The Radical Moderate: Bruce R. Gilson's Homepage

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

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

• Phil Hunt's discussion of voting systems,
• the discussion of alternative voting systems in L. Sandy Maisel's book,
• the Center for Voting & Democracy site,
• the Proportional Representation Library, and
• Donald Davison's "New Democracy" site.)

Summing up my opinions:

• I am sort of in the middle on the abortion issue, believing that there should be choice, but not only the woman should have a say, since it took two to cause the situation.
• On gun control I am probably further left than most Democrats. I feel strongly that nobody should own a gun except the police and the military. The Second Amendment talks of militia, and unless the NRA types want to really form a militia subject to the terms of Art. I, Sec. 8, paragraphs 15 and 16, which gives Congress the right to call them out and to control their supply of arms, they are misconstruing the Second Amendment.
• On economic issues, I am of the right. The Government should not use our taxes to fund all sorts of things that could better be done privately. If no private company is willing to do something necessary, the Government has to do it, as for example the formation in 1971 of Amtrak. But much of what the Government does should be privatized.
• But the issue that sends me farthest away from the right is the idea that the guardians of "morality" feel they have the right to impose their morality on others. A person's private activities, and the activities of people of any age together as long as all people involved consent, should only be limited if it causes harm to someone else. I can't accept the Libertarian Party's attitude on drugs, for example, because a drug-induced failure of a person's mind can cause danger to others. But on issues such as pornography, unless someone is sent it against his wishes, nobody is harmed.
• I believe strongly that the death penalty is the only appropriate punishment for homicide, but I can not see any other crimes being made capital.

• I am interested in languages, both the ones that people learn natively and others constructed to make international communication easier. (For another article on the reason for construction of interlanguages, by the same author but fuller, click here. ) For a few good links, click to see my language page.
• I collect paper money, especially from foreign countries. (If you've seen foreign currency, ours is drab by comparison! It was not always that way; we used to have some very beautiful currency. But at present, that is one thing we don't do as well as other countries.)
• I am interested in trains, both intercity and rapid-transit. And, since I do not drive, I'm interested in public transit in general.
• I'm also interested in recreational mathematics. In fact the number 3141 that I chose for this address comes from the first 4 significant digits of pi. My IRC friends know me as "EZ-as-pi," though on chat lines which permit long nicknames, I expand it out to "EZ as 3.14159265359" or the like (get the pun?) Even my art and musical interests are mathematical:
  I'm very much interested in geometric abstract art, and
  much of my interest in music theory has to do with the use of numerical relationships to create unusual scales.
• I am interested in games, but mainly abstract board games and card games. I don't care for fantasy games at all.
• When I want to listen to music, it is the music of the early 1950's that I like best. (For lyrics of some of the big hits, there's another nice site.) My favorite singer is Doris Day. Read about her awards and nominations; it's an impressive list! I can't find a list of all the songs she's recorded, but her albums are listed on the Web.

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.

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