I usually identify myself as a conservative, and indeed I am pro-life, pro-limited government, pro-the-marriageness-of-marriage, pro-military, pro-Carrie Prejean, pro-personal responsibility, and pro-business.

But that doesn’t mean you can look down the line of every political opinion I hold and check the box marked “conservative,” and there are some things about conservatism I’m not happy about.

No, I’m not saying I’m a stupid moderate – if I ever do that you all have permission to punch me in the face.  I’m still conservative enough that if you wear Dan goggles, everyone will start looking like tree-hugging hippies.  In fact, some of you might read this post and go “that’s all you disagree with conservatives on?  Wuss!”

Well, whatever.  Here are some of the places I don’t lean conservative – or at least don’t lean fully conservative  – off the top of my head.

Also, one more note:  I usually try to avoid saying “I” too much when I write, but this post made it come sort of naturally.  Apologies.

1.  Global Warming Certainty

I’ve written extensively about “Global warming,” which will apparently be on hold for the next few decades, and almost all the time I talk about how skeptical I am of global warming.

But for all of those posts, I’m not totally certain that theories on global warming are totally without merit.

I’ve generally held this kind of skeptic’s view:

• Global warming is not happening.
• If it is happening, it is not caused by human activity.
• If it is caused by human activity, climate change bills won’t help much at all.

Why criticize global warming support so much?  Because so much of it is on the extreme side of the pendulum.  Because so many global warming believers are so hesitant to put their money where their mouth is and avoid gas-guzzling jets and cars.  Because Al Gore is getting rich off of green investments while his house burns enough energy to be seen from Jupiter.

Do you know how sometimes when someone is so wrong about something, that you become a big contrarian and act like you hold an absolute position on the other side?  This applies here, and I think it’s what conservatives (including myself) are/have been doing.

Global warming hysteria is so ridiculous and the political reforms suggested for it are so bad that I often find myself swinging to the other side of the pendulum and acting like pollution isn’t bad at all.  Clearly, it is.  But last I checked, carbon dioxide is hardly a pollutant, given that plants use it (what’s more “green” than plants?) and create oxygen in return.  The idea that so-called environmentalists want to list carbon dioxide as a pollutant and regulate it as such should show you how weird things have gotten.

But if I’m being honest, no, it’s not a good thing to pollute.  It’s just that the solutions liberals have are terrible, and they’re blowing the problem way out of proportion in the first place.

So where do I stray with conservatives?  By admitting I don’t know all that much about pollution’s effect on the global climate.

2.  The Death Penalty

I’m Pro-Life, which means I’m against the dying of people.  If you are pro-choice but claim you don’t want babies to die, you’re a big stinking phony and you haven’t thought things through.

If you are Pro-death penalty, you’re not 100% Pro-Life, either.

Conservatism is generally for the death penalty, and I am not – except in extreme exceptions when the safety of other peoples’ lives is at stake.  (If you’re consistent about life, the only exceptions you have for not killing other people is when you’re saving someone else from being killed.)

The best argument conservatives have for the death penalty is that it can act as a deterrent for murder, resulting in less people overall being killed.  This at least makes the distinction of wanting the most people possible to live, which I can sympathize with, but ultimately that is simply a way of violating someone’s right to life in the name of re-engineering society.

Which, when you think of it, doesn’t sound all that conservative at all.

3.  Preemptive Foreign Policy Like the War in Iraq

As Ron Paul likes to point out, running an empire overseas is not sound fiscal business, and I have to agree with him.  I’m not with him in thinking that all we need is free trade between countries and everything will be hunky-dorey, but having massive government expenditures tied to expensive, ultimately unnecessary wars like the War in Iraq isn’t exactly sound fiscal policy.

Not that I’m against the heavy funding of the military.  No – it’s one of the few areas I think the government has a right to build up, since the government is charged with defending our liberties and you need a military to do so.

As I said in number 2, you have a right to defend yourself, of course, and there are indeed just wars to fight.  On the whole, I don’t think preemptive wars are usually just.  There can be exceptions, like if you want to invade a country that is a few weeks away from building bombs to kill you.

4.  Evolution

Evolution is not a conservative vs. liberal issue (global warming isn’t, either), so be careful when you see conservatives or liberals making it one.

Avoid the temptation to make the leap from evolution to creation story – i.e., “evolution explains how humans developed!  There must be no God!”  Also, avoid the need to doubt any new fossil that comes along that explains something about our past.

One of the big issues about evolution is how human origins are taught in our schools.  My thoughts?  This sounds like exactly the kind of problem (one of many) that would be solved by not having public schools in the first place.