The Radical Moderate: Bruce R. Gilson's Homepage


About me


Well, since this location was called "The Radical Moderate" those of you who aren't already my friends may be wondering what the oxymoron is for. The idea came to me when I decided that I'd move into the political neighborhood on this website. I hold strong opinions on a lot of issues, but some are what you'd call left and others are what you'd call right. And when you add them up it averages out to just a little right of center.

  1. My political views
  2. My non-political interests
  3. My personal data

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Political views

I am a registered Republican and have only voted twice for a Democrat in my life. (However I've voted for Libertarians and other splinter-party candidates too, more often than I've voted for Democrats!) I don't agree with every Republican on everything, but by and large, I find myself on the Republican side when it comes to an election issue. Republican candidates just usually seem to have more in common with me than the Democrats do. Unfortunately, it seems the public saw fit to return Clinton to office, but at least continued a Republican Congress. I may not have agreed with every position that Dole and Kemp expressed, but I found them a lot closer to my positions than Clinton and Gore.

One of the problems that I have is that the Republican Party, by the nature of our two-party system, includes disparate elements. The religious right, for example, is hell-bent on taking it over. Before the 1996 election, I was enthusiastic over the candidacy of Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who tried to take on the Religious Right, but was unable to get his campaign going. We had to settle for Bob Dole, who was not of the Religious Right himself, but was unwilling to fight them because of intra-party political requirements, as a candidate. For the next election, I would really like to see a candidate like Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey or former Gov. William Weld of Massachusetts, but neither of those two is likely to be nominated.

Of course, if we had a different voting system, perhaps I'd be in a party that differed from many of the typical GOP positions. But the voting system here does favor 2-party politics. (See

Summing up my opinions:

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Non-political interests

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Personal data

Born in 1942, I've been on this planet for almost 57 years (my birthday is Sept. 9).

NOTE:

I have attempted to construct my webpages in the spirit of Cari D. Burstein's "Best Viewed with Any Browser" campaign. I don't know about anyone else, but I feel that web pages that only work with a single company's browser are counter to the spirit of the Web, and I eagerly endorse the ideas expressed by Burstein.


Last modified May 17, 1999

PS I do not currently have access to e-mail, but please send comments or feedback to this address until I get re-established on e-mail. My friend will pass it on to me. Thanks.
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