This is where I come back in ...

... with apologies (or appreciation) to kavips.

So I ran and lost, and knew I was going to lose well before the event, but not how badly.

So I learned that no matter how well they make think of you personally, people (at least humanoids in Delaware) will not pull the lever for a third-party candidate in great numbers.  There were several other examples of this on the ballot, from Catherine Damavandi (the most qualified Attorney General candidate, who couldn't break 5%) to Rose Izzo (about whose qualifications the less said the better, but a GOP label netted her 35%--certainly wasn't her debate performance).

A lot of other things I learned, the most valuable of which were not political.

I learned that even had I won the election it would not have substituted for time I should have been spending with the 11-year-old grandson that Faith and I are raising.

I learned (or at least had re-emphasized) that you don't have to be in office to affect policy in Delaware (although it sure does help when the money is being passed about).

I learned that you can't beat an incumbent who represents the cadillac of constituent services, and who--even when he is dead wrong in his votes--is such a nice guy that nobody can campaign against his record.

I learned that I am interested and passionate about a lot of things I really wanted to talk about or blog about, but didn't, because they had nothing to do with winning.

I learned that winning is overrated, even when losing still sucks.

And, most importantly (at least today, this hour), I learned that I cannot contain or express my worldview within the confines of any particular ideology, although the ideology with which I still feel the most affinity would be libertarianism.

I'm coming to grips with the fact that no ideology--not libertarianism, not conservatism, not progressivism--is actually a tool for solving problems.  At best they are intellectual focusing devices, and at worst they are straightjackets that not only cut off most conversations, but almost all circulation at the neck.

Purity tests are for Puritans, as are tall black hats and big belt buckles, none of which interest me.

Ideologies, inherently, simplify your world view.  Unfortunately, the world is a complex, nuanced, complicated, dirty, messy place, wherein there are good people in the service of bad ideas, and good ideas defeated by their earliest encounters with reality.

I'd rather have a system of ethics than an ideology.

So I'm starting over here, in a sense.  As a historian I know that all phenomena involve both continuity and change.  I'm still the same person, with the same background, the same interests, the same flaws, and the same leanings, that I was about seven years ago when I first started publishing The Delaware Libertarian.  I'm just unwilling to confine my ideas, my observations, or my potential solutions to that framework any more.

So, in what will probably be fits and starts, I'm going to try the next step of my personal evolution, and just be ... Steve Newton.  If my ideas and observations have any merit, such merit will remain no matter what the title; if not, Libertarians shouldn't take the fall for my transgressions (not that you can fall too hard from a distance of 1-2%).

I will endeavor to be interesting, but I will not worry a great deal about consistency (thank you, Ralph Waldo Emerson), and I will write what pleases me.  If anybody reads, great.  If not, that's also fine.  I don't expect to make a living, or even a side income, from blogging.

I liked the rather bizarre title when kavips accidentally put it together a couple of years ago, and it has niggled at the back of my brain (brane) ever since.  The best whiskey is blended, then carefully aged, and consumed neat.  Not everyone will like it.  It doesn't matter because (at least for the moment) I don't care.  I hope my friends will stick around for awhile to see if this ages into something good, but if they don't, I'll understand.