Over the course of my life, I've seen just about every side of the political landscape, from attending fundraisers for Republican candidates like Ronald Reagan and George Deukmejian as a child to casting my first presidential ballot for Ross Perot to proudly ticking the box signifying my selection for Barack Obama in the 2008 & 2012 elections. To a lot of people this would say that my values and opinions have changed over the course of my life, and to a relatively minor extent, they have. That's not the whole story. A large chunk of this story is just how far the politics in the country have shifted to the right and authoritarian, while the social scale has shifted left. I wonder if these two things are bound - the further left social opinion is, the harder right the political spectrum tends to turn.

I've always been pro-choice. I don't feel like I have the right to tell someone how they manage their own body. Even as I was helping my mother make end of life decisions, I felt awkward making suggestions that might differ from what my mom wanted. How, then, could I demand a say in the lives of millions of women across the country? How could I tell a poor mother struggling to feed children that she already has that she should bring a child into the world that she will not be able to support? How can I tell a woman with an abusive husband that she be required to bring a child into that relationship? How can I tell a victim of sexual assault that they must keep the child of such a violation? I can't. I can't square any of that with my place in the world. Nor do I want some kind of arbitrary distinction made that separates abortion into its own category with regard to healthcare funding of various groups. I get the other side of the debate - that an abortion is technically ending an unborn life, I just don't happen to agree with it. Research tells us that unwanted children are less likely to succeed and be productive members of society. I draw a hard line in the sand at enforcing my beliefs on another person's body, and I ask that those who represent me feel the same way – because that choice is not for politicians, it is one between a doctor and their patient.

I've always been pro-education. My mother was a teacher for more than 30 years. I know the value of education, because I've seen first hand what it accomplishes, and what teachers sacrifice for their classrooms and kids. It wasn't uncommon for my mom to spend as much (or more) on her classroom each month as she did on food because the school was constantly underfunded. That's something that only happens when you truly believe in your calling. Good education grants a foundation for an ever-changing world, but it is not enough to build a foundation – a nation must continue to maintain and upgrade education, or face a point where its citizens' knowledge no longer suffices for the modern world. When I was a child, Pluto was a planet, most people didn't believe that smoking causes cancer, AIDS only affected "the gays", there was no internet, and there were no cell phones. We launched Voyager 1 twenty days before I was born and this year, it will spend its 40th birthday far outside our solar system – it's the first interstellar spacecraft, and it continues to send scientific data about the universe beyond our solar system's heliopause. The kind of education required for that kind of accomplishment isn't just something done in laboratories. It's fostered in children, nurtured in adolescence, matured in adulthood, and questioned in old age. Not only do all Americans deserve to receive a quality education, but our place in the world demands that we treat it with respect.

I've always been a proponent of immigration. I grew up going to a school with more than 50% immigrant children, and then later go to a private high school with more than 30% foreign students. My best friend in kindergarten and first grade was the son of Mexican immigrants. I had three roommates in my boarding school; my first was the son of Japanese immigrants, the second the son of Indian immigrants, and the third's parents worked for an oil company in Bahrain. That kind of diversity is a gift, not a threat. It is impossible to know or state how much this shaped my understanding and appreciation of different cultures or how much we all have in common.

I've always preferred lower military spending. I don't believe that we can withdraw from the world stage in quite the same way that non-interventionists tend to believe, but I do think that we as a country spend too much on our armed forces, and that funding would now do better propping up programs aimed at education and research. For one thing, the vast majority of military jobs require some serious job retraining costs often combined with psychological trauma costs for returning veterans, but also, R&D spending or infrastructure spending will do more to strengthen our country in the modern world than brute force does. I was nearly a teen when the Berlin wall fell, a casualty of the relative wealth and prosperity of Western societies compared to the poverty of the old Soviet bloc. Since then, the US has continued to outspend the rest of the world, feeding an industrial complex that continually seeks to engorge itself by stoking the fires of armed conflict rather than peaceful resolution. That said, so long as the US can provide some level of stability, and appropriately intervene when crisis demands, then we should be prepared for action.

I've always favored the decriminalization of drugs. We've tried to legislate morality before during the prohibition era and it didn't work out well. In fact, it had the exact same effects as the "War on Drugs" has had: staggering cost in human lives, prison terms, societal stigma, gun violence and inability to combat addiction. Only just now are we even beginning to wake up from this nightmare of our own making. Sending drugs into the black market has sent our money to the hands of people who are willing to break the law in order to provide supply for the demand. Since those people cannot go to law enforcement for stolen property, they're going to enlist the aid of weapons and people who are willing to use them. What follows after that are bloody clashes over markets between rival cartels and gangs, and corruption of peace officers via the accumulation of wealth by drug trafficking groups. We will not solve drug or alcohol use through the use of law enforcement, we will only solve it through treatment programs, common-sense regulation, and income equality.

My Dad & me protesting the federalization of Big Sur.

I've always been in favor of protecting the environment. This goes hand in hand with growing up as a Big Sur native, though the methods of protecting the environment tend to change over time. When I was a child, I was out there protesting the federalization of the Big Sur coast with my parents. On one side of that fight were arrayed the forces of Ansel Adams (yes, that one), the Big Sur Land Trust, Leon Panetta (also yes, that one) and other local Democratic party members. On the other, a scrappy band of locals formed into the Coast Property Owner's Association. Over the course of ten years, as many as seven different attempts were made to turn Big Sur into a National Park. "Environmentalism" got kind of a hippy name back in the 70's and 80's, but what I'm talking about isn't Weatherman-style radicalism, it's the simple understanding that what humans do impacts our world, and we have to make choices that will be beneficial not just for ourselves, but for the generations to come after us. In Big Sur's case, the solution wasn't to nationalize the area, it was to allow the land to remain in private hands, because "private hands" in this case meant individuals. But what we're seeing in the wider world is an increase in capital and power in the hands of larger corporations, and those corporations often tend to have less altruistic goals in mind. If I had the choice to see Big Sur be turned into a National Park or clear-cut by logging companies, I can guarantee you that I'd be for the former. As with all things, it's a matter of perspective.

I've always been in favor of equal rights. I don't really have much to say here. We're all human. We should all have the same rights, regardless of color, gender, or sexual orientation or identity. You do you, and I'll do me.

My views on gun control have shifted toward the left. While I'm still largely in favor of the second amendment, I think that gun control lobbyists need to take a seat at the table and make some concessions when it comes to firearms purchases. Universal background checks. Mental health checks. Federal registration of firearms. Licensing by firearm types. In return, a more straightforward and sane policy on firearm ownership and usage across the country. We know that gun violence in the US far outstrips that of other countries. We know that other countries that have worked to combat gun violence through legislation have seen massive declines in death rates to firearms. It's time to talk about it like reasonable and rational people.

My views on healthcare have shifted, or more accurately, have formed. While I don't necessarily feel that healthcare is a universal "right", I do feel that it's in the government's best interest to provide a base level of healthcare for all citizens. Rights are things that are in-alienable, and cannot be taken away. Rights are what citizens can expect in the form of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". I can certainly understand the desire to lump healthcare in with the right to 'life', but that is a semantic issue. What I do feel is that in the society which we find ourselves today, it is more advantageous for a country to provide healthcare for all. It's economically more viable and less wasteful, lets employers handle the thing that they're best at (whatever business they're in) without having to worry about running peoples' healthcare, and makes insurance portable so that they're free to seek the best opportunities.

My views on capital punishment have almost completely reversed. Long ago I felt that the death penalty, while clearly a barbaric practice, was also a necessary one. Since those early and formative years, I've learned a lot more about the actual cost of the practice (astronomical), and the likelihood of wrongful convictions. Also, I don't have any proof to show that capital punishment leads to less incentive to commit specific types of crime, and apparently, neither does anyone else.

When I look at politics and politicians, this is the lens I view them through. I'll revisit this in another ten years and see where I stand then.