with the way it's set up: we get back around ten times what we pay in, total, including Social Security.*  It is not a tax break--it's taking money from some that work harder and/or luck out in their connections, and giving it to those who don't make as much. 

One of the biggest reasons I am so harshly against welfare programs of all types is this: it is nowhere found as a Constitutional right and/or responsibility enjoyed by congress and is a blatant vote-buying scheme.  Another reason I have issues with it is because of what it's done: it has created a permanent, generational underclass of single mothers begetting babydaddies and babymamas.  And it's not just any one race--it bridges races more than anything beneficial does. 

My lefty friends disagree with me on this, to some extent.  Now that many of them are paying taxes, they agree that there's a lot of fraud, and that the fraud needs cleared out.  They also believe that it's the responsibility of everybody to pay taxes to take care of those who need it.

I, on the other hand, believe it should be up to the individual to help...or not.  And most will.  Especially if the government ceases doing jobs that they're not supposed to.

I also believe that we are not the world's police force.  An army is not supposed to be forcibly restrained from the soldiers defending themselves with ridiculously restricted ROE.  An army is not supposed to engage in nation building.  An army is supposed to kill people and break things in defense of their nation.  We haven't done that since WWII, in the Pacific front, except for in Afghanistan and in Iraq.  This is something that most of my lefty friends strongly disagree with me on: they believe we shouldn't be over there, or that we should be the world's social workers.

Welfare isn't just limited to individuals.  I assume most, if not all, of my readers are fully aware of just how much money our government hands out to other nations (who are frequently our enemies).  That also needs to stop.

I do believe that the government has set all the social policy it needs to with the decree that no one can discriminate against anyone else on the basis of religion, creed, race, or sex.  The government has no business saying who can marry whom (and who they cannot marry), nor does it have any business forcing business owners to act against their faith while protecting people who simply do not want to do the job for which they're hired from being forced to act against theirs (like selling pork or alcohol in a store which sells both).  A government that enforces morality is tyrannical, no matter whose morality (right or left) it enforces, and it seems that both sides want to get into power just for that purpose.

Another issue that gets me into trouble, ironically enough, with everybody, is abortion.  I am not conservative enough for my conservative friends, and I am not leftist enough for my leftist friends.  I do not believe that it should be an option that a pregnant woman can choose if she doesn't want children--there is, after all, always the option of walking out of the hospital without a baby.  And it was most often a choice that put her there to start with: having sex without using a barrier method, or a hormonal contraceptive. 

I have had two children.  I know for a fact that by the time most women know they're pregnant, the baby is already more than just a clump of cells.  My two were moving at their first doctor's appointment when I was eight weeks pregnant--actively moving away from Doppler and sonogram.

I also do not believe that abortions should be illegal for a doctor to perform if it is the life of the mother on the line, or if a baby is developing in such a way that their condition is incompatible with life, and incredibly painful.  I do believe that it should be a woman's choice to refuse such, but I do not believe it is hers to choose to murder her baby.

So.  Too far right for my left friends, and too far left for my right friends.  How many others are in the same situation?