My Philosophical Evolution

As a young high school then college student in the 1960’s, I was told I was a “liberal”.  (OK, a classical liberal.)  I was for a color-blind society, valuing individuals by merit, from my own experience.  I was for freedom of association, freedom to choose, and personal responsibiity.  Sound and stable money, charity by choice from personal passion, upward mobility and equal rights under the law were my ideals.   I was opposed to a military draft and foreign wars for the benefit of connected corporations and client governments.  Peace & Love.

I questioned authority.

As a young entrepreneur in the 1970s & 80s, I was told that I was not a liberal anymore.  I was a “libertarian”, accused of not having a heart for the “disadvantaged”.   Working hard while taking care of my own and those known was not enough shown.  Advocating the lowering or termination of taxes in favor of user fees, volitional financing and competitive privatization threatened the “liberal” agendas, those of the political class who wanted me to pay for intervention programs to enact their social ideals.  I still believed in owning one’s own body and what you put in it, as well as the right to be wise or unwise, and live with and learn from the consequences.  Leave us alone, and a market would arise for most anything.

I questioned the use of force.

As a long hours family man & businessman in the 1980s & 90s, I was told I must be a “conservative” because I did not subscribe to special quotas for politically fashionable “minorities” nor taxation and redistribution through social engineering agencies and organizations working against my own values and sovereignty.  I still believed in live and let live.  But for the social critics, that was not enough.  Worse, I was a “gold bug” – saving, rather than borrowing to make the economy more prosperous (for banks and cooperating corporations), nor donating to make the connected more powerful.  I practiced defense, not tribute.

I questioned the political class.

As an innocent bystander to the media propaganda wars of the 2000s, the corruption of information, education, public administration and the business world left me reluctant to participate.  Apparently my silence or refusal to join the cultural Marxist social engineers and their globalist corporate puppeteers in expressing postured outrage at selected “misdeeds” was my disgrace.  I was now a “deplorable”.   For being knowledgeably skeptical as to political agendas, soundbites & stunts, identity politics, government decrees, false science, scamdemics, planned chaos and misleading or fake “news”, I was labeled a “conspiracy theorist”.  It is how the enlightened are discredited.  It is how any spotlight on or resistance to the deep state is deplatformed.

I questioned the official narratives.

As a witness to the social chaos of June 2020, I am told that I am part of the problem.  My failure to offer vocal and financial support to the racial racketeers, my failure to “confess” and ask for “forgiveness” for things I have not done nor condone, for attitudes that are not of my own mind nor application, are somehow acts of “enabling”.   For not “excusing” the rioters and looters, for pointing out the real statistics of crime and policing, for observation that the problems with law enforcement are less racial, but more structural, I must be a “white supremist racist”.  (Actually that puts me in the good company of accomplished black Americans as Thomas Sowell, Candace Owens, Larry Elder, Walter Williams, Shelby Steele, Herman Cain, Ben Carson and Allen West).

I questioned the new normal.

Funny thing.  Over my life, I have supposedly gone from “liberal” to” libertarian” to “conservative” to “deplorable” to “conspiracy theorist” to “racist”.  Yet my worldview had never changed.

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