I am Raden™, and I am a middle-aged guy who is fed up with our political system. Don’t get me wrong, I do not think something like socialism or communism would be better, but I do believe that WE can do better, and that’s what this blog is about… doing better, making better choices.
In my opinion there is a serious disconnect… oh, wait, this is turning into a blog post topic of it’s own. I’ll save it for that.
Anyway, my life’s political journey has been long and winding. I come naturally from a conservative bent, but I have never been extreme. I have never been the equivalent of a Tea Partier, for example. Over time I grew dissatisfied with the Republican Party and the dishonesty of politics, in general. I began to describe myself as one who “is conservative according to the dictionary definition, but not the political definition”. This worked well for me, and to some degree still does.
As some things about Republicans and conservatism soured me, such as advocacy for civil asset forfeiture, etc., I became attracted to the Libertarian Party and philosophy. You won’t catch an honest libertarian supporting civil asset forfeiture (aka legalized theft), that’s for sure. I even joined the party for a short time in the early 1990s.
It wasn’t too long, though, that I became disenchanted with the Libertarian Party and philosophy, and especially the people. They were too dogmatic and unwilling to accept realities of the world around them. Also trying to get them to work with people’s competing interests proved impossible. They tended to be wrapped up too much in what I call the “Paper Theory” over the real world. In other words, Libertarianism proved to be a fantasy land.
My next stop was true independent. I became a “decline to state” voter as far as registration goes, and have been continuously since the late 1990s. I want no party to count me even as a number on a voter roll and claim that as support for them and their policies… because I don’t. I do shut myself out of the primaries, but that is a trade-off that I am willing to make.
And that’s how I remained until around 2010 when I latched onto the “Centrist” label. For the first time I feel like I am “home” politically, so to speak. I still maintain my independent philosophy, only now I have a place.
Radcen™
1 April 2016