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Greetings, I have been posting here for a little while, but I have not introduced myself. My two biggest political influences are Yuval Levin and Christopher Ferrara. The basic thing that differentiates me from Leftists is that I do not see people as "the government's children". The basic thing that differentiates me from Objectivists is that I do not see people merely as disconnected, atomized individuals. I believe that people thrive in the spaces that exist between individuals and government. Religious institutions, private clubs, and indeed the free market are some examples of those spaces. Modern Western governments, by their sheer weight, by the sheer amount of their nations' productive capacity that they consume, have crowded out a significant portion of the rest of society, of those crucial intermediary spaces that I mentioned. Because of this, plus the increasing amount of corruption (e.g., more and more people hired, because of political favor-trading, as bureaucrats at $200,000+ a year salaries to do essentially nothing), plus the soaring interest payments from the increasing government debt pile (over 100% of GDP at present), society is pedaling harder and harder just to stay in the same place. Our current situation simply cannot be sustained. I suppose what draws me to this forum as a non-Objectivist is that Objectivists are some of the only people who recognize this hard truth and will be honest about it rather than trying to hide from it.