What’s this site all about?

By David McElroy · May 11, 2011

I don’t have any interest in starting a political movement. I just want to live life and be left alone as long as I’m peaceful with others. I’m trying to figure out how to do that. If you’re interested in doing the same — and if you want to do it without the shrill and angry confrontations of politics — I hope you’ll join me in a conversation that might lead to better lives for all of us.

My own political evolution is a long and twisting story. I grew up in a generally conservative household, but I was taught to be a political independent. I also learned — from school and from my own reading — to be an intensely patriotic kid. I believed in our political leaders. I believed in the political system. I believed in the morality of this country’s role in the world.

Over the years, I’ve lost faith in all of that, first for pragmatic reasons and later for moral reasons. At first, I thought the problems I saw could be solved by supporting one of the mainstream political parties, but I came to see that the mainstream parties are more alike than different, despite their rhetoric to the contrary. Next, I believed that supporting a libertarian approach to politics was the answer, but I came to see that it was impossible to talk people into doing the right thing. The more I thought about it, the more I saw that majoritarian systems can’t deliver what they claim, now or ever. Eventually, I discovered the basic moral truth that even if I could talk the majority into supporting my position, it’s immoral for me to impose it on others — and that is the central role of the state. Ultimately, the state is immoral.

If you’re still at a point where you believe in politics, I’m not here to talk you out of it. If you have an emotional attachment to the state, only you can decide you’re ready to give it up. If you believe in supporting a political party in order to avoid the chaos you believe would come about without the state, I’m not going to change your mind until you believe there are other alternatives to the chaos you envision.

But if you believe the state is both immoral and incompetent to protect the natural rights of individuals, maybe you’ve found the right place to connect with people who believe the same thing. I’m not interested in debating the state. I’m interested in finding ways to live peacefully without it.

I’d like to find a way to build a community of like-minded people who are also looking to find ways to live without the state. This is the beginning of my effort to do that. For now, I’ll be writing here and hoping the right people will find the site and get involved in commenting. In time, we might build a community through something like a message board. I’m not sure. I just know that the state isn’t going to come tumbling down until people believe they have an alternative to choose. This site is the beginning of my effort to find an alternative that works.

I don’t know what to tell you to expect. You’ll see a lot about the deficiencies of the state. There’ll certainly be some things about alternatives to the state. But you’ll see a lot that’s just “real life” from my point of view. You’ll see things that represent what’s important to me, such as animals and beauty and humor and my Christian faith.

I hope it will be entertaining. I hope it will be useful. Most of all, though, I hope it’s the beginning of meeting people who will become lifetime friends and partners in the effort to build better lives and a better world for everyone. We might not be able to change all of the world, but maybe we can change our corner of it.

I hope you’ll keep coming back.

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I received the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine Monday — and I’m happy to report that I’m neither dead nor a zombie controlled by Bill Gates and Co. Eligibility was recently opened in Alabama to everyone who’s 16 or older, so I signed up for the Pfizer vaccine at a site run by a local university. I know this is a political issue for a lot of people, but that honestly baffles me. We can disagree about whether such a vaccine should be mandatory — which I’m against — but as a voluntary choice, it seems like an easy choice now that it’s been safely given to millions of people. Is it a perfect preventative? Of course not. But the decision seemed obvious to me when looking at the statistics and evidence. I haven’t had any of the side effects that some people have experienced, but that’s supposed to be more of an issue after the second dose, which I’ll get on May 3. In the meantime, I’ll let you know if I grow a third arm — or if the secret microchip kicks in and someone starts trying to control me remotely. All kidding aside, getting the vaccine seems like a rational voluntary choice to me.

I get a lot of email from readers. Some of it is fascinating and useful. Some of it is full of confessions that people want to share with a stranger. Some people write to ask advice. What’s really surprising, though, is the small percentage that seems to come from mentally unbalanced people. When I started using the metaphor about being an alien — the tagline at the top of each page here — it never occurred to me that I’d start hearing from people who took it seriously. But every few months, I get a strange email — such as the one above from a few months back — from someone who seems to think I’m claiming to be an actual alien. The first time it happened, I laughed. By the time it became a semi-regular thing, I was simply appalled. For the record, I can provide no proof that I’m an alien, because … well … it’s just a metaphor. I do feel like an alien among human beings, but as far as I know, I’m just as earthbound as you are. It’s just a metaphor. Honest. Or at least, that’s what my lizard-beast overlords told me to say.

After Tampa Bay, Fla., musician Colt Clark had all of his gigs canceled last year for months on end, the entire family felt trapped at home as most of the world was on quarantine lockdown. His wife, Aubree, had an idea that would let Colt make music and involve the whole family in making music videos to share with their friends and family on Facebook. Aubree is a photographer and homeschooling mom to a daughter and two sons, who range in age from 6 to 11. After their friends started asking to share the videos, they made the performances public — and a few of them are now on YouTube, where they go by the name of Colt Clark and the Quarantine Kids. The younger son, Becket, is on drums. The older boy, Cash, plays keyboards, strings and guitars. Dad supplies lead vocals and plays guitar, while 6-year-old Bellamy mostly dances but sometimes does backup vocals. There’s even a dog who makes an occasional appearance. The Clark family has just raised the bar for what I need to create with my future children. And best of all, they seem to be having a great time together. I hope they make you as happy as they make me.

Have you ever wondered how the social media world works for so-called “influencers”? I find it comical, so I thought I’d share with you. I frequently get offers such as what I’m about to describe. And if I’m getting such offers — as a relative nobody in the online world — you can only imagine what people with huge audiences are offered. It starts with an email appealing to my ego: “We came across your online presence and we LOVE your style. We’d love to have you as one of our Brand Ambassadors. To celebrate our new [Brand Name] collection, we want to give you a FREE Watch so you can post a picture of you wearing it and drive more exposure to our brand.” Did you hear that? They love me. They want me to be seen wearing their cheap $59 watch so other people will think, “If this amazing influencer wears that, surely I should buy one.” They even offer me commissions on the watches sold from people clicking from my site. So the next time you see some alleged “influencer” touting something online or on social media, remember that this is what it’s probably all about. It’s laughable.

Modern culture is going insane. The latest evidence comes from the effort to redefine children’s author Dr. Seuss as a racist whose books should be banned. Why? Because a few images in those books don’t meet modern political standards. The drawing you see here is one of those “dangerously racist images,” and it comes from the Dr. Seuss classic, “And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street.” The book catalogs all the wild diversity seen by a child on one street, including the offending drawing of a Chinese boy. What’s racist about it? Apparently, it was racist to show the boy eating rice, wearing a funny hat, using chopsticks and (worst of all) having eyes represented by a slit. (The bearded man near him has dots for eyes, but that’s apparently OK.) In other words, the stereotypes are considered racist today. (Oddly, the culture warriors who fret over such things are never concerned if a white southerner is depicted as ignorant trash living in a trailer. Some stereotypes are great, especially if the left hates those people anyway.) Theodore Geisel — the name of the real-life Dr. Seuss — was a product of his time and nobody at that time would have seen any of this as racist. Using stereotypes and exaggerations is how artists depict differences in simple ways. You can argue that it’s better to achieve the end result in a different way, but it’s insane to pretend that everybody from the past should have his work erased because it doesn’t match the preferences of modern leftists. Unfortunately, the company that publishes Dr. Seuss books has caved to the insane people — and six of his popular works will no longer be published. The world has simply gone insane.

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