Tag: American Archipelago

Is the Future of Freedom in America, Private Government? – Part 1

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During all the chaos and violence associated with the Defund the Police and BLM Riots, statements were made on how the rich could tolerate living around this danger because they lived in gated communities and had private security protecting them at home and elsewhere.  And that got me thinking, maybe that’s what we need too.  I don’t mean that we can all afford to live in the enclaves of the rich and famous.  Obviously, we can’t.  But maybe what we’ll be looking at as a way to survive is a form of gated community.  In the same way that people buy condos and have to adhere to the rules of the community maybe we’ll need to organize into closed communities that will protect us from a long list of societal ills that the Left is unleashing on us.  Undeniably this type of setup will have to be located in a red state.  Otherwise, the federal and state governments will attempt to crush it based on some kind of anti-discriminatory nonsense.

You might ask why would someone living in a free state like say Florida need to go to all the trouble of getting involved in a restrictive collective relationship?  This is a fair question.  Being a contrarian myself I can see how having to toe the line on a laundry list of personal choices would be annoying.  But the reason would be to ensure the safety of you and your family and to preserve other freedoms that otherwise will be infringed on living in Post America.  So, the trick is to figure out what requirements are absolutely necessary to allow this sort of collective to function correctly and protect the members from harm but otherwise maintain the maximum freedom for the individual.

So now you can see I’m founding a state!  Here I am Plato planning out my Republic.  But really what I’m trying to do is found a town.  What is needed is a planned community in the sense that it will include schools, recreational and social organizations, homes, a hospital, police department, fire department, cable television company and a social networking company.  In fact, it probably should have its own general store, barber shop, beauty parlor, pharmacy, hardware store, restaurants, theater, lawyers and a host of other things I haven’t thought of yet.  In other words what you want is a self-sufficient community.

You can immediately protest, but all those things will be uneconomical.  Walmart and Amazon make hardware stores and general stores obsolete.  And how can a one-horse cable company and social media site compete with Comcast and Facebook?  Well in all four of these examples they can’t.  But they can provide services that their alternatives cannot.  The hardware store can be associated with the local tradesmen; plumbers, carpenters, electricians who can perform the jobs that require more experience and manpower than the average do-it-yourselfer can muster.  The general store can stock the crafts and other products that the community produces.  The cable provider can eliminate the channels that nobody wants and provide local access for community projects.  And the social network can be used for actual social networking around the neighborhood.

It might even be desirable for the community to have its own energy infrastructure.  Purchasing a gas station and heating oil company along with a power company to provide electricity for the community might make sense.  So that’s about what I see as the extent of the community.  In the next installment I’ll try to think of convincing reasons why it makes sense.  But if we devolve into the kind of place you see in California I could see localities doing everything they can to try and maintain their quality of life by cutting themselves off from the danger and dysfunction all around them.

What’s a Twentieth Century American to Do? – Part 1

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A few days ago, I was having a political discussion with someone on our side of the cultural divide.  I said something like, “If none of the red state leaders does anything to resist the unconstitutional changes being made then we might as well leave and go somewhere else.”  His answer was that maybe we might leave out of protest or anger but we wouldn’t be going someplace where we would have more freedom than we have, even in this diminished America.  And that got me thinking, “Is that true?”

Our complaint with what is going on is that we are being cheated out of the freedoms that were the defining qualities of this country.  If we cannot have those freedoms here, where can we have them?  If the answer is nowhere else then leaving would just be a matter of protest.  So, this needs to be determined in order to know what is the reasonable course of action.

Knowing the fellow that I was talking to; I think he was specifically talking about the 2nd amendment.  But I thought about all the things that are considered freedom in America.  And that is a complicated calculation because some of the most cherished freedoms, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the right to bear arms; are exactly the things that are under assault by the Left.  But there are other advantages in this country that we might want to consider freedom.  I remember during the Second World War the US government sponsored Norman Rockwell to produce public service ads that highlighted some of the American virtues that we all benefitted from, such as, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear.  As diminished as some of those things have become it is definitely important to look at what trade offs would exist if an American were thinking of leaving here.  After all, as unequal as some of the enforcement of laws has been in the last few years it bears remembering just how non-existent justice tends to be in most of the world outside of the first world.  Imagine demanding your rights from the police in Mexico or the Philippines.

So that is the first part of what this post, or these posts are about.  But contingent on the answer to whether there is a freer place to go, there is a second question.  If there is no better place to go then the next important topic is how can we maximize our freedom while living in this post-freedom America.  And surely, I’ve talked about this a million times already but I want to look at it from a different perspective.  It’s a new idea I’ve had.  I have started calling it the “American Archipelago.”  The concept is that we can look at all of our separate lives spread across the length and breadth of this continent as islands of freedom in a sea of darkness that is Woke America.  We can walk in freedom on our own tiny preserve and we can visit each other in real life or in digital space and step from island to island and travel over this sea of darkness without being drowned in it.  All we have to do is perfect our seamanship to avoid being drowned.  I like the metaphor and plan to use it in a story I’m thinking about.

But for now, I’ll think a little bit about the answer to the question.  Is post-freedom America still the freest place on Earth?