Allow me to introduce myself

I tread a narrow path

So pleased to have you on board.

I do indeed make most of my living writing. I contribute to several local magazines, including a business quarterly and two lifestyle-feature-type periodicals. I cover local government for a media company that has four radio stations and a news website. I also play music professionally. That activity currently has two outlets: a jazz trio, and a roots-type band (blues, soul, swamp boogie). I’m also adjunct faculty at the local campus of a state university, teaching jazz history and rock & roll history.

I’ve had my blog, Late in the Day, since 2012. I’ll continue to post there. The sorting out of what is most appropriate for Substack and what’s best suited to LITD will no doubt take a little time.

I’m also host of a biweekly podcast called Barney and Clyde. Clyde Myers is a libertarian, and I’m a conservative (that’s conservative. I’m most decidedly not a Trumpist; more on that momentarily.) We choose about four topics for each segment and explore where there’s Venn diagram overlap and where there isn’t. (The latter set of circumstances generally occurs when the topic is foreign policy.)

And now, as to where I stand: I am a three-pillar conservative. Here is how I articulate the three pillars:

1.) Free market economics: A good or a service is worth what buyer and seller agree that it is worth.  Period.  No other entity - certainly not government - has any business being involved in reaching that agreement.  Therefore, public-policy inquiries that concern themselves with macro-level phenomenon such as wealth inequality or “fair” wages are not only pointless but tyrannical by definition.

2.) The understanding that Western civilization is a unique blessing to the world: Both the Greco-Roman tradition from which the West has distilled the political structure of a representative democracy and the above-mentioned free-market economy, and the Judeo-Christian tradition from which it acquired an accurate understanding of the Creator’s nature and humankind’s proper relationship to the creator are the two most significant avenues of advancement our species has ever discovered.  (And much falls under this point that needs serious discussion at this time, such as the fact that there are only two genders, male and female, and that their is no fluidity between them, and that the family structure of a husband, wife and children thereof is the overwhelmingly normal one and the one most conducive to a happy and prosperous society.)

3.) A foreign policy based on what history tells us about human nature:  Evil is real and always with us.  A nation-state seeking a righteous world(such as the United States of America) should only form close alliances with other nations that have demonstrated a track record of common values.  Regimes that are clearly tyrannical and / or expansionist should never be appeased.  Indeed, foreign policy should be guided by thinking on how to at least eventually remove such regimes as problems on the world stage.

And that, here in late 2019, is all I’m willing to defend. I shill for no brand or tribe.

I assert without equivocation that it was a mistake for the Republicans to nominate Donald Trump for president and for the country to elect him. (And save the binary-choice argument for someone who has the time and patience. Of course, it would have been disastrous to elect Hillary Clinton.)

Why do I say this? As I put it in a LITD post this morning:

He's 73 years old and has maturity issues most people have resolved by the age of 20. He is petty and vindictive, he demands personal loyalty like some kind of Cosa Nostra don, and he knows no other way of responding to slights than to engage in schoolyard taunting. He has no core set of principles, which has resulted in incoherent economic policy and foreign policy. He's switched parties several times over the course of his life. He is a man of low character. He was cheating on his first wife with the person who became his second wife. He was in the midst of divorcing the second wife in 1998 when he was out on a date at New York's Kit Kat Club with a cosmetics heiress. He saw Melania Knauss and, when his date went to the restroom, approached her and asked for her phone number. Years later, after he'd married Melania, he was at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe while his wife was home with their newborn son. While there, he embarked on affairs with the pornographic movie actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy Playmate of the Year Karen McDougal. He doesn't read - not only policy materials, but anything. He can't put together a coherent sentence when he speaks.

So that sets the table. This is pretty exciting. I’ll have some engagement-worthy content for you very soon.