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I've only spent a few minutes browsing your site but already would like to join (and possibly move to Keene). Surfed here from the main FreeKeene site, which I googled after a friend linked me one of those rare news items that manages to inspire hope (rather than cynicism or outright despair) re: the future of American liberty.
I'm in a large city now but lived about an hour north of Keene for a few years. Back then, I didn't have a care in the world. I enjoyed drugs and favored legalization, but this wasn't a pressing issue for me since drugs were plentiful notwithstanding prohibition. I disagreed in principle with almost everything about the Bush II admin and (especially) the PATRIOT Act and expanding security state, but these issues didn't impact me in a daily, practical, visceral way. I had known since my very first exposure to federal and state tax-bracket data that taxes were entirely too high, but my parents wrote the check to the IRS – not me – so I could debate fiscal policy from a place of sporting intellectual detachment rather than deep personal grievance.
After college, I worked briefly for the federal executive branch in a capacity related to foreign policy and national security. I wanted to make $ and have stories to tell at parties, and this seemed like a glamorous resume-builder to me. I didn't witness any shocking abuses of American citizens' privacy rights, unless you count the expensive, invasive and ineffectual security-clearance protocols they subjected me to. But then again, domestic affairs weren't really in my wheelhouse. And I did witness witless expenditures of taxpayer money – my parents' money – that were positively shocking.
I'm now a private sector professional. As I'd always hoped, I earn good comp – too bad the government confiscates half. For this and other reasons I unfortunately can't detail here, I've come to passionately resent (to the point where I am preoccupied with them and fantasize routinely about acts of insurrection I'd never actually commit) the types of government overreach that only bothered me at a superficial, intellectual level when I was younger. I don't want to feel this way; instead, I want to channel my time, energy and talents productively. I want to connect with people who appreciate what was formerly intuitive to most Americans: that warrantless surveillance, strip searches, confiscatory and baldly-redistributionist taxes and indefinite, incommunicado detentions are the hallmarks of a police state, not a free society, and that it's good to live in a free society. I aspire to live in one myself one day. So, thanks for starting this discussion and for letting me be a part of it.
Wow, great intro! Glad you found us and hope to see you here in the Shire soon.
Very Cool Anonysquire. I like the line,
"instead, I want to channel my time, energy and talents productively."
I agree!