Freedom

Conservative, libertarian, and Christian posts in my blog and podcast episodes

Education / Freedom / Nonjudgment

Conservative, libertarian, and Christian posts in my blog and podcast episodes

Most people who call themselves environmentalists are on the political left. I talk to a lot of them. I also talk to people on the right and in other directions. I learn from all of them. I decided to compile them for reference. Some blog posts (I'm sure I missed a few): This week’s selected media: March 17, 2024: You Are a Badass; Into a Strange Land: Women Captives among the Indians; Conservatism 101 Followed up: watched recommended historical videos from the Leadership Institute’s course “Conservatism 101” My first Hillsdale College online certificate and why I took the course Cultural Exchange Without Flying: My dinner at the Trump International Golf Club at Bedminster More cultural exchange because of not flying: plinking and target practice This…

November 6, 2025

Lincoln didn’t heal slaves’ wounds. He led their “owners” to stop owning them. I’m following Lincoln, and then some.

Freedom / Leadership / Nature

Lincoln didn’t heal slaves’ wounds. He led their “owners” to stop owning them. I’m following Lincoln, and then some.

Our environmental problems are symptoms. I won't fight people trying to protect and conserve nature, but the degradation of nature isn't the problem. Restoring an old growth forest doesn't change that billions of people are acting in ways to cut down whatever is restored. Many times I've described how the suffering and death we and our culture is causing is orders of magnitude times greater than slavery, so I won't hesitate describing what I'm doing in terms of slavery. Also, while I value nature, we have laws to protect people, not as much to protect nature. Many environmentalists point out that since we're all connected, protecting wildlife is protecting humans. It works the other way too: protecting humans means protecting wildlife, since protecting humans means…

October 31, 2025

Hear my second time on the Heritage Foundation podcast The Power Hour with Jack Spencer

Audio / Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership / Podcast

Hear my second time on the Heritage Foundation podcast The Power Hour with Jack Spencer

It's been close to a year since I first appeared on the Heritage Foundation's podcast The Power Hour, hosted by Jack Spencer, who has been a guest on my podcast three times. First, I enjoy Jack's hosting both as a guest and a listener. I really was laughing as hard as I said when I came on. You'll hear me share more about how America's founders, Lincoln, Adam Smith, and other Enlightendigenous thinkers inform my views and actions. To my credit, I think I convey important thinking about sustainability based on what we need for society to work. It won't work if anyone can just do what they want. Roles for government include ensuring the consent of the governed and protecting people's life, liberty, and…

October 21, 2025

Abolitionists didn’t free slaves by teaching children that slavery was wrong. Yes, they taught children, but they freed slaves by freeing slaves.

Education / Freedom / Leadership

Abolitionists didn’t free slaves by teaching children that slavery was wrong. Yes, they taught children, but they freed slaves by freeing slaves.

I've written that, yes, we should teach children about living sustainably, but teaching children doesn't solve the problems we're teaching them about. On the contrary, if we teach them to do what we aren't doing ourselves, they learn from our behavior, not our words. We will lead them to see polluting and depleting like cursing or drinking, something kids have to wait until they grow up to do but that is okay for adults to do as long as they mostly hide it from kids. I put it in the frame of smoking in my post Don’t “teach children sustainability”. Here’s why and what to do instead. I also wrote How environmentalists are like smokers who tell others not to smoke … while smoking. Today…

October 18, 2025

Everyone says that raising kids means you can’t avoid polluting and depleting. That’s colonialism.

Addiction / Freedom

Everyone says that raising kids means you can’t avoid polluting and depleting. That’s colonialism.

I've already written how polluting and depleting appropriate other people's lives, liberty, and property without their consent. Societies used to take other society's land---also known as colonialism---by invading or settling. Nowadays they avoid the risk of violence by addicting people. The opium wars were fought over incapacitating a population with opium. Now we do it with cell phones and hydroelectric dams. A new way of appropriating others' land is by sticking them with our poisonous waste, especially plastic. We can see piles of it from space and if we look at the details, we'll see that the shareholders profiting from it are people like you and me. We drink Coke, they live in our plastic waste. Raising kids, pollution, and depletion Everyone says that raising…

October 17, 2025

Their motivation to make doof: to drive your emotional system to buy more

Addiction / Choosing/Decision-Making / Doof / Fitness / Freedom

Their motivation to make doof: to drive your emotional system to buy more

I was thinking about the people who manufacture addictive things like doof. If you believe that someone choosing to buy something means they valued what they bought more than what they paid for it, then you think that the more they buy, the more they've improved their lives. Then the more addictive you make the product, the more you sell. You can tell yourself that your profit means their life improvement. The way it looks to me is that science has figured out how to control the human emotional system more effectively than the person with that system, at least in some cases. They've learned to use short-term motivation to override long-term reward and ability to regulate oneself. Then it's a stretch to say that…

October 8, 2025

What I’ve bought this year besides food

Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience

What I’ve bought this year besides food

I tried to remember what I bought this year besides food. My doormen remark when a package arrives for me since I get a few per year. I ask if anyone else gets less. They say not even close. They tell me that some people receive more packages in some weeks than I do in a year, and many such weeks. As for food, I probably spend about $200/month, though I don't keep track. My biggest food cost is probably dried legumes in bulk. One example: I had been looking for a pair of shoes in my usual way: checking Craigslist and Offerup when I thought of it for a few months. My current pair has holes in the bottom. Since they're minimal, that means…

October 6, 2025

Year five, day 2 no refrigerator. Did you know power companies promoted them to use more energy (not for health, safety, or flavor)?

Doof / Fitness / Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience / Nature

Year five, day 2 no refrigerator. Did you know power companies promoted them to use more energy (not for health, safety, or flavor)?

The first time I unplugged my fridge was December 2019. A few months later Covid hit and I lived outside the city a couple months. My fridge remained unplugged, but I don't count that time since I wasn't home. The next time I unplugged earlier in the year: November 2020, and made it six months or so before spring warm weather made keeping things fresh harder. The next year I started yet earlier: September 30, 2021. My goal was to make May, I think, but that May I unplugged the whole apartment so made it a year with the fridge unplugged and didn't see a reason to plug back in. Along the way, I learned from the book The Grid that fridges became widespread not…

October 2, 2025

The paradox of homelessness and dependence nobody seems to see

Freedom / Relationships

The paradox of homelessness and dependence nobody seems to see

Why are some people homeless? Why does the problem persist throughout time and across cultures? Learning about dominance hierarchies as systems helps see patterns beyond just what the eye sees. Take, for example, the observation that some cities in the US have greater homeless populations than others. People are quick to assign causality to correlation. To understand helplessness and homelessness, it helps to understand freedom. If freedom is ability to walk away without coercion or fear or risk of retribution, then people who lived where food and other resources were evenly distributed and all know how to live off of them, than egalitarian hunter-gatherers had more freedom than we do. That distribution also put personal responsibility on every individual to maintain mutually agreeable relations with…

September 18, 2025

Stop saying the playbook for doubt and deception comes from “big tobacco.” What to say instead.

Freedom / Models / Tips

Stop saying the playbook for doubt and deception comes from “big tobacco.” What to say instead.

When people talk about industries sowing doubt to avoid being scrutinized or regulated, people often say that those industries are using the tactics of big tobacco. It happens a lot with businesses the pollute and deplete a lot. I think they're mostly relying on the book Merchants of Doubt, which wrote about how the tobacco industry created uncertainty and other tactics, not to defend themselves so much as to deflect accountability and interest. I agree with the sentiment, but tobacco companies didn't start the practices. It's been a while since I read the book Industrial-Strength Denial: Eight Stories of Corporations Defending the Indefensible, from the Slave Trade to Climate Change, by Barbara Freese, so I might misremember, but it traced them to the slave trade.…

September 15, 2025

If you claim to consent for someone else, you’re a tyrant

Freedom / Leadership

If you claim to consent for someone else, you’re a tyrant

This nation's government says it's just only if based on the consent of the governed. Consider Cancer Alley. Nobody consents to being given cancer. Nobody consents to being born with a birth defect. Yet Cancer Alley and other sacrifice zones are growing. I don't deny that people can benefit from perks that come from activities that pollute and deplete, but as long as they pollute and deplete, they violate what makes government just. You might like the perks, but you can't consent for other people. There is a word for people who "consent" for others. They are tyrants. If you claim to consent for someone else, you're a tyrant. I'm not saying you're good or bad. You have your values. I'm only saying something as…

September 9, 2025

Libertarians confused on pollution, sacrificing their core values. At the root: lack of hands-on practical experience.

Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience

Libertarians confused on pollution, sacrificing their core values. At the root: lack of hands-on practical experience.

I found a podcast episode from the Cato Institute, where I spoke last year and met some wonderful people: How Does Libertarianism Deal with the Problem of Pollution?. I'm posting quotes from them mainly for future reference. Sorry if the post isn't my most readable, but my main response: Lack of hands-on practical experience leads them to opposed their own values. They think no pollution means the end of civilization, when Adam Smith didn't pollute. Were ancient Athens, Sparta, Rome, China, and India not civilization? They think banning pollution means a band on a modern economy. A ban on modern economy? What value is an economy if it undermines freedom? Do they not believe a free market can solve the problems of keeping people healthy…

August 16, 2025

James Madison on slavery (in contrast with Abraham Lincoln)

Freedom / Leadership

James Madison on slavery (in contrast with Abraham Lincoln)

I've been learning more about America's founders who opposed slavery, their personal actions on slavery, and their resulting views. Lately I've been learning more about James Madison so saved some comments on him by a biographer, Drew McCoy. I haven't finished a full biography of him, so I'm just starting learning about him in more depth, but I'm coming to see his views on slavery versus liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy as relevant today, in particular to pollution and depletion, which undermine liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy. Like Jefferson, he considered slavery wrong but didn't act against it---that is, he valued freedom but didn't fight for it in all cases. It looks like he valued it more for himself and his peers than for slaves.…

August 12, 2025

Consent of the Governed and NIABY: Not In Anyone’s Back Yard

Oil refinery

Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience

Consent of the Governed and NIABY: Not In Anyone’s Back Yard

Context: The United States has a region called Cancer Alley. Flint, Michigan is known nationwide, maybe globally, as a place where water is poisoned. We're "solving" that problem with bottled water, which poisons others, so it's more like kicking the can down the road. Actually, by accelerating a cultural distrust in municipal water, it accelerates bottling, so it's more like accelerating a snowball or avalanche. Nobody consents to cancer, birth defects, or lacking access to clean water. The founding principle of our government being based on the consent of the governed couldn't be more clear: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty…

August 2, 2025

Two personal bests in a week: Freedom.

Choosing/Decision-Making / Exercises / Fitness / Freedom / SIDCHAs / Stories

Two personal bests in a week: Freedom.

When I started doing Turkish Get Ups, I struggled with a 25-pound kettle bell. Over the years, I worked up to where I comfortably do them with a 28-kilogram one, which is 61.6 pounds. My next heavier kettle bell is 70 pounds, which is a big jump. I wondered if I would ever be able to do it. I dented my floor when I lost control of a kettle bell and I once injured a rib that way, so I respect the exercise's potential for injury, or rather, the need for safety and form. Personal Best #2 Today I did my first 70 pound Turkish Get Up, one on each side. For those who don't know what they are, here are many posts. In a…

August 1, 2025

The social cost of gratuitous plunder and destruction of life, liberty, and property.

The social cost of gratuitous plunder and destruction of life, liberty, and property.

This restaurant is called American Bar although, with the government permitting this violation of its role to protect people's life, liberty, and property, it's violating the original intent of America's founders. How? See how the sliding doors are wide open? Also, see the vents on the white wall facing the wide open window? Those vents are blasting air conditioning into the outdoors. Why should anyone care if they pollute and deplete? This nation's Founders (and writers of the 14th Amendment) didn't just suggest protecting life, liberty, and property for the fun of it. They recognized that if we don't think our future will be better than today, or that if we create something someone can just take or destroy it, we lose reason to invest…

July 30, 2025

I love learning about the Enlightendigenous origins of liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy in America

Education / Freedom / Leadership

I love learning about the Enlightendigenous origins of liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy in America

I've written before about my functional new word Enlightendigenous. In that post I shared what I learned about the evidence for the philosophy and practice of indigenous people in North America influencing and inspiring Europeans into what became called the Enlightenment. Europe at the time had little to no democracy or social mobility. Your status at birth---that is, the status of your parents---determined your place and role for life with rare exception. People lived under a dominance hierarchy based on access to resources like arable land enforced by a system of justice and military. Meanwhile, on the east coast of North America, there were no river valleys like Mesopotamia or the Nile to precipitate dominance hierarchy on that scale so people practiced local politics. They…

July 25, 2025

To conservatives and libertarians annoyed at trash strikes: Sanitation systems are socialist. Most of your garbage promotes socialism.

Doof / Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience

To conservatives and libertarians annoyed at trash strikes: Sanitation systems are socialist. Most of your garbage promotes socialism.

Sanitation systems across the nation are on strike. It started in Boston: and expanded to the west coast in solidarity: Since people who are conservative and libertarian often don't like strikes, which they may see as socialist, communist, or moving in that direction, Today I want to clarify for them: Sanitation systems are socialist and motivate waste, violate Enlightenment thinking and practice, and violate the original intent of the Constitution. (For liberals and progressives, they are also imperialist, colonialist, and contribute to racism, which I'll cover in another post.) First, a personal note: you can improve your life by reducing your garbage by well over 99 percent. Also your health, safety, security, freedom, family, budget, and longevity. I grew up generating as much or more…

July 16, 2025

I love developing resilience and strength: AI version, part 1

Addiction / Awareness / Creativity / Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience / Perception

I love developing resilience and strength: AI version, part 1

A recent article on artificial intelligence in the New Yorker wrote about how people who are suffering from loneliness are finding help from artificial intelligence. Some people can't help loneliness, not out of character defect but circumstance. It gets the reader thinking about the elderly, for example, who outlive everyone they've been close to, or it describes as worse, if those who remain are senile. Sorry to give away the ending but it suggests that for however it helps people who can't escape, it will create dependence in far more. The article is A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That’s a Problem: The discomfort of loneliness shapes us in ways we don’t recognize—and we may not like what we become without it. by academic psychologist…

July 15, 2025

I love where I live. A perk of volunteering: July 4th fireworks up close (also Thanksgiving)

I love where I live. A perk of volunteering: July 4th fireworks up close (also Thanksgiving)

Common roles for auxiliary police officers include crowd control and traffic control during big events, like parades. July 4th fireworks is another big one (scroll down for pictures from last year's Thanksgiving parade). This year my patrol during the fireworks was right next to the water. I took a video toward the beginning (after ensuring it was okay with the officer I report to). Should I say it's only a minute because the fireworks went for half an hour, or it's a full minute, because even a few minutes would seem long for fireworks in most places. In any case, I love volunteering, all the more when I'm fulfilling what feels to me like civic duty. Here are two pictures from before the fireworks started.…

July 14, 2025

A broad outline of my vision and mission for the workshop and alumni community I love

Entrepreneurship / Freedom / Leadership

A broad outline of my vision and mission for the workshop and alumni community I love

About a month ago, the core organizational team behind the workshop I lead and its alumni community had our quarterly meeting. I shared my vision and mission. I thought everyone knew it, but when I finished, they said, "You have to share this message with the alumni community." I was wrong: everyone didn't know it. It was my responsibility to share it. I didn't want to impose my views on others, but my history having started many of the projects and exploring the frontier of leadership in this area, I could see how my views could help others see beyond their horizons. Future vision 1 year: thriving online community, self-sustaining. A core team will still manage things like the online site and new initiatives, but…

July 10, 2025

I love how hurting others less (ie living more sustainably) teaches me more about the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

Freedom / SIDCHAs / Visualization

I love how hurting others less (ie living more sustainably) teaches me more about the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

I keep my working spaces clean, including clearing my desktop every evening before going to sleep. I try to keep files off my computer desktop too. Working on my next book has me referring to and learning from the Declaration of Independence and Constitution so often, I decided to put them on my computer desktop. Many sites online carry their full texts, but I couldn't find any with a file to download that looked clean and simple and that was easy to search. No big deal, but I copied the texts into files and formatted them simply. You can see them in screen shots below. I'm not looking to show them off. I'm making it easy to refer to them, quote them, and read them.…

July 4, 2025

Why I love the heat, even when it’s 95F (35C) on the way to 102F (39C).

Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience / Nature

Why I love the heat, even when it’s 95F (35C) on the way to 102F (39C).

New York City is supposed to hit 102 F (39 C) today. So far it's 95 F (35 C) and since my battery was drained and the rest of the week is forecast to be cloudy, I'm out in the park charging. The park is mostly empty. Here's my view right now, showing a fraction the number you'd see when the temperature was lower. You can also tell I'm sitting in the shade. It cools me probably ten degrees. Yes, I'm more lethargic and less active than usual because I overheat fast if I move around. My burpees this morning I did significantly slower than usual and felt well more winded. I could go on about how much less comfortable I feel. I'll also probably…

June 24, 2025

I love how much leading in sustainably leads to learning the history of liberty and freedom

Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience

I love how much leading in sustainably leads to learning the history of liberty and freedom

Pollution destroys life, liberty, and property. Depletion violates the principle of leaving enough as good in common for others. Basic principles of how people can live together include protecting life, liberty, and property and leaving enough as good in common for others are among the most basic and necessary. The language looks like it comes from Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, and their Enlightenment peers. I would say their Enlightendigenous peers to include the new world people who brought hands-on practical experience with democracy to the old world ones, who didn't. I knew some about them before starting to lead in sustainability, but now I'm learning more. I love learning about people who worked for liberty and freedom, including overcoming slavery, Apartheid, Nazism, caste systems, and…

June 23, 2025

Not hurting innocent people a “purity test”? I think your ignorance or internal conflict is showing.

Freedom / Leadership / Nonjudgment

Not hurting innocent people a “purity test”? I think your ignorance or internal conflict is showing.

Thomas Jefferson owning slaves, including his own children, wasn't an abstract immoral act. He hurt people. He took away their freedom and hurt them. It isn't a "purity test" to say that by owning slaves he hurt people. When people act like living more sustainably is a "purity test" I see two possible causes. The generous one, which I find implausible in today's world, is that people don't know polluting hurts people. People often tell me "Josh, they really don't know. " When I respond that they know enough and if they pretend not to know, they're deliberately keeping themselves ignorant, people generally agree, and intentional ignorance doesn't make you innocent. It means they knew enough to know they're hurting people, they just want to…

June 22, 2025

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