Broadly speaking, how would you describe your political beliefs?

As simple yet complicated a question as you’ll ever find. Where do you generally lie on political issues? Do you lean left or right economically? Liberal or authoritarian? Do your views tend to be swayed heavily from the norm on certain matters? Why do you hold these views? Etc.

Now just to make this clear, though polite debate, I’m neither wanting, nor attempting to instigate aggressive arguments here, so I would appreciate if people be respectful of others beliefs. I like to believe that in a community as sensible as Fluther this would be a reasonable request.

I’ll get the ball rolling. From an economic perspective I typically refer to myself as ‘radical centre’, but this is more a courteous way of saying ‘fluctuating’. I typically approach economic issues on a case-by-case basis, believing that the areas and amounts of resources involved, and the current status of the society, culture and resources should be considered among other things. With this said, I do lean heavily left on education and healthcare believing these should be centrally funded. I also fall slightly right on private industry, depending on the industry.

From a social perspective I’m a shameless liberalist. I take a very ‘innocent until proven guilty’ approach to individual rights in that I think civil and political freedoms should be a given unless strong arguments and evidence can be provided which proves them to be overall more detrimental than beneficial to a society. It should be noted that this isn’t by any means impossible.

It’ll be interesting to observe how people differ in their political perspectives relative to where they live.