My name is Brian Richardson

My name is Brian Wilson Richardson. I am told I was conceived while the Beach Boys’ new album, “Pet Sounds,” was playing on the stereo. I try not to think too much about that, because who wants to envision what your parents were doing when you were conceived? TMI, says I. TMI.

The name Brian suits me, I think, but most of my friends call me B.W.

I was raised in a small state on the East Coast somewhere between New York and Delaware, then packed off to a private college out here in, well, the state where I am now. There, a rodent with a walrus moustache tried to indoctrinate me into the ways of the collective, but I am my father’s son, and my father was an individual.

One of the first thoughts I remember having along the lines of the way the world is: The folks who signed the Declaration of Independence did not believe they were forming a new country.

“We, therefore … solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states …”

Notice the plural? States? What’s the difference between a country and a state? In 1776, there was no difference. United states, yes – one nation? Not so much. More like a federation, like our United Nations today. That’s why the first contract between the states were articles of confederation.

My ideas about The Way Things Are kind of riff off that thought. “Libertarian” describes my philosophy better than “republican” or “democrat” or “conservative” or “liberal,” and if you suggest that I sometimes veer toward anarchy, I don’t take that as an insult. Just keep in mind that my heroes are people like Gandhi and Thoreau and King – people who used their minds and their creativity to change the world, not their fists or other physical weapons.

If there is a battle between two dichotomies in this world, I suggest it is between the individual and the state. Call me an anarchist, and I respond that I fear a world without individuals more than I fear a world without states. But I don’t necessarily believe the institution of government is bad, if that government is an organization created by individuals to serve individuals, not rule them. I’m just not aware of any government that functions under that code.

I was murdered four years ago. All right, that is not exactly what happened. My father put me to sleep, believing that I had outlived my usefulness.

It’s time to wake up.


P.S. You think you know who my father is, and who I am. Maybe you don’t. In any case remember Tom Paine’s words from “Common Sense”: “Who the Author of this Production is, is wholly unnecessary to the Public, as the Object for Attention is the DOCTRINE ITSELF, not the MAN.”