Declaring Your Independence, Step 1

Consciousness. (Realizing the problem is bigger than you thought.)

Free your mind
And the rest will follow.

—En Vogue, “Free Your Mind”

In Step Zero, we looked at a partial enumeration of the surreal and disturbing horrors that have become commonplace since 2020.

As obvious as those are to most of you, dear readers, there are still huge swaths of normies who have no knowledge of any of this. They only consume the mainstream narrative, so they don’t even know what it is that they don’t know. Step Zero, then, is knowing that there is something to know. Knowing that there is a problem.

I regret to inform you, however, that there are many steps to come, and the next one may be a lot harder to swallow than the red pill. That said…if you stop with the red pill, what have you really accomplished?

Sure, you know that a lot of bad stuff is going on. You know that the rabbit hole exists, and while you don’t know exactly where it ends (none of us do), you’ve seen partway down. Good. Awareness is essential. But it is not enough.

Yes, things are crazy. But if we do not do something—something other than consuming doom-porn all day—then all we have is The Crazy. Down that path lies fear and despair. Down that path lies a feeling that you are alone in a mad, mad world.

Step 1 of leaving that path and declaring your independence requires a shift of consciousness.

Consciousness? What a bunch of new-age garbage. I want solutions.

Ah, but my dear reader, a shift of consciousness is a solution. In fact, it is the necessary first solution.

Your awakening is the greatest threat to whoever is behind this. If enough people truly wake up, they—whoever they are—are finished…and they know it. There is nothing our oppressors fear more than a critical mass of people waking up. A new consciousness is your first and greatest weapon.

The right solutions are impossible without that shift of consciousness. And that shift is impossible so long as we remain stuck in the past…

The American Founders were great men—greater than most of us will ever be—but they made one really big mistake. They were correct that no government can be legitimate unless it has the consent of the governed. They were wrong—terribly, terribly wrong—in believing (or convincing themselves) that the system they created gives us that consent.

IT. DOES. NOT.

So long as it is deemed sacrilege to say such a thing…so long as we go on beatifying the Founders as unquestionable, and enshrining the system they gave us as the best mankind can ever do…we will remain stuck in a permanent Sisyphean nightmare.

That sort of thinking leads to these kinds of ‘solutions’:

If we just elect the ‘right people,’ we can get back to the ‘original vision’ of the Founders.

If we pass better laws, things will be okay.

If we just democracy harder, we can fix democracy.

Have you not been paying attention over the last two centuries? This thinking leads to nothing but endless war. Each year, we lose a little more ground. Each year, we tell each other that we just have to fight a little harder. And then we turn the fight over to our children, and their children, forever.

A person is considered represented if he votes, but also if he does not vote. He is considered represented if the candidate he has voted for is elected, but also if another candidate is elected. He is represented, whether the candidate he voted or did not vote for does or does not do what he wished him to do. And he is considered politically represented, whether "his" representative will find majority support among all elected representatives or not.

Hoppe, “Democracy: The God That Failed,” pg. 284

The big-brain moment occurs when you realize that our problem is not one of tactics or elections or rearranging deck chairs on a moral Titanic. The big-brain moment occurs when you realize that

The problem is with the system itself.

And once you have that realization, you will never be the same.

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—Let us say you want to buy some incandescent lightbulbs. You remember those—the ones whose sale was banned a few years ago?

First they said that we all had to switch to CFLs. Whoops, those contain mercury—bad for the environment, and for you, should you happen to break them. Then it was LEDs…and lo and behold, it looks like those may cause macular degeneration. Yet you still cannot go into Lowe’s or Walmart and buy good old-fashioned incandescent bulbs.

You weren’t thinking about any of that, though—you just prefer the warm glow of incandescents to the cold, sepulchral brume emitted by the replacements we’ve been forced to adopt.

There were sellers willing to sell you incandescents. You were willing to buy them. That voluntary transaction has been prevented by force.

Think deeply about that:

Less: “Who are the jerks who passed such policies?”

More: “Why does anyone have the power to prevent any peaceful, voluntary transactions?”

—Let us say that a loved one has an illness and wants to try a treatment, but is prevented from doing so because the treatment is ‘not approved.’

This is not a hypothetical—it happens all the time. Many thousands of people would still be alive if the ‘powers that be’ had not blocked the use of ivermectin against Covid. Ivermectin is also showing promise as a cancer treatment. Will they block that too?

Some jurisdictions have passed “right to try” bills that allow extremely ill people to access medications that are otherwise forbidden because they are not approved by our overlords. 

Does that sound right to you? That we have to go, hat in hand and ask permission from our betters to make decisions about our own bodies and lives?

Ask yourself why you have to go ask permission to exercise a right that is already naturally yours.

Or maybe ask yourself why it is okay for them to force you to be on death’s door before they allow you the privilege of trying to save yourself.

—Numerous politicians and powers are trying to make it so that we cannot own gas cars, gas stoves, or even ceiling fans. Imagine the world where their plans come to fruition. What gives them the authority? What gives them the right?

(Note, while fueled by ignorance, compliance, and narcissism, the concept of ‘climate change’ is nothing more than an excuse to turn your very existence into a threat to ‘the planet’ in order to justify using force against you.)

—A person gets out of jail (perhaps having been incarcerated for a victimless crime) and finds it difficult to find a job, so she decides to start braiding hair out of her house. Her clients are willing. Being at home allows her to take care of her child. But the state says she has to buy a license to braid hair. She does not pay—both because she cannot afford it and because she thinks they have no business telling her to pay in the first place. So she continues to work to provide for herself and her child, and they arrest her for engaging in ‘unapproved commerce.’

We could go on listing injustices all day, but the real question is this: When you think of such injustices, do you think the problem is

A) that we have simply voted for the wrong people—for the kind of people who would use their power to impose things like this, or

B) that we live under a system that gives ANYONE this power.

If you answered A)—if you believe that we just need to vote for the right people—then you are condemning us, and our children, and their children’s children’s children to an endless moral crime, fueled by the invincible belief that this is the only way it can ever be.

I say that with love and understanding, because there was a time not so long ago when I believed the same thing. I get it.

For right now, set aside the fact that this is all we’ve ever known—and that you might not be able to think of an alternative way in which society might be ordered—and just do the philosophical math. How do actions that are considered immoral when done by individuals become moral when government does them? (Hint: they do not.)

If my cousin needs an operation and I threaten you with violence to make you pay for it—and use the violence if you refuse—I am guilty of a very serious violation of your human rights. So explain to me—in precise philosophical terms—what transforms that action into a moral one when a third party does the threatening and violence-ing for me.

If John threatens Bob with force if Bob does not do what John wants, John has violated Bob’s rights. That does not change if John is joined by three of his friends. It also does not change if John and a bunch of people who agree with him have a proxy institution (government) do the threatening for them. If Bob has not initiated force against anyone else, then any force initiated against Bob is a violation of his rights. It is a violation of natural law. Full stop.

Yes, the implications here are provocative: The system we live under is itself a violation of natural law. The way it functions—its very existence—is morally impermissible. I understand that those implications are scary. But how can you deny them?

“Because we have to find ways to live together” is not an answer. To say that this is our only option—to permanently inscribe moral crime into human social order—condemns us to endless conflict.

“Because democracy” is not an answer either. Democracy led to the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, but that did not make slavery okay.

Indeed, because government is fundamentally non-consensual, it shares its primary characteristics in common with slavery—or at very least with involuntary servitude. No force in the universe can make that okay.

This is the #FREEPILL, and I know it is a big pill to take. But you must.

Until you do, it will not matter how red-pilled you are—how many memes you share, how much doom-porn you pass around, or how hard you vote. Until you do, you will still be stuck in the Matrix.

Set side the fear and the centuries of indoctrination. Set aside ignorance of what our other options might be. Set aside the inertia. Put down the tricorne hat.

You know that your thoughts, choices, and actions are your own. You know that you are the owner of your own life and being, and that any acts of force against you are wrong. This knowledge is echoed in the whispering trees, in the blowing wind, and in your intuitive understanding of a moral ethic that transcends any manmade law. No one needs to tell you—you just know.

That voice inside you is telling you that because you own yourself, your consent is required in all things……and that you did not consent to any of this.

Step 1 of declaring your independence is the consciousness-shifting realization that what we’ve been told is consensual isn’t…and never was. Not even back in 1789.

Are you ready for Step 2?