I’m a novelist, essayist, Army Infantry veteran, former defense contractor, and proud native Texan. I’ve traveled the world (Asia, Africa, Europe, South America, and the Caribbean) mostly in a professional capacity taking part in a variety of security, intelligence, and extraction missions.
Ethnically Jewish but raised evangelical, in my twenties I rebelled and became an atheist and was a writer among the “anti-woke left” between 2014-2019. Yet after living in Israel and learning more about my family’s history from 2018-2021, enduring the pandemic of 2020, and reading a lot of classic literature from 2022-2023, I underwent a worldview shift in my thirties that resulted in a recovery of my belief in G-d, conversion to Judaism, and embrace of postliberal conservatism.
You can still find essays from my previous life under my old blog Young Heathen. But I do hope you’ll find my recent articles at Cowboy Mystic (on philosophy, history, religion, current events, culture, and everyday life) to be more engaging, enraging, and enchanting.
Influences: Prior to 2020, I loved H.L. Mencken, Christopher Hitchens, Sidney Hook, Huey Long, George Orwell, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine. Since 2020 however, I’ve come to enjoy the work of Yoram Hazony, Patrick Deneen, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Wendell Berry, and Roger Scruton, as well as the fiction of Cormac McCarthy and the poetry of Yehuda Amichai and Ovid. Influences throughout my adult life that have persisted through my political and spiritual shifts have been Plato, Aristotle, and Marcus Aurelius.
Favorite Historical Figures: King David, George Washington, Sam Houston, Andrew Jackson, Theodor Herzl, Doc Holliday, Teddy Roosevelt, John Pendlebury, Joseph Trumpeldor, Winston Churchill
What I Love Besides Writing: smoking cigars and Marlboro Reds, riding horses, shooting my guns, reading Tanakh, going camping, exploring National Parks, worshipping at synagogue, talking to older veterans, watching football (Texas Longhorns), sitting by big fireplaces, eating fatty brisket, drinking an ice-cold Shiner or Dr Pepper, touring gothic cathedrals, listening to ZZ Top or Paul Cauthen, spending too much money on boots, and falling asleep to true crime or paranormal podcasts.