People tend to embrace whatever political ideology justifies their existence. Since I feel like a working-class Tonka Toy born with a 350-cubic-inch, 4-barrel-carb, V8 brain under the hood, a meritocracy makes the most sense to me. If the government is going to redistribute anyone’s wealth—not saying they should, but I’m fantasizing here—I feel they ought to toss some chump change at economically underprivileged folks who are capable and motivated rather than at the soft and the stupid. But I don’t see much chance of a meritocracy being established over the next millennium or two, and our current “democracy” will collapse into a roach-infested idiocracy at some as-yet-undefined point over the next ten or fifteen minutes.

If modern liberalism was anything like classical liberalism, it wouldn’t seem so dangerously naive, and if the tempeh-gnawing diaper tots who comprise modern progressivism had stuck to the original game plan, I wouldn’t fantasize about putting rat poison in their snark sandwiches.

I loathe self-identified liberals roughly as much as Hitler hated Heebs, but not for a moment have I ever categorized myself as “right-wing,” “libertarian,” “fascist,” or any of the Pantone Color Matching System’s twelve beige tones of “conservative.” I’ve probably dropped more tabs of blotter acid than there are members of the Electoral College, which is possibly why I tend to shun binary thinking and scoff at the idea that the political “left” and the “right” are tangible entities, much less precisely definable ideologies riven cleanly in two like Die Mauer used to divide East and West Berlin.

I like to pretend I have an open mind that can be pried loose from my opinions if better evidence or a more well-reasoned argument comes along, which is why I no longer believe in Santa Claus, Christ’s resurrection, or equality. If there’s a starting point for my political beliefs, anti-egalitarianism would be it. Everything else flows from that “not equal” sign. I think the law should treat people equally, but I also think most modern political disasters, both micro- and macrocosmic, spring from the delusion that folks either are equal or can somehow be made that way.

Whether it’s due to being antisocial, sociopathic, autistic—or, as I prefer to see it, an “individual”—I don’t join political movements or parties and feel claustrophobic being labeled as a member of any of such team. But if you can’t restrain yourself from pigeonholing even those who shun such simplistic classifications, dust off your vintage Dymo Label Maker and try to make sense of my political beliefs as they currently stand.

GOVERNMENT

• I favor nationalism over globalism, states over nations, municipalities over states, and my abode over everything.

• You’re born with all the rights you’ll ever need. The government cannot give them; it can only take them away.

• Taxation is theft. Never once have I consented to it, and neither do I have a choice. Deficit spending is planned debt slavery. I’m not permitted to live beyond my means, so the government either needs to tighten its belt severely or risk getting strangled with it.

PRIVATE ENTERPRISE

• The day when corporations acquire the power to extort a third or more of my shekels and throw me in shackles if I refuse, maybe I’ll entertain the idea that they’re as bad or worse than governments.

• If I must hate the wealthy, I’ll aim my animus at those who pocket their ducats through currency manipulation and emotional-distress lawsuits instead of those who earn it through manufacturing, invention, and other such tangibles.

• I favor economic nationalism for America and protective tariffs as high as the Iowa cornstalks. I don’t weep enough tears for oppressed cow-fucking Malaysians to endorse shipping our entire manufacturing base to such places. In fact, I only weep for the cows.