I like your comment about Obama being very strictly disciplined and prioritized - I tend to think of him as unorganized and flailing, but that is because I am a radical in some respects, and he is not a radical.

Normally I write from a pragmatic perspective respecting the realities of what is possible given the interests of the elites and the structures of power.

That is why some around here consider me a moderate or even a conservative.  Sometime I see things getting so dysfunctional that there is a serious risk of things going seriously awry - e.g. a serious escalation towards war in the middle east.

Traditionally conservative and right wing have been linked. I think that has been a mistake. I would see Noam Chompsky as a conservative. There are a whole lot of radicals on the left who do not like him, I suspect because of it. Angry Arab had a nasty comment about him (I felt out of context) recently.

[Conservatism] is a political and social philosophy that says that traditional institutions work best and society should minimize change. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism and seek a return to the way things were.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism

The first part I agree with, the second part I disagree with. A left-wing conservative would seek gradual change towards a particular left-wing type of system.

There's a lot to be said for gradual change as opposed to revolution. (That's not to say that revolutionary change is never desirable.) I believe that the parliamentary system is better than the checks and balances system. The Parliamentary system evolved over time, and I believe actually provides better checks and balances than the US system where there is no clear chain of who is responsible. I remember cringing as the Soviet Union broke up with how it appeared that the US was encouraging things to happen as fast as possible.

By temperament, I would probably like to be on the conservative end of things... Maybe that's why I like reading your posts. I want to be a far left radical conservative.

_{aspiring to genteel poverty}