"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws."
-- Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"

Veteran:
Reagan presidential campaign 1980, 1984
1980 GHWB Texas Primary (regret that!)
1982 Kay Hutchison congressional campaign (she lost)
1986 Phil Gramm senatorial

RNC convention 1984 - Delegate alternate

Traditional Roman Catholic (Latin Mass) and Zio-Con (thanks RCW2001 for that moniker). Consecrated Knight of Christ the King

Former winemaker and New Zealand vineyard owner.

Native Texan minus the accent.

Fiscal conservative and social libertarian. RIP Milton Friedman and Bill Buckley.

"For over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of a triumph -- a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeters and musicians and strange animals from the conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conqueror rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children, robed in white, stood with him in the chariot, or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting." -
Patton

"The [U.S.] Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals ... it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government ... it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government." Ayn Rand - WMail Issue #36

The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog. --G.K. Chesterton

I had no religion. I was taken to church weekly as a child, and at school attended chapel daily, but, as though in compensation, from the time I went to my public school I was excused church in the holidays. The view implicit in my education was that the basic narrative of Christianity had long been exposed as a myth, and that opinion was now divided as to whether its ethical teaching was of present value, a division in which the main weight went against it: religion was a hobby which some people professed and others did not; at the best it was slightly ornamental, at the worst it was the providence of ‘complexes’ and ‘inhibitions’ - catch words of the decade - and of the intolerance, hypocrisy, and sheer stupidity attributed to it for centuries. No one had ever suggested to me that these quaint observances expressed a coherent philosophic system and intransigent historical claims; nor, had they done so, would I have been much interested.
--Brideshead Revisited

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