I am a 30-something male living in San Jose, CA. I grew up in a Democratic family and was taught that FDR was the greatest president. As I got older, I found Howard Zin and all the other lib staples unsatisfying - no one on that side seemed to have a systematic way of analyzing the world and it seemed all very ad hoc. I put myself through school in my late 20s and obtained a degree in Economics and Philosophy, summa cum laude :) from San Jose State University. The experience of studying these two subjects changed my entire way of thinking. I became, and remain, a minarchist libertarian. Actually, classical liberal would be a more precise label. My favorite thinkers include Cicero, John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume, Ludwig von Mises, FA Hayek, Milton Friedman, Aristotle, Fredrick Bastiat, Joseph Shumpeter, Virginia Postrel, John Stuart Mill (the early years), Karl Popper, Robert Nozick, and SJSU Economics professors Jeffrey Rogers Hummel and Rudy Gonzales. I consider the following the most influential thinkers on the other (interventionist) side: Plato, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Rawls, Machiavelli, and John Maynard Keynes. I am a frustrated psuedo-intellectual with a wonderful fiance', three cats, two birds, and a dog. I work in operations for a major networking equipment maker. I welcome any correspondence as long as it is civil (no ad hominims please!)