Beginning in the Middle

Professor Feminism has done me the great honor of inviting me to be his newest sidekick here at the League. Since I will now be an official regular around these parts, and no longer known only as the mysterious “Ryan B”, I figure it’s time to put all my cards on the table.

I provide contractor support of a financial/economic nature to a medium-sized federal agency. My corporeal being resides in Washington, DC, but my heart will always bleed Maize and Blue. I have a fiancée (nuptials will be in Spring 2012, so stay tuned), and she has two cats that have become my surly, ungrateful stepchildren. My major areas of interest are politics, literature (especially of the genre variety), college sports, and video games. I’ve recently taken up a minor interest in the vagaries of food and (adult) beverages as well.

On the political front, I have almost as much trouble with labels as our Dear Leader. I’ve called myself a liberal, a left-libertarian, and a libertarian socialist. My politics tend to be a hardcore civil libertarianism married to an equally hardcore opposition to war married (see, I got the civil libertarian part in there up front so I could turn the conversation immediately to polygamy) to a fairly pragmatic notion that markets are most useful after we’ve defined our goals socially and constructed a framework in which markets can get us to those goals. More broadly speaking, assume I come from the left but have no particular interest in the Democratic Party.

If you’ve seen my guest posts up until now, you can assume that my future work will probably be very similar in both tone and substance. I will continue to be mystified by the way mainstream liberal bloggers approach foreign policy, and I will somewhat frequently talk about geeky pop culture things from a liberal perspective.

Now, a little Match.com type trivia:

Favorite Movie(s): The Empire Strikes Back, Patton

Favorite TV Show(s), All-Time: The West Wing, Batman: The Animated Series

Favorite TV Show(s), Current: Parks & Recreation, Project Runway

Favorite Book(s): Lolita, almost anything by Joseph Conrad, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman

Favorite Cocktail(s): Manhattan, Sazerac

Favorite Dance Move(s): The ones I do that make me look like someone’s dad

Okay, I think that’s good to get us started. I am very excited to be joining the team, and I look forward to learning from the great bloggers and even better commenters who make this place such a good time.