What I Think

Like many people I come across, you can't put me in a neat category, though I do have some solid convictions and ways of thinking that may seem stubborn and gelled.

I am an atheist, but not a ranting, antireligionist. People like the late Madeline Murray O'Hair got under my skin just as much as I imagine she affected religionists.

I see great value in religion for most people, both as a source of social stability and a moral compass. I just don't buy the supernatural belief aspect, but I do attend a Lutheran church weekly. An atheist attending church? What's up with that?

Well, my community is small and integrated, and if you want to get along and keep in contact with others, church is a great place to do so.

Second, I enjoy the Sunday School discussions; though they don't know I'm an atheist, I do a good job as a devil's advocate in discussions of morality, behavior, history, sociology, and philosophy in general.

Third, though my immediate family does not attend this church, there are many distant cousins of mine there, and people I've known all my life, so it imparts a sense of being at home to me.

My ancestors and theirs came to this spot more than 200 years ago; ten of my direct ancestors fought in the Revolution, so my roots are here.

I take pride in my ancestors helping create this great nation, and those who followed to protect it. My great-grandfather's brother was killed at Spotsylvania in the Civil War, my grandfather fought in the trenches in WWI, both my parents were in WWII (my mother an airplane mechanic in the Marines, my father in the Army on Enewitok and Okinawa ), and I served 6 years in the Army as well.

The people who settled in these parts, and those who came later, were strongly individualistic, both in their religion and the way they lived; that ethos was passed down to me.

In my college days, I was a Yippie, an anarchist you could say. I read and reread Ayn Rand, and absorbed the individualist, rational anarchism of her writings. Later, as I went out in the real world, I gravitated back to the Republican Party like my parents, recognizing that some modicum of government was necessary. At that time, Reagan had just been elected, and I thought I saw a bright new future for our nation with his ideals and ideas seeming to come into focus.

Since the 94 Congress, however, I became disillusioned with the GOP, seeing them devolve into little more than a moderate branch of the Democrats.

It was then, when talk radio came to the fore, that I discovered Jim Quinn and Neal Boortz, and realized that there was a whole world out there of libertarians hitherto unknown to me. And of course the Internet, where ideas that were not allowed in the driveby media could flourish.


You can't pigeonhole me into paleolibertarian or neolibertarian, or any other, though I could say that I am a social conservative in some matters, and a strong foreign defense hawk.

As I said earlier, religion is of great value to a lot of people, and to go about denouncing all religionists as crazy or ignorant is just stupid. Most people will always believe in some supernatural entities, and as long as those entities don't tell them to go out and terrorize others, I'm comfortable with their beliefs.

As an individualist, I don't care what you do in your private life: smoke dope, drink yourself into oblivion, shack up with three women and call them your wives, drain a swamp on your own property, teach your children God is a deer who lives on Mt. Ararat, doesn't matter to me; as long as you do no harm to others in what you do.

Robert Heinlein said somewhere in his books that sin is inflicting harm on another without reason. That's a good definition. Lest that be misunderstood as meaning that you can't harm or kill someone in self-defense, read it again - "WITHOUT REASON". He doesn't mean without an excuse, or justification, but without rational thought. Harming someone in defense of yourself or others is entirely rational, therefore self-defense is not only permitted, it is prescribed.

Given that, it is entirely rational for our sovereign nation to wage war on Radical Islam, as their stated intent is to kill, convert, or enslave those who are not Muslim. As they will not be persuaded otherwise, so it is our duty, in protecting ourselves, to kill them before they kill us. Plain and simple.


I'll post more of my views and thoughts as time goes on, as events and popular topics of discussion arise.