Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

"Society must be so converted as to preserve the sovereignty of every individual inviolate [and] it must avoid all combinations and connections of persons and interests, and all other arrangements which will not leave every individual at all times at liberty to dispose of his or her person, and time, and property in any manner in which his or her feelings or judgment may dictate, without involving the persons or interests of others."
—Josiah Warren, 1840

Do you believe in the sovereignty of every individual? Do you seek a place where you are not coerced? Not forced to align your actions with the dictates of others? Have you been looking for "Ancapistan" or "Galt's Gulch" or a free country?

I have. I've searched the world since 1991, including travel in North America, Europe, Africa, Asia. There isn't a free country. So, for many years, I've asked the question, " What are you going to do, start your own country?" Usually I ask this question in response to some complaint, entirely valid and wise, about some injustice, or bureaucratic requirement, or madness of the system we find ourselves in.

The question arises: where? Where are there people in large numbers who oppose centralisation, tyranny, abuse of power, and coercion? The answer, of course, is in the United States. Not everywhere in the United States, though. Rural and mountain areas have more of the freedom enthusiasts, coastal cities seem infested with communists and statists.

Appalachia, Ozarkia, Cordilleria

The three major mountainous regions of the United States include two areas, Appalachia and Ozarkia, that are entirely within the USA and one, Cordilleria which goes from Alaska to Patagonia, as one continuous system of mountain chains.

Currently, I am in Ozarkia, near Cherokee land, and close to some really nice lakes and hills. East of me are the higher mountains of the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks. For hundreds of years, the people in this area have, like the people in other mountain areas, disdained government interference, made moonshine liquor, and have been used to fending for themselves.

For the last several months, I have been anticipating post-election violence, and I continue to anticipate that violence. It now appears that the election outcome will be disputed for many years, whatever happens in the next few weeks. If the electoral college votes this coming week, as expected in the constitutional provisions for it, or if it is prevented from so voting due to the legal challenges to the overwhelming evidence of fraud, there is going to be conflict. Those who want to destroy freedom, enslave mankind, and rape children will stop at nothing to be in charge, as they imagine, of everything.

Of course, wanting such power they are not fit to hold it. Further, their insistence on centralised systems and a command economy create at once an extremely fragile system with, built into its structure, the inability to find market clearing prices and, therefore, make the economy work. Their unwillingness to acknowledge the importance of small businesses, entrepreneurship, and free market principles does not prevent them from exerting significant power, harming billions of people, and delaying the triumph of freedom. But there is no doubt that their approach is wrong, will fail, and is deadly.

So, I believe that being in these hills is better than being near the coasts. And, very happily, there are many good people living in this area who are not only interested in freedom, but willing to work hard for it.

Provinces and Cities

It is something of a strange matter that the oligarchs and their sycophants, such as Barack Obama, admire Mao Zedong for killing 76 million persons, but ignore much of what he wrote. Obama in particular deliberately sought me out on the campus of Columbia University in early May 1983 because I had been active in one of the anti-war groups on campus that he profiled in his Sundial magazine article of that vintage. We talked for about ten minutes. When I said that I was dropping out of the anti-war group both to work at a job at a bank and also because the new chairman of the group was an avowed Maoist, he seemed puzzled, and asked what's wrong with Maoists?

I said, "Well, you know, all the dead people?"

Mao wrote, and I believe it is in his little red book, that "power flows from the provinces into the cities." You can literally see that in many parts of our country. Power plants are suburban or rural, and power literally flows into the cities. So does food. So does water. So do other resources. Cities embedded in countryside that is completely hostile to the city dwellers are like a hothouse flower. Conditions may be right for a while, but something always gives.

Thus it is not in cities that I expect to build successful freedom communities with my friends and allies. Rather, it is in rural areas. There is an area near Spavinaw, Oklahoma with access to Lake Eucha (the locals say "ew-chee") that seems very agreeable to me. Several pieces of ground are available for good prices, and allow us to begin with 180 to 200 acres depending on which parcel we pick.

Better still, there are lots of people in the area who are dedicated to freedom and willing to work very hard. I've met with the Tulsa contingent of this group twice, most recently today 12 December 2020 and also together with the Fayetteville and Springfield, Missouri contingents in November. Dozens of good people around here are ready to build good results.

Land Planning

It turns out that one of my good friends, Mike Swatek, the man behind PPMSilver.com/Jim and other ventures, is experienced at land and drainage planning. He's built his own home in the area acting as his own general contractor. I'm in that home today, and it is a solid structure, heavily insulated, and so efficient it is heated with a single wood stove yet over 3,000 square feet floor space. He designed and built his own mechanical water filtration system so as to avoid depending on integrated circuits for anything in the event it becomes necessary to use the manual pumping method. He has some excellent Faraday boxes for certain gear that will be useful in the coming time we face.

Our plan is to acquire one of these properties and put a bed and breakfast near the front entrance, with RV pull-throughs and a campground on the property. The rest of the land would be developed along the lines written about by Spencer MacCallum in his book The Art of Community which you can read by visiting ScienceOfSociety.net and grabbing the free .pdf. The main ideas include having unitary ownership of the entire property and negotiating long term leases with prospective residents.

So you want a quarter acre, or two-acre, or five-acre home site, we have a lease ready to go. You pay a deposit (say $2,000 for the quarter acre) and an annual lease payment (say $500 for each quarter acre) and the land is yours for 99 years or 999 years depending on what terms you like. Your heirs and assigns can inherit the lease. When you run the numbers, remember that only about 65% of the land can become home sites, under the best of circumstances, due to topography, the need for roads and trails to each home site, and other considerations. Yes, we do plan to make a profit.

You would have to agree to our "Zero Aggression " terms, but these are widely understood and highly regarded by our intended audience, the voluntaryists, abolitionists, and agorists of the world. If you need a refresher on what generally we're asking, simply look here. Our goal is to make it easy for you to get involved, while at the same time creating a community of mutual aid.

We have people with many skills such as welding, bricklaying, construction, carpentry, farming, chicken raising, goat herding, dog training, software development, business planning, barn raising, steam engine maintenance, systems design, drone flight operations, strategy, tactics, healing arts, gunsmithing, marksmanship, library science, sewing, quilting, cooking, property management, drainage systems design, dam building, chemistry and physics, midwifery, child raising, teaching, accounting, and many more. The goal is to help bring people together who want to work cooperatively, with the understanding that some things people are going to barter, other things people would pay for with money, and yet other things would be shared on whatever basis free individuals choose.

VALIANT Rising

We want you involved. We want you to locate in our community. But we're very eager to help if you want to build your own community near us, or in some other state or region. We're enthusiastic about creating the new economy, the new concepts and strategies that supplant the old bad system which is clearly being destroyed by the oligarchs. We want a new system of voluntaryism and freedom, not penury and slavery.

Admittedly, those of us involved are not in possession of all the best ideas. If you have great ideas, let's do things your way, too. But let's see what we can build.

The time for debating nuanced positions of Austrian economics or Objectivist theory or philosophical mumbo-jumbo seems, to me, to be over. Hey, if that's all you wanna do, be free, do your thing. But I'm going over here, and gonna be building. Buildings and communities and relationships and businesses and opportunities and possibilities, God's will be done.

You'd be very welcome to come visit, or stay and build.

 

Jim Davidson is an author, entrepreneur, actor, and director. He is the vision director of HoustonSpaceSociety.net You can find him on Twitter.com/planetaryjim as well as Pocket.app and Flote.app also as planetaryjim. He appreciates any support you can provide as times are very difficult. See the Paypal link on this page. Or email your humble author to offer other choices. Visit IglooLuau.com for more information. Those seeking a multi-jurisdiction multi-hop VPN for communications privacy please visit https://secure.cryptohippie.com/houstonspacesociety.php For those seeking colloidal silver try ppmSilver.com/Jim Ask Jim about CryptoWealth. Coming soon: FreedomLandDAO.com - under construction. Just arrived: FreedomDeFiSoftware.com