Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth to see it
Some of the Biggest Changes/Trends in the Ten Years of the Blog
I initially started the blog after McCain and Obama had seized their parties' nominations. I initially intended to present an independent conservative aspect, vs. being a partisan shill. Let's be clear: I never had any intention of voting for Obama. I had despised the obscure partisan state senator before I moved out of Illinois in the spring of 2004. In part, I saw John McCain as a bipartisan leader who could deliver in the wake of Bush's failure to bring to US government what he had delivered as a popular Texas governor. But keep in mind that I was never a partisan hack: in my salad days I had been a registered Democrat; I have always been pro-life and fiscally conservative. I had not really been a skeptic of certain progressive interventions through government, but I also hadn't really studied economics, say beyond Marx's critique of capitalism in social philosophy class. I remember being attracted to Carter's advocacy to zero-based budgeting, truck deregulation, etc.
It wasn't until I took my graduate economics classes that I became a more consistent conservative; it really wasn't that my professors were conservative (they were probably progressive) but more of a skepticism and distrust of the government monopoly that had repeatedly failed its mission. Moreover, the moderates and conservatives in the Democratic Party had been marginalized. For me, the final straw was when the Dems declared war on the Bork nomination. The GOP simply won by default, not because they appealed to political principle.
Here are some of the notable changes from the earlier years of the blog:
- a transition from modest immigration reform perspective to a more strident open immigration advocacy
- a total break from interventionist neo-con foreign policy; radically scaling an 800-base empire
- my embrace of the Tea Party
- my departure from the GOP when Trump clinched the 2016 nomination
- the need to radically reform entitlements and government pensions
- audit the Fed and the Pentagon
- abandonment of a dysfunctional war on drugs (not an advocacy of drugs)
- privatization and rebalancing of government along the principle of Subsidiarity
- opposition to the imperial Presidency
- enforcement of the Bill of Rights (privacy, eminent domain, due process, etc.)
- decreased emphasis on politics
FEECast: FA Hayek
Political Cartoon
Courtesy of Robert Ariail via Townhall
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists
Elton John, "Blessed". One of my favorite all-time singles.
