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A Declaration of a Sort
2003-12-14
I am kind of a radical moderate; that is, my political and ethical views are actually pretty moderate when you look at them from an objective point of view, but in the current world climate, they are considered extremely left-wing.
Pretty early on in Citizen Kane, Charles Foster Kane decides to post a short declaration of principles on his newspaper's front page. He later violates his own principles—which include a commitment to not skewing the truth—but the idea of such a declaration is still glorious in my opinion.
I am committing to always telling the truth. Needless to say, I will use the only point of view I have on it—mine—but I will never omit important facts, paint dubious points as facts, say things I know are not true, use logical fallacies deliberately, or compromise what I think in anyone's interest. I will say what I think when I think and write it regardless of the consequences.
I don't tell others how to live their lives, and I don't want anyone else, including governments and corproations, to do so, either; if you don't like premarital sex or people watching pornography or women walking in jeans, then it's your problem. I will not tell anyone what to do with his or her private life, and I will not accept anyone telling people what to do with their own private life. They call it "private space" for a reason.
I will never expect people to support a cause. People have the right to be in the default situation, meaning follow laws, not participate in violent or nonviolent resistance, and so on. I will never support attacking people for exercising this right to inertia, call Palestinians who don't fully cooperate with Israel terrorists, or do anything similar. Further, I will not miss any opportunity to attack people who subordinate those who just want to be left alone to a side in some power-play, be it among Iraqi factions, between political parties in the USA or Britain, between the USA and the EU, or whatever.
Finally, I promise to be a human being first and foremost. I do and I promise to value all human beings equally, be they white, black, or Asian; Christian, Muslim, nonreligious, Hindu, or Buddhist; poor, middle-class, or rich; American, Iraqi, German, Persian, Chinese, Indian, or Papuan; male or female. I will never put an ideology, a state, or for that matter any group or structure above individual human beings.
You don't have to like my principles. Nobody is taping your eyes open and forcing you to read this site.
Call me naive. Call me idealistic. I don't care; you don't change a bad reality for the better by agreeing with it.
This site's motto is, "The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
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