Obviously many here shout out their ideologies for all to see, however, I thought it would be interesting anyway to get some specifics on what people feel are their core political values - not in the sense of "I vote Liberal!" or "I'm slightly more fascist than Franco!", but rather more in the sense of what principles are most important to you.
For example, "supporting an unfettered free market" is a principle, or "separation of church and state", or even "traditional Judeo-Christian values in law and government". Please, please, PLEASE do not use the tired and almost useless "left" or "right" designators, as they are not meaningful but rather are intended to obscure meaning.
I'll start:
DEMOCRACY: My first principle is that there is only one legitimate type of government, and that is democratic. Whether parliamentary or in the US style. Its very imperfection, mutability and inefficiency are its strengths - people are irrational, imperfect beings and their governments should reflect that.
DECENTRALIZATION: I prefer a federal model like that in Canada, where the regions have significant power - I'd actually prefer it even more decentralized, like the USA used to be before the Civil War, but it still remains far preferable to the French or current US system where the national government arrogates most power to itself. Democracies work better if they are uncoupled from huge national bureaucracies that take little account of the dynamics of large populations of dissimilar people.
MIXED ECONOMY: There are certain tasks that a government can perform better than the free market. Efficiency, the bugaboo of the rabid free market types, is not always the overriding factor in economics. I always use the example of the old New York City fire control system - it used to be you'd hire private companies to put out fires, but after a bunch of uninsured buildings burnt down and people got killed, along with the companies sometimes having inadequate equipment, or fighting each other in turf wars while citizens fried, it became clear that the municipal government running the fire departments was a far better idea. Of course, the businesses involved claimed that the free market was the solution to all problems, and that government would make it worse, but as it happens, these champions of capitalism were dead wrong.
RULE OF LAW, and CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE: It might seem odd to put these together, but I think that both have a place in my favorite political system, democracy. On the one hand, the law must apply to all, high and low, rich and poor, without favour, for society to function with some degree of justice. On the other hand, principled disobedience of the law is sometimes necessary when the law itself is unjust, such as in the civil rights campaign of the 50's and 60's in the USA.
Anyway, those are my big 4 (or 5). For reference's sakes, I usually vote PC or Green party in elections, although none of the parties really excite my admiration. If I was an American, I would have great difficulty as neither of the big two parties appeals to me at all, although I must say haven't seen a good Republican president since Eisenhower - which is sad considering I didn't see him, either, as I wasn't born yet
