Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

"In times of stress be bold and valiant."
— Horace, c. 11 BC

So far we have received verbal commitments for about $140,000 from people who want to be members of our prospective community in Oklahoma. Thursday 28 January 2021 Mike and I were contacted by a woman in Texas with a two-thousand-acre ranch who is seeking help with building a community there. Since August 2020, I’ve been working with a friend regarding his 640-acre property near Terlingua. A group in Dallas contacted us early in January about an 80-acre property they have been researching in Wood county, Texas. This week I’m discussing the possibility of heading to Keene, New Hampshire for a 70-acre project there. A friend in Colorado has found 160 acres for sale near Bedrock where we might also be buying the general store.

About ten days ago, I was contacted by an old friend building in the Carpathian mountains in eastern Europe. One of my friends from the space movement, Dennis Feucht, is in the highlands (a thousand feet elevation) of Belize not far from San Ignacio. Friends in Canada have found hundreds of acres in Ontario and acreage in other places they’ve told me about. There’s a recent contact in Idaho with a project there. A lady in Maine contacted me about two properties there. A lady in Georgia wants to go home to the Roan Mountain area of Tennessee and has found some good prospective properties. There’s a group I’ve worked with for several years that has a small place in Arizona and there are other places for sale nearby. A group in West Virginia has a project going in that area, and we keep hearing of others.

For example, FortGalt.com picks up where the terrible fraud of Galt’s Gulch Chile left off, and is actually doing a pretty good job from what I’ve been able to discern. There is a group in Honduras headed by Massimo Mazzone who is using a special economic zone to build a free city using the ideas of Spencer MacCallum. Recently, two places in Mexico have been suggested for freedom community building.

Back in 2017, when I started the Resilient Ways Foundation, we were determined to recruit a good board of advisors. One of my friends in the freedom movement, Wendy McElroy, agreed to join us as an advisor. We also were given encouragement by Doug Casey who has, for many years now, owned a very large estancia in the Salta province of Argentina where he built "La Estancia Cafayete." Recent events have led many people to look closely at what they really need, and many people are concluding that they need to build a home for freedom.

One of Wendy’s essays, "I the Person versus We the People" contains this important quote: "Josiah Warren’s disillusionment led him to conclude that social harmony required a radical individualism that he labeled ’the Sovereignty of the Individual.’ In his work Practical Details, Warren explained the meaning of this phrase: ’Society must be so converted as to preserve the SOVEREIGNTY OF EVERY INDIVIDUAL inviolate. That 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." Thus, Warren planted the seeds of a fundamentally individualist approach to society, which was further developed by the next generation. His protégé Benjamin Tucker expanded on this theory, maintaining that society did not exist — only individuals did."

Profiles in Valiance

Mike Swatek, chief engineer, is responsible for the design of facilities and systems needed to make everything work. He is the primary person responsible for the VALIANT project in Oklahoma. Mike has extensive experience in drainage and land use planning, offshore oil production, robotics, systems design, software development, and root cause failure analysis. Mike has been involved in mechanical, and propulsion engineering for over thirty years. He brings a deep knowledge of product and process development along with a genuine love for effective solutions to our company. Mike has extensive contacts in the engineering side of oil & gas especially submersible pumps. He operates his consulting and manufacturing businesses from his 30-acre home near Eucha, Oklahoma.

Chris Boehr, vision director, is responsible for developing and implementing the liberty vision and policies of the company. A board member of the Science of Society Foundation, Chris is a software engineer, team leader and algorithm scientist with extensive experience creating complex software for a variety of products and applications involving the transmission and processing of video content, firmware, and programming for banks. His recent focus has been on video image processing, face recognition, airborne vapor detection and identification, signal processing, data communication, & intuitive user interfaces. He has extensive experience with cryptocurrencies, gold mining, and luxury products sales including diamonds. His book The Liberty Project details the effective ways to implement freedom communities based on the writings of Spencer Heath, Spencer MacCallum, Alvin Lowi, and Chris’s own in depth knowledge of the topic.

David Mayoh, director. David is primarily concerned with forming new structures and institutions that are reflective of humanity’s deeper need for freedom and free association. By learning from past wisdom, as well as the natural world, David seeks to reimagine how we operate in business and with one another. Currently working in the emerging field of psychedelic medicine, David has historically worked in the realms of IR, platform technology, law, culinary, and most happily, with plants as a gardener and landscaper.

Lisa Bowman, property manager, brings extensive experience in rental property management for an impressive list of clients. Providing these services requires a high degree of trust and dependability which is demonstrated with her continuing relationship with her clients and her growing clientele. For the project in Oklahoma, there would be rentals in the categories of: long term home site leases; bed and breakfast room rentals; self storage rentals; campground rentals including RV pull-throughs.

Some Media Links

I’ve been asked to post links to some of the discussions about this work. Here is the link to Ernie Hancock’s show at the end of December 2020.

About a week later, I was on Free Talk Live discussing the opportunity to build in Keene. It now looks like I may be invited to come visit and develop the business plan there, and maybe work on some other projects for a bit, some time in February. I’m also being asked to travel to Colorado for the VALIANT project out there. So it is a busy time for me. Which means I am looking for more work!

An old friend once said that if you want to see something done, ask a busy man. The other kind has no time. Turns out the concept has been around for a long time.

Here are some videos of the property in Oklahoma, including some of the springs and the view from the height. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI4EWtTtCOoDnzc2VUW2KAQ

Who is the Market for Freedom?

Long time readers of L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise may recall that I’ve written several essays about the tendency of Americans to withdraw from the system. The most recent figures I’ve reported are that 123 million did not vote in 2018 and in 2019 about 115 million did not file income tax papers. At that time 95 million were counted as "not in the work force" though only 41 million were receiving food stamps - meaning that 54 million or more Americans are making it work without being " employed" in some coercive, manipulated, heavily taxed occupation.

Back in 1991, all my illusions about how the American system actually works were eliminated, destroyed when I was falsely accused in February 1991 of "felony gambling promotion of a lottery" because of a lawful sweepstakes my friends in the Houston Space Society and I organised between May 1990 and December 1990 to give away a trip to the Mir space station. We had a contract with Glavkosmos in October 1990 for that purpose. In May 1991, the state of Texas attorney general and the Harris county Texas district attorney agreed to drop the false charges, admitting we had been conducting a sweepstakes the entire time. Nevertheless, my business was destroyed, and my finances ruined.

During the ensuing thirty years, I have been looking for a free country. I concluded by 2004 that there were none, and that in order to have a free country one would need to be created. With that idea in mind, I had joined Courtney Smith’s New Country Foundation in 1995 when he founded it. He and I worked with Michael van Notten and Spencer MacCallum through 2002 on the Somali Free Port project and the Awdal Roads Company, but it was not possible to build a free port in Africa where we wanted to do so.

In 2004, at a meeting in Three Forks Montana, I helped draft the declaration of independence of the Free Mountain West. I continue to believe that the mountain communities of North America are the best hope for freedom. The spirit of the frontier and the determination of free people make these great places to live. Accordingly, I am focused mainly on Appalachia, Ozarkia, and Cordilleria for new freedom communities. I believe that by creating a network of these places, we will be able to build a free society, a voluntary social order, many new businesses, and a culture of individual liberty. No other place in the world that I’ve been is even close in terms of readiness to build freedom.

How it started: Voluntaryists & Agorists Living In Absolute Non-Aggression Today (VALIANT)

A memorial to Spencer MacCallum and some more details: VALIANT Too

A look at Howard Lichtman’s project for New Hampshire and beyond: The Art of Liberty

Which States, Though?

Below is a map that I’ve presented several times, which I think is worth seeing again.

 

 

As you can see, places like Maryland, New Jersey, Hawai’i, big cities in New York state, and coastal California are extremely unlikely to be good places for freedom. Nor are the populations in Nevada and New Mexico as keenly pro-freedom as those in other parts of Appalachia, Ozarkia, and Cordilleria. I think much can be done in the bright green states above, which are " constitutional carry" states, meaning that they recognise no permit is ever needed by anyone to keep and bear arms.

Progress Report

Today we have a far more advanced business plan, just under 60 pages, detailing the things we know about the property in Oklahoma and the people we’re working with to make it happen. We just today picked up a new team member, and accountant who is very interested in living in the VALIANT community in the Oklahoma Ozarks.

Our chief engineer, Mike Swatek, has done great work laying out the lots, identifying the issues with the property, and showing where the existing ATV paths can be best made into roads for the community. We’ve identified costs and opportunities related to developing the front of the property for a bed and breakfast, an agorist market, a campground, RV pull-throughs, and self storage sheds. We’re looking at moving forward swiftly in coming weeks.

Meanwhile, we are also very happy to provide consulting and support services to anyone seeking to build a freedom community near themselves. In fact, I think the team in the Keene, New Hampshire area has nearly all the skills to implement the VALIANT project plan there, on the 70 acres we’ve located across the road from the gun club. So it should be possible to move forward quickly there and in many other places.

What Next for America?

I think it is indicative of a vast change in what is going on in our world that one of the big freedom conferences no longer finds Las Vegas an acceptable home for their event. Late last year, I gather, Mark Skousen and his team decided to take FreedomFest.com to South Dakota. Why? They just don’t get to have an event the way they want to in Las Vegas, so they moved away.

I believe that’s going to be reflected in a lot of movement during the course of this year. People who have lived in big coastal cities are now clear that obedience to the communist collective is being demanded, symbolised by hiding your face from view, keeping your distance, not being allowed to shake hands, hug, or speak face to face with anyone. The joyless filth who represent the oligarchy that claims power over the people of our world are no longer pretending to be tolerant. So there will be many bad things in big cities. I recommend you seriously reflect on getting. Get uphill. Get rural. Cities may become death zones even more than they are now.

The Arguments for Leasehold

Like everything else we’re doing with this open source project to create a community where may be found Voluntaryists & Abolitionists Living in Absolute Non-aggression Today (VALIANT) our purpose is to end the state. To end the state we must avoid doing things to bring it wealth and power.

You don’t own your home, now. You lease the ground it sits on and the improvements you’ve made to it from your county government in most states in the USA, parish government in Louisiana I guess. You pay property taxes, and these are "assessed" by a parasite who works for the county who is the "tax assessor " and may also be the tax collector. These filthy vermin hate humanity and want to evict anyone who doesn’t pay their taxes, and most sheriffs are happy to oblige. So don’t come at me with "I want to own my own home and you won’t let me" because you don’t, and your argument is tiresome.

Consider a trailer park. You own the trailer you park there, which might be a double wide or a single wide or an airstream or a mini-camper, or a pop-up tent trailer for all that I know. But you don’t expect to own the lot it is parked on, nor the plumbing and electric power and other features of the pad to which you attach. We’re actually proposing a lot more features and benefits, so you can use the land you lease from us to grow your own crops, have every other sort of freedom that the zero aggression principle is consistent with, and build permanent structures to suit your needs.

But, if we subdivide the land, that gets the state and county government involved. If we keep it all one unit, they don’t have to know what arrangements we’ve made. We’re viewing it as a sort of "religious" community in that the Zero Aggression Principle represents a shared belief system.

Similarly, if we register wells and septic tanks and all kinds of other things with the state, there’s going to be all kinds of inspections and detections and this and that. We want to avoid having the parasites anywhere near the property. So we’re implementing alternative technologies.

As well, it is our intention to have a membership association among people with a shared belief in the zero aggression principle. There are a bunch of exemptions in the system for this sort of thing, which we mean to use to best effect.

Buying In

You can help us get this project going by introducing me or Mike Swatek to people you know who would like to either live near Lake Eucha, Oklahoma (about 600 feet away, uphill from the lake), or people who would like to invest in a community for freedom lovers. We’re working on our plans and I’m happy to share the current version with those who email me. We’re here to find ways to make it worth your while.

There’s going to be lots of opportunity to visit and have fun together. And, of course, to plan how to cope with the state as it makes its final tyrannical push to get everyone under its thumb forever. One such opportunity is to attend MidFest which is discussed at MidFest.info and on a number of Telegram channels.

"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

One of the evident things about this region is that people around here don’t like the masque mandates and won’t obey them. Many stores and restaurants don’t agree with communism and won’t ask you to wear a masque. It is, after all, a masquerade. The real virus is tyranny.

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.

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.

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.

Free the slaves. Stop the wars. End the state. You’ll be glad you did.

 

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. This week Jim learned that SubscribeStar.com/planetaryjim is working, so he’ll be adding new things there soon. 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