[Ed's note: This story has been expanded with online bonus content.]

The Nugent Manifest versus the Communist Manifesto: Who wins and by how much?
We won a long time ago. Obviously, Obama didn't get the press release. I'm still scraping the rotten flesh of the vanquished from the cleats of my steel-toed work boots.

If the electoral college started and ended with the Nuge, who would be President?
Mike Huckabee.

On your website, you're referred to as the "thinking man's Abe Lincoln." Please explain further.
I never went to college as I was too busy learning stuff. The irrefutable pragmatism of respecting life's actual hands-on lessons of responsible conduct forces one to adhere to the evidence of honest cause and effect to maximize quality of life for everyone. Thinking gets you there.

Do you still have that leopard number you wore during the solo in “High Enough”?
That was zebra, and no, I do not still have it as I loaned it to Mayor Kwame for his Motor City jihad, but like everything in his life, he lost it.

What's your take on the recent nationalization of failing banks? Is ruinous speculation an inevitable by-product of unregulated markets? It hardly seems fair that they should get a bailout when a small business that made similar heinous choices would get no such second chance.
Ya think? Fedzilla is a runaway glutton of unprecedented waste and vulgarity and should be bullwhipped to within an inch of its soulless, pathetic life. The suicidal beast of socialism is a direct result of a near-terminal abandonment of our sacred "we the people" responsibility to never let it get this bad. Living within one's means would be job one for a responsible, conscientious person, business and this once-great experiment in self-government. Unfortunately, the role of bureaucracy is to sustain and grow itself in defiance of the Dream. I say open season on Fedzilla.

You're a huge supporter of our armed forces and the war on terror, but also low taxes. How does the Nuge propose to pay for our ongoing, treasure-hungry conflicts? Nationwide bake sale?
Yes, a nationwide bake sale, baking the obscene policies and bureaucrat punks that have bloated Fedzilla to the point of no return, thereby eliminating the outrageous bling-bling orgy of the entitlement-driven American Planet of the Apes. Accountability and prioritization ring any bells?

What's your favorite thing about New York?
That it is far away from my home.

I like your credo of personal responsibility. Everyone today seems to want to blame everyone else for everything. Where does the buck stop?
The buck stops where my arrow pierces its pump station, but more to your point, the buck to which you refer does not stop anymore. Our laughable court system and hopelessly entrenched Al Capone cronyism within the legal community is beyond the pale. America is quickly becoming the whining brat that makes France look like rugged individualism. It breaks my heart.

How can a city slicker become a rugged, bow-hunting individualist like yourself?
Breathe deep; slow down; admit to the healing powers of nature, the perfect dynamo of tooth, fang and claw reality; and join in with spirit, heart, soul and honesty. Venison is health personified in every step of the way, from observing, respecting, connecting, killing and eating. Hunting is, indeed, the last perfect environmentalism available to mankind. It will cleanse the soul, and the colon.

Nugent’s book, Ted, White, and Blue: The Nugent Manifesto, is in bookstores Tue 7.