Isilion

We’re not just the Internet!

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OK, people, it’s our turn! Bring your friends, bring your family! Notify your MeetUp!

When: Friday, August 24, 2007 10 AM - Monday, September 03, 2007 10 PM
Where: Exhibition Hall
State Fairgrounds
Timonium, MD
Who: 410-263-2125

http://www.mdgop.org/Calendar/Detail.aspx?EventID=7656

I am a 52 year old support engineer working for an Internet service provider in Imperial City, DC.

I’m just old enough to remember seeing John F. Kennedy speaking at the West Virginia Centennial Celebration in 1963 and I know what AuH20 means because I remember seeing the signs.

I am a child of the Sixties.

Nuff said.

I enlisted in the Air Force in 1972. As with many of my contemporaries it was a great way to dodge the draft. I saw myself with three choices: 1) go to Canada and risk a felony conviction 2) carry a rifle in Vietnam, or 3) fix broken airplanes in Arkansas. It was a no-brainer.

I got out shortly before Jimmy Carter was elected.

I set out to study electronic engineering in digital electronics, but ended up dropping out to make my living as a singer/songwriter. After too many years of just enough money to drive to the next gig (think Lodi), I finally got a real job working as quality inspector in Southern California during the tail-end of the Reagan Defense Boom. The company I worked for eventually tacked the letters V.P. after my name. I was 33, single, making way too much money and living less than an hour’s drive from L.A. I lasted about 3 years and ended up driving across the country with all my worldly possessions jammed into disintegrating Celica GT, weighing about ninety pounds and living on the last batch of meth I could afford. I ended up on my sister’s doorstep in Pennsylvania proving that home is indeed that place where when you have to go there, they have to let you in.

I became an on-fire Pentecostal and married my sister’s best friend.

We were together about seven years, finally parting amicably when the Jesus wore off and we both realized we where neither of us the person we married.

I was working again in Quality Assurance but slowly migrated to IT as the company I worked for started using these new fangled computer things. Not long after my divorce I left my job when the small but successful and very proud manufacturing company I worked for got swallowed up by a large conglomerate which proceeded to destroy everything we loved about working there.

After that I worked as an IT contractor around the DC area and abandoned Christianity completely.

I was initiated into Wicca, but ended up drawn more to Ceremonial Magic rather than garden variety Paganism.

I could tell you about people, places and organizations, but, heh heh, its a secret.

Shortly before September 11th I had been fired from a gig at a federal office in Maryland because I couldn’t get a security clearance. I had been slowly gravitating toward small el libertarianism. My journey began with a debate on a citidel style bbs about Lincoln and secession. I had always considered him on of the Great Presidents ™ and thought that preserving the Union was his finest accomplishment.

I started googling “secession” to gather ammunition for the debate, tooling all around the intertubes until I stumbled upon this oddball website called LewRockwell.com.

It was quite an education. The scales began to fall from my eyes. Before to long I found myself reading this: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/paul16.html

The more I read his stuff the more astounded I became.

Eventually it lead me to blog this: http://isilion.blogsome.com/2005/07/…move-to-texas/

The day I heard about this: http://youtube.com/watch?v=4HLkASWLPF8 I wrote a check for $100.00. I have never given money to any politician in my life.

The rest, as they say is history.

Now, you’ll have to forgive me for going overboard on this post, but there is madness to my method. I have lived long enough to have a vague recollection of the dream of America. I have passed through some of its worst nightmares. I have seen us at our best and our worst. This video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSlcNqcvdXg could be the story of my life.

There is just about nothing I haven’t seen, heard or done. I am an intelligent man who has explored life from many perspectives. I like to think I have obtained a little wisdom in the process, if only by the tried and true method of making mistakes and learning from them.

What I see right now is that we are at a pivotal moment in history. We will either succeed in passing the glorious benefits of Liberty to those that come after us or we will witness the descent of a tyranny unimaginable by those who pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to pass that gift on to us.