How I Got From Here to There

My journey from Liberal to Libertarian started when I was thirteen years old. In 1980, President Reagan was elected. I could remember how bad things were under the Carter administration. Although I found the election of an actor as down right silly, there still seemed to be something comforting about Reagan in that he could have passed for any one of our fathers or grandfathers.

Now, I never really paid much attention to politics until maybe 1992, when Clinton was running for office. I was in the military at the time.  The first gulf war was over and I voted for Clinton simply because I only really remembered having a Republican president. I figured, why not just go the other way. In 1993, I got out of the military and went on with life as a civilian.

In roughly 1995/96, I got a job where I was driving a lot and discovered talk radio. What seemed to be out of the blue, was this alternative way of looking at things that was actually opposite of everything I could remember before and it seemed to make a lot more sense to me. Actually, once I discovered the conservative position, I got angry with a lot of things I remembered in the past. I started to realize that the media, both news and regular T.V, was manipulating me all along. I started to think of shows like MASH and All in the Family. In the T.V show MASH, the story is suppose to be taking place in the Korean war, but anyone who watches it knows it’s commentary on the Vietnam war. In the show Charles Emerson Winchester III was the stuffy conservative prick, while Hawkeye Pierce (who was my favorite character and I emulated while I was in the service) was the sharp witted Liberal. Then there was “All in the Family”.  Archie Bunker was all of our dads in the 70’s. They made Archie borderline retarded and Meat head the enlightened one. In hindsight, I was angry that the makers of the show would be so biased and it made me very uneasy.

So, I was a die hard Republican and so were all of my friends. I voted for George Bush Jr in 2000 and was happy when he became president. It seems that perhaps we could turn things around from what I felt were 8 terrible years under Clinton. Clinton, in my eyes, was a liar of epic proportions and this new guy would not be. Folks, at this point, I am in my late 20’s and I believe one guy is a liar and the other is going to tell the truth. How naïve could I have been, I say rhetorically to you, good folks.

One day, I was leaving my college chemistry class. As I started to walk by the student lounge T.V, there were all kinds of people huddled around that T.V. so I went over to see, and there was the world trade center on fire. I asked the guy next to me what had happened, he said a plane hit it, and the first thing I thought was how bad of a pilot do you have to be to not be able to miss a building of that size. A few minutes later, a second plane came into the camera shot and crashed into the other world trade center building. The room got dead silent. This wasn’t an accident, this was on purpose. It was hard to process what was going on. Then, all of a sudden, the buildings start to free fall. I remember thinking, at the time, that buildings don’t just free fall like that; then both of them do, I say no way. I only learned later, that three buildings free fell that day and one was never even hit with a plane.

After 9/11, I thought for sure since we are at war with some group or country that we would seal the border first thing, but it never happens. The government doesn’t fight the “enemy”, the government fights two countries and us. Now, the government has a pretense to do whatever they want, they can do things that they could never do if 9/11 never happens. It’s not about borders and citizens and patriotism, it’s about control and we are the sheep’s they want to slaughter. It’s not about right vs left it about them versus us. They are not worried about men in caves they are worried about armed American citizens, but why? The best I can tell is that when you commit big crimes good people with guns may not be very pleased with you.

Elections, arguing over this bill and that bill, what a joke. It is all a side show, a congress-men’s job as they see it is to stay in office. All the offices are bought and sold just like any commodity, and if you think the Bill of Rights is going to help you, you are wrong. Go a head and try to live free, you will be in a cage or dead by lunch time. The police are little more than hit squads. They will use the Nuremberg defense to justify any and all actions. Every dollar and every ounce of freedom will be bled from you until they destroy you. It has always been this way I suppose, but the fact that folks still believe the non-sense they are sold every two to four years is like a disease. The elites must be shocked that for the last hundred years the American people fall for the same Lucy pulling the football away trick every four year and the American people thinking this time, yes, this time that little bitch won’t pull that ball away.

There was Waco and Ruby ridge, there was the abuses of the LAPD and NYPD I could have written about but being it is the day before Thanksgiving, I don’t want to get too depressed. So, tomorrow when you sit down to eat your Thanksgiving meal, don’t look to outside forces to help you in your freedom and happiness, just claim it as your right because it is. The state does not own you and your life is what you say it is, go claim your freedom and don’t back down.

That is how I became a Libertarian

Mike Starr