The healing journey of a widowed, unschooling badass in Delaware.
Bridget Phestasy is my favorite current events commentator. She coined the term “politically homeless” and speaks truth to power like early seasons of Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, The Daily Show, and South Park. Although, I hear South Park still has some fire.
The following links are a couple interviews followed by an episode of her somewhat weekly comedy news show.
If the people of these United States have no right to leave the union, then why were they asked to join it in the first place? The U.S. Constitution would never have been ratified if the people were told that they would forever be beholden to the agreement. As populations grow all over the world, sovereign states are becoming geographically smaller. The trend is toward more countries on the map, not fewer. 400 million people cannot be governed by a few hundred elected officials. It is madness not to consider a congenial splitting of the country. Texas may very well secede, and other states will follow. Let’s start talking about how we can do it peacefully. The federal government has proven that they will not be peaceful, so the people must demand it and back the states who wish to leave the union.
Tom Woods and Michael Malice have been fantastic at publicizing the case for national divorce and it seems to have reached the halls of Congress. Woods addressed a recent exchange on the subject in his newsletter:
You may recall that your friend Woods here published a free eBook called National Divorce: The Peaceful Solution to Irreconcilable Differences.
Well, today Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) once again suggested that given the radical difference in worldviews among the American public, combined with one side’s determination to subdue the other, national divorce was the only solution.
Now yes, I know that that view is not authorized by the New York Times, and it doesn’t fall within the range of allowable opinion.
But good heavens, what could be more obvious?
Well, along came Liz Cheney, who can always be relied upon to resolve disputed questions with fact-free platitudes. You’ll never guess — she insists secession isn’t allowed! What a surprise!
She wrote:
“Our country is governed by the Constitution. You swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Secession is unconstitutional. No member of Congress should advocate secession, Marjorie.”
Secession is of course not unconstitutional. The federal government was never granted the power to suppress secession (suppressing an insurrection, which involves a state governor seeking the federal government’s assistance, is not the same thing), and Article I, Section 10 (which lists the things states cannot do) nowhere prohibits the states from withdrawing from the Union, so that more or less settles it.
The case for the constitutionality of secession is to my mind quite overwhelming, though of course none of us are taught it in school. I discuss it at length in National Divorce.
The states preceded the federal government. The sovereign peoples of the states sent delegates to the Philadelphia convention. Each state ratified the Constitution separately — there was no national vote of a single “American people” — because the states are the building blocks of the Union.
The peoples of the states did not forfeit their sovereignty when they acceded to the Constitution. In doing so they were exercising their sovereignty.
And since they retain that sovereignty, they may later choose to exercise it by withdrawing in the same manner.
This is what Emmerich de Vattel, the great international lawyer, explained in his 1758 book The Law of Nations: the mere fact of states joining a confederation does not involve forfeiting their sovereignty.
Liz Cheney, one suspects, probably hasn’t read that one cover to cover.
It’s true that in Texas v. White (1869) the Supreme Court declared, absurdly, that secession was unconstitutional. I also address that in the book. But even if that case were an insurmountable obstacle, there is another way, also covered in the book, to bring about peaceful separation that would not run afoul of it.
Get your free copy, and thereby de-LizChenify yourself:
Tom Woods
I’m downloading the book to sharpen my understanding of the subject. It feels obvious to me that we’ve gotten too big to be a single nation, but that’s not yet a popular view. Texas will be the big test and we’ll see how quickly other states follow.
Jordan Peterson did something special for Joe Rogan’s audience.
In the second hour, he reviews the biblical book of Exodus. He then circles back to Scriptural references as he relates them to modern concerns over the next hour.
This is the kind of discussion I rarely hear on Rogan’s show. Although not religiously-based, I imagine this was some of the only positive commentary on the Bible that much of his audience has heard.
We’re not having honest discussions about how the vaccines are manifesting in the population. There are a lot of questions to be asked, yet they are not uttered in the respectable circles.
Bret Weinstein and Joe Rogan have an important conversation about what we are seeing happen to professional athletes and the vaxxed population. It’s a conversation more of us should be having if we want to correct our mistakes and move forward in truth.
This much seems clear to me: whether it is an engineered coronavirus or novel vaccine technology, man’s hubris has unleashed chaos in the world. The way to restore order is through sober and self-reflective analysis.
Jay Bhattacharya and Sten Vermund are passionate, intelligent friends who vehemently disagree on Covid Lockdowns.
In this Soho Forum debate, they respectfully put forth their best arguments. I think the debate is over when Vermund concedes that the Lockdowns were a “desperation measure,” but you may disagree.
After the debate, Bhattacharya went on The Tom Woods Show to break down his performance.
Someone tried to tell me that adults aren’t as good at learning as children.
I’m convinced that 13+ years of schooling distorts the way our brains naturally work. We are trained to learn on a regular, 8am-3pm, Monday-Friday schedule. Then we are released into the world as fully formed adults who have been coveted away from the way the world actually operates. We collapse into regular, 9am-5pm, Monday-Friday jobs because they are familiar.
It doesn’t have to happen like that. There has never been a better time to learn in human history.
Today I learned some fascinating things about Thomas Paine on the great Tom Woods Show.
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I don’t know if I’ll read David Benner’s book on the subject, but it will go on my long list of possible reads.
I do know I’ll be listening to a collection of writings by influential anarchists from a variety of standpoints. The Anarchist Handbook is a collection of essays organized by Michael Malice and I just borrowed the audiobook from the library.
We limit ourselves in so many ways. Physically, mentally, and spiritually we see doors closing. We fail to see how many doors of possibility open everyday. Home education and the learning lifestyle have taught me these things.
Now go learn something.
We don’t let government determine how we practice religion; where we work, live, and play; or who we choose to socialize with.
Yet we are told society has agreed to let government have full control of our children for a significant portion of their waking hours.
Like every government operation, school are funded through seizure of property (taxes), politicized through elections, and protected from criticism as a “public good.”
I have chosen not to let government forces train my children. Many more are joining the ranks of the home educators. They are learning the frustration of paying property taxes in addition to their own educational expenses. The concept of vouchers is an attractive one. “Free” money always looks attractive at first.
It is important to understand that vouchers do not loose one from the yoke of government schools, but strengthen the government’s grip on the education of our children.
In this episode of The Bob Murphy Show, Jacob Hornberger discusses exactly why reform is not the path toward freedom and choice in education.
Jacob Hornberger Says Libertarians Should Oppose School Vouchers
In this episode of The Tom Woods Show, Robert Barnes details the multitude of rights violations that Alex Jones suffered in his civil trials in Texas and Connecticut.
Put your feelings about Jones aside and listen to how these trials are an attempt to silence those who do not follow the corporatist media narrative. There were movie cameras on the judge and jury during the Texas hearing. It was a show trial with a pre-determined outcome.
These trials are bad news for freedom of speech and thought, they should be understood and denounced by every thinking individual.
After our offensive, regime-changing invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan; support and manufacture of the “color” revolutions; and interventions in Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Lebanon, the United States has no moral ground on which to contain any other nation through military force.
Our representatives have road blocked peace talks between Ukraine and Russia and are responsible for escalating the war. Russian and Ukrainian blood is on our hands.
In this episode of The Tom Woods Show, Benjamin Abelow discusses his new book and how the US and NATO need to self evaluate their actions in the last 30 years before extending the war in Ukraine any further.
How the West Brought War to Ukraine
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On this episode of Part of the Problem, Dave Smith talks with the encyclopedic Scott Horton about the ongoing debacle in Ukraine and the reasons the US seems to be pushing toward nuclear conflict.
In this interview, Joe Rogan explores a wide range of trauma-related issues with Dr. Gabor Maté.
From Maté’s discovery of personal trauma after decades as a celebrated healer to Rogan’s insightful advice on parenting, my sons and I found a lot of surprisingly useful information in this conversation.
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