I was a neocon. The year was 1999 and the race was on between Al Gore and George W. Bush for president. Actually we had gone through the dot com bubble and I suffered the pangs of loss in my meager portfolio. Global Warming was off the radar. I was reacquainting myself with politics after spending a few years examining the court system from the inside while enjoying a particularly nasty four year divorce.
By the end of the next year we found ourselves embroiled in the battle for the office of president. As a Neocon I was rooting for Bush and hanging on to every word the news saw fit to broadcast. Fast forward another year and I watched in horror as the second plane struck the World Trade Center south tower, the north already being hit.
Patriot Act
Like many I cheered the Patriot Act, thinking we had to have a way to hunt down the terrorists. After all, I had nothing to hide. My lovely fiancée called it the Gestapo Act, being of a more liberal leaning, or maybe given the history of her parents in a German work camp during WWII she just understood tyranny better than I did. I would argue the need for a crack in basic privacy to keep us safe. I hadn’t read history, finding it boring trying to memorize dates and places, and never being introduced to the stories themselves.
What was done in the name of neoconservatism started to worry me
My eyes started to open when statutes passed that forced me to buy bulbs that leak mercury vapors. How could that great defender of freedom, George W. Bush sign such a thing? Had I been wrong about him? Had I bought into the theater being played out in my government? I had, past tense. It was time to really see what was going on. It was time to get involved.
I joined the local 9-12 group, spurred on by Glenn Beck and a burning desire to learn the history I never knew. I joined a local Tea Party to feed on other’s opinions, only to watch as the group worked to elect another lying politician. I held my nose and voted for “Maverick” McCain, not because I thought he was any better than Obama, but because there was a 24/7 Obama channel on the dish and I wondered where the money came from to fund that. I took the Foundations of Liberty course through Monticello College , forcing me to read amazing stories of Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and George Washington. I read about the Roman Empire, Communism in China and Hungry, the Fascism of Mussolini and the National Socialism of Hitler. I read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. My eyes were opening.
The scales fell from my eyes when a friend gave me an excerpt from “The Creature from Jekyll Island” and I spent the next three days researching central banks and the history of the Rothschild family. I felt like Neo in the Matrix having swallowed the red pill. There was no going back; this Neo-Con was waking.
As I proceeded on this journey I realized the solution to this problem of dictatorial government and fiat money lay in the People. The People needed to be taught, not to pass some test, but to think for themselves. Using the greatest tool of enlightenment available, the internet, I studied the Frankfurt School of thought and the damage it has done. I learned the true meaning of a classical liberal. I devoured the works of people like Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell and other prominent Libertarians.
This rabbit hole goes deep and I implore everyone to take the red pill and follow it. Learn to be better People that we might have better government; of the People, by the People and for the People.
