On occasion someone will ask what my political orientation is. This is normally after engaging in the discussion on a point that we agree on, at least in broad strokes, some other topic is raised in which my position is so diametrically opposed to theirs, that they realize I’m not what they thought.
In 1961 (I was ten) I went to live with my Grandparents in a very small town (Linden, TN) in a very rural county. Grandmother was the spitin’ image of Granny Moses (Clampett) and every bit as feisty but quite a bit more urbane. Grandfather was a tough as nails old coot you would assume was a hillbilly and he wouldn’t correct you, but you would be so very wrong.
One of the very first things my grandmother did was walk me over to the County Courthouse/City Hall (a block and a half, did I mention this as a small town?) in the basement of which was the county library. She introduced me to the librarian, who as all great librarians, had the marketing skills of a crack dealer. I’m sorry that I don’t remember her name, but I remember the first question she asked this ten year old boy. “What is your favorite book?” I told her that I had read Swiss Family Robinson several times because I liked it so much. She asked a couple of more questions to make sure I didn’t mean a comic book of the story, but the full unabridged book, and then marched straight to a bookshelf picked a book from it and said, “you’ll love this one. let’s go get you a library card.” The book was Rocket Ship Galileo. That was my introduction and the beginning of discipleship to Robert A. Heinlein.
Much later when the “social liberals” of the Republican Party gave birth to the Libertarian Party, I was right there. And I stuck with it. I worked years “herding cats” as Michael Cloud terms low level Libertarian party politics. However eight years of military experience had proven to me just how small the globe really is and how futile isolationism is as a policy. I worked on Harry Browne‘s 2000 campaign for president in Atlanta. My step-kids were the pages at his event in Atlanta, my wife (at the time) was handling the registration desk and I was doing my best imitation of a headless chicken doing the “cat herding’. My disappointment in Brown’s asinine unfortunate comments after 9/11 caused me to throw up my hands and just flat quit.
Then in April of 2005 the authors of Questions and Observations released the first of five issues of The New Libertarian. I was home again. So if I surprise you by being not what you assume, before you challenge me as inconsistent click on that link and do some reading. Hell, don’t wait, click on it anyway. I may be wrong, but the TEA Party gives me great hope that Bureaucratic Establishmentarianism is on cruise control headed for a cliff.
By the time this post disappears from the front page of this blog, the blogroll will be up and the link to The New Libertarian issues will be there.
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