About this Blog

Over the years I've made several abortive attempts at blogging. The failures to launch were due as much to my own philosophical tensions as it was to basic logistical difficulties. Simply put, I didn't know what to say, and--with work and family obligations--I didn't have much time in which to say it.

As with many others, the attacks of 9/11 (or, more honestly, the events that followed) exposed the intolerability of my jumbled and temporal political assumptions. I was deeply disturbed by how easily my chosen political affiliates, the Democrats, were overrun by (and often facilitated) the authoritarian blitzkrieg of the Bush administration. Yet, I couldn't articulate a platform from which I would have resisted the onslaught. Thus, we allowed America to be degraded and handed a sterling victory to the terrorists.

Since then, I have continued to do what I can while fundamentally re-evaluating my political philosophy. (What else is a dedicated political science major to do?) Unsatisfied by modern commentary and philosophy, I went back to the source: the Constitution. I turned a corner when I began reading works by and about Thomas Jefferson and his administration. (Of particular help was David N. Mayer's The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson.) The deal was clinched when I visited Monticello. (Can you imagine a modern President with enough intellectual wherewithal to leave an architectural statement to the nation--and, I'm not talking about those corporate-funded ego-tectural monstrosities called "Presidential libraries.")

Lonely philosophical wandering can go on indefinitely. (How can they really end?) But, at some point, you must cast off the security of the loneliness and temper your considerations with the light and heat of public exposure. In the end, I was most inspired that "now is the time" by Daniel Larison's blog "Eunomia," which is provided friendly offices by The American Conservative magazine, the only interested political magazine on newstands today. While I don't agree with Mr. Larison or TAC on many topics beyond defense/national security/foreign policy issues, I do admire how they've carved out a niche for their philosophy on the right. I hope to do the same for neo-Jeffersonian, or "states' rights," liberalism on the left.