Introduction
These writings exists, in part, due to a selfish need to write down my thoughts as an exercise to organize and analyze them. However, it is my hope that others may find these musings helpful. It is important, at least to me, for my children and their children to know not just what I believe but why I believe it. To know me more fully by understanding how I have reasoned through some of the most complicated and controversial debates in our time.
Our country is getting more polarized as the twenty-first century progresses. Our society has devolved into personal attacks and rhetoric instead of reasoned debate. From social networks to the professional media, everyone is taking sides, based solely on the color of their jersey and the name of their “team.”
But I continue to be hopeful. I know there are still reasonable people on both sides of the proverbial aisle, not to mention the people in the middle who have no emotional ties to one party or the other. Our country is at a crossroad. We are moving faster each day toward a royal government. I will explain the starting point for all my beliefs in the first essay, On Natural Rights. If you read that essay and disagree with my founding principle, that a set of inalienable rights is inherent to every individual, then none of the other essays will be convincing to you. However, if I am unconvincing in my argument that every individual has an inherent, inalienable right to life, liberty, and property then I ask you to do the work I have done and reason through what you believe and why you believe it.
My goal with these essays is not to change the mind of the reader, but to show them how I have worked through the process of understanding why I believe with the hope that, regardless of what they believe, they are able to explain it to themselves and their children and grandchildren.