David Nelson

I am a 27-year old software engineer living in Boston, MA.  I grew up in Atlanta, GA and went to a very progressive K-12 school that was particularly “woke” to the modern social justice movement.  We had gender days and race days, where the entire school day was dedicated to discussing white privilege, male privilege, and how the patriarchal society is designed to keep the oppressed down.  In middle school, we had a court system, where people could be “charged” with “put down” or other forms of emotional wrongdoing against students. When Barack Obama was elected president during my sophomore year of high school, the entire school was gathered into the auditorium to watch his inauguration, as teachers and students celebrated.  Dissent or opposition to modern liberal progressive values was not an option because everyone knew that good, caring people were Democrats and mean, uncompassionate people were Republicans. There were rumors about a handful of students whose parents were Republicans, but no student or teacher would ever dare to voice any opposition to liberal political beliefs.  As a result, I always considered myself a Democrat. It seemed that liberals were more compassionate and cared about other people, so clearly I should be a liberal.

Curiously, the issues of war and peace never seemed to be prioritized by the so-called progressive culture I was surrounded by throughout childhood.  When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, the sentiment was more or less ambivalent. Sure, nobody much cared for George W. Bush and people were disappointed when he beat Al Gore in the 2000 election, but when it came to Iraq, the general feeling was that he was doing what he had to do to keep us safe.  During the 2008 election, we were all conditioned to despise John McCain, who was attempting to thwart Obama’s run to the presidency. However, the opposition to McCain had very little to do with his unhinged warmongering tendencies.  Instead, we were supposed to fear that he would cut taxes, deregulate the banking sector, or oppose free healthcare.

I moved to Boston for college and for the first time encountered people outside the political perspective I had always known.  I tried to defend the ideas that had always been drilled into my brain, namely, that society can only function properly when managed by a wise, moral central authority that has the power and will to impose its goodness on others, both domestic and foreign.  However, I began to find the opposing arguments far more compelling than my own and my consistent inability to effectively defend my position, both from an economic and human freedom standpoint, led me to adopt a more free market, limited government political belief set and before long, I considered myself a Republican.  Republicans were the party of liberty and small government, so I thought at the time.  I even convinced myself to vote for Mitt Romney in 2012.

Near the end of my time at college, I was introduced to libertarianism, a philosophy predicated on peace and nonaggression, particularly in foreign policy.  I read and listened to some of the most influential libertarian thinkers and began to learn more about the true nature of the state and the real humanitarian costs of its policies, and in particular, its wars.  Very quickly, I realized the errors in my previous thinking, both as a Democrat and as a Republican. The state is not a group of morally sound public servants simply looking out for the good of the people. It can more accurately be described as a group of self-interested individuals who have been granted an enormous amount of power to carry out countless atrocities at home and around the world.  The Republican party is not a party of liberty and small government and the Democrats are not a party of compassion and empathy. Both parties believe in America’s ongoing strategy of global imperialism and both believe in the moral imperative for the U.S to “spread its goodness” across the planet through its military power.

I now believe the issues of war and peace to be the most essential to the causes of liberty and prosperity for Americans, as well as those all over the globe.  I have acquired a wealth of knowledge in the history of American foreign policy as well as the philosophy of non-intervention and why it is so important to the achievement of human peace and prosperity.  Through my writing, I hope to advance the cause of peace, promote the ideas of non-intervention, and provide an antidote to all the mainstream propaganda that is so pervasive in justifying America’s ongoing military empire.