I am a betrayer of intellectual indigence, a chimeran diplomat for the unfettered, unrelenting, and unheard. Yet, I am mostly unknown, wallowing in the garbage of less menial neophytes to politics, the products of a supposed diktat whose critics twist prevailing mores of the majority under the banner of the same freedom they ultimately wish to dissolve.

Who am I kidding. Stuck. Outside, through a clear ceiling to floor window, I can see the ignoble masses pluck and plod in mesmerizing symmetry to the cadences of beach worthy weather, while I use my afforded break time to collect festering thoughts that have no respite, on a medium that has no readers, in a tone that has no inflection.

Most men have already hidden their dreams to normal societal levels, paying homage to the white bearded visage when necessary. I still dream, and I dream differently. Age corrects and perfects these dreams into lucid reality and possibilities. Everything I am, I have once desired.

Things have a way of coming back to you, and I have always portended to my eventual fame and power, but only as an inevitable consequence of my desire to do right by myself and that which I believe fervently in. This, like my atheism, will bite me in my ass, especially if I intend to become politically oriented. It will demand my accordance with deeply held convictions of honesty to one’s character, the innate integrity that should never be compromised for votes. I am a leader of free people, not a master of slaves. Ultimately, it is the will and balance of the governed to demand that which they desire upon themselves.

But here I am, my work sprawled across my desk, job orders and acquisitions, budget deficits and spending caps. On my wall, a half dozen quotes by various free-thinkers. Today is a Heinlein day. “Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.”
Indeed. My LSAT study guide sits open near my bag and the test schedule is marked on my calendar. A headless stress ball in the shape of the Linux penguin sits on my desk as if it could still see me typing away, mocking me even… The droning buzz of the air conditioners mellows the office confabulation of box scores in the distance. My co-worker is spending his time debating the proper size of his carry-on for British Airways flights for his impending trip to Europe, before abruptly leaving for the day. The occasional re-churning of the printers followed by the pattering of footsteps excitedly ensuring proper printer format of their delicate documents is a measurable annoyance.

The world completely indifferent to who you are… until you demand attention.

In the meantime, my coffee, the sweet ambrosia of the day, swirls in my steel Starbucks cup, awaiting another sensual liquid exchange.

This is where my dreams meet reality. What Is, and Is wish. I want to change the world, and the feeling has never dwindled in me, even as the ethereal hammers of my existence seem to cave in around me, I hold onto it…
I can cure the need for nihilistic facades.

From many, one.

Is it the desire of Americans to exclude? With the words of Emma Lazrus’ poem The New Colossus etched in bronze on Liberty Enlightening the World, the statue more commonly referred to as Lady Liberty,

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The same poem gives the name of this country as Mother of Exiles.

I was born in Hampton, Virginia, the state of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison. I went to public school, paid taxes since working at the age of 15, voted in every state and national election since my 18th birthday in 2000, graduated from the University of Notre Dame, lived in more than six states on every corner of the country, and have never left the continent. Yet, I do not feel like an American.

Is this the intention? Am I to continue to show deference to weak tradition and overwhelming calls to just “let it go”?

The national motto of my country is “In God We Trust”. On every coin the same motto appears, proclaiming this country one of ceremonial deism at the very least, and at its’ most egregious an establishment of this nation as one under the God of Christianity.

And what of the people who do not trust in God? If the offensive and equally insulting motto were changed to “In God We Do Not Trust” would the common theist response be similar? Would the call to “let it go” be heeded?

Do not assume they are not the same, in my eyes, this country is not a place for people like myself. This self-evident truth in my own emotion and reason trumps all claims of revisionist history when one assumes that this country was never meant to allow people seeking a country based on liberty to exclude anyone based on religion, creed, or race. By my very opining on the subject, the declaration of my own uncomfortable alienation I am confirming that that which was never intended by the founding fathers of this country is reality.

The lack of representation only points to the more disturbing trend of persecution among the majority religious of the atheists in this country. The foundation of this country is freedom, first and foremost.

Until the country stops regressing, until it realizes and recognizes the position and importance and rich history of her Freethinkers, until she declares openly E. Pluribus Unum, America is no longer a free country.

As a child cog in the public school system and product of the then newly anointed school doctrines of self-esteem and character building I was destined, insofar as such a thing can be ordained, for the inevitable inclusion into the “entitlement to privilege” legacy of my peer group, were it not for the harshly mellow dominance of a realistic single mother.
While at school I learned the ever important notions of sharing and equality, at home I was taught inversely that if I didn’t eat the last honey bun, someone else would, regardless of prior claim. Instead of a contradiction of reality, somehow these truths resonated with some deeply archaic genetic disposition most likely entwined into my Portuguese ancestors, and the socially liberal, economically conservative libertine you now read bears product.
In reality, I enjoy the conclusion that most of the energies exhausted in controversial debates today are deeply seated in the expression of a few on the primacy of absolutism versus non-absolutism. To claim that I am a certain thing over another merely denotes that I favor a particular sentiment that often falls within accordance to deeply held convictions on the importance of freedoms of conscience, personhood, dissention, sexuality, expression, and equal opportunity (contrasted with favoritism in opportunity). I favor the articulated tenants of the prophetic First Amendment of the United States Constitution, and I openly exalt a more thorough concentration of Roosevelt’s four freedoms and the concept of “freedom from”. In this I believe that freedom from religion, freedom from oppression, freedom from suffering, freedom from fear, freedom from torture, and freedom from excessive want are examples of desirable traits of the current zeitgeist in the governance and protection of people, and thus the sacred limits of government.
From a deep comprehension of human biological and psychological evolution, one can obtain naturally a promising import to the concept of economic liberalism, by extension of the aforementioned freedoms. Without applying a doggedly exerted explanation and apologetic essay on the necessity of a free market and capitalist economy, I will merely hold that the current model of economic freedom is the only model to overcome the concept of stagflation. It is the only model that does not intend to change human nature.
It is most interesting to note at this point that the two prevailing thoughts on the subject have intertwined before in the form of the Nobel Prize winning economic theorist Friedrich Hayek, for which Reagan was highly influenced (President Bush would later recognize his achievement with the Presidential Medal of Freedom), and his close friend, the humanist Karl Popper, who with the induction of empirical falsifiability into the philosophy of science, would become a barrier to later religious encroachment on science. It is odd to observe that religious components of conservatism in modern American tend to use both Hayek as the founder of modern conservative economics, and Popper, founder of modern version of open society, even as they shared a deep outspoken criticism of the role of theism in governance, science, and ultimately human freedoms perversely and fiercely contrasted to the powerful religious right. Religious Conservatives who taut the greatest minds of conservatism forget that they were oft comprised of the fiercest agnostics and free-thinkers of the time, including Ayn Rand, Karl Popper, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Friedrich Hayek.
My ultimate point here is that there is a growing feeling in this country that the two party system has failed us. Is it possible to mix economic and social liberalism, as they are divided so well in the current bipartisanship?
In this, I side mostly with the Libertarians.