“What happens when both parties are completely corrupt and the ivory towers are falling down?”

A Little background on me and my upbringing

I am a rare breed to say the least. A breath of fresh air for some and a pain in the ass for others.

Unwilling to succumb to the status-quo, determined to bring about real change. Dedicated to proving that America is, was, and always will be the greatest country ever know to man.

I was raised in a Christian home by loving parents who emigrated from Puerto Rico in the early 80′s. Puerto Rican born citizens are automatically citizens of the United States but other than that, the similarities between my family story and any modern day immigrant are eerily similar.

My dad: was a poor country boy, who grew up in New York until he was 7 and then moved back to Puerto Rico where they lived with no running water or electricity. I’ve seen the house and it always blows my mind when I think of what that must have been like.

My mom: was the rich city girl (if you can call Guayama PR a city) who fell in love with the country boy. They decided to get married and come to the states for my dad to finish his degree. I was already in the womb when they came over. Apparently I was a journey man before birth.

They were on a quest to make a better life for themselves and open doors for their children that had never been opened for them. They were as lost as a couple from a small island might be after moving from their homeland, to a much larger city, learning to cope with the cold winters, and mostly just trying to figuring out how to survive.

We lived a simple life…

My parents took us to church most Sunday’s while we were growing up (against my will most of the time), but I learned the bible and its message all while rebelling in my own way.

I was a renegade from early on. I remember always questioning authority and giving my parents a hard time. You could say I was the text book case study on how to be a black sheep.

My sister is a few months and a year older than me and my brother is about 3 years younger. There I sat, right in the middle of a five person household, in a modest cape cod style home (with only one bathroom, I-might-add). The house sat one block away from some of the rougher neighborhoods on the north side of Columbus Ohio.

The rules I learned to play by

Ever since I can remember, I’ve played this game called life by my own rules. Running around questioning authority and pushing the limits of acceptability; often crossing over the proverbial line-in-the-sand which usually carried it’s own own set of consequences.

Most of the time, my efforts lead to a tanned hide at the hands of my moms favorite wooden spoon or my fathers leather belt which was branded with his name. Something he had picked up on a recent trip to Mexico.

No matter which of them was reminding me how much of a screw up I had just been, I learned early on that decisions had consequences. I learned that the choices I made, were not un-makable and that once I did what I did, I would get what I had coming.

“I know I have something special waiting for me when I eventually have children because of the nightmares I must have given my parents growing up.”

Sometimes I deserved every bit of the whooping I got, but most of the time, I deserved more.

How much have I really learned?

I can’t say I really learned anything because I still make all sorts of mistakes. However, the way I see the world is what they truly affected. I might mess up once in a while but they instilled good values. They taught me the most important things and left it up to me to learn the rest.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but now I can appreciate that tough love more than ever, as I watch a culture of idiocy sprouting up all around me, I wonder if I will do half as good a job raising my children as they did raising me.

There are so many children running around unchecked by neutered parents, unwilling and unable to be restrained. Entitled to everything, working for nothing and otherwise raising themselves in a society that becomes more and more unrecognizable as time goes on.

Lost, wandering around aimlessly, unprepared for the rude awakening that will surely find them one day soon. Unaware of the backhand that awaits around one of the next corners in their maze called life. The smack down they desperately need and undoubtedly deserve.

Growing up liberal, err… creative.

I have always been a man of the arts. I remember on one of our family trips to Puerto Rico as a child, my mom tried to bribe me with bubble gum to sing for random members of the family. I was part of at least 4 different choirs growing up, attended a Commercial Arts program my senior year of high school and would attend a prestigious design school to study industrial design when I graduated high school.

My mom would later tell me that at times she worried I might turn out to be gay… Me? I just loved to create and capture my ideas. First visually, then later through my words. It would become an addiction I would never break.

As a child I remember drawing all the time. It started when I was younger. I used to copy characters (X-Men mostly) out of the comic books I used to collect. One time I remember showing one of the drawings to my dad. He looked at it and told me there was no way I could have drawn it. He said that I must have traced it. I persisted and showed him the comic book I had copied it from. When he compared the drawings and saw that the scale didn’t match he had nothing left to do but apologize for telling me he thought I traced it.

My time as a liberal…

Lasted about as long as a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things.

I still remember thinking at one point, that money was silly and that people should just have what they needed and give what they could. I never studied Marxism formally but there was a time in my life where I believed in the ideology of socialism and the principles of communism. I think it is a natural progression in the development of a curious mind. The exploration of a truly ideal society is appealing to everyone at some level.

Even to this day I understand the appeal of that ideology. I understand the desire to believe in a Utopian society where people are always good, have everything they need and there is no suffering anywhere.

I quickly discovered that this utopia I dreamed of would be impossible to actually pull off. There is no chance for a perfect society, and there can be no equality in life, whether talking about outcome or income. America was the closest man will ever come to a true Utopia and we are doing all we can do to destroy it.

Later in life I would get an opportunity to chase my dreams, but I also learned early on that it would be the hard work that paid off in the end. The road would be bumpy and success would be no ones responsibility but mine.

I quickly realized that there would be no one there to hold my hand or make sure I didn’t get hurt in life. There would be no do-over’s or mulligan’s. I discovered that I would have to fight, claw and suffer in order to truly be the man I thought I was destined to be. I learned that I would have to lose it all before there was any chance at having anything real.

A constitutionally conservative libertarian

I actually remembering helping my parents deliver newspapers early in the morning and hearing Rush Limbaugh on the radio. I don’t ever remember listening to it and I am sure I even protested it at times but that was before children ran all over their parents so mine just told me to shut-up.

It wasn’t until much later in life that I stated to really explore politics and learn about American History on my own. I had this thirst to understand the founding of this country and to understand other parts of world history. I wanted to know about the rise and fall of the other great societies that came before America.

I wanted to know why we were different and why, over the last 200 years America was able to grow technologically and economically like no country before it.

I am sure I studied the constitution growing up, and I’m sure I even memorized the preamble without ever really understanding what it meant. But, for some reason, at this point in my life, I had a genuine desire to know more about what it all really meant. I wanted to understand the political and ideological philosophy of the great leaders and nation builders of the past.

When I made the switch

I was carving my own path as a freshman sales professional at a Toyota dealership in Bradenton Florida, and I was finally making some real money. I started paying attention to the world and wanted to understand business and economics.

These were all things I might have learned in college… had I stuck it out. Instead, I would be forced to discover my own path. I would explore the world for myself and appreciate what it meant to live in a free country. I decided early on that I wanted to be my own king and build my own castle.

I learned to learn, and I learned to love it. I read book-after-book, not only discovering the foundation of this country but the demise of other great nations throughout history.

I wanted to understand the background for what is now the progressive political movement in America. The spawn of Marxism, Communism and Fascism. A movement that has been patiently executing a long-con on the inner workings of our entire political system.

I wanted to know everything about everything. I finally stepped out of the bubble, started exploring for myself and learned that the world is an amazing place. I saw that there was so much to know and learn about it and the human species. So much to learn about our behavior and habits as social beings.

I need to understand how and why these behaviors are constantly manipulated and how they are used to move entire sections of society. I wanted to learn more about how we are socially engineered on a mass scale and why anyone would want to corrupt the most brilliant social experiment on the face of the earth.

I wanted it all.

I started learning about political philosophy and life itself. I mixed everything I read with my own life experiences and then started to understand why someone would want it all for themselves.

I started to understand why a group of people would eventually want to take it all for themselves and turn the rest of us into their slaves. Leaving us all ultimately unable to change the national decision making process by neutering the power of our entire political system.

I saw how both of the political parties had corrupted the entire system from the inside out, and how they desensitized everyone to politics as a whole. I discovered a religion of government being built right underneath our noses and that we were falling for it hook line and sinker. I saw that it was more of a battle to protect their power than to govern under the constraints of the constitution. Or even under the pretense of protecting the people.

I saw corporations greasing the wheels of a political machine that runs the vehicle of progress that is America. I watched them pervert the word progress as a whole and dictate the entire premise of any debate.

I began to see their master plan and started to wonder when they would finally pull the rug out from under all of us. When they would have enough leverage to pull the cloak over the entire country and finally flip the switch.

I wondered if we even had a chance to stop and turn things around. Whether we even had a chance to save the country I had fallen in love with all over again.

I’m still a liberal at heart

In the truest sense of the word I am a liberal. I believe in maximum freedom and limited government. I believe in personal accountability and even used to call myself a liberal until I realized how badly the word had been bastardized.

My Struggle with the current political establishment

I don’t really know what I am when it comes to a current political affiliation. At least in the sense of using one of their popular labels.

I am usually able to understand both sides of most of their arguments, I even think there are some pretty logical solutions to many of our current political problems. I am just utterly appalled at the current state of affairs in America. It seems as if we are incapable of playing nice with one another. As if for some reason the system was set up to get us to fight among ourselves. Almost as if they were purposely dividing us in order to distract us while they ran away with unchecked power.

They have lulled us to sleep and put us all inside of boxes. With their political labels they have branded us and we are to conform or be crushed. We must fall in line with popular opinion or fall under attack. As if for some reason, all of us should somehow be ok with getting put into one of their boxes and never speaking out.

We should all live under the name of one of the labels they give us and never question a thing.  We are all bridled in political correctness, unable to express an opinion for the fear of being labeled a bigot or racist. We are to throw common sense out the door and instead follow only their direct instruction. We are to trust in them with as much faith as any religion and we are not to ask questions.

I for one think that’s an utterly absurd premise and refuse to accept it. I am unwilling to succumb to the pull of one established political party or the other. In my eyes the political parties in this country are both irreversibly corrupt. Both sides pulling us towards a tyrannical state in which we will all be left at the mercy of our beloved king.

The only difference is that we will refer to our king as president. And his kingdom will be capital hill.