Six Days to Purgatory

Here begins my political blog, as the world as I have known it since attaining adulthood crashes around me. I came of age under Reagan, cast my first and second votes for George H.W. Bush, cheered the Contract With America and the Gingrich revolution of 1994, pulled the lever (hopelessly, but proudly) for Bob Dole in 1996, and gave the current "leader" of the Free World the benefit of the doubt (holding my nose both times).

So, bona fides established. I have stood with the GOP for twenty years.

Yet I am, in fact, a libertarian (more on that to follow). And I will this year, for the first time, cast my ballot for the Libertarian Party candidate for President, Bob Barr.

Yes, my friends, we've come to that.

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I did not leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me.

But it's clear I was misguided all along. There's not a whit of difference between the major parties, really. Two subtly different versions of the status quo, spending hundreds of millions of dollars every election year to...what? Incrementally change a few things? Push the needle a little left, a little right...to what end?

This nation is so far removed from the ideals upon which it was founded, the ideals that allowed a small, agrarian population remote from the centers of trade and political power to grow into the mighty colossus of opportunity and wealth that we became by the turn of the 21st century, so far removed as to be unidentifiable as the nation that Held These Truths to be Self Evident in 1776.

Were we perfect then? Of course not. What nation was in 1776? We weren't the only nation then with slavery; we weren't the only nation then to fall short of guaranteeing equal rights for all citizens. But a few brave and wise souls put together a Constitution that, in time, has allowed us to strive for that perfection that we did not possess in 1776.

Beginning in 1932, though, it has all come flying apart. While the final march to equal rights as envisioned in our Constitution continued into the tumultuous 1960s, the foundation upon which all our rights are based has been eroded continuously since 1932 (or arguably, 1914 and the passage of the 16th Amendment, but that's a topic again for another day).

"Progressive taxation" (Orwell would be amused that this is the proper term for confiscation of wealth), massive federal government spending on programs never envisioned by the framers of the Constitution, a military twenty times the size necessary to defend our nation, restrictions on individual liberties in direct contravention of the Bill of Rights... Suffice to say, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, et. al., would not recognize the United States of America today.