i am politically challenged.....please help?

Question

i'd like to be more knowledgable when it comes to politics. where do i look to find out more? not about just one party but about issues in general and how each candidate stands. i find it all very confusing. as you can tell, i've never been politically minded so please, no mean comments or smart*ss remarks. just some decent info. thanks.

so much to think about. i know what i believe in but it seems that i'm kind of in the middle. i agree some with each party.

Answer 1

Many on the left will slam me for this. Listen to talk radio on AM. during the day. Glenn Beck ,Sean Hannity ,Rush Limbaugh,Al Frankin,Neal Boortz, Michael Savage. These are not all right wing guys but you can tune into them and in a few days you will learn more than you will from a bunch of these guys in here. If you wouldd like to chat politics email me i will be glad to share what i know.

Answer 2

I guess the best quote to begin with would be:

If a person is not a liberal by the time they are eighteen they don't have a heart, and if a person is not a conservative by the time they are 30 they don't have a brain.

Most of the time you can find out where a candidate stands on certain issues by visiting a local church right before the election they generally hand out pamphlets explaining where candidates stand on issues the church feels is important.

Also it is a good idea to think about what your issues are.

Where do you stand on abortion?
Do you beleive that private citizens should have the right to bear arms.
What is your veiw of national health care?

Remember that regardless of who is in office you will most likely not be represented. The Democrats claim to be the party of the poor, but they are all rich so it is an oxymoron, moreover they can only keep your vote by keeping you poor but they have a solution that will cure that if you continue to vote for them. The Republicans are labeled as the party of the rich, so at least they don't have and identity crisis, but there is no party that represents the working middle class, so basically you are stuck voting for who you think is the lesser of the two evils

Answer 3

You can watch C-Span if it is available in your area. Go to the library and check out books on government. Read some history books. It helps a lot to understand where we are if you know how we got here. Don't go WAY back to the 1990's. Go back to the 1500's - 1600's. There are a lot of websites that can help too.
Google "American History". You will be busy for a while.

Read your local newspaper, but understand that the articles were written by people. People as a rule will slant an article to make their favorite side look a little better (left or right). Try to read the facts out of the article and ignore the rest. The TV news is the same.

Go to town council meetings, school board meetings, etc. While generally boring, they are informative too.

Feel free to ask the politician how he/she stands on an issue and why. If they give you a generic answer, ask them to be specific. You hold the key to their future - your vote.

Vote, vote, vote and then go vote. If someone tells you your vote doesn't count, ignore them. It does.

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

Develop your own system of beliefs. Decide what you believe is right or wrong rather than what everybody else says. Disregard polls, political commercials and the media. Determine what is best for you and your loved ones and vote accordingly.

Answer 5

Know what issues are important to YOU.
Match the candidate with those values.
Surf the net and don't rely entirely on the news to keep you informed, the television networks are not politically neutral.

Answer 6

OK first let me pre explain a few things someone not into polotics might not understand. Thier are 3 parts of our government, Left wing Liberals, Moderates, and Right Wing Conservatives.

Liberals tend to like change for the heck of it and belive in the saying it takes a comunity to raise a child. They are against gay marragie, very new age, and tend to ignore history's lessons at times. They also do not pay much atention to the constitution and wish to change it to make sense today.

Moderates tend to be push overs you dont want to be a moderate

Conservatives tend to like keeping the status quoe and are very old school. Thier against gay marragie, strongly belive in retaliation and also tend to be history buffs too. Conservatives belive in preserving the constitutions values in today's world.

First its a basic rule of know the true facts. Dont listen to any TV news station and dont go to a website for any of these. With exception to fox news all news media tends to be liberaly oriented and will spin things to suport the Democratic candidate and slader the republican one.

For good info, A: Bill O'Riley tends to be critical of both sides on Fox News but he is (like myself) a member of the right wing of Republicans, highly conservative and hating of the far left democrats (also right wingests: George Bush, and most of the Republican leaders)
B: if you must watch a TV new station ABC Nightly news also tends to be rather LIberal in thier views.
C: Do not under any circumstances watch CNN they lie like thier is no tommorow!
D: Go to a canidates web stie they all have them and those will give you thier view points strieght from them.
E: take a side and follow that, hopefully you will decide to take the side of the right wingests like myself but hey its your opinion. Take a side dont go wishy washy pick left or right and stick with that for life.

and now just a little slanderous right side talk for ya, you can continue to read or not.

Firstly the left side democrats are out thier, they are morons. HIllary Clinton is an idiot. If any one in the world seriously thinks she cares about the people of new york or the people of this country.... ha not a chance. Liberals are very power hungry they only want power for themselves and no one else. This can relate to Cesar in rome they very much mirror his views. Its interesting that if you look at the Romans and the Americans, we are very similar. Both are world powers, both run under a republic form of government, both were founded to get away from a tyrant monarch and both have a good say at what goes on in the world. Thier is a saying history repeats it self, wich is hapening right now, the liberals are like cesar and could destroy the American way of life forever and change the world. It could be because of them that the US will be taken over. And the freedoms we enjoy today will be gone. The EU is a dangerous idea. If the EU (european union) gets formed the US is in Deep ****, we have to keep the EU from forming, if thier is a candidate that mentions keeping Europe seperate folow them regardless of what they think else wise. As for the touchy subgect of the war.... To pick a candidate that will pull out imiditaly will meen one thing for us... death! The terrorists in Iraq and afghanastan care nothing about anything but killing americans. atleast with the war going we can kill them before they kill us. Might I also mention that thier were almost 6000 terrorsit related US civilan casualties under Bill Clintons administration and that he had a lower aproval raiting the President Bush? Somthing the boys on ABC, CBS, and NBC failed to mention... people also sadly have forgoten 9/11 we promised we would hunt down and destroy the people responsible but we can't if people hate the war. I really think that the first amendment should be changed. To not include freedom of press because they over stay thier welcome. They have made wars impossible to fight, they alow polotitions to run wars not generals. If we could get rid of the press life would be easier.

So hope I've helped alittle and hope you might also know some evils of the Democrats and the left wing. Hope you make the right (pun intended) desicion.

Remember they dont call republicans right for the wrong reasons.

Answer 7

If you could narrow down what you would like to become more knowledgable about I could give you a list of good books, papers and movies/documentaries to get you caught up. I think its great that you want to educate yourself on important issues.

Answer 8

take a college course in political science.