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Honoring Independence Day By Following the Principles of 1776

Posted by Ben McClintock, Friday, 30 Jun 2023.

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Welcome back to the Tree of Liberty Society. Thank you so much for joining us. So we're getting hyped up for Independence Day, July 4th. And I like to think of July as Independence Month for two reasons. I'm in Utah and the Latter-day Saints, they came to Utah declaring independence from the apostate United States, who had already by that time left the principles of the constitution.

But coming up to the 4th of July and American independence from England, I came across this article from a local Utah news source talking about, the headline is, "Salt Lake City to Replace Firework Shows with Drones." And I just found that to be so ironic and just bizarre, this juxtaposition of, we're celebrating America's freedom from an oppressive government with a symbol of oppressive government. And so I wanted to have Dr. Joe Wolverton on to talk about the principles.

I just love everything that you have talked about, the things that you teach, your book, "The Founder's Recipe," what degree of madness, just all of those that talk about those key principles of how individuals worked to get those chains of oppression off of them and how we can apply those same principles today. So I wanted to have you on. Thank you, Dr. Wolverton, for joining us.

Thanks, Ben. I really enjoy your show.

I remember when I first heard about, I guess we've known each other a long time, but I remember the whole Deseret thing, and then just thinking that's something no one at the time was doing. And so it's great.

People talk about make America again. I said, make Utah Deseret again.

Exactly, exactly, exactly.

Yep.

So we have that concept. So before I wanna get into that, I kinda wanna get your thoughts on this idea of using drones to celebrate American independence.

Well, I have actually. The weird thing about when you sent me that article to read, it reminded me of a conversation I had with the governor at the time, Gary Herbert, was that it? Herbert, right?

Yeah.

I had a conversation with him because it was a weird sort of juxtaposition of weird coincidences where I had met some people at a, member of my family had a party and I'd met some people there, and the husband worked for a defense contractor. And I said, "Where do you work for defense?" He's like, "Oh, at Salt Lake Airport, we have a little office." And then my wife's best friend, her husband worked for, I'm like, "How do you all work for defense contractors in Salt Lake?" 'Cause I had no idea. And then come to find out, and then I talked to, Governor Herbert had released this press release saying how proud they were that the predator, that Utah was essentially the home of the predator drone. And he was so proud of all the defend, it was around July 4th, I don't remember what year it was. And they were so proud that the NSA had chosen Utah, that Utah were, they knew to put the drone manufacturers in Salt Lake because they knew that Utah was filled with patriotic Americans who would support America's military strength. And so when you sent me that article, I'm like, "Yeah, it's just par for the course." They're very proud of being, of making the machines that completely, on the daily, commit serial murder overseas. And Utahns, who let's be honest, are most known for being Latter-day Saints. That is the most shameful association that I, as a Latter-day Saint, I find it intolerable, unconscionable, that a people who claim to be followers of Christ crow and brag about being the state where these weapons of murder are manufactured. I think that's disgraceful. So when you sent me that article, I just, I was, "Yeah, well, that's what they do."

That's what they do.

Yeah, they're proud of that. They're proud of it.

Well, you know, that it's this bizarre thing where you're beat down as a people so much that you get this like, almost like a Stockholm syndrome, where now we went from defying the United States to now we're licking the boot of the United States. And it's pretty, it's disgusting, but it's kind of what happens. And so—

Yeah, you tend to, you don't necessarily join the Gadians, but you learn their ways and partake of their spoils.

Yep. So they've gone this completely bizarre juxtaposition between their celebrating American independence with the symbol of big government. And we talk about, why are we even celebrating American independence? Because America, I wanted to, that's kind of the theme is I wanted to go over of remembering the Declaration of Independence, remembering what it said, that it wasn't about taxation without representation, that there's a whole list of things, a whole host of things. Basically, that tax that everybody talks about was already repealed by the time they even started working on the Declaration of Independence. And there was so much more.

Yeah, repealed 10 years before the shot heard around the world.

No one, but if you look at American textbooks, you'll see that the Stamp Act and the Declaration of Independence are one sentence after the next. There's no mention of, I mean, they do mention Lexington and Concord, but what I'm saying is they act like that was something that was a reaction to that. And it most certainly was not. It was a reaction to the English government decision or attempt to abrogate all American colonial legislature. That the idea was you receive your laws from London, period. And if you as a colony pass some sort of law that we don't agree with, then that law doesn't exist. And they're like, no.

Almost like the so-called supremacy clause today.

Not almost, exactly like that. Exactly the way people interpret the supremacy clause. Yeah. And that's what caused them to do it. And one of the funny things about the Declaration of Independence, I teach a whole class on it, Ben, because nobody knows anything about it. And it's like, when you read that thing, if you really read it, you get to the last couple of paragraphs when Jefferson explains without having to explain, because everyone at his day would have understood that each one of the states was the same political entity as Great Britain. He says that. And when peace was finally declared, when King George signs his assent to the peace, he said, "I am signing peace with," and he listed, because if he just said the United States—

Or the colonies.

Or the colonies, or America, it's like, who are you declaring? So he listed it. And the Declaration of Independence was signed by representatives of the states, never the people. We've never done anything like that. And so you learn so much if you just read it for yourself. The whole drinking downstream is the problem, man.

Right.

It's just read the Declaration of Independence.

And it's not that hard. It's even easier than the Constitution.

Much easier.

Not only because of length, but because of the language as much as well. It's not, and it hasn't, we haven't been brainwashed as much out of the terminology used in the Declaration either. And so it's much more, we can still read it with ease today, unlike other documents.

Yeah, absolutely. I bet it's one of those things where they'll say, "Well, a slave owner said all men are created equal, so you shouldn't even read that document." Right, I mean, that, you know.

Yeah. About the Bible, because Moses had caveats for slavery, so you might as well just throw out the Bible.

Well, yeah, exactly. But if you read, so yeah, anybody who reads, I told someone this last night, because they were like, "I remember a couple of years ago that you said that you weren't gonna celebrate freedom because we weren't free." And I'm like, "Well, we're not." And they're like, "Well," I said, "But I'll give you this. I will celebrate our secession from the British Empire in 1776. I'll celebrate that." But I'm not gonna get out here and wave the flag of the empire and celebrate our freedom, because it doesn't exist. And I'm not gonna be one of the people on the plantation pretending that I'm free, because the master is kind to me. That's not gonna be me.

We're celebrating a fictitious thing. It doesn't exist anymore. Essentially, what we're doing now is we're celebrating the glory of the empire. And we're saying it in the name of something else. It's almost like celebrating the independence of Israel from Egypt. It's irrelevant to what we're facing today. It's got nothing to do with, you can celebrate what they did, that's fantastic, but it has nothing to do with you in your everyday life.

It has zero to do with us. And it's funny, Ben, when you were just saying that just now, I thought of that, I don't know if you know the story, you probably do, about when Patrick Henry died and they found that envelope in his will and everything that he'd had. And they found that envelope and he'd written a copy of his Stamp Act Resolves. And on the back, he'd written a message to, like a dying message to his countrymen. And he's like, "We're free "and we should be thankful to God that we are free, "but we will not remain free "unless we remain righteous." And that message, that alone proves to us that we're not free. Because as a society, we exalt debauchery. We praise pornography, we laugh at it. And that alone, for an American, should be enough to say, "I know we're not free "because we're not virtuous enough to be free." Even if you never read a document, but you knew in your heart, there is no liberty without virtue, then you would know that there's no way that we're free. But yeah, I'll celebrate the 13 colonies seceding from Britain. Yeah, I'll celebrate that all the time, but I won't be participating in how many brown people did we murder today. I won't be doing it.

I wanna go over some of the key language so we understand that. And we can kind of show people what it is that we're actually talking about, because people might find it offensive, people might be shocked. But one of the things that I really like in the Declaration of Independence of how it talks about how these things are self-evident, that they're obvious. And to argue about it is just madness. It's like, I'm gonna get in an argument with somebody about the grass being purple. You're dishonest if I have to have an argument. And that's what they were saying about the principles in the Declaration of Independence, is that if you're arguing with somebody about it, they're the ones that are being disingenuous and you're wasting your time, 'cause these things are self-evident, they're obvious to any honest person.

Don't do that. Don't argue with people like that because you're not going to convince them. And there's really no reason to. It's like—

Well, they probably are convinced, they're just lying. 'Cause that's the kind of people they are.

Right, exactly, that's right. Yeah, right, you're not gonna get them to admit that you're right. So why bother?

Why bother? And so the Declaration, it says that we get our rights from God, that's self-evident. And that government's job was created by the people to protect and not give them their rights. And that's something that's very confusing to people today is that they think, well, like healthcare, just as an example, they think, well, I have a right to that, as if if you have a right to something, that means it's up to the government to provide that to you. But that's absurd because you have the right to, listed in the, government shall not, is what it actually is in the Declaration. And I mean, I'm sorry, in the Bill of Rights. And it talks about how we have, the government can't go after your right to religion. That doesn't mean the government provides you with a church or a printing press because of freedom of the press. Or a gun because they can't restrict your right to defend yourself. And so these, the government's job was to protect them, which means they weren't allowed to go after them, not to provide them for you.

Well, if you're saying you have a right to healthcare, what you are actually saying is, I have a right to make a doctor my indentured servant. Because he should be entitled to the fruits of his labor, just as you are. You don't have a right to anything that would require you to take from another the fruits of his labor by force. So you don't have any right. You don't have a right to education. You don't have a right to that, but so what? Educate yourself. Do you have a natural right to read? Well, you have a natural ability to read, you know, if you're taught. But the point is me having the, knowing that education, for example, is good, doesn't mean I should be able to force someone to pay for that for me. But that's what we do. That's why when I made a big kerfuffle about saying that public and charter school was nothing more than food stamps for school.

Exactly.

But the conservatives, the good little Republicans, they're like, that's ridiculous. I'm like, it's the same thing. You get mad at the welfare people going down with—

Now they're brainwashing your child into the doctrines of the state.

Yeah, exactly.

Just stealing from you.

Exactly, at least with food stamps, you might buy something nutritional. Right, you might accidentally buy, and you might even have people on food stamps who are like, I'm only gonna buy nutritional food. You send your kid to charter or public school, they're not getting educated. They're getting seduced.

Yep. So which actually, I think that's great. It leads right into the next line in the declaration. It says that governments are instituted among men and they derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. And that's laid out in the first three words, I believe, in the constitution, we the people. And then they lay out the powers that they are delegating to the general government. And so if we understand that if it comes from us, we're giving it to the government, that means I can't give away something I myself don't have.

Right, and that's a word that was common then. And you can look it up. I mean, you could look it up in like Johnson's dictionary of 1780, 1785. Unalienable doesn't mean it can't, well, it doesn't only mean it can't be taken. It means it can't be given away. It means it's inseparable from you because it didn't come from you. You are this way as an inheritance from your Father in Heaven, and you therefore cannot give it away, right? Even if you wanted to, you can't do that. Can someone take it by force? Yes, but then you're saying it's not legitimate, right? And you can—

And you can't give it away legitimately like your virtue, like you're talking about your virtue.

Exactly, you can't give it away. Unalienable doesn't mean the government can't take it. It means you can't give it away either. And that's where I think ultimately it comes down to there is no tyranny without obedience to a tyrant. And that's what it comes down to. It's like, whether we have a tyrant or not has nothing to do with men with tyrannical aspirations. It has to do with, are we being obsequious? Are we obeying these things that this, senile octogenarian spouts? Are we doing it? That's on us, not on him. He does what people like that have always done.

Right, it's that, there's the many of the different parables about the fox and the scorpion or all these different things. They are what they are. And that leads us into the next line of the Declaration of Independence that I think is the most offensive to most people today because we've been so brainwashed from the tyrants since the 1860s that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, meaning protecting your life, liberty, property, it is the right of the people. So it's obvious, it's self-evident. It is plainly clear to any rational person that it is your right to alter the government or to abolish it and then to institute new government. So they've done these things. This is the role that they have. These are self-evident facts. And if they go against these self-evident facts, it's our job, it's our duty from God to get rid of them.

Yeah, he says that later in the declaration. It's your duty, it's your obligation to do this. It's the whole, and if you notice, Ben, one of the things that I always underline is where he says, "Laying its foundation on such principles "and organizing its powers in such form as to them "shall seem most likely to affect their safety, "happiness, prudence," all that. So does the Declaration of Independence, would it be effectual for a people who wanted to separate and be completely communist? Yes, absolutely. As to them, see, right, separate yourselves and make yourselves into your own political entity where you establish a government, divide power, give power, whatever you wanna do, whichever way seems to you best. The thing is, in the United States, we agreed on what kind of distribution of power. England, we agreed when we were Englishmen. Magna Charta, the Petition of Right, the Bill of Rights, all of these things in the English Constitution were being violated by the king in parliament. And that, 'cause what government is he talking about? Right, he's talking about the English government violating the rights of Americans, and he goes on to list them, but the point is how Sidney said it, "He that creates may destroy." It only makes sense. If I build a house, am I in trouble if I knock the house down? No, it's my house, right? And so if we have built this government, which we did, then it's our right to get rid of it, try something new, or alter it, tinker with it, see if we can get it to work better.

And then to separate yourselves with people that are of a like mind, because if a society all of a sudden becomes unruly and people are, we have this melting pot that we were told the Founding Fathers wanted to create, which is a complete lie, now we have these societies that are intermingled, and promiscuously, as some have called it, that is now just the natural result of that is the violence and the clashes that we're seeing all over society today.

Right, and Ben, but that begs the question, no one wants that. I don't want to be on the brink of a civil war. I don't want to be having to fight against my neighbor's notion of how he's gonna weaponize his vote and how much more of my money he's gonna take. But everybody knows that, and nobody wants that conflict, but somebody is sponsoring the perpetuation of this conflict. And you have to realize that there are people who are profiting, just as there always has been, people who are profiting from keeping us in this promiscuous, forcing us together for the very purpose of making us fight, because they are prospering from that. Like you're talking about the drones. If the Constitution were followed, they wouldn't be making the money they make, right? So, but I guarantee you, if you went to the CEO of Raytheon and said, are you pro-Constitution? Heck yeah, I'm pro-Constitution. He's not. He isn't. But again, it comes down to the right, as Lincoln himself called it, the sacred right of everyone to leave, to separate themselves, even a minority, separate 'cause what right do you have to force me to agree with you? If all men are, that's the whole point of the declaration. All men are created equal. That king, regardless of who his dad is, has no right to force me under a certain type of government. And so I'm gonna change it.

These people on, you know, in mainstream Republicans, people that consider themselves, like you said, constitutionalists. It was said in an interview that I did before about how even ancient Rome under the empire thought that they were still under the Republic. And so, so many people today think that they are, you know, they love the Constitution and they have no idea what that even means. And, you know, they say you can't leave and because it's a government. And it's like this idea where like, if you were to say that to a woman, to an abusive husband, you'd be thought of as an insane person and an enabler of abuse, but all of a sudden you change the word husband to government and now it's reasonable to make an abused person stay with the abuser.

Well, it's like, I had a debate with one of these Convention of States people. And he said, well, if the Founding Fathers had anticipated the right to leave the union, they would have included it in the Constitution. And I'm like, and I said to him, I'm like, I'm like, are you—

Anticipated?

Yeah, I'm like, are you married? And he's like, yeah. And I'm like, so in your marriage vows, what did you explain about divorce? And he's like, what are you talking about? I'm like, well, if you had anticipated your right to not stay married until death do you part, you would have mentioned it in your vows. And since you didn't, you can't get divorced ever because it's not in your vows. Well, no one unites with the thought of divorcing. But sometimes—

Well, it was inevitable because they had just divorced. You didn't need to lay it out.

Well, it's self-evident in Article VII of the Constitution. If nine of you agree, then we form a union with those nine. The other four, Rhode Island didn't ratify after Washington had been president under the new government for a year. What was, did Rhode Island cease to exist?

They were just rejoined.

Were they subsumed? No, they were a republic. They were a nation.

Right.

Right? That's just, I mean, why? These people understood. If you read Benjamin Franklin, when he talks about what was going on in the Continental Congress and how they were able to get anything done, he said, well, each one of them carried a copy of Emmer-DeVado's Law of Nations. And you're like, why would they do that? Because they understood that each one of them was an ambassador from a separate nation coming together to fight a common enemy just like any of the Greek confederacies of history.

Right.

They understood that's what they were doing. This is Athens, that's Sparta, that's Corinth, that's Thebes, we're all coming together to fight Philip the Great, but we're not gonna make laws for each other that other than the laws we have to make to fight the common enemy.

Right.

I mean, you have Corinth who regularly would be like, yeah, we're not doing that. Right, when the Corinthian League would say, and we need you to do this. Yeah, we're not doing that. Well, did that make the Corinthian League cease to, no, it didn't cease to exist. It just meant Corinth isn't doing this, but did they contribute in the ways that they agreed to contribute? Yes. And that's the same today. I'm telling you, people don't understand that secession, nullification and secession are the most pro-union attitude, the most pro-constitutional, because otherwise you are using force. And right here, he says, in the Declaration of Independence, the only legitimate basis for government is consent of the governed. That's it. So if you use force, then I can use force to push you back from forcing me, from taking my will forcibly, obviously. So if Utah, Tennessee, Arizona, whatever, if we feel, hey, the agreement that we made is being violated, the contract is being broken, because the guy I was debating said, well, everybody in the contract would have to agree. Are you a law, no, you don't. If you took me to court, if you and I had a contract and you took me to court because you had contracted me to paint your house blue and I painted it red and I sent you a bill and you refused to pay it, if you took me to court, the judge is not gonna say, well, you guys entered into a contract, Ben, sorry about that, buddy, but you owe him. Right. No, the judge is gonna throw it out and say, are you gonna look at me and say, do you read English? Because he obviously said paint it blue. You quite obviously painted it red. So the contract is null and void and no legal effect because you did not do what you contractually obligated consensually to do. So that's what's happening now. And then if you're forced to stay in the contract after it's been violated or you're an abusive relationship and you can't leave, are you more likely to wanna make amends if they're not letting you leave? Or I mean, the idea is that once you're forced to stay, you're getting more and more angry and at the person that's trying to make you stay and less and less likely to want to make friends. Whereas if you're allowed to take a break for a second, you're like, and the guy's like recognizing your space, then you're more likely to reconcile. Or not. I mean—

Or not, yeah, either way. This is the thing, Ben, that I always get back to is like, there's got to be very powerful people whose names we probably wouldn't recognize who profit from this political climate of constant chaos, of constant conflict and contention. There's got to be people that profit. And if the only way we're ever going to succeed is if we secede, not for the purpose of saying, I don't love the United States of America, but for saying the United States of America no longer exists because that thing that created it has been violated and voided generations ago. Right. And me pretending that it still exists is me participating in something that's frankly a bit insane. I mean, honestly, if you're going to get out there and praise America's liberty, then you're either voluntarily or involuntarily ignorant. I'll forgive the involuntarily ignorant. I think we should get into that 'cause like in the Declaration of Independence, it says these separations shouldn't happen for light and transient purposes. Right. And so then they go on to say, these things that we're facing are not just things that we can just kind of like, okay, yeah, that's just the way it is sometimes, let's just slough it off. And so I want to kind of go over a few of those and maybe you've got some that you think that I should have covered. But the first one is, it's quotes, the Declaration says, "He, meaning the king, has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance." And so that's why they said that was one of the things that was not a light and transient purposes. It was a reason good enough to separate. And now today, do we face that same situation? Through my research, I've been able to find that we have at least, we have over 345 agencies set up by the king that does that same exact thing, where they go through and they will, there was a sting against Amish farmers for selling raw milk, right? So that's the exact, where they have set up one of these agencies to oppress the people. And then you have the same thing during the COVID where another agency comes out and fines and takes away companies and individuals' money enforcing these unconstitutional acts.

There are, I put this in an article about the bureaucracy. There are today more federal agents in the state of Nevada, which is one of our most sparsely populated states than there were in the entire Roman empire at the height.

Oh my gosh.

Right? And Tacitus, the Roman historian says, "We are basically being destroyed by bureaucracy." There are more bureaucrats in Nevada than, do you realize the Roman empire at the height of its size, we're talking from England to India, essentially. And there are more swarms of officers in one of our smallest 50 states than in the entire empire of Rome.

Madness.

And swarms of officers, I mean, you've got someone like a few years ago, Joseph Robertson. He, I mean, an old man, property, he was fined, what, 40,000 a day because he dug a hole on his property to fill with water to use as a pond for a Christian summer camp. Well, his neighbor didn't like it, turned him in to the EPA, who started fining him 40 grand a day, which he could not afford, so they put him in prison. And then to add insult to injury, they sent officers into his home to take all of his weapons because now as a felon, he wasn't allowed to own weapons. And so—

The pretend legislation that the declaration talks about as well.

Right, but swarms of officers, I mean, I would seriously challenge somebody to name one of these complaints that we don't suffer from. And much worse, much worse. The Stamp, I mean, the Stamp Act, we still, we have the Stamp Act. We live the Stamp Act. I mean, but nobody cares because life on the plantation is pleasant enough.

Well, remember, we're lulled into this false idea that, well, if we don't like things, we'll just vote harder.

Exactly, vote harder.

So the next complaint I wanted to cover was, I quote, "He, the king, has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power." Now, obviously, I'm gonna give some examples of that 'cause that has happened because the Constitution says the only body that can authorize the use of the military is Congress, but we have going all the way back to the entrance, basically, well, the last declaration of war was in World War II. And so that means Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Panama, Bolivia, Argentina, all of these other military actions is an implementation of the executive being independent of the civil power and using it on his own.

And what did we accomplish? Do you think that, you know, I'm 53. My dad served 18 months in Vietnam. So my kids will never know their, now my dad's passed away, a bit young, but still, the point is, how many kids will never know their grandpa or their, because they died in Vietnam, or they died in Iraq, or they died in Afghanistan, or they died in Somalia? For what? Ultimately, for what good?

Building the New World Order.

Oh, absolutely. Ultimately, for paying, you know, for the yacht of the owner of Raytheon and all the, and McDonald's.

Definitely it wasn't fighting communism like we're, you know, like we're lied to, or fighting for freedom and democracy, like they like to tell us.

Well, if we're fighting 20 years in Afghanistan against the Taliban to make, to declare victory and give the country back to the Taliban.

Right, right. That, if that alone should prove that we are literally, it's like when Madison says, what degree of madness, we really are, we're literally been made crazy. Now, how that, I mean, not only a process of education, but think about the, you know, the food that we eat, the injections that the king forces us to receive, right? How do we know that this hasn't worked something in our brains to make it almost impossible for some of us to really think about what's going on? I mean, that honestly might be a thing to where there might be some among us who are good-hearted people, but literally cannot understand what we're saying, because in their minds, this is freedom.

Right.

Because I'm not chained anywhere.

Right.

I was actually talking about that with a few folks before was the reason why the king hasn't gone after you is because you are compliant. Basically, like, so, and there's that article that probably people have read about how the average person commits three felonies a day if they just don't know about it. And so I was talking about how, you know, I've, I've, I wanted to be more, if I'm gonna be doing it anyways, I want to be more purposeful in my committing three felonies a day. And so I know of personally at least three felonies that I am in the active practice of committing every single day. And so the only reason why I haven't been in prison is because I'm essentially in hiding.

Right. You have, that's right, you have been, it's like that Maccabees, right? I mean, Christians, unfortunately, for the most part, don't read that book, but any of you liberty lovers, read first and second Maccabees in the Apocrypha, will blow your mind. But it was like that. Here comes the king, takes over, first thing he does, take over the education, right? Second thing he does, take over, make, change the religion. It's close enough to what you, you know, used to do, but, and then the food supply. And it's like, this is why we don't get taught history, is because if we did, we'd say, hey, wait a minute, this is exactly what's happened before, right? And that's how come our Founding Fathers knew, okay, we've been trying since 65. It's now 11 years later, nothing is better. Now we've got to call it a day, because anything longer, 'cause he says, right? As long as these evils are sufferable, mankind typically suffers them. So we've got to a point. And then when, like you're saying, you're listing all the ways that Jefferson's like, I don't want you to think that we're just declaring independence, 'cause we think we're better, or that we just got mad or angry or petulant. You know, we want you to see that this is something. So that's the thing though, Ben, could Utah, I think I told you this story one time when I was on the radio. I used to do this radio show in Utah when I was in college. I did the conservative corner for X96. I don't know if you remember X96 back in the day. So I did this little thing and they thought it was hilarious that I would get on there and, but there was a thing about, well, someone, and I would take calls and this guy's like, well, if you feel that way, you should just get all your followers together, go out in the desert and create your own society. I'm like, we did, it's called Utah. Yeah, and so I'm like—

And then you invaded.

Right, and then you invaded. And, but then what? Just like in that Maccabee story, what made it where Israel was like, okay, it's cool. You had Jews, prominent Jews come forward and say, man, come on, it's not that bad. He's letting us do this, he's letting us do that. The fact that the church gave Temple Square to the tyrant, not only are we gonna build it, but we're gonna give it to you and pay rent on the thing we just paid to build. Right, 'cause otherwise you won't let us join your club. And if we don't join your club, we're not gonna get all the money that club members get from other club members, right? We can't, we're not allowed to join your mafia, you know, unless we contribute.

And you're going to keep oppressing us and keep throwing our people in jail unless we join your mafia.

Exactly, and so the idea being of all of this, if you look, if you're a Utahn, because that's what you should be thinking of, that's the political entity that you voted with your feet to be a part of, right? 'Cause you can move if you don't like, unless what, unless you want to change the laws. And that's perfectly fine. You should want, particularly if you're a native.

If you still can, but I think there's enough evidence to show like with the Satanists involved, that there's no control even over how you do that.

Precisely, and so you look at your, so Washington DC is lost. Don't even pay attention because there's literally nothing you can do to affect that. But you can have some control over Utah County. You can not control, but at least you can have influence. Right, you can maybe influence Utah County to say, okay, we're done with the rest of this. And all you would have to do, Ben, is look at this, at the declaration, say, okay, let's see if even the state government is doing this to us.

Right.

And you're going to be like, heck yeah, the state government.

Or the city.

Or the city, right, exactly, exactly. You know, when you see what is how, what's the word he uses? You know, that he has quartered large bodies of armed troops among us. Your local police in Utah are all part of DHS through funding, so that's, you're—

They're not a part of your community.

Right, your standing army is your local police, whether you like it or not. You have troops quartered among you right now. And they are, you cannot, they are above the law, so far above the law, and you can do nothing, the civil authority can do nothing to control it. So you're right, even the city level, often these things are being committed by city government.

I want to do another one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The king has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws, giving us assent to their acts of pretend legislation. And so I bring up the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, G7, G8, G20, USMCA, NATO, and then almost 90 other bodies where that's exactly what has happened to us.

Every, literally every line in the code of federal regulations, literally every line in the IRS code, none of that is law because law, all legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in Congress. All, all lawmaking for the union is done in Congress. So if you're a bureaucrat and you pass a regulation, that isn't law, that's pretended legislation. So has combined with jurisdiction foreign, meaning outside of the constitution, because he's not talking about England making pacts with Germany. He's talking about jurisdictions outside foreign to.

Right.

So just all of the organizations you named, every one of those, every one of those organizations, but also every alphabet agency and every regulation that agency has, all of it is pretended legislation. That's what he's talking about. But again.

Everything's born to the constitution. Yeah, absolutely.

I, you know, dare you to try and explain this to the most conservative American. And it's bizarre. And you know, as well as I do, that that is a battle that is ultimately going to be the battle that cost me my life and you, your life. But that's okay because guess what? It costs Jesus his life too. So it's like Sidney said when they chopped his head off. Right? I'm dying for freedom. That's why Jesus died. So let's have it.

There should be a movie about him, just like they did with the—

We're well, stay tuned, man. Stay tuned.

So I think we've really shown how they're, you know, just perfect examples of that. And like you said, you look at every single complaint that is in the Declaration of Independence. As we remember the Declaration of Independence, I hope all of us will go back and we'll read it. And we'll say, how are, is this something we're facing today? And I would say, yes, this is every single one of those complaints is something, if a group of people would want to secede, they would be under every natural right to do so. Some people have said, you mentioned the COS folks, where they talk about, well, it's not in the constitution. In fact, after the war of Northern aggression, you had every single state afterwards actually were forced to put that into their state constitutions that they were prohibited from ever leaving again. And so some people say, well, you know, the secession for any of those states is illegal. Well, I would say, first of all, that contract, especially for Utah was under duress. And so it's null and void day one anyways. But like you said earlier, if you put that into your contract, you couldn't get divorced when you got married.

You're not allowed to make a contract require, no, I mean, literally in the law, you're not allowed to make a contract that requires someone to give to you what is their right. In other words, I can't say, I couldn't have a contract saying my son inherits a million dollars if he promises not to marry a girl with blonde hair. I can't do that. You cannot make a contract. So you can't make a contract that Utah constitution, the Arizona, all of the progressive constitutions, none of those are valid because they demand that you surrender a right in exchange for entering the contract. And in Anglo-American law for 1100 years, that has made that contract void. So yeah, it's void because A, duress, easy, duress. But also B, because it required you to contract away one of your natural rights.

And future generations, because of something somebody did 200 years ago, now I'm stuck with it, it's madness.

Oh, well, I mean, even like Sidney says that, he's talking, but they're like, well, you can't talk bad about the monarchy. We've had the monarchy for, since our German ancestors invaded. And he's like, well, if my grandpa wears a coat, do I have to keep wearing it even if it doesn't fit me? And if it's threadbare? Well, yes, it's the coat, right? But it's threadbare and doesn't fit, right? But it's a coat, right? I get what you're saying, but it's not really, how long till it's not a coat? And can I just say something, Ben? Please, all of you read the Declaration of Independence on July 4th. Do that if for no other reason than to show that you want to honor the virtue and valor of your ancestors. If for no other reason, right? If you wanna be rah-rah empire, let's nuke them all and let God sort them out. If that's your deal, fine. But at least show honor to your ancestors. And if you look, the fact of the matter in the Declaration, look at how the U in United States of America is lowercase, man. He wasn't naming a country. He was naming 13 countries. Right. The state, each one of these states, look at it, that each one of these colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states, the same as the state of Great Britain. Right. New Jersey equals England, as far as our ancestors were concerned. Utah equals England. There is no difference, right? We have that right. But ultimately, Ben, why don't we do it? Now, even logically, philosophically, we don't do it for what's in the final paragraph, right? Right? We don't want to give—

We don't wanna sacrifice those things.

We do not want to, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine providence, pledge to each other our lives, our fortune, and our sacred honor. I don't wanna get in trouble. So I'm gonna enjoy, maybe I don't get everything I want being on the plantation, but it's comfortable enough. And we're not comfortable, enough of us yet, with sacrificing our lives, our money, and our ambition. We're just not, we're not ready for that.

And I think it's pretty pathetic to think that we can inherit something that we didn't pay that same, that we're not willing to pay that same price for, at least if the need comes up. You know, nullification, obviously, something that needs to be practiced much more often than it is. And you have people saying, "Well, that's scary." And well, yeah, you know, doing the right thing can be scary sometimes, but you look at all these, you know, some people say, "Well, you just, you know, you can still believe in God in your heart. You can still believe in these things in your heart." Well, when Daniel was told that he was not allowed to pray, he didn't say, "Well, I can still pray in my heart and still obey the commandment to communicate with my God." No, he opened the windows and he screamed his prayer for the world to hear in open defiance to an illegal law, not because there was a law against stopping somebody from praying out loud, but because it was against God's law, it was against natural and nature's law, like the Declaration of Independence says. And so he stood up and he did the right thing, not in secret, but openly. And I think we need to, you know, have that more internalized in us as we remember Independence Day, American independence, as well as Deseret independence.

I would love my family, except for me, my father's family, so to speak, my siblings and my mom live in Utah. I live in Memphis. I would love it if the next time I go visit them, I needed a passport. (laughs) I would be, I probably would cry if I got to the border of Utah and they asked me for, I would be so grateful to God that the people of Utah got their minds squared away like that. That would be such a happy thing. If you could be like, get a little stamp in my passport, the state of Deseret, I would be overjoyed. And I think, let's be honest, I think God would be grateful.

Absolutely. Well, is there anything you want to bring up before we sign off?

Yeah, if you want to go, I have a new podcast. If y'all want to look at it before, I mean, it's just now started, but if you want to go to my YouTube channel, Teacher of Liberty, Teacher of Liberty, if you want to go over there, I have one episode up. It's a show, I think 30 minutes or so, and, but I'm going to be doing it twice a week from now on. But if you want to go over there and kind of get a taste of what it is I'll be doing, it's on YouTube, Teacher of Liberty, and then it's on Apple Podcasts and Spotify as well.

That has probably been spursed out because I use a different one, Podbean, and it's there too. So you've got to go. Yeah, I use Podbean as well. So that's what distributes my stuff too. So yeah, just, I haven't, I haven't advertised, you're the first person that I've talked to it. I mean, like publicly is, yeah.

People always say, you know, who do you trust? Who's a good, you know, I always mention you. There's, it's a very short list because it's just, there's just the way it is. It's not like people say, well, you just don't like anybody. Well, I'm like, well, you know, there's certain standards, right? And so I always, you know, encourage everybody. They should be absolutely reading your stuff of the New American and listening to your podcast, Teacher of Liberty. Thank you so much, Dr. Joe Wolverton. I appreciate the discussion.

I appreciate you so much, Ben, for what you're doing.

Thank you. All righty. Well, this has been the Tree of Liberty Society and please make sure that you are subscribing to our emails and our text alerts and please become a part of the solution. Join us with the, supporting the things that we've been talking about today by becoming a part of the community that's working on these things by going to treeoflibertysociety.com and becoming a member today. We'll see you next time.

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