This website is an attempt to portray one man’s POV
About Dave’s World, the Independent Conservative
CURRICULUM VITAE:
Dave started life in the early nineteen-forties in a rural suburb of
Milwaukee, very close to the town of Waukesha, and was raised in a Roman
Catholic household. Politics was always a subject of discussion and he
still remembers the arguments between his parents about Sen. Joe McCarthy
.
He went to Catholic schools and upon graduation from high school entered a
Jesuit seminary to study for the Catholic priesthood. While in the
seminary, he studied Classical Greek and Latin as well as French and
German. Studying Philosophy at St. Louis University, he got involved in
local politics and worked for a black candidate for Congress named William
Clay. He left the seminary in the mid-60s and went to graduate school at
the U. of Michigan on a Fellowship. In 1968 he became a member of the
National Staff of Eugene McCarthy’s run for the presidency and as a
National Staff Member was involved at the Hilton Hotel during the Chicago
Convention disturbances of that year, and subsequently worked for Paul
O’Dwyer’s 1968 Senate Campaign in New York City. He became involved in
radical politics in early 1969, but when asked to join the State Department
later that year, entered the Foreign Service and paradoxically was assigned
to Vietnam, where he served for two years. He learned fluent French and
good Arabic at the Foreign Service Institute He served in France,
Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia and left the State Dept in 1980. He began
working for John Anderson for President at RNC headquarters that year and
was Anderson’s chief in-house Middle East Advisor. He then worked in
various consulting jobs in the electronic media for ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS
television and wrote editorial pieces for the NYT and CSM. He also worked
for Mondale for President in 1984 at the National Mondale Campaign
Headquarters in DC on international issues. He subsequently worked as a
foreign policy lobbyist for various Middle Eastern and other countries in
Africa and Europe. After a short stint working on energy issues in a
Washington, D.C. policy “boutique” for Drexel Burnham Lambert, he became
International Editor of the Oil Daily for two years in D.C., then moved to
Chicago to work for Amoco Corporation as an area director and entry
strategy specialist in the Planning and Economics shop. He is now retired
and lives in South Florida with his wife and teenage daughter.
PERSONAL ODYSSEY:
He has obviously moved from being an ultra-liberal Democrat in the Sixties
to being an independent conservative in the New Millennium. He still
occasionally votes for a mainstream Democrat, as he did in Florida’s most
recent gubernatorial race. He follows national politics closely and
interagency politics inside the Beltway with avid interest. Many of his
best friends and longtime acquaintances are liberal Democrats. His views
are those of a cultural conservative who approves of social safety nets for
the disadvantaged in the areas of health, disability, and social security.
He is for social volunteerism as much as possible and for school vouchers
to maintain private and parochial educational systems He is also for
strong accountability in the public school system, especially in areas like
FCAT-type ratings as well as anonymous SAT and ACT attainment scores by
Secondary school students becoming publicly available by school. He is
against capital punishment, but for strong law enforcement with long
imprisonment for crimes of sexual violence against children or armed
violence of any kind, except in self-defense.
He realizes that his views are somewhat idiosyncratic and occasionally
libertarian, but believes that consistency is an unattainable will o’ the
wisp. He believes the family is the foundation of society and that
heterosexual marriage is the foundation of the family. He believes a man’s
home is his castle, but that spousal and child abuse are inexcusable and
punishable by law.
Finally, he believes that multiculturalism has value as a body of
knowledge, and that there are certain values that are not relative, but are
innately comprehended.
Finally, he believes that there is some sort of existence beyond this life,
and that ancestors and descendants are a continuum of the great bond
between the living, the dead, and those yet to be born.
University of Phoenix