Thomas Anderson

Life begins at conception. Mother and child each have equal human rights that must be balanced. To exercise any right, one must also accept a corresponding responsibility. The right to life includes the responsibility to provide your own life functions and to not threaten the life of another. A pregnancy may be terminated by the mother at any time for any reason because she alone owns her body, but if the child is capable of life outside the womb, it has the right to be born and not be murdered. Therefore, at whatever point the child is "viable", the mother must seek adoption if she does not want the child. Viability includes if the child would be able to survive with the help of medical machines and an adoptive parent can provide such care. Late term abortions in which the child is intentionally killed without first seeking adoption must be considered murder unless for medical necessity, e.g. severe congenital defects.

Strongly Agree

Strongly Agree

Everyone has a right to do with their own body as they choose so long as they don't hurt anyone else. This includes the right to die. Making suicide, including assisted suicide, illegal only makes it more likely for suicide attempts to potentially hurt others. That said, assisted suicide should only be allowed after a thorough psychiatric evaluation in which life-prolonging help is offered, and the individual is found competent to make such a decision.

You get more of what you subsidize and less of what you tax. We should only tax the things we want less of and only subsidize the things we want more of. In this vain, taxing work, investing, and property improvements seems very counterproductive whereas taxing excess/luxury consumption, "sins", waste, etc., makes more sense. Therefore, I would abolish income taxes and property taxes and move all revenue collection to import duties, sales taxes (exempting certain necessities), sin taxes (gambling, prostitution, drugs, gluttony), amusements, recreational vehicles, pollution-generating activities, etc. With property taxes eliminated, funding for schooling should be distributed to students equally to use at any school of their choice and to municipalities in an equitable manner such as by road miles contained in the jurisdiction.

The state government should not be distributing welfare and charity to individuals, but only engaging in activities that benefit the general welfare such as maintaining a competent and efficient criminal justice system, ensuring fair elections, preserving state parks and game lands, providing for state highways, and maintaining the Pennsylvania national guard. Programs that attempt social and economic engineering such as housing programs must end since the market is much better equipped to provide for such things. I would eliminate government departments which are not mandated by the state constitution and can be fulfilled by the free market, mutual benefit societies, private charity, etc. The largest state expenditures are on education and medicaid, two areas that are much better served by introducing and leveraging market forces. Insofar as the state ensures that all students may receive a primary education, expenditures on this should be constructed such that a vibrant free market in school choice is engendered which continually improves quality while cutting costs. Education funds should be allocated to individual students to spend on the school of their family's choice, including home schooling if desired. Maintaining a bloated and antiquated brick-and-mortar government-controlled K-12 system in the age of the Internet is foolhardy. Medicaid funding should be predicated on recipients demonstrating health-promoting behaviors such as eating healthy, exercising, and abstaining from drugs. Public funding should not be used to subsidize expensive medical interventions to redress a lifetime of bad decisions.

Strongly Disagree

Not all individuals need nor have the aptitude for a college education. Funding something that is unneeded and taken for granted is a massive waste. Some individuals should end their educational career at high school or vocational school and pursue a trade. Those who want to continue into higher education should weigh their options between community colleges, state universities, and private universities according to their interests, ambitions, and means. College loans shouldn't be subsidized.

Strongly Disagree

Individuals are guaranteed freedom of conscience and freedom of association by the state and federal constitutions (First Amendment). This protects an individual's inalienable right to discriminate according to their beliefs.

Government can never close churches on account of the mutually consensual activities that occur inside. The only possible reason would be to condemn a structure because it is unsafe for human occupancy.

Taxpayer funded health care should be abolished in all forms. This is a market function, not a government function. But insofar as we have Medicare and/or Medicaid, it should be highly targeted so as to only fund necessary procedures to alleviate infectious diseases, repair injuries due to accidents, and treat congenital and ideopathic diseases, not to subsidize lifestyle-dependent acquired maladies such as complications of obesity, type-2 diabetes, lung cancer from smoking, etc., which could be prevented or solved by pursuing better habits. The taxpayers who made good life choices should not be on the hook for other people's bad choices, unless voluntarily through private charity.

No government, school, or employer should ever have access to an individual's private health care information nor require any medical or prophylactic procedures. Ever. Period.

The United States should stop interfering in Middle Eastern countries. That would end Islamic terrorism. We should neither bomb, invade, nor subsidize any other countries anywhere for any reason other than a Congressionally declared war for probable cause.

Neutral

I agree on a personal level that Israel should end persecution of Arabs. But neither the U.S. government nor Pennsylvania should not be involved whatsoever. Certainly the Pennsylvania National Guard must be recalled from all overseas operations.

Disagree

The United States federal government has zero authority under the Constitution to secure the border against peaceful immigration. That is purely a state level function. The federal government may only make whatever provisions are necessary for protecting from a MILITARY incursion. The war on immigration must end. Allow businesses to cater to immigrants so as to provide safe passage, inexpensive housing, employment assistance, etc. The U.S. is suffering a labor shortage and needs workers.

The Constitution only gives the federal government authority over naturalization -- that is, when an immigrant can become a citizen. The federal government has no authority over immigration and thus cannot set ANY standards for allowing or disallowing immigration. States must each decide their own immigration policies, as per the Tenth Amendment.

Strongly Agree

Schooling is a market function, not a government function. Insofar as the state must ensure that all students are guaranteed the ability to receive a primary education, funding should go equally to each student to be used at whichever school their parents decide, including home schooling. How children are educated is for parents to decide, not the state.

Neutral

Insofar as Judeo-Christian values are based on the "Golden Rule", i.e. empathy and reciprocity, this is a fine and adequate basis of ethics for a libertarian society. This ethical philosophy is not predicated on a belief in an Abrahamic conception of God, however. It is quite probable and feasible for a secular humanist to come to the same exact ethical philosophy. Moreover, other, more Puritanical conceptions of Biblical values are not compatible with a free society.

Strongly Disagree

Non-discrimination laws are unconstitutional. Everyone has a right to discriminate and associate with whomever they please and shun those they disagree with.

Neutral

If we reserve marriage to a purely religious definition, then there should be no laws whatever having to do with marriage. Insofar as marriage has a legal definition and particular benefits and restrictions by law, then religious marriage and state marriage are two entirely different things and the state can define their version however they like while not infringing at all on the religious version. I'd prefer to keep the state entirely out of marriage.

Strongly Disagree

Racism is a collectivist idea. The United States is an individualist country. There are no fundamentally racist institutions in the United States because the government is mandated to provide equal protection of the law to every individual without any regard to their peculiar properties that they may or may not share with others. Dividing people into groups by skin color, gender, sexual orientation, economic class, etc., is a fundamentally Marxist institution which has only recently pervaded.

I'm a secular humanist who shares most values with Christians. I believe in the material world as revealed by science and experience. My ethics derive from the Golden Rule, i.e. empathy and reciprocity. In about 1813, Thomas Jefferson wrote "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth", which is a compilation of all of the moral teachings of Jesus, stripped of all supernatural elements such as miracles, angels, demons, and deities. Jefferson wrote that “The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus Himself are within the comprehension of a child" and amounted to "the most sublime edifice of morality which had ever been exhibited to man." This included his sermon on the mount and various parables. I can't say for certain that I agree with Christ on every last thing, but I share most of my values with this naturalistic conception of his teachings. I do not believe in eternal punishment and reward though. I do not believe in a Devil that possesses evil people nor a God that guides and rewards good people. I do not believe in "original sin". Humans are born innocent and are either guided by good and ethical parents, teachers, and others or are corrupted by abuse, neglect, and bad influences. We are all the authors of our own destiny in the end though. The choices we make determine the content of our character and the successes we enjoy and the relationships we cultivate. Our genetics and upbringing greatly influence us but do not control us. If we do good by others or we do bad by others, there is generally but not always a sort of karmic return one way or another, not because of some supernatural force, but because of how human society works as a nonlinear network. If you know and interact with, say, 30 people, and each of them likewise has a circle of about 30 people, then you are connected within two steps (a friend of a friend) to up to 900 people, and within three steps to 27,000 people. And now with the Internet, we're even more connected. Nearly everyone on Twitter, for example, is connected to everyone else on Twitter within 5 steps. What that means is that good faith or bad faith between people can quickly spread to millions of other people, some of whom may be in a position to either help or hurt you at some point in the future. That's how karma works and why it's best to just treat everyone as you would like to be treated. Do what's right even when nobody is watching. Not because you'll get into Heaven or avoid Hell, but because it's the right thing to do, and in all likelihood, how you act is how others will treat you too. I'm not naive, however; there are certainly bad actors in the world. Many of them are in government. In fact, as the saying goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Furthermore, a government that offers absolute power attracts the most corrupt and sociopathic individuals to seek office. As in most things, the Pareto principle probably applies here -- approximately 80% of people are generally good and 20% are generally bad. Of the bad 20%, 80% are just disagreeable and anti-social and 20% are truly criminal. That gives us about 96% of the population are mostly law-abiding and 4% are criminal. 4% of the U.S. population is about 12.8 million people who are criminally-oriented. 21 million people work for government at all levels. I figure a high proportion of people who are both smart and criminally-minded probably find their way into a government position, which means that potentially half of government is highly prone to criminal behavior. This is colloquially referred to as "the swamp". We can never drain the swamp so long as we vest great power in government. The only way to get criminals out of government and stop the government from acting criminally is to drastically downsize it and reduce its power. The "afterlife" that I believe in is the legacy that we leave behind right here on Earth. I do not believe that our essence lives on in another plane of existence. Rather, we live on in the lives that we touch, the lessons we teach, and the things that we build. The urge for fame (or infamy) for many is a yearning to make an indelible mark so as to have a lasting legacy. I want my legacy to be my children and the world that I leave them, hopefully better for having had me in it.

Disagree

We need to ensure that only those who are registered in their district can vote. The exact method of checking registration status doesn't need to be photo identification per se, but it could be. It could also be a registration card or phone app or a bill specifying your address or something else. The main thing is that we only allow registered voters to vote once regardless of how they're verified. We must ensure the integrity of our elections.

The current universal mail-in voting scheme is a clear failure. It does not protect secrecy and allows fraudulent mass voting, e.g. by an employer, union, mob boss, etc., to threaten or reward people for voting by mail and voting the way they're directed to vote. We must put a stop to this. Mail-in voting must be only for excused absences from the polling place and should be generally discouraged as it's currently implemented. Only if there's some way of ensuring secret ballots by mail (or potentially online) would it be justified to transition away from in-person voting, but we're not currently there with present technology. To restore faith in our elections, we should return immediately to in-person voting. Furthermore, we need to end the winner-take-all vote counting method. We should implement a ranked-choice or approval voting system so as to eliminate the "lesser evil syndrome". This will put all parties and candidates on equal footing so that truly the best candidate can win.

Racism is only a threat to the domestic security of the United States when it is implemented in law so as to deny equal protection to every individual. This is usually done in the name of anti-racism. But anti-racism is a form of racism. Any special privileges or lack thereof granted by government due to the color of a person's skin or cultural heritage is un-American. The woke agenda pervading the American left today is racist and un-American.

Strongly Disagree

Nobody owes anyone anything on the basis of race.

Stricter environmental laws and regulations cost too many jobs and hurt the economy, in most cases. This is particularly true with regard to "carbon" laws. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, it's a vital organic element which is required for all plants to grow. However, laws against using leaded gas or asbestos insulation or dumping carcinogens in drinking water supplies are well worth the small cost.

Strongly Agree

Fracking pushed "peak oil" out by decades or perhaps longer and will enable us to maintain our quality of life while considering and transitioning to other alternatives over time. Fracking is particularly important to Pennsylvania where we have a century or more worth of natural gas due to this technology. Eventually, fracking for natural gas should allow us to transition to a hydrogen economy thanks to natural gas reformation processes.

Government primarily exists to provide a fair and efficient criminal justice system and national defense. It should be involved in little else.

Lean Conservative

This is a false dichotomy. Political philosophy is not limited to conservative or liberal. I'm a libertarian who leans conservative in most things and liberal in some things. But authoritarians can also lean conservative or liberal, and that's a completely different thing! I believe in individual liberty and free markets above all else.

Did not answer

No

My highest priority is ensuring that Pennsylvanians can weather and adapt to the high inflation and recession we're facing. Methods of doing this include reducing regulations and taxes on farmers and energy companies so that we can promote abundant and inexpensive food and fuel for all Pennsylvanians, come what may. I also want to make it easier for people to build off-grid homes and take their existing homes off the grid. Also high on my priority list is making Pennsylvania a constitutional carry state. As per the constitution, the right of the people to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state shall not be questioned. I also aim to reform the law enforcement system, particularly in rural areas. Specifically, constables should be tapped to provide primary law enforcement in rural townships and villages and boroughs, and we should provide adequate training and certification for that purpose, similar to municipal police training.

Neutral

Police officers should have discretion to disagree with departmental policy if they believe the policy to be unethical or unconstitutional, but when they are acting within the bounds of departmental policy and they believe ethically, then they should be immune from frivolous criminal prosecution. If their departmental policy is in fact unconstitutional and infringes on the rights of the people, then the department should be sued without the officer necessarily being personally culpable.

Strongly Disagree

Police should receive an adequate level of training to deal fairly and beneficially with individuals suffering mental health issues.

There are no constitutional or needed restrictions on gun ownership.

Strongly Disagree