Member Training – Economic Independence

Member training from November 10th, 2025.

In this presentation, we explore the principle of economic independence as an essential foundation of true liberty. You’ll hear a discussion about why separating ourselves from the systems of Babylon — especially financial dependence on corrupt governments and institutions — is not merely an option, but a necessity for any people who wish to remain free.

We’ll look at how scripture, history, and modern examples all testify of the same truth: that those who trust in “Egypt” for their sustenance eventually become its slaves. From Isaiah’s warning to the Israelites, to Brigham Young’s call for the Saints to “cut every thread” of dependence on the Gentile world, the message is consistent — God’s people must learn to provide for themselves, to trade among themselves, and to build their own communities rooted in faith and freedom.

The presentation also includes a short documentary segment highlighting one such intentional Christian community that has successfully applied these principles in our day. You’ll see families who live and work together — producing their own food, clothing, and goods — while raising their children in a culture of self-reliance and cooperation. This serves as a living example that it can be done, and that liberty-based living is possible even now.

Finally, we’ll discuss how these ideas can be applied locally through the Tree of Liberty Society and beyond — whether by forming small local networks, joining existing off-grid communities, or simply beginning to live more intentionally where we already are. The goal is not to retreat in fear, but to advance in faith — building strongholds of independence so we can resist tyranny more effectively and help others do the same.

Watch the full video featured in this nights training here: https://youtu.be/CVBkciLcZVA?si=Nupdi7OVPX5fXOei

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TRANSCRIPT

Heavenly Father, we're grateful to be able to meet together once again to discuss liberty and the things that we can do to help align our lives with your will. We pray for the Spirit to be with us tonight. Help us all to be receptive and to listen and to find ways that we can do things better. And we ask these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.

So talking about economic independence, we talked about this lots of times. But what we're going to be covering is going to be additional angles, additional aspects, additional action items, actionable items to be taken, and just some things that will hopefully spark your imagination and say, okay, I'm starting to get the big picture or, okay, I can see how this is a thing that is possible, that it's not just some theory that there's no application for. But it's a necessity. It's a necessity. It's not just possible, but it's a necessity. And so, of course, as always, we need to make sure that we are not perishing because of lack of knowledge.

We need to make gaining knowledge a priority if we are going to be successful in the fight for liberty. And everything that we're doing here in the context of what we're talking about tonight is the building understanding and adherence to. the principles that have built free nations exposing the satanic conspiracy and then build an effective resistance to that conspiracy this is going to be practical application of doing all of those things actually so i know we've talked about recently um some of the things i'm going to be bringing up but we see here just recently uh with the trump just announced a moving things up from a 30-year mortgage to a 50-year mortgage for houses And in fact, you know, he even promoted the fact that he was following in the footsteps of Roosevelt, who was an avowed communist.

Well, I don't know about an avowed communist, but he was definitely a communist. Another thing that he just announced was he's going to be sending out checks for 2000 bucks a person to be paid. And then whatever's left over from the tariffs, he is going to just going to be paying off the debt. So redistribution of wealth. Bigger and bigger government, making everybody more and more dependent on government, just like was done during his first administration during the fake pandemic and the illegal shutdowns. We see here again, FedCoin is happening. And we talked about the digital ID. And so with these types of things happening, it's becoming more and more clear, more and more obvious that tyranny is coming. physical resistance we need to have things in play where we have alternative options for us available so that way we can still feed our families we can still have housing and we can still provide for ourselves even if we don't participate in these digital ids and even if we don't participate in these digital currencies that are controlled by will be controlled through social credit schemes. And so it's just vital.

And we just see things happening every single day that show the importance of us moving into this direction. Because just like, so with this idea of a 50-year mortgage, this is literally implementing what Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum talked about of you owning nothing. And that you're supposed to be happy because you're a supposed homeowner. Whereas what you really are is a perpetual renter from the banks and bankers like Klaus Schwab. And so the traditional things that we talk about all the time, our founding fathers, the ancient Moses, the pilgrims, they didn't just say, we just need to vote harder. That wasn't the solution that they were engaged in because that's not a solution that works. But at the same time, They weren't quitters. They didn't give up. They weren't like, I'm just going to sit here and talk about how moral I am and how bad the king is. They were actively engaged in solutions that are eternal solutions that always work, that have proven to work throughout time. And so we talk about this, right? What they did is what we cover in our member manual.

And it's encapsulated in this quote by Brigham Young, where he says, we do not intend to have any trade or commerce. with the Gentile world. For so long as we buy of them, we are in a degree dependent upon them. The kingdom of God cannot rise independent of the Gentile nations until we produce, manufacture, and make every article of use, convenience, or necessity. We will have people abroad among all nations until we can obtain and collect the raw material for our manufacturers. It will be their business to gather in such things as are or may be needed. So we shall need no commerce with the nations. I am determined to cut every threat of this kind and live free and independent. So that is the process of becoming free and independent. That is economic independence, which leads to political independence and political economic liberty and political liberty. They are intertwined and inseparable. And as much as we are dependent upon our enemies, to be able to feed ourselves, to house ourselves, to clothe ourselves, to provide for our families, we are enslaved to them.

And so it is essential that we build a network where we can do these things and not be a part of that system that is our enemy, our about enemy. They admit that they're our enemy and that they hate us and that they're trying to kill us. And so it is essential that we do everything that we can to be able to implement this amongst ourselves. So we look at the scriptures and it's throughout all of the scriptures we are warned about this principle. The prophet Isaiah says, Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord, that take counsel but not of me, and that cover with a covering but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin. They walk to go down into Egypt and have not asked at my mouth to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh and to trust in the shadow of Egypt.

Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame and the trust in the shadow of Egypt, your confusion. And so I would say just replace the word Egypt with the United States or with the world and Pharaoh with the government. Because what he's warning about is what he's talking about is the fact that God's people or people that were considered themselves God's people were not trusting in him. But they were saying, look at what Pharaoh, look at the world could give us. And it was safe. And it was something that I didn't have to have as much risk. And the Lord is, through Isaiah, is telling them that it's going to be to your shame that you depended on the world instead of God.

And in Leviticus, right, this is the pattern the Lord has set, that he shall be holy unto me, for I, the Lord, am holy, and have severed you from other people, that you should be mine. So when we're connected with that system, the enemy, of liberty, the enemy of God, then if we are severed from them, then we are not dependent upon them. But when we are a part of them, we are enslaved to them because we will do whatever it takes to be able to receive that money or pensions or welfare checks or food stamps or whatever it is that we are dependent upon them for our jobs, being able to get groceries, then we are a slave to them. But if we are going to be holy and if we are going to be God's people, then we are severed from them. And so that way we are only dependent upon God for our sustenance.

So then when I talk about these things, This is really a very common question or response that I will get. This individual writes to me and says, do you know of people who are successfully refusing and withdrawing from those kingdoms while still being able to exist in society besides the Amish? I'm wondering how that would work practically. So it really goes back to this idea of only the Amish can do this. And so, right, this is a, this is, we're not saying that, you know, the Tree of Liberty Society is telling everybody to just be Amish. That's not what we're talking about. But that's kind of what people think about because they are able, they have been able to be separate. They don't get vaccines. They don't have to obey certain traffic laws. And they're able to separate themselves from taxes and different things along those lines. And so that is something that people bring up. But that's not what we're saying. There are other options out there than just becoming Amish.

And so, but the other problem with what he's saying there is he's, you know, this is to me is the, I don't know if it's a confusion or if it's a lack of understanding. He's saying, how do we withdraw from the kingdom, from those kingdoms while being able to exist in those kingdoms? And what I'm saying is you can't. And that's what ancient Israel did. Did they say, I'm going to be in Egypt, but not of Egypt? No, they had to leave Egypt. The pilgrims, they left Europe. And the founding fathers, they separated themselves from England. And so it's not about being able to be within this thing. It's really about doing the exact same thing that other people have done that have gained their liberty. So I'm going to play it. This is a longer clip. This is from a 45 minute video. I would encourage everyone to watch the full video.

It's a very interesting video and gives a lot of practical examples and practical advice and shows how these things can be done. And without being quote unquote Amish, giving up all technology, giving up all the things that we're all used to, but at the same time, not being dependent upon Babylon. for our sustenance and so this is it's about 11 minutes and so i i ask you to bear with me to watch this video i don't do this very often in training but i thought that showing you these main portions of this longer video was essential to helping maybe some things click that i couldn't share with you otherwise just with my own words so it's it's showing people doing these things in real life right now and being successful at it. There's a lot of people that feel the shaking. There's a lot of people that recognize things aren't going to be able to continue to go as they have and that changes are coming. And their response to that a lot of times is fear or you might hear the term prepper. And a lot of times that is stockpiling lots of things, stockpiling food or stockpiling ammo. That's not really our approach.

The idea of stockpiling and the nature of it is not sustainable. That's what the stockpile is, is that it's going to have an end. And we're trying to think about it from an approach that how could we recognize that there are changes coming, things are failing, things are not going to always go as they have, and can we be doing something to prepare for that that has a look ahead in a positive way? that maybe can teach people how to sustain themselves or bring people together in a way that's not antagonistic but is cooperative. It's sort of the same shaking. We're not in disagreement that things aren't failing. We want to respond to it in a way that brings hope and brings cooperation. This land is community-owned. It's about 500 acres. So there's 1,200 of us here, maybe 350 families. You know, I read a quote yesterday that said, We all want progress, but sometimes recognizing that you're on the wrong road and getting off and going to the other road is the right thing. And in that case, the first person to jump off and turn around is the most progressive. That was C.S. Lewis. This building was assembled as a mill around, I think, 1760. So this is a pretty standard Dutch-style, German-style barn. So this is operated entirely by the water wheel outside.

There's a shaft that's coming into the basement. But what transfers the power here to the upstairs are these two belts. So you've got this belt here operating this horizontal shaft. You can take a look at this gear. See the teeth on that gear made out of wood. So if you broke an iron tooth gear way back when, the blacksmith is going to be expensive. So they made the teeth out of wood, much like this one here. Try to be as self -sufficient as possible. So what's interesting is that ball bearings and bushings have not yet been invented, but that vertical shaft is running, as you can see, straight and true. And what they have found is this makes an excellent bearing.

You can recognize what that is, right? That's a corn cob. You can actually see the bottom of them. We estimate some of those cobs are over 100 years old, and they work great. That's the hard red wheat berries. that comes down into this tray and when the the top of the tray fills to the bottom of the elbow the flow stops so this is self-feeding self-regulating see how this it's rocking back and forth that's why it's called the cradle well the cradle is being rocked by this stick which is called the damsel so the damsel rocks the cradle and it's right here where the grain falls into the center of the eye of the stone of course over time a wooden damsel will be rounded out to a wooden dowel in which case we have a damsel in distress So this is a pecan tree here. There's some pecans, there's some plums, there's some peaches. We're always trying to improve the orchards. You want to think about where can there be another garden? Where can there be a greenhouse? What can we do with animals? How can we graze that one year and do something different? You see over here in the corner, we've got some bees.

So the bees are pollinating the garden. We've got a beekeeper that breds those hives around and mines them. It's always in flux. Here lately, we've been working on a hydrology study to dam up some of the gullies and some of the creeks that kind of run through this land and slow down the water to try to recharge the water table. Because if you let that water just run straight through, it will go right to the river and you start to lose your water table. But if we can slow it down and dissipate it and retain it, we can start to recharge some of our shallow wells that are down on the bottom land that are feeding the farm. And you make things out of leather? Exactly. So these are kind of your... Men's Toiletry Bag, we call them a doc kit. We've got wallets, we've got fat folios. Our number one seller is these fly swatters.

Did you grow up here? I did not. So how'd you hear about it? So we're from Arkansas. A friend of mine found out about the place when he was in Texas and he told me about it. And some of our friends who started this shop in 2015, we became good friends with them. helping him around here. Eventually we took things over for him. You guys went into the problem of using chemicals for tanning? We're actually working on doing some of it ourselves. Without chemicals, it's a challenge, right? It is. If we did it, we would start with just like an oak bark tan and try to avoid the heavy chemicals and do like a natural vegetable tan. There's always people coming from other places. They come with an idea or a vision or a hope, or they realize there's another piece that we're not doing. Sometimes people rekindle a dream maybe they had a long time ago. For me, it was just to work from home and to be with my family and kids. To be able to do other working and to do some woodworking, it's pretty special to involve your family with this. Do you live here? I do. I live just right around the corner here. And you can live and work and just stay?

Absolutely. So it's a real community. Yes, ma'am, it is. So this is Mark. He runs the wood shop. My parents joined the community here when I was nine. So you were exposed to craft at a young age. And you still live here? Yes, I live on the farm here. It's about a five-minute bicycle ride to work every morning. I've been working here in the shop for 28 years, building lots of custom furniture, classes. This, the Windsor chair here. You made this chair? Mm-hmm. Oh, it looks antique. We usually do an antiquing on it. So for this one, we start with a log, and we split the wood out with a sledgehammer, wedges, split it down into little spindles. So one of these little sticks will become one of these sticks for the back here. Okay. And these pieces here are steamed. So we take it from a log that's wet, steam these pieces to bend them, and then make the whole chair. So we start Monday with a log and paint the chair Saturday. Fiber crafts and textiles is pretty much dead in America.

It's all been farmed out and all mechanized. We do a lot of weaving, a lot of spinning. These looms are from all over the place. There's kind of your three basic needs for life. Food, clothing, and shelter. And textiles has been so farmed out and is such a commodity, we actually forget about textiles. And part of the journey back to sustainability is going to include textiles too, and being able to make our own clothes, make our own garments, and deal with fabrics. So we had a class of young boys that wanted to make their own coat. And so they spun their own fabric, they wold their own fabric, and then they sewed their own coat. And that was the second year floor loom class. They started in the spring and by fall they had their coat for the winter. And so that would be a senior project that some young men or some young ladies might do. We're really trying to rediscover what it is to really provide for ourselves. Different people find their way in different places.

You know, some people farming is full-time and a real passion and other people they're just gardening. Or some people are really into having a couple of animals. and other people aren't really having animals but they're really into doing field crops and so everybody kind of finds their way of like what steps for me and my family am i needing to make to make ground and everybody kind of finds their way this seems so idyllic but i'm guessing there's a lot of work behind this that you don't see yeah a lot of people move here or they come from other places they come from other backgrounds and when you're making a big shift it really does come at a cost You have to decide, is what I'm going for worth what I'm going to set aside here? My wife and I felt like we needed to get out of the suburbs and we needed to reconnect with the land. And we knew about this community and we wanted to make ground coming this way. It was going to take a major shift.

You know, I was going to have to quit a job that I loved and do something. In the meantime, I took a metal panel job and I was selling metal panel instead of running a construction company. And that was quite a transition. And I remember one particular morning trying to pull a goat out from under a fence. And I was dressed to go meet clients. But I go out and my goat is escaping out from underneath the fence again. So I go grab her and I pull her back in the fence and I try to patch it up. Now I'm all dirty. I got to go back inside. I thought, boy, this is going to be a lot harder. It was a lot easier for me in Austin. And so standing there, you really weigh like, what am I doing? But I felt like this was going to be worth it. And so we stayed at it. And it wasn't long before an opportunity opened to start working with the barns.

I certainly recognize the feeling of seeing things not going well in our greater culture. But for me, I don't think it's going to be much of a life if that means I need to go hide underground. I don't know that that's the life I want. But I have some kind of hope. that we can pull something together where things begin to fail or unravel, and there's a place where people feel like they can come and cooperate together. That has a lot more hope and meaning to me than preparing a place where I'd go hide. We know the whole combination of steps that we need to take to really get sustainable, to really make a complete ejection, is not going to happen in one generation. We want to be clear in the direction we're going. And we don't want to be impatient. We want to be thoughtful. And we want something that we start to last and take root.

And recognizing the bigness of the vision of really achieving sustainability, we know it's not a single generational kind of vision. It's going to be multi-generational. Oh, it is idyllic. Yeah, it's really amazing if you can pull it off. Yeah. It's like that. Once in a while, dreams come true sort of scenario. There are a lot of things that I thought were really, really neat about what they're doing, right? They have multiple different industries that they are all engaged in on this one property where they have their own individual homes. It's not like a commune. I mean, if somebody likes a commune, that's fine. But they all have their own individual homes. They all have their own individual jobs. But right there on the property, they are producing the things that they need to eat. They are producing the things that will clothe them. Not only that, but they are teaching the youth. They are making it a part of the culture where the next generation is learning how to woodwork, how to sew jackets, how to do the things that they need to be able to provide for themselves. And so they don't need the digital ID.

They don't need... currency they're able to take care of themselves and not be a part of any type of system that is trying to enslave them because this is what true freedom is is being able to uh provide for yourself and to live amongst the people that you are of like mind with on these things you all have the same goal working in the same direction and in fact um these these people all belong to the same church they're all part of the same religion and so this is their website heritage ministries united uh these are the different locations where they have these communities all over the world and so uh this is based on uh their uh their church their specific denomination i mean and so um if you go to their their website heritage ministries united and look on there and if that's you know just that's an example that if that is something that is appealing to you, you could look into. But there are other ones because just like I've talked about before with Samuel Puffendorf, where he says that people that are combined together have to be... agreement on these things. Otherwise, it's going to turn out bad. The parties will clash, as he says. And so this isn't for everyone because they have a certain standard. They have a certain faith that they're all united in.

And so if those things are something that you're united in as well, that is something to look at because these are people that are already doing these things right now. Other websites, you have The Bruderhoffs. And they go to their website and they have a similar thing. These are all called intentional communities. And they're based on Christian denominations. And so they have different groups of people at different places. But they're all working together to be able to provide for themselves and to be separate from this system. And so they can follow those biblical principles. And of course, how they interpret those biblical principles will be different according to each of those communities, which is fine. That's what they should be doing. And if you interpret biblical principles one way, then that's the community that you should be with. Another one is called Beachy Churches in North America. They're more back in the eastern United States. And what's interesting is even though they're more of a Mennonite, they're not strictly Amish in the traditional sense that you might see in TV and movies.

They do accept. some modern technology, but they're actually growing in population and membership throughout the last 50 years. They're not stagnant. They're not decreasing. They're not declining. They are actually dramatically increasing. And so this is something that is attractive to a lot of people because as the guy in the video said, it's just becoming more and more obvious to people that what is going on right now is not sustainable. And so they want to be able to be with other people of like mind. where they can be able to work together to be able to provide for their own housing, food, clothing, and work. And so they don't have to be a part of this system that is clearly falling apart. And so the next thing is, you know, the question is what about Catholics or Mormons, right, or Latter-day Saints? And so there are many different kinds of Catholics or many different kinds of Mormons. All of them have a basis in this idea of apostolic authority or keys.

And so what that means is this makes these non-denominational or Protestant Christian communities really a non-option. Because if you're a Mormon of any variety, you're going to want to be around people of like mind. And these people in these non -denominational or certain Protestant Christian religions aren't going to want to have you there. for Catholics, right? And so they're not going to be of the same thing. So are there options for people that are part of churches that maybe might not align with those communities? And so I wanted to share with you with those. A few months ago, I brought on a couple of representatives from the Utah OSR Land Co-op. And then Rod and I actually went out and visited them. at their community and looked at what they were doing. And the people out there, they are a mixture of all kinds of different faiths coming together and working on it. They're not an intentional community. They're an off-grid community.

And so at the same time, they're not like a co-op, but they are working together to be off-grid, to be able to produce the things that they need to be able to live themselves. They have that one down, I mean, up, I don't know what you'd call that. Is that central or north central Utah out in the middle of nowhere? That same organization, they have one in Arizona. I know you can't really see, that's northern Arizona. So up over here is the Flagstaff area. So we got Winslow area right there. So it's just south over by Snowflake. If anybody knows where Snowflake, Arizona is there. in between Snowflake and Sholo, Arizona. And so again, this is one of those communities where they're not a religious-based community. And so people from many different faiths have decided that this is the place that they wanna go to to be able to live more intentionally where they can work with others to be able to produce the things that they need to be able to live and not be a part of. this new world order that's coming up.

So these are other organizations. These are the Davis County Cooperative and we have a couple of different fundamentalist Mormon communities where they're working towards these types of ideas. And then we have these other ones where you are more Catholic, where they're actual communities where you go to to actually live in a community setting. where you're all not a part of the New World Order, but you're working to provide for those things amongst yourselves as a Mennonite or an Amish community would, but without those specific religious or lifestyle restrictions. And so voting harder isn't what works. Voting harder isn't going to solve the problem that we're in.

We are in the same situation as those that have gone before, where it's time that we separate ourselves from those that want that, from what's coming, and those that don't. And so we're not giving up. We're not quitting. We're not just saying we're going to just ignore what's going on. We're recognizing what's going on and we're fighting against it. But while we're fighting against it, we are making sure that we are building a path where No matter what Babylon does, it doesn't matter because we have a separate path that is free. No matter what, if a digital currency comes and I can't go to the grocery store without my digital currency, it doesn't matter because I'm living in a community that's producing our own food. If you have to be able to earn the digital currency to be able to have a job or have a digital ID to have a job. and be able to travel to your job it doesn't matter because i'm living in a community where i'm taking a five-minute bike ride like the guy in the video said and i'm driving i'm riding my bike to my job and so where i might not be you know where i'm not taking the fed coin to be able to provide for my family i'm working with others to be able to provide for them and they are you know and they provide things for me and so that way that they can we can all of us be intentionally working towards a free society instead of the one that is being built up around us.

And so going back to the things that's listed in our member manual, right? Members of the Tree of Liberty Society should seek to do one of the following. Work to bring their neighbors into a place where they desire liberty and will behave in a way that allows them to have true liberty. So if you want to stay where you're at, you like where you're at, What I would recommend then is you build something similar to what's going on in that. saw in that video today, right where you are. That's great. If you can find people right where you are and build that kind of a community right where you are, awesome. Or you find a place where people are already living like this, such as what I just showed you. There are lots of people already doing this. It's not impossible because otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.

There are people doing this right now. And if finding those types of people is what you want to do, go find those types of people or the third option is to work to find others to then establish another jig you're like okay there's not enough people right in my neighborhood you know i don't want to do this in my neighborhood anyways but i'm i'm developing a network of individuals where we want to be able to do these things and so we're going to go work together and find a place we can all go to to do these things And so members, we find others through cottage meetings, distribution of the videos, our book clubs on the topic or our boot camp. You know, that's what, you know, the Tree of Liberty Society, our goal is to be able to build a free society by people implementing these things. This economic independence is a part of what we do.

And so if you're inviting them to our meetings, if you're distributing our materials to them, then you are helping to bring more people to this so you can find people to either gather to, find people to gather together to, or to build in your own neighborhoods where you're already at this type of culture where you don't have to be a part of this. Because as we talked about before, it's essential that we do not, that we're in a position where we're not going to say, well, we're going to put up with it and build that. What's it called? Where you have this normalcy bias where you're just used to it. You're like, well, if I want to keep my job and feed my family, then I have to take the digital ID. If I want to feed my family, I have to get the digital dollar. If that's a non-option for you, this is the only other solution.

You're either a part of Egypt and Babylon or you're a part of this. Those are the options. How you get there is up to you. These are different ways of getting to that situation. But those are the two options. And so some people would say, well, why not just build a Tree of Liberty Society community, right? With all of my millions of dollars, I'm going to go buy. Well, I don't have a bunch of acreage and everybody that's in the Tree of Liberty Society moves out there and we all do this ourselves. And so I want to bring up, I brought up this reference to this quote earlier. But I want to bring it up again because it's an important principle behind why we don't just do that. Orson Spencer, he explained, men of congenial interests should separate themselves from those of adverse interests and pair off each to each.

The promiscuous intermixture of heterogeneous bodies for the purpose of unity and strength is alike distant both from pure religion and sound philosophy. And so he's just reiterating. what Samuel Pufendorf had said and other natural law teachers know. And what history teaches us is that, you know, we might be good friends and we might support one another to reach unified goals of universal liberty. But if we are not unified on all of these principles, we would jeopardize that friendship. And actually, eventually, we would end up fighting each other. And so it's important for us, we can work together on these, you know, outside things but if we were to build a community we should be of you know i like what that community is doing they're all of the same religion i think that that video that we watched even though they're not my faith i love i would that's the thing i wouldn't live there because i'm not of their faith but i would love to help them and support them and work with them to do that and i would love to help and work with others to do that with where with where they're at according to the principles that they follow But I want to make sure that the people that I am working on government with and that we're working in our neighborhoods on a day-to-day basis, that we're unified on all of those core principles and so that we don't clash.

And so there's logistic reasons, resource reasons, but it really breaks down to this fundamental principle right here of why we don't do that, but why we say these are the three things that you should be looking for. and that we should be working as an organization to help each other to be able to do and to be able to find and so that is the or or we do this and so um as much as we can put it off is great we're warning as we're warning others about what's coming um and we put it off that's fantastic um and we but but really where our core strength is is in building strongholds like any military would where you're separate from this system and you're able to defend it and so when it's under attack you won't be broken up whereas as these things try to get implemented if we're all separated and in separate communities and far away from each other we can't defend each other and so it'll be harder to to be able to actually stop these things and oppose these things but if we've combined together in these communities and we're not dependent upon the system then we can stand up in a more effective manner against these things so it's not like i'm just saying hey go build you know go hide in your cave with your friends and let all the stuff i'll let the world fall apart no what i'm saying is um you're able to fight these things more effectively when you are separate in these communities and following the principles where um that have established free people in the past and then because you are following the principles that free people have followed before and that establishes a free people, you will be able to more effectively fight the conspiracy. And so I'm going to look at the chat as we go through and let anybody ask questions.

We've got a few minutes before the official meeting is over. So if you've got any questions or comments that you'd like to share right now, go ahead and raise your hand and I'll call on you and we'll go through and we'll look at as I'm looking through the chat as well. We start with Alan and then we'll go to Mark. Hey, what was the original term that you called these communities? You had a general term that you called them. Intentional communities is what they're referred to as. So I don't know if you heard of a guy here up in Canada. I've met his family and stuff. His name is Webo Ludwig. He had a problem here in Alberta with the provincial government over surface rights to oil. So he and his family started up. an intentional community that was loosely based on Dutch Christian reform theology. And they're entirely off-grid and self-reliant.

And I visited the community and I'm a city guy. I can't handle it. There's hard, hard physical work involved and stuff like this, you know? So much as I admire their community and what they're doing and stuff like that. What we need to look at is creating an off the main line. digital community for people who are, because we're already being, what do you call it, tribalized by online social media and stuff like that.

And rather than use them, and I posted this little joke about Zoom because I just looked at Zoom for the first time, my Zoom display in it. had version number 666 so i thought but no i i'm thinking there are things like uh mesh networks mesh tastic which is a technology that allows people to do cell phone like texting off grid entirely it's shared your your device actually shares with everybody else uh the data and passes it on kind of like apple air tags but it's not proprietary It's open source and not owned by anybody. So these type of technologies, to me, look to the possibility of creating a virtual intentional community. Great. Thank you.

Yeah, there's definitely more things that we can put into this and wherever people are at is where they should go. Mark. Yes, I'm going to play the devil's advocate a little bit because I think it's important. First of all, I support all of this independence. effort to be independent. I think it's great. The prepper argument goes along the same lines of my devil's advocate position here. What we're facing, this was a debate off and on on Kate Dahlia's show, and there's a lot of people that believe that you could be so independent or so prepared, even a decade of food stored away and so forth. that they no longer make an effort to fight tyranny.

And what's really important, my point here, is that if you study totalitarianism, modern totalitarianism, the Nazis, Germany, the Soviets, and other communist countries where they practice totalitarianism, they can't, because you were using statements like, we need to separate from others, yes, doesn't matter. as long as we produce our own food we produce do our own producing it doesn't matter and totalitarianism it may not uh it may still matter because what the totalitarians do even though it can work politically to some extent like uh digital currency you don't need digital currency because you're self-sufficient but what the the condition isn't going to be just anarchy or chaos like the bulk uh bosnia balkan wars the condition is totalitarianism they don't want you to be independent at all and they will use force they and all you have to do is look at the soviet union and all the other communist satellite countries and and nazi germany and nazi eastern europe as well they close took the food, they stole the food. Ukraine was the breadbasket of Europe.

And yet the people starved to death by, you know, as many as 14 million were essentially starved under totalitarianism. So even if you are independent, it doesn't mean they're not going to come in and shut you down, steal your food, steal your independence. I think that's why, you know, the Tree of Liberties... not putting all their eggs in that basket. They're fighting tyranny. We have to fight tyranny with everything we can because once totalitarianism here, these independent communities may be fairly easy for them to disappear when the military is ordered to do so. Any thoughts on what I said? Yeah, absolutely. If we use our independence as an excuse to be neutralized, then we've missed the entire point. Hopefully, especially as I wrap things up, the point is to be able to build strongholds so that we can be stronger together and that we can better go on the offense. Because as we've talked about before, it's not just about slowing down the tyranny.

Our job is to go on the offense and destroy the tyranny. Our job is to retrench and then be able to, with that strength, go out and totally obliterate the conspiracy. If you can still eat and you have shelter, it's easier to fight from that fortress than it is from a starving household. And if you're like, you know, at the same starving household, if they can shut off your power, if they can surround you because all of your neighbors are, you know, in favor of these things or they're controlled by these things and they don't want to lose their welfare, they're going to be the first ones to turn you in. And so there's so many strategic reasons. of why this is an important step in the overall offensive effort. It's not a retrenchment and hiding in the caves. A step. We can't put all our eggs in this basket. Exactly. Well, we can't put no eggs in the basket.

So, yep. Thank you, Mark. Any other comments? Ben, one last point. So in the Soviet Union and the German under the Third Reich, but especially the Soviet Union, there were no hamlets. There were no independent communities. They closed everything down and so they controlled the people. So even if they had digital currency and so forth, it didn't matter. So I just want people to think that you can run away from this in your country. And we don't have, you know, Europeans ran to America, as you talked about earlier. Where do we have to run to? We've got to stand and fight. Thank you. Hey, Micah. Yeah. So you're saying we need to put the right amount of eggs in the right amount of baskets. Exactly. Okay. I just want to clear that up. Really specific about that. Okay. An intentional community is a broad term for, because you have like straight up communists that are building their own intentional communities.

And so if you Google intentional community, you're going to find a wide variety. And so when I was searching, I was searching for. conservative or conservative religious intentional communities. And so that's what I was looking for as I was giving examples of what we shared tonight. Ben? Yeah. Would some of these baskets holding different kinds of eggs, would some of these baskets be holding guns and arms? I've never talked about such things before. I'm just, that was facetious. Absolutely. I mean, that's our book, Killing No Murder. I mean, that's exactly what that is. That is a basket with eggs. Hopefully lots of them. Hopefully strong eggs with bulletproof vests on. Mark, yes. Yes. Do you have any more information about these 50-year loans, mortgages rather? You know, the average house first time. House fire is like 35 years old. I mean, many of those people are going to be dead before. It's not about ownership. They're just going to make you think you are.

But, you know, it's perpetual death. It was just announced yesterday or today. I just heard about today. The Trump administration came out with it, so I don't have all the details. It was just a proposal that he put out there to be able to help with housing affordability. More executive order dictatorship, I assume. I would imagine, but I don't have the details yet. Well, we're out of time, so let's go ahead and have our closing prayer, and then we'll go ahead and have our open forum. Linda, would you be available? Yes, I am.

Our dear Father in heaven, as we come before thee tonight, we're grateful unto thee for the opportunity we have to come together and meet and talk and discuss, plan, and decide what is best for us and our families. We ask you to bless us that we might have thy spirit and guidance to be with us, that we might be able to prepare and have a sense of security and that we might be able to reach out to others around us and create communities of support. Again, we're thankful for this opportunity to come together and learn and think and progress. We ask that you bless us now that we may continue to have thy spirit with us. These things we pray for in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.