Essays

Gina Carano Firing Is Aimed At Intimidating Dissenters

Bill Collier February 13, 2021

Popular. Likeable. Capable. Like Pedro Pascal, Gina Carano somewhat wears her politics on her sleeve. Like Pedro she made a comparison of her opponents to the Nazis, which is generally bad form in most circles.

But Pedro is being feted and adored and being offered new gigs while Gina is being sacked and pilloried.

What’s the the real difference, except their respective politics? Gina’s politics are not favored by the billionaire robber baron class who use wokeness and race as a form of distraction from their many crimes against humanity. Gina is part of the dissent. Gina is a beloved actress who portrays a popular character. Taking her out of a hit series that finally racked up some wins for the whole Star Wars franchise, crushed under a cancel freedom agenda out of step with its fans, is pure messaging.

The old adage about tyranny is that one doesn’t have to shoot all the rebels, one only has to publicly execute a few to frighten the many.

While milquetoast faux “conservative” Ben Shapiro is also banging on about the same theme, and has offered Gina a new gig doing a movie with his outfit, the shrill-voiced, fast-talking lad also sided with Nikki Haley in her refutation of President Trump. She was basing her rather shrill depiction of a denouement of the Trump saga on outright fabrications and lies by the corpostate-party press.

Shapiro on one side of his fast-moving, ever-flapping mouth hails Gina as the stand-in for all the dissenters while, on the other hand, gleefully sucking up to the cancel America crowd when it comes to President Trump. While we support Shapiro in doing a movie with Gina Carano, it is disgusting how easily distracted the man is from the truth and the big picture.

Our concern and objection isn’t that Shapiro criticizes President Trump, it is his inability to recognize the real “play” here that is designed to distract everyone from the deeper and more dangerous problem. If Trump was a so-and-so and badnick, the people opposing him and wanting him destroyed are far worse and more insidious.

The whole edifice and infrastructure of freedom is burning as crazed arsonists light more fires and Shapiro wants to carp on the guy across the street who won’t mow his lawn, which the crazed arsonists want you to also be focused on.

Gina Carano is in fact a warning to all dissenters- if you don’t comply with the cancel America agenda, you will be canceled yourself. Period. This also applies to President Trump: what better “public cancelation” could there be?

We are not of the sort to make anyone, including Trump, our totem for freedom. Trump has many deep flaws that we equate as much to his own will and character as we do to the moral and spiritual decline of this country’s culture. Trump was no worse for your own welfare and freedom than any other President, perhaps better, and the shrill-voiced over-the-top reactions and denunciations of the entire establishment were never warranted by actual events.

President Trump did not, in the end, fully comprehend the forces arrayed against him nor the malevolent intent and implacable opposition to him as a symbol of dissent. Additionally, President Trump was all too prone to gift his opponents with many gaffs and erratic content that was easily inflated into hysterics to delegitimize him.

There are many cases where Trump’s words are twisted into hideous caricatures, but in many of those cases even a novice Public Relations professional would not have opened the doors to such exaggeration. As Trump has chosen to be his own solo voice in all things PR and has refused professional counsel, he is like a novice lawyer who is his own counsel in a major legal case of extreme import.

Turning this into an opportunity to illegitimize every opponent is beyond the pale. But Trump certainly brought this on himself and us and his over-the-top conduct was and remains worthy of censure. So, why not censure him and move on?

The point isn’t that President Trump colors outside the lines or does things we or others may consider also beyond the pale. The establishment doesn’t care if you are beyond the pale in terms of morality or the Bill of Rights or the Constitution. They only care if you encourage dissent from their cancel America agenda.

Many Presidents have gone further than President Trump in fomenting crises and lowering the discourse. They were doing so in a way that didn’t encourage actual meaningful dissent from the ruling class of the corporate-government industrial complex. (In our shorthand we call this the “corpostate.”)

Gina Carano could have chosen her form of dissent better, as could her co-star, Pedro Pascal have chosen his form of slavish mimicking of the corpostate’s cancel America agit prop.

But Gina was fired and Pascal was feted. See the difference? It’s OK to be a rube or even a nogoodnic if you are not fanning the flames of actual dissent.

Outright encourage your followers to burn, loot, and harass to make a political statement and that’s fine as long as your ire isn’t directed at those who truly hold power and exploit the nation’s institutions for their benefit at our expense. The red rags of race and wokeness, genderlessness, and all these other things keep everyone fighting and not paying attention to the ruling class as they dismantle freedom and cancel America.

The game is: keep the raging bull of rigteous indignation going after the red rags while you, the real threat, plunge spears into it until it dies. The raging bull is what’s left of your dignity and freedom as a sovereign spiritual being made in the image of God.

The true target of all this isn’t Gina, or even Trump. In Gina’s case we argue for innocence, whereas Trump hasn’t comported himself well at all, regardless of the reasons why or the betrayals and disloyalty he has had to endure which might drive anyone to lash out. One may understand that perhaps few would react better, but the totemization of Trump isn’t going to help us nor is the demonizing of Trump, even if you think it is deserved.

Instead of merely defending some stand-in for our own fight for dignity and respect as free people, we need to focus on the true enemy here: a ruling class who want to end freedom and cancel America.

Whether you are for or against Trump or a registered Democrat versus a registered Republican or Independent, you are the target here. Your slavish giving of your vote, your consumption of their products, and your under-compensated labor are demanded on pain of being canceled. You can riot and protest all you want against your fellow Americans and demand things of no consequence to the ruling class. But you cannot aim your words or actions at the true problem: a ruling class who think they own us.

We must aim our ire at the real foe and we mustn’t be distracted by red rags, like wokism or Trump or whatever. The real issue with the people wanting to cancel others is that they are not morally qualified to judge anyone.

We will stand up to the corpostate goons and for your dignity and freedom as a spiritually sovereign human being! We will not be distracted because we know, as with the firing of Gina Carano, that the real target of all this is our meaningful dissent from their cancel America agenda.

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Sustainability, NOT Global Warming

W R Collier Jr October 5, 2020

Bill Collier- In an article on the 8th of February, Christopher Booker of the UK Telegraph lambasted “global warming” and “climate change” science, joining a growing chorus of critics who accuse scientists of skewing data to prove their theory. Indeed, the fault line for the “global warming” debate is ideological and political, not “scientific.”

Critics of the global warming theorists point out that their solutions often lean heavily toward a top-down global “collectivist” approach. Some use the word “Socialist” to describe the global warming theorists. Even efforts by non-collectivists to produce a free market approach to effect reductions in “carbon emissions” have been rejected- evidently, critics point out, global warming can only be dealt with by resorting to some form of global collectivism that is managed by a small group of ‘experts.’

This begs the question as to what is or isn’t collectivism and whether critics are “red baiting”, but the fact the argument has come down to the alleged ideology of the proponents of the global warming theory seems to reveal that the “science” has taken a back seat to ideology, on both sides. Only time will tell if accusations against the “science” behind the global warming theory are true and founded.

For years, efforts to clean our air and produce what is called “sustainability” have been based on “global warming.” We were told that “in order to prevent global warming, we must reduce pollutants and we must focus on sustainability.” Sustainability is a move towards locally renewable or recyclable raw materials and alternative energy all of which have a “light footprint” on the environment.

Partially as a result of this fear compelling people to seek such solutions, these sustainable solutions, including alternative energy, have come down in costs. More and more advances are coming along making wind, solar, and other forms of sustainable energy solutions affordable to average people. Alternative building techniques, which city codes are still catching up to, such as cobb and straw bale construction, can so reduce building costs as to make adding on wind and solar power generation to each home quite within reach of average people.

Sustainability and clean air are tied almost inextricably to “global warming” and if, whether it is fair or not to do so, the whole theory of global warming is rejected by most people, then it may also be that concerns of clean air and efforts to create more self-sustaining communities will suffer the same fate. The picture of large plumes of soot-smoke pouring into the sky from factories and coal fired power plants will no longer concern people who believe that this has not impact on “climate change.”

One city has become the poster child for a move away from fossil fuels and toward sustainability- Peking. Here is a city which has days of such heavy pollution that people are forbidden to go outside, and rare is the day when the “fog” lifts enough for you to actually clearly see the city skyline. Perhaps all that smog will not do one thing to tick the global temperature up, but one can certainly argue that this smog is not good for the people, the plants, or the animals of Peking.

A precipitous rush away from fossil fuels towards sustainable energy is economically harmful, it is argued, and with some serious questions emerging about the science behind global warming, it may be tempting to drop the whole move toward sustainability altogether. The current EPA rules regarding coal-fired power plants are driven almost totally by global warming fears, for instance. While it may be argued that the EPA is moving too far, too fast, and all in the name of something fewer and fewer people believe is a real threat, the truth is that there are other good reasons to consider pushing forward, even if at a more reasonable and far less disruptive pace, with sustainable energy solutions.

Sustainable local energy is energy from locally renewable raw materials which local people, at the household level, are mostly in ownership control over. It means that the community, down to the individual homes and businesses, owns and controls its own energy resources and that the use of those resources has little to no negative impact on their air, water, or natural environment in general. Far from being only about global warming, it is about empowerment and it is about clean air, water, and an overall pristine natural environment being left to future generations.

Such solutions, however, are not proposed by many global warming theorists. Often their solutions focus on “one big system”, or “OBS”. OBS looks like this: a giant solar and/or wind farm owned and controlled by a corporation or government that distributes power through a nationally interconnected “smart grid” that charges consumers, you and I, high costs for energy. This is already happening and anyone who pays electricity bills knows all about this.

Sustainable local energy focuses on empowering individuals to become individually “energy independent”, at least in their household, by freeing them to use better and less expensive building techniques to shift the cost of building a home from the building to its energy and waste removal infrastructure.

Sustainable local energy is empowerment. It puts more wealth, more resources, and more control in the hands of the individual and removes much of the “middle man” fat of governments and corporations which currently control our energy.

As the debate over global warming devolves into politics and ideology, if people genuinely reject this theory, then it is possible they will reject and be suspicious of anything associated with it, including efforts to pursue cleaner air and sustainability in general, which are rewarding and beneficial even if global warming were conclusively proven to be a total myth. The danger here is that we will continue, as individuals and communities, to rely on OBS, whether OBS is sustainable or not sustainable, and we, as individuals, are thus rendered “dependent” on OBS rather than ourselves and our neighbors.

Freedom Is Beyond Politics

Bill Collier September 25, 2020

By Bill Collier- The words “freedom” and politics seem interwined. If I speak to someone about freedom they may say, “I don’t want to talk about politics.” But is this really the proper response?

Freedom, when we break it down, includes “free” and “dom”, the domain of the free or the dominion of the free. A Freedomist is one who believes the free should basically be in dominion. Once you see this, it becomes easy to spot every bad idea by unfree people who promise results at the expense of your free dominion.

What is politics? In short, and broadly speaking, politics is rooted in the old Polis, it is the public life or public sector. And since just past the stone age human civilization has always tended toward some concept and practice of the public life, we might assume it is somewhat useful to human welfare and progress. This is debatable by some, but what it true is that some aspects of our lives with human civilization have for thousands of years involved some form of public life.

What is public life?

In terms of ownership, if we think of it from that perspective, it includes things that are not owned by any single private person. But in the past, under monarchy, a lot of what we consider public now was considered the monarch’s private property. In reality, the monarch’s private property tended to mostly serve a public good, their parks and roads were often used by the general population but maintained at royal expense.

In terms of power, if we consider public life we tend to see that control over resources and rules goes to some form of government system or structure, be be royal or democratic. The individual and their private associations or enterprises doesn’t have much say or power in comparison, at least not in those spaces considered public.

Now, let’s return to the domain or dominion of the free. What is in that space?

What is in that space is everything that is owned and ruled solely on the basis of some form of private ownership or shared ownership in total freewill association. Unlike the public space, which you cannot easily choose or control, the free domain is totally up to you whether or not to enter and how to rule it.

The idea that freedom is interwined with politics is, to me, absurd. It misses the point. Freedom is everything that isn’t public life and too much public life creates an imbalance and tends toward a loss of freedom and a corresponding loss of humanity. While it may be argued some public life is essential to human prosperity and progress, the truth is that private life was the primary life known to humanity until after the stone age.

Basically, the free domain is essential to our humanity and public life may have value but we seem to be able to survive without it or with very little of it. When the free domain shrinks too much we lose our humanity and dignity, we stop moving forward, and we even lose our wealth and prosperity.

The petty and surface arguments of those who imagine a world where public life is supreme and private life is severely limited are smoke and mirrors. They conceal the true issue and cover up the true flaws behind their nature: the nature of all these collectivist policies and programs is to reduce the free domain of private life to a shadow of what it needs to be.

Freedom isn’t political. It is depolitization of as much of our lives as possible. When you either vote for or refuse to vote against public life supremacists, you ensure that more and more of what you thought was and should be private and controlled by you will become public and controlled by others.

Looking at the photo below, we see protestors are often riled up by the press and financial backers to essentially demand less freedom and more utopian promises. These seductive promises are like a drug that initially gives you euphoria and then becomes a life-controlling and costly addiction.

To march toward freedom is less about politics, though it does include the need to engage the public powers, and is more about building your own robust private life and private free associations with people of like convictions and values. Freedom is a process of seizing your own agency as a spiritually sovereign human being created in the image of your Creator!

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Is The US Headed To Revolution Or Rupture? A Commentary By Bill Collier

W R Collier Jr February 28, 2018

Bill Collier- Crane Brinton in his 1938 book, THE ANATOMY OF REVOLUTION, attempted to lay out the signs and roadmarkers to revolution. While his work has been criticised, it was a useful starting point in discussing the portents of upheaval. It introduced to a broader audience the concept of discerning the signs of change, and in particular violent change or some form of radical alteration of power.

At the root of his and other similar works are the ideas that an existing power structure that has lost public trust and is itself on the verge of bankruptcy is the main catalyst for upheaval. Beyond that there must be a well led movement calling for change and, in the case of civil war, opposing sides along religious, ethnic, or ideological lines whose views are incompatible and who view one another as evil and beyond redemption.

In any society you are bound to have all these factors to some degree at some time. It is the intensity and duration of these factors, coupled with the emergence of strong proponents of and resistors to, upheaval that spells out the increasing likelihood of revolution or rupture within a society.

The laws of causality in human history are not amenable. Keep stirring the “right” ingredients of disenfranchising parts of the populace, a power structure that is both out of touch with all or a substantial portion of society and both morally and financially on the road to bankruptcy, and an intractable divison between the power holders and a substantial portion of the populace, and you get revolution or rupture. Over time, despite many fits and starts which end in failure, you see the emergence of effective champions of the groups of people who feel disenfranchised.

When the disenfranchised include the most productive members of society, the danger of upheaval increases.

If then we consider these factors, we see the ruling elite, the left, and the right in a stand-off. While it may seem the ruling elite are using the left to batter the right, the real left, represented by groups like antifa or rank and file Democrats, would like to make a nice breakfast of the elites who currently pander to them. The right, characterized mostly by strong adherents to the US Bill of Rights but demonized by both the elites and the left as nazis, lacked a strong leader until Trump. Whether he becomes more than a 1 or 2 term president to truly mature into a transcendent force with a well-organized following, remains to be seen. Beyond winning elections, neither he nor his cohorts have even made a good effort to create a well-organized movement.

The left have a movement and leaders, and a strong identity as Democrats that is deeper and more coherent in a cultural sense than the right. Democrats root for their team like football fans do for theirs. Conservatives often recoil at the notion of being Republicans and have a lack of cohesion: they don’t have a single “team” they root for, even when it has a bad coach or its players aren’t up to snuff. As an Eagles fan all my life, I totally get what rooting for a team means, and liberals root for their team far more than conservatives do.

You root for your team always, right or wrong, and keep hoping it gets better.

The left also fund their players better. They invest in their rank and file. While the right wins elections, the left burrow into national instutions and carry on their work, regardless of election outcomes. They know the chidlren belong to academia’s indoctrination, which they control and which Hollywood and the Press all reinforce with slavish devotion.

Wealthy conservatives tend to be parsimonious, egotistical, and, frankly, cheap. If or when they patronage any person or group, they pinch every penny and excert so much tight control that nothing of significance can happen. The left’s donors lavish many groups, let them do their thing, and hire real experts at high wages to keep the balls moving down the court every day.

Perhaps some conservative cause or movement will invent or break through to a crowdfunding model that negates the need for rich patrons, but, so far, that has not happened. Mostly because conservatives as individuals also tend to be parsimonious and want their activists and activism on the cheap. If or when that changes, then conservatives might have a chance.

As it stands, despite election victories, conservatism in the US is doomed. The real battle may be between the left and the elites, after we conservatives are shunted aside and after immigration reform reshapes the electoral map in states like Texas, which is the last major bastion of conservetive power in America. Conservatives have been cheap and stingy, not supporting their activists or activism, not realizing the need and power of paid mobs as it were, and all social proof of emerging victory belongs to the left.

As a conservative activist trying to earn a living, I cannot tell you how often a fellow conservative has attacked me for daring to try to find a way to crowdfund my effort: if I really cared for the cause, I’d work for free. As if we don’t need or want professional activists who wake up every day focused on the cause and not whether or not they csn pay their bills.

Don’t get me wrong, I get paid doing political work, but it’s not activism.

The question is this: are we facing a revolution or upheaval? We are facing the potential for a leftist revolution or an internal upheaval, either of which will lead to the final destruction of conservatism as a political force in these United States. Conservatives are stingy with resources to support a professional cadre of counter-revolutionaries whose activism and leaderhsip could match and defeat the left and the elites. When a populace which espouses an idea or belief system refuses to finance it, then we know that movement is headed for demise.

In truth, not even conservatives truly believe in their movement. So the potential upheaval we face in America will mean the triumph of either the elites or the left, who will likely fight it out after routing the conservative movement.

The Fantasy of Progressivism- A Sewer of Death

W R Collier Jr November 23, 2015

W. R. Collier Jr- Some 80 plus years ago Oswald Spengler, in his “Man and Technics”, described the final form of “materialism” a civilization takes before it enters a dead Caesarism which he felt had been expressed in the 18th and 19th centuries but which would give way to the fascism of the 1930’s which, though he was no fan of fascism, he felt was inevitable.

Spengler was prescient but wrong, at the same time. While he described a genuine philosophy of “materialism”, rooted in Hegel and Marx’s interpretation of Hegel, he failed to see that this ideology as a rebellion against morality had not taken root in the masses, but only among the elite. It is for our day that what he called materialism, and which I describe, I think more accurately, as libertine collectivism has become so general that in much of Western Civilization it has displaced faith and morality as surely as it has replaced science and reason, it’s constant claims to be “scientific” notwithstanding.

And so he writes of this utopian, but actually dystopian, fantasy that poisons the minds of a late and dying culture:

“No more war; no more distinctions between races, peoples, states, or religions; no criminals or adventurers; no conflicts arising out of superiorities and differences, no hate or vengeance anymore, but eternal comfort throughout the millennia. Even today, when we experience the last phases of this trivial optimism, these idiocies make one shudder, thinking of the appalling boredom — the taedium vitae of the Roman Imperial age — that spreads over the soul in the mere reading of such idylls, of which even a partial actualisation in real life could only lead to wholesale murder and suicide.”

What he leaves us with, however, is only resignation and despair. The Caesar must come, sewing together the ruined pieces sundered by the time of fantastical decadence, and he must reign some centuries before the final curtain falls on a civilization.

Spengler failed on three counts: the attempted Caesarism of the 1930’s and 40’s in the West was only a dry run for the real thing, his “materialism” had not run its course (and still has not), and he neglected to take into account that the history of civilizations is not linear- one civilization does not follow another, but one begins even as another is coming to an end, and many escape the vissicitudes of the dying civilization by embracing the ideals of the new civilization.

His description, however, of 19th century materialism in its propositions, promises, and its gross pride in its alleged scientific basis (witness the global warming cult, akin to the classic end-times cults of the mid to later 19th century which were just as “certain” of their theological and mathematical predictions), sounds like the pop-culture version of late Western “progressivism” which, as he also notes, actually seeks a stasis of luxury for all without want, a paradise on earth, achieved by the gods of men, the technocracy, all for pleasure, a utility of “whatever pleases the majority”, that sweeps aside the individual, all while claiming to practically adore the individual, that, like Caesar, “makes a desert and calls it peace.”

Because MOST people, even some reading this, have such a tiny porthole through which they view such things as history and philosophy, instead of the grand vistas of 30,000 plus years of the rise and fall of human societies, it is impossible to dig deeper than perhaps 100 years back and to look no further than the next “most important ever” election! When you see the march of history, in its cycles and patterns, it is a wonder everyone isn’t even now looking for signs of the coming civlization which, like all new civilizations, will be first and foremost moral, virtuous. They would discard the pleasure seekers and fantasy weavers, knowing that these are not prophets of a golden age but pallbearers of a dying culture.

The Optics Of The Obama-Castro Meetings

W R Collier Jr April 12, 2015

Bill Collier- The meeting with Cuba’s dictator will no doubt leave a bad taste in the mouth of President Obama’s critics and many Cubans, for whom the Castros are synonymous with Hitler or Stalin. The image of the President proudly smiling with glee and talking about how nations should only use pursuasion and nothing more in their dealings with one another is in stark contrast to the scowls and bitter bromides his domestic political opponents feel they endure. It was well beyond “persuasion”, his critics lament, for the IRS (allegedly) to turned loose on the President’s political opponents.

Of course the President’s supporters seem happy with the move, indeed the left in this country idolize the likes of Che Guevara, an Argentinian communist who played a key role in Cuba’s revolution. For them, opening trade, diplomacy, and travel to Cuba seems a bit like a dream come true. Michael Moore, a leftist documentary film maker, even came to Cuba to extol the virtues of its health care system.

The President has been seen with many foreign leaders who seem unsavory, including the Chinese communist leaders who notoriously order to aborting of all children beyond a couple’s first child unless that couple can pay steep penalties for “permission” to have other children. But so too have other Presidents been seen with such characters, and the President pointed out that having dialogue and diplomacy does not constitute agreement as such. For him, merely having diplomacy and dialogue is an improvement that might just mitigate future conflict. This is exactly what is being done with Iran, and normalization of relations is the end goal.

But Cuba is 90 miles off the coast of Florida, so the fact we have a communisty tyranny so close and that, with economic trade, it could afford (again) to export its revolution by force (as it once did) is deeply troubling. That the current American President proclaims policies that to his critics sound too much like the rhetoric coming from Cuba on “economic justice” only makes the optics of a Castro-Obama relationship seem all the more objectionable. A communist dictatorship across the ocean is one thing, but many Americans feel, instinictively, a particular revulsion for a communist dictatorship 90 miles from Florida!

Make no mistake, the Castro regime is a massive human right violator. Even during the Summit of the Americas in Panama City, Panama, anti-Castro protestors were brutally beaten by Cuban security who were on scene while the Panammian police stood by and did nothing.

For a President who is accused of being in bed with communism and who is accused of over-stepping his bounds of authority, the optics of being more friendly and congenial to Raul Castro than he has been toward his domestic opponents, the optics were particularly unfavorable: at least in the eyes of his domestic political critics. But President Obama believes an opening with Cuba might soften the regime and do for Cuba what Nixon felt US relations with Communist China would do: export the values of freedom. Some would argue that Nixon’s China policy has failed and that, instead of exporting freedom, America imported shades of socialism.

Despite his smiles and clear satisfaction in meeting with a man many see as an enemy of American values, despite the fact a majority of Americans appear to approve of this opening of relations with the communist dictatorship, one should not expect such efforts at open and cordial dialogue and a commitment to not go beyond persuasion with the President’s domestic political opponents.

A New Model For A Free Press

W R Collier Jr July 29, 2014

A People-Powered Community Press Model From Tioga County, PA

tioga freedomist header 7 19 14 — Our First Local Newspaper- The Tioga Freedomist- Tioga County PA

FREEDOM ESSAY- William Raymond Collier JR- Nestled firmly in mountain valleys, Tioga County PA is the center of what is called “the Twin Tiers”, a highly mountainous and verdant region on the borders of New York’s Southern Tier and Pennsylvania’s Northern Tier. Sleepy, mostly rural, but with some towns, and not often the source of national news, the Twin Tiers and Tioga County PA in particular are home to what may very well be a new model for a truly free and independent press. In short, the region may not “make the news” often but it is actually remaking the way news will be done in the whole nation through a new model for news reporting and dissemination that is profitable.

The new model is being tried, tested, and refined through a local and now regional digital newspaper with a print edition in Tioga County as the starting point. Within 2 years of its launch, the Tioga Freedomist has achieved remarkable market penetration.

In its immediate coverage area of around 200,000 people, the heart of the Twin Tiers, this relatively new media entity reaches over 65,000 readers through print, social media, and its main website, Tiogafreedomist.com. What is more, of those 65,000 plus regional readers, 30,000 come from Tioga County PA alone, which has a total population of 46,000. This means that this new publication has a regional market penetration of around 32.5% and a local market penetration of around 65%.

How has this degree of market penetration been achieved in only two years?

The phrase “your people powered community press- free and independent” sums up the basic model. The newspaper relies on actual reader participation in the news gathering process, teaching readers basic rules and methods of journalism along the way; it uses a Watchdog, Advocate, and Resource model (or “WAR” for short) for determining news content; and it remains focused on being free and independent with a special focus on the original spirit and intent of the Bill of Rights (which we believe all press SHOULD focus on objectively and fairly).

People want news that has this balance (Watchdog, Advocacy, and Resource news). They want to be empowered to participate in news gathering and reporting. They want news that is fair and freedom focused (remembering that “free” is the first ethical imperative of the “free press”), and they want news that is written in the language of real people instead of the cold “emotionless” language of the old media establishment.

While the Tioga Freedomist has its own unique editorial leanings, it welcomes, and receives, all views across the political spectrum- this empowerment of readers to advocate for their views and convictions is a vital part of the “community press” mission.

The numbers prove the point. More and more local and regional readers are coming to the Tioga Freedomist not only to get news but to participate actively. Readers lead many stories and are often the best or only sources of accurate information. Readers use this platform to help one another- hundreds of thousands of dollars in funds or direct aide have been raised by readers using the Tioga Freedomist to rally supporters. It is not unusual, for instance, for a story on a fire to be followed with an appeal for donations to help the people involved. This appeal, usually posted by a reader, is then promoted through the newspaper’s resources to reach its large audience.

Of course, advertisers use this platform to reach potential customers and as the “secret” of this newspaper’s market penetration gets out more and more local businesses are shifting their advertising budgets to include this newspaper’s print, social media, and website advertising options. For funding, the Tioga Freedomist depends on earning advertising dollars, using nothing but free market principles.

The parent company, Kross Publishing, which also owns this national digital newspaper and many other properties, has invested in building the local and regional audience in order to earn advertising revenue. The ability to invest during the first two years while the newspaper was gaining advertising revenue as a result of growing in market share has made the current success possible.

This model of a people-powered community press that is free and independent is the future of local journalism. The need for accurate news that includes Watchdog, Advocacy, and Resource reporting and coverage has not gone away. What has changed are three key things- the delivery (a combination of social media, print, and websites), the style of writing (lose the emotionless “AP style” and don’t just push YOUR views- be inclusive), and the process (reader participation leads, not the agenda of editors or owners).

A community press must be “owned” by its readers. If readers truly own it, advertisers who want to reach those readers must follow, and thereby profit is not merely possible but inevitable.

Welcome to the new model for community based journalism- a people powered free press that is free and independent to its core.

NOTE: William Raymond Collier JR is the Editor of the Tioga Freedomist. Paul Gordon Collier, the co-editor of The Freedomist, is the Digital Media Director.

Millennials- Are They Following The gods Of Their Loins?

W R Collier Jr July 12, 2014

FREEDOM ESSAY
Bill Collier

Recent surveys reveal that millenials are mostly in favor of being “socially liberal.” In other words they are for abortion, gay marriage, and legalization of drugs for “recreational” uses. Many politicians in the GOP are taking note and, in a bid to obtain the vote of millennials, modifying their stance.

But millennials also value freedom, prosperity, fairness, and opportunity, according to these surveys. Indeed they are socially liberal and fiscally more conservative, although they tend to vote from a perspective of “social liberalism”, which favor the Democrats who champion this rejection of traditional morality as enlightenment.

Here then is my response to those millennials who have embraced the belief that moral virtue is intolerance and being immoral by “traditional” standards is “enlightenment”.

If you want freedom, fairness, prosperity, and opportunity then denying the need for moral virtue only ensures you that you will not get any of these things. When we cannot define marriage in a manner that is most conducive to mothers and fathers raising their own children, we adopt a “world as spoil” ethos that is going to produce more decadence and more corruption. People who follow the gods of their loins have no difficulty cheating, lying, or, in general, adopting a distrustful and corrupt pattern of behavior.

As I see it, millennials have been brainwashed by hedonists in our education system to embrace a libertine view, an “anything goes” morality, or a-morality, that is more focused on “saving the planet” than actual self-control. Discarding the ancient wisdom of thousands of generations by saying drug use, “gay marriage”, and abortion are all “good” is hubris but, worse, embracing such unhealthy practices (unhealthy for body and soul) is dangerous for the well-being of society itself.

So it would seem that baby boomers have intervened and taught their grandchildren to follow strange “gods”, namely the gods of their loins, and this cannot end well.

As Millennials grow up and see the diseases, the broken families, the crime, and the economic and political corruption that must follow their moral decadence, they are likely to become much less open minded about the promotion of sexual promiscuity (and “experimentation”) and legalized inebriation as matters of official policy. Or they will fail to make the connection between cause and effect and continue to seek government subsidization to fix the problem their own immorality is causing.

Politicians who pander to the millennials’ penchant for following the gods of their loins are digging the grave for their sovereign state. In the end, the gods of our loins are gods that terrorize and kill, tear down and destroy. They promise pleasure without pain, but give only fleeting pleasure and then endless pain. Instead of pandering, true leaders should be pushing the truth, that those who reject the moral virtues that our society has learned from its ancient roots to be most useful for its well-being will end up opening themselves up to all manners of corrupt consequences.

Moral laws are not arbitrary, they are objective. To disregard them must necessarily cause negative consequences for the entire society. True freedom and prosperity is not compatible with immorality disguised as tolerance.

Wake up millennials, you could be throwing your entire civilization’s future away with your embrace of the gods of the loins. This licentious worldview is not cutting edge, it is mainstream and conventional in today’s American culture. Like lemmings, you are heading towards the cliff with the pack, racing to your own destruction.

Commentary- I Am An American Freedom Seeker

W R Collier Jr June 15, 2014

By Bill Collier-

I am an American “Freedom Seeker”- this means I believe that true freedom is an American mission and extending freedom is part of our destiny as a People and a Nation, and that even our State (the governments, their agencies, the territory governed by them, and the citizens who own those governments) ought to be guided by this “freedom vision.”

I stand for the values of moral virtue, personal liberty, and local independence as the basis of true freedom for all, regardless of anything except the content of their character, with equality of opportunity in a true free market based on one’s participation in a fair exchange, with equitability and equality of justice, and with a public commitment to preserve the persons, rights, and property of all Americans against all hazards, foreign or domestic- and that, so help me God!

I recognize that the evils of elitism, racism, bigotry, exploitation, and both social and economic justice require a people-powered approach (led by private persons and communities of faith or of other shared values) and encouraged by a robust public policy that rewards those who do good for others and punishes those who do evil toward others.

I value life, equality, liberty, justice, fatherhood and motherhood as the foundation of a healthy family unit, a pacific foreign policy built on the foundation of a strong but efficient national defense, sustainability that is people-powered and locally scaled to promote freedom, and compassion that is favored but not mandated by public policy.

I believe every American, regardless of race, ethnicity, age, geographical locale, sex, or any other factor can be and should be an American Freedom Seeker as well.

I do not believe the Democrats are wrong on the social ills and injustices, but they are wrong on the government-powered (as opposed to people-powered) “solutions” which create elites.

I do not believe Republicans are wrong about the role of the free market, private initiative, and voluntary compassion as solutions, but they all too often ignore the actual problems and pretend things like enviornmental problems, racism, sexism, and exploitation do not occur as much as they do.

I am not middle of the road, between two extremes.

I am on the high road, the high road of a free “united people’s democratic republic” founded on the ideals of unity in diversity, popular sovereignty, democratic equality, and rule of law, a republic based on merit that denies the very existence of any race except for the human race, while celebrating (and respecting) the cultural diversity of the “nations” of people within its borders as a healthy means of creating a vibrant culture and a free society of inherently equal and valued human beings created by and for a Loving Creator.

Are you a Freedom Seeker?

Nobility of Merit or Inherited Electorship?

W R Collier Jr September 14, 2013

What is this idea of a new nobility of merit?

The root of the idea is simple- When the righteous rule the People rejoice, when the wicked rule, the People mourn.

If then we should find a way to root out the wicked, to disqualify them from leadership, then we would have righteous rulers. And let’s not think of this word “righteous” in a purely religious context, we might say fair and good, noble of intent, just and of a good character, wishing well for others, not being selfish or vainglorious.

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