Lawyers are a useful tool. When you feel like you are in a bind, talking to the right lawyer can be such a breath of fresh air. It can be a conversation from which you walk away saying “Phew! I have options I didn’t even realize I had.” Life feels better with options. Life can be easier with experts on your side who want to help. I get that. That is brilliant.

I am going to tell you something that truly bothers me, though, about that search. It is when people look to lawyers as the solution. It is when people view lawyers as a way of outsourcing part of life’s journey. There are some things you just cannot outsource in life.

Children’s Health Defense is one of my favorite health freedom organizations. They fight in the courts. They organize and fight a battle with a fervor and skill that few have. They are also a brilliant think tank, and they additionally publish powerful daily stories on top of that. If you do not already donate to them, I must ask, “Why not?” If you are broke, skip the afternoon tea and send them $1.76. Say “thank you” with a donation of any size.

Though I love them, I recognize a limitation. They are not going to win this battle for us.

The battle is in you.

Quite literally, you have been lulled into being the greatest enemy to your own freedom. I have been lulled into being the greatest enemy to my own freedom.

You cannot outsource that battle to a lawyer. You cannot outsource that battle to a psychiatrist. You cannot outsource that battle to a pastor. You have to do that work.

Some people wonder why I harp on face masks. These are usually the same people who obediently put on a face mask.

The reason I harp on face masks is because I recognize that it takes ten times more courage to stop wearing a face mask than it does to call a lawyer and ask him to file some papers for you.

People actually call me and ask me for lawyer recommendations when they will not even take their boss out to lunch and have a calm face to face talk. I still tell them to take their boss out to lunch and have a calm face to face talk. I sometimes also call them a coward when they come up with some excuse for why that should not happen and why a dramatic legal battle is preferable. It takes little courage to find a lawyer. It takes courage to speak face to face with a person involved in your life, such as a boss, and to tell him what you want, for him to tell you what he wants, and for you to negotiate those interests. That is required of you to live a free life. If you cannot do that, I am not going to be the crutch that gets you a lawyer, so you can kick the can of adulthood further down the road.

And I get that conversations like that take courage. It is a lot more courage than most people are comfortable stomaching. Then, unfortunately, that person who will not push himself to be a little more courageous, will have the indignity of being lorded over by his inferiors. Why? Because he does not have the courage to speak his views.

The effects of being lorded over by your inferiors are especially dire at a time like this. Speaking your views openly and honestly in civil conversation, for the purpose of hearing another out, and negotiating the spread between the bid and the ask, is so important.

Do I mean speak your views in protests and chants? Do I mean speak your views in an ALL-CAPS emails? Do I mean speak your views by forwarding umpteen New England Journal of Medicine articles to supervisors? No. You go and sit across the table from a person, and you ask them what he wants, tell him what you want, and then you guys talk. That is what civil society is built upon — calm conversations filled with disagreement. Such a bedrock concept of civilization is almost oxymoronic to even reference in this era, even among freedom fighters.

There are umpteen variations of how to do that, how to have that calm conversation. As far as I am concerned, basically everything else is sociopathy — hiring a lawyer included. If you have not exhausted all options for calm conversation, you are in the wrong when you steer yourself evasively past those conversations. When you do so, you steer yourself into the realm of sociopathy.

Buying into such sociopathy makes the world an even more collectivist place. That is good for those who want to burn down the system more quickly, perhaps. But those are not usually the people who call me. The people who call me want to resolve an issue.

There are lots of useful tools to get what you want, but it all comes down to that conversation, and if you can have that conversation, then you can grow in your ability to have that conversation even better and in even more important scenarios.

Other people are trying to figure out exemptions, or how to do a spit test instead of a nasal swab. At some point you have to draw a line. I like exemptions because they help a person start to train themselves and delay a little, while society comes to its senses. They can be especially useful in big organizations, which are generally designed to behave sociopathic and need creative approaches for you to avoid being dragged into the same. In as many situations as possible, many times each day, what you really need to be aiming at is having the personal face to face conversations that are so uncommon in our era. It is an era of cowardice, in which even the freedom fighters have bought into the idea that avoiding these conversations is appropriate.

The only way to have freedom in your own life is through these conversations. Not once. Not twice. Daily, constantly, as a matter of your path through life. Someone tells you he wants something. You tell him you want something else. You negotiate. He might say he is just doing his job. That is useful information. Any order-follower is the wrong person to spend your precious time on. Go find the decision-maker and talk to him instead.

It is not about a face mask. It is about every little time that you have avoided this normal and natural negotiation, because you do not want “conflict.” It is about being a member of the silent majority for whatever reason you tell yourself. To be a member of a silent majority, generally requires a great deal of hiding, shirking, and tacit approval, in order to get through the day. These behaviors are synonyms for “lying.” It is about going to church on Sundays and reading your Bible and praying in the morning, but no one outside of your church has ever heard you speak about how God has changed your life. It is about your neighbor behaving a certain way, and you call the cops instead of handling it and building that relationship. It is about going to HR or a supervisor about something a colleague did, when instead, you could use that as an opportunity to grow in your relationship with a colleague by saying something like “You know, I really like you, but it sure bugs me when you… Do you have a minute to talk about that?”

A tattle tale is not a bad thing because he rats out someone who did bad. A tattle tale is a bad thing because he is too cowardly to confront that person and say, “I like you, but if you want to keep coming around here, that thing you did in front of me is not something I ever want to see you doing again…” Stop looking to authority. Stop looking to the collective. Stop looking to the great state. Stop looking for recourse. Let the buck stop with you in your life.

Have I been burned by doing this? Many times. In a world in which everyone is trying to cover their own butts, you can expect this approach to produce imperfect results. Everyone seems to have stories as to why they have bought into the sociopathy, rather than owning the situation around themselves. I can identify these excuses from a mile a way. They always seem to start out the same way and with the same tone. What is the maximum effective range of an excuse? Zero.

Everyone in modernity has been burned. That happens. Good people, doing the right thing, sometimes get hurt. I do not know about you, but I am not going to let someone else’s shortcomings stop me from doing the right thing.

To do the right thing, own the situation. Constantly having the hard conversations is your duty as someone who wants to be free. Be able and willing to identify your boundaries, communicate your boundaries, and defend your boundaries. That can be done many ways. The most important way is by being able to have calm conversations with people in which you say what you want, they say what they want, and then you guys work something out.

Does it always work? Hardly. We live in an era of cowardice. Does that mean to stop owning the situation? Hardly. You would only deny yourself the chance for growth. Anyone whispering anything different in your ear is denying you that chance for growth. At a time like this, such self-denial is practically lethal.

It is not about the face mask, but I know this much: once you stop wearing the face mask in one place, you are going to write me about how you figured out how to stop wearing it in all places. Then you are going to write me that you got your child unmasked at school. Then you are going to write me that you figured out how to protect your child from the Covid shot and tests too, while all the other parents with obediently masked kids are losing their minds. You might even write me that you pulled your child out of school. You might write me that you flew maskless. You might write me that you meet weekly with other likeminded people, that you regularly close down illegal government meetings, that you are running people for office, that you have started a food co-operative for the maskless who are sick of eating glyphosate, a clinic for the unvaxxed, an underground school, a private club for local freedom fighters to go for drinks after work.

I do not know where it ends. But I know when you take off the mask, when you figure out these conversations, you will automatically begin rebuilding a more free society around yourself again. More importantly, you will have altered your internal terrain in such a way that you will never be able to turn back.

Take off the mask, now and forever. Posterity will thank you, and you will one day soon thank yourself. “Face Masks in One Lesson” exists to help you do that, as do these LewRockwell.com pieces, and the email newsletter at RealStevo.com full of quick, easy to watch videos on how to make that and other bold steps a reality in your own life. 

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A reader writes:

Yesterday (Friday, August 13) late afternoon, Columbia (Missouri) Public Schools announced a mask mandate for the coming school year. We teachers (I teach high school math) start on Tuesday, and the students start a week from then.

Due in large part to your influence through your writing, I spoke to my principal and informed him that I was never again going to wear a mask. I am about to lose my job because of it. I cannot find a policy. They are simply following CDC guidelines, and he has told me that there is zero tolerance.

My husband and I moved in with my in-laws five years ago to take care of them and keep them at home. My husband stays home with them full-time, and my teaching job is what pays for our Insurance and food.

I’m scared, but proud. We have been through hard times before, and God has always taken care of us.

I just wanted to thank you for your inspirational writing and your encouragement.

God bless you,
A Reader Who Has Had Enough

—-

The roar of the lion
Chutzpah and guts
Grace under fire
Spurs and Latigo
Duty, pride, faith, and not fear
Pilgrims, pioneers, settlers
Salt of the earth
The Remnant
The type of man who could never let a plane be taken down by a box cutter
Could not care less about losing a job that meant you needed to compromise your values
Last stands that become first steps into a new life
Junipero Serra and anyone who ever stepped out into the unknown, who accomplished things great.
The 41 who lived long enough to sign the Mayflower Compact
The 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, some ordained clergy among them, at risk of execution
Those who travelled inland into every acre of this continent when doing so meant that you would likely never be seen again
He who does not shirk
She who does not wince
Proverbs 31
Woman of virtue

That is what the new America will be made of.

America will not die. It may not look exactly as it does today, at least not for long, but there will, for some time, be an America, a new America, the type of America inhabited by this woman, who writes above.

On a Friday night recently, in left coast lockdown land, I spoke to a fellow warrior, a sister who had long called that place home.

She shook her head about that place in which she lived. I reminded her that she may very well have been made for a time such as this, put in a place such as that. It is one of the most locked down city in this country, a place that very few Americans wish to live, a place fled from over the past year by as many as one-third of its inhabitants.

She and her friend recognized me, knocked on the window of the local gathering spot they were in, and called me in as I walked by on the sidewalk. They were a few steps away from an old comedy club called Cobb’s.

They had been at Cobb’s that night. I could understand why they were down. Please allow me to tell you what I witnessed.

That night, a one time heroic figure for me, J.P. Sears, did a show at Cobb’s. His venue that he chose did not just follow the city face mask orders. The venue, in fact, went over and above. I have seen and heard many ugly face mask stories. Never had I seen people so drunk with power, so callously implementing the face mask orders, as those at the door of the J.P. Sears event that night. I have never even seen TSA behave with such reckless, unapologetic abandon.

I know what Kristallnacht looked like because of what I saw that night. I did not hear the breaking of glass. I did not hear the breaking of bones. To claim to have seen that part of Kristallnacht would be a gross exaggeration. I saw, however, the essence of what made Kristallnacht possible. I saw men drunk with power lording over their intellectual and social betters, as their intellectual and social betters cowered in disgrace.

To know that I saw this at an event organized by a heroic figure such as J.P. Sears caused my blood to boil that night. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

J.P. Sears is an entertainer who has played an admirable role over the past year-and-a-half for his nicely produced, entertainingly delivered, hard-hitting, intellectual consistency in opposition to the public health mandates since the Ides of March 2020.

When J.P. Sears came to west coast lockdown land, the day after the local mayor crushed the spirit of some of the people in that town by making what was already the most rigorous lockdown in the country, even more rigorous through the announcement of forthcoming vaccine mandates — the day after that, J.P. Sears appeared in a venue where they didn’t just follow the existing city orders, but they went over and above. J.P. Sears was effectively a heroic figure to me until that night, when I saw what looked a lot like his full support of the lockdowns and scare tactics that have been so hard on so many locally.

That city, that community, the free people who gathered there that night, in one of the darkest days of the summer of 2021, needed a strong voice, a leader, a breath of fresh air. Instead, they got to shell out a small wad of cash to J.P. Sears and got brownshirt treatment.

I have given up a great deal in my life since the Ides of March 2020. How much you sacrifice does not matter. It is more about how little you care about the cost of that sacrifice when your values are put on the line. I could have done what was easy. I could have stood by my values. I chose that.

My words mean nothing without my actions. Actions are the only things that matter. Words are cheap. Instead of sacrificing a great deal through 2020, at the spear tip of this great battle, I could have also given in and with my actions and given the lockdowns my full support.

That’s what J.P. Sears did that night when this corner of the country needed a hero to ride in and buck them up. He let the people know he was here to be an entertainer and nothing more. I do not know J.P. Sears personally. He may have always just wanted to be an entertainer. Covid schtick might just be a quick way to get attention. Covid schtick might just be a quick way to make a buck. That is not what I imagined, though. I imagined in J.P. Sears a leader among men, a lion, who leads an army and leads that army judiciously.

His army appeared. I travelled many hours to be with them that day. Obedient people, lined up, being lorded over and taking orders. Thirty feet back in the line they spoke one way, with such gusto, and what appeared like bravery, but it was mere puffery it seemed, for when they appeared at the front of the line they spoke another way.

A black man and two hispanic men lorded over them and yelled. One might like to think there is some truth to identity politics — that a black man knows oppression and therefore will not oppress. No such thing is true. We are individuals with individual experiences.

The men lording over the audience yelled loud yells. They yelled in people’s faces. They patrolled up and down the line, barking orders. One even threatened a man by pulling out a weapon, one of those expandable Nancy Kerrigan beaters. A maskless man, in line to see the show, took a box cutter out of his pocket, to show security and ask if it was acceptable. Within twenty seconds, security had him backed up to the curb and expanded that baton, holding it cocked and ready to strike, yelling and threatening to do him harm. It had nothing to do with the silly knife. It had everything to do with so many men and women walking up to them unmasked, uncooperative, unwilling to be controlled, until they just barked their illegal, unjust orders more loudly and threateningly and attempted to deny them entry to the J.P. Sears event. Control freaks do not like free people around them; it makes them tense. Their impetus is to crush that spirit. J.P. Sears made a few dollars that night complying with those illegal orders and lining his army up to cower rather than stand bravely.

I presume Sears has had to make tough decisions in life. That night, he made a decision to host his show in a venue that was going to play outrageous security theater. He single-handedly made that possible; he single-handedly made the worst corona crackdown I have seen in the last 18 months possible. From where I stood that night, that decision seemed neither admirable nor difficult, though people in such positions always seem to find a way to call the easy decision “difficult,” sometimes even in tearful apologies.

To make matters worse, once inside, no one was asked to put their mask on. It was all brutal security theater at the door and nothing more, implemented and made possible by a whole host of people, J.P. Sears most of all, who were 1.) “Just following orders,” 2.) Looking the other way and being willfully ignorant, or 3.) Very happily enforcing these orders.

The boss of the door, informed people repeatedly he was in charge and that he was exerting just authority. He went up and down the long line barking this information. For all of his 6 foot 5 inch, 300 pound self, he really seemed to be screaming how little he felt. He was the type of black man who made the slave trade possible. He was physically imposing, cruel, and very obedient to authority. It was not the Dutch who traveled 1,000 miles inland into inhospitable West Africa to drag slaves to the coast to be loaded onto their slave ships. Those who peddle identify politics would like you to forget that. They would like you to forget the content of a man’s character and to only look skin deep.

Silence and compliance were the only ways to guarantee yourself a peaceful entrance into that place that night.

Next to him were two other men, the type of men who made Auschwitz possible. They were just there to do their job. That is what they told themselves as they yelled as loudly as they could next to people’s faces. Sure, you could say they were just doing their job, but after a year-and-a-half of Covid fear porn, you could tell, they really, really liked their jobs. One even wore paramilitary garb. He hardly knew the language. These military-rejects and flunkies were playing drill sergeant with the affluent audience that J.P. Sears drew, and the affluent audience seemed to think nothing of it.

A grown man yelled in the face of another grown man over and over again and the one being yelled at obeyed, put up with it, acquiesced, did not even bother to politely say “Stop yelling at me,” let alone sock a guy in the kisser for thinking it okay to yell in his face like that in front of his wife.

Can you imagine yourself letting anyone yell at you in the face like that? If you can, I would like you to do some soul-searching on what dignity really means. After that, I would like you to reflect on the importance of polite exchange for civil society not to fall apart. What role do you want to play in your life on those topics? If you let a man yell in your face like that, are you playing the role you want to play?

Plus, you are just a gutless coward if you let that happen.

That is the kind of night I witnessed for the four hours before that woman knocked on the window of LaRocca’s Corner and told me how bummed she was getting about her hometown.

You can maybe find sympathy for why she was bummed. There are always things to get bummed about. Helping others to refocus is so very important in being a leader.

Prayer followed for us — those two women and me. Nothing that I write, nothing that I speak, is as powerful as when I grab a brother’s or sister’s hand and pray for them and their needs. It is not about the messenger. It is about the message. Prayer reminds us of that. And prayer can help us refocus. There was no reason to be bummed.

The only reason to get bummed is because you are focusing on the wrong thing: the sheep or the hyenas.

You see, the hyenas have always existed in all times. The Bill Gates, the Gavin Newsoms, the Anthony Faucis have always existed. They matter so little, though. They are not the variable. They are consistent throughout all history. They deceive and attack. The hyenas do what hyenas do, unless prevented from doing so.

The sheep have always existed in all times. They are the highest group of people in society. They spend a great deal of their time in fear, seeking out a leader. Moses went up the mountain for mere days before the sheep felt leaderless and scared. Days. Days. Just days. Their leader for years, who led them out of slavery, was only gone for days. That tells you the very essence of what it is like to be a sheep. You cannot expect a sheep to do anything of their own volition, nor anything considerable virtue for more than a few days. To expect otherwise makes you the fool. If they have no leader, they are busy finding the best leader. That is what sheep do. They have always done it. They are, thankfully, not the variable in history.

The arc of history does not depend on them, nor on the hyenas. The arc of history depends on the lions. Were the lions asleep? Or were the lions on the prowl? Were they in charge of their domain? Or were they being lax? Upon that is what history rests — the steel-spined man who will not back down from his values, or the slack-spined man who knows better and does not act accordingly. The woman of virtue who chooses to act unvirtuously, or the woman of virtue who summons more righteousness than she ever knew she had, no matter what the external circumstances are, no matter how tough the times. Upon the individual actions of lions like these does the trajectory of all history rest.

I could have focussed on the sheep who entered the J.P. Sears event. I could have focussed on the hyenas who bent them to their will. I did not. I caught myself and stopped.

Earlier that night, three brave souls and I gathered together — three brave souls and I, who did not want to put on the mask for a second to hear J.P. Sears or anyone else speak. Three brave souls and I had a meal together in a nearby business that did not demand masks of us, did not demand vaccines of us, just wanted to serve us food in exchange for money. We supported that kind of place. J.P. Sears and a few hundred fans supported a different kind of place.

What a hero he would have been if he would have had the command, oversight, and decency to walk out of that club and to fill the tiny restaurant with his adoring fans.

Those three souls ate their hundred dollar tickets, because they refused to be masked for a second. They refused to tell that lie. They refused to let that evil into their lives. Men and women like that lead in difficult times, not with their words, but with their actions.

I do not know what to think of those who went to watch J.P. Sears that night and their many excuses for why they wouldn’t stand up. They were the people who knew better, but who refused to do better, exactly the type of people who presided over the horror shows of history.

I did not need to think of them, though, for I was surrounded by a pride of lions. I was surrounded by people who matter. The wide awake, on-the-prowl lions, who knew what they were about and who took control of their domain no matter where they were. The four of us.

The four of us will build the new America if that is what it takes. But there are more than the four of us.

The west coast lockdown land is the spear tip. We must remember that. How easy it is to get lost in daily life and forget how sane some other places are. A great long spear is behind us. Hardly does any other part of California look like the goofy, yet influential, small pieces of land in Southern California, near Los Angeles and Northern California in the Bay Area near San Francisco — the two areas from which the state is controlled.

Places like Templeton, Yuba, and Barstow. Ukiah and the Russian River and hardscrabble places in the desert and foothills alike. Places where those who live there wave flags from overpasses, where they tell stories to their children about grit, places where they spend their Sundays worshiping.

This was that kind of evening. I could have spent it grieved at the number of sheep and hyenas I saw that night for a 7 p.m. show and then again for a 9:45 p.m. show. I caught myself doing that and stopped. I turned my attention to one of the many blessings of 2020 and 2021: the clear separation of the sheep, the hyenas, and the lions — and the bold lions that have been brought into my life as that separation occurs and as people realize how little they share values with those who they had once surrounded themselves with.

Everyone is on their own journey. Forgiveness can be easily had. Every day, new people wake up and stand up. The time is very short, though. The window of opportunity to correct course is very small. Flu season comes each year. This year will be no different, and there are some bad folks with some evil plans for this next flu season, which they already plan to rename as something other than flu season, as they did last year. Time in these days and weeks ahead truly is of the essence. We must successfully beat back this tyranny.

Dear reader, thank you for your note, you virtuous, upright woman you. Have a look at that CDC order they claim to be following.

It has an exemption for those who are unable to wear a face mask safely. At this point, I don’t know if anyone is able to wear a face mask safely. Get your principal on the right page. Make him give you the policy. Make him read the policy.

Something tells me, though, that you may be done taking orders from sheep or hyenas, that you have come into your own as a lion.

That decision is yours. Whatever the case, I am here to support you. Something tells me though, there is nothing you need from me. Though you claim to be scared, I hardly believe it. There is such a fearlessness in your letter.

That is a fearlessness the hyenas hate. Because they know that courage is contagious.

Stop the evil. Say “No!” to the mask.  “Face Masks in One Lesson” exists to help you do that, as do these LewRockwell.com pieces, and the email newsletter at RealStevo.com full of quick, easy to watch videos on how to make that and other bold steps a reality in your own life.

The Best of Allan Stevo