...like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad."

[VforVoluntary49]

All my life, at home, in school, with friends I knew that something was wrong, that what I kept hearing about the world was not correct.  I didn't know how or why and whenever I tried to investigate I was beaten back and beaten down by those around me, and came to think that I was alone, that I was just wrong.  But something kept picking at my brain, and I could never reconcile what I felt inside about war, violence, religion, etc. with the world and its words...

I don't believe in "god" or any deity but I do believe that if you attempt to remain tru to yourself and your values, the world will give you what you need (or perhaps more accurately, if you keep searching you will find the truth). As a sophomore in high school, I switched into AP english at the last minute and that was the class I first read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and instantly found what I was looking for.  Ayn Rand was able to put into words so many of the things that I had always thought in my head but could never find the way to speak.  I had a few issues with her philosophy but when you find the only water in a desert you devour it, no matter how dirty-at least it isn't like the miles of sand all around you.  But for many years I never realized there was more to the ideas than just Rand-I thought her philosophy was from long ago and had died out in the world I was living in, so few people did I see who even came close to espousing these ideas, and so while quietly considering myself a Libertarian I went about my life, trying to put many of the things I believed (independence, integrity, self-worth and "honest self-interest") into practice but always found myself living a twisted life between the world inside and the world outside, and the conflict drove me down a number of times.

  But then a few years later (this past year or so) I heard my first Ron Paul speech and fell down the rabbit hole, so to
speak-reading his work, the work of many of the Austrian economists,
moved onto looking at some revisionist history, and ended on Rothbard's
minarchism/semi-anarchism.  Stuck there for awhile, throughout the election
cycle and could not fathom how people were not supporting this man in droves, so honest and correct he was compared to the rest of the dancing puppets surrounding him. After the election ended I could still realize something was just still barely missing, that the movement must have missed something or must have some fatal flaw because it just didn't add up in my mind.
In a suggested video to one I was watching on youtube, I saw "The Story
of Your Enslavement", and finally "exited the Matrix". Started reading
UPB, Everyday Anarchy and listening to the podcasts, and am greatly
interested in pursuing these ideas and investigating further-because
just about everything I keep hearing is what I've always known but never
had the words to say, and now I can't get enough.  I am doing my best to internalize and investigate this freedom as fully as possible, and find new ways to bridge the gap for those who are not quite here yet and may not find the way, so small is the window we have in this current world. 

Anyways, thank you for listening FDR community-I am so pleased and honored to be here. Stay strong and stay free.

[Isomies]

Thanks for posting. Felt what you're saying about knowing that something was wrong, and not being able to let it go.

[Chris Harris]

Wonderful introduction and, again, glad to have you here!