Time for a change.
Albert Jay Nock wrote one of the best essays ever written, “Isaiah’s Job,” which first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1936. The Wikipedia biography of Nock is linked here, a Mises Institute reprint of the essay here. If you take the time to read the essay, I can almost guarantee that somewhere in the future, you will take the time to reread it. The essay is about the prophet Isaiah, and here in three paragraphs is its central premise.
The prophet’s career began at the end of King Uzziah’s reign, say about 740 B.C. This reign was uncommonly long, almost half a century, and apparently prosperous. It was one of those prosperous reigns, however — like the reign of Marcus Aurelius at Rome, or the administration of Eubulus at Athens, or of Mr. Coolidge at Washington — where at the end the prosperity suddenly peters out and things go by the board with a resounding crash.
In the year of Uzziah’s death, the Lord commissioned the prophet to go out and warn the people of the wrath to come. “Tell them what a worthless lot they are.” He said, “Tell them what is wrong, and why and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don’t mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you,” He added, “that it won’t do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life.”
Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job — in fact, he had asked for it — but the prospect put a new face on the situation. It raised the obvious question: Why, if all that were so — if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start — was there any sense in starting it? “Ah,” the Lord said, “you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it.”
I suppose I knew, deep down, before I wrote the first word of my first novel, The Gordian Knot, that I would be writing for the Remnant. That’s not to say I’m in the same league as the prophet Isaiah. My sales, and the sales of my next two novels, The Golden Pinnacle and Prime Deceit, certainly confirm that I wasn’t writing for the masses. As a first novel The Gordian Knot had its flaws, and perhaps only merited its small, presumably indulgent, readership. I’m a quick study, though, and I try to be as rigorously self-critical and open to improvement as a fallible human with an ego can be. The next two novels were much better, and years after I’ve written them, I can’t see anything in either one that I’d change. They deserve a wider audience, and some day they may get it.
Not that I’ve ever wanted to be a bestseller machine. We Remnant writers know that’s never going to happen, and the whole routine seems quite distasteful. Keep writing books that are just like that first bestseller, only a little different. Resign yourself to whatever pigeonhole agents, publishers, and the bestseller lists consign you. Pull away from the tedious job of writing until you reach the next-to-highest level of the contemporary writing pyramid: your name on the cover selling books ghostwritten by the name in much smaller print below. Finally, that highest level, attained by only a few: hefty sales of new books with your name on the cover, written after you’re dead. I can’t begin to imagine the joy those elite authors must feel.
I suppose I also knew, deep down, when I started Straight Line Logic that I was blogging for the Remnant. The hit counter on my site indicates that here again, I’m not writing for the masses. However, by the standards of the alternative media I’ve done relatively well in a relatively short time. My articles are regularly reposted on sites with much greater readership than mine. Occasionally I’m invited by people who like what I write to give speeches to groups with which they are affiliated.
Unfortunately, we’ve reached Peak Insanity, and I’m tired of chronicling and commenting upon it. Regular readers know the insane litany, rehashing it here would be tedious. It’s become a struggle to find something new to write about, or even to write about something old in an interesting new way.
I’m not closing Straight Line Logic down, but I’m scaling it way back. Once in a while I’ll put up an article when I think I’ve got something interesting to say, but with nowhere near the frequency I have been. And once in a while I’ll put up other writers’ articles that I feel have singular merit. However, there will be days, perhaps weeks, when I put up nothing at all. If you receive regular emails about the site you’ll know when something new goes up. If you don’t, just check the Home page every so often. I hope that Western Rifle Shooters Association, NCRenegade, The Burning Platform, Zero Hedge, Lew Rockwell, and the many other fine websites that have featured my work will continue to do so, intermittent though it may be. I thank all of them and the people who make them go, particularly Peter White, David DeGerolamo, Jim Quinn, and the Tyler Durdens.
Straight Line Logic has been invaluable to me. While the commentary has been on current events, I believe the best of my essays will endure, embraced by the Remnant of this and future generations. Just as important, I have met some wonderful people and made friends for life through Straight Line Logic. As I get older those friendships age like fine wine, and I cherish them as perhaps only an older connoisseur can.
Which brings up the fact that I’m not getting any younger. I’m sixty now and as I ponder the remainder of my days, it’s become an imperative to spend that time wisely and happily. I am involved with a startup, 4Ry Inc., whose technology has the potential to upend several multi-billion industries. One example: our nozzle at the end of a diesel fuel injector could potentially increase diesel engine efficiency by 10 to 15 percent and cut particulates and other noxious emissions by a like percentage. We are working now with a leading fuel injector research firm to develop that product.
If 4Ry is successful, we will vindicate and enrich a genius—and our majority shareholder—Dr. Arnold Kelly, who has been innovating (he has over 30 patents) and consequently fighting the system all his life, as most innovators must. He deserves much more that he has so far received. This, to me, is a challenge worth undertaking, exponentially more worthwhile and interesting than excoriating insane idiots for their insanity, about which I can do nothing but make people aware, and which I know in my bones is leading inevitably to cataclysmic disaster. I want to devote as much time as I can to 4Ry. For those who want more information about 4Ry, see 4rysprays.com, and three articles on SLL I wrote about it, “The Choice,” Parts One, Two and Three.
I have at least two more novels in me, probably more. I also have plays, screenplays, and short stories. Use a good part of the time I’ve been spending every day on Straight Line Logic and all those prospective works have a chance of getting written. Keep doing what I’m doing and only if I live far beyond the years the actuarial tables indicate I’ll live—and stay healthy—will I accomplish what I want to accomplish. Writing is in my bones, chromosomes, genes, and every vital organ. I can no more not write than a fish cannot swim or Arnold Kelly cannot invent. However, it’s time to concentrate on writing what I enjoy writing most. Writing, as I recently told a dear friend, for the ages, not the reviews or the sales.
I once proposed an alternative news agency, dedicated to truth and fighting the mainstream media and fake news (see “Breaking the Alternative Media’s Dependence on the Mainstream Media,” SLL). To me, that idea now seems like more chronicling of the insane and their insanity, but anyone who sincerely wants to run with it is welcome to it. If you’d like, contact me and after I vet you and your plans, I’ll try to help with funding. However, I will assume no operational role under any circumstance.
Rest assured, I’m not dropping off the planet. Someday the Remnant “will come back and build up a new society.” In the interim, they know where to find me and my works. As for the rest, they have never been my concern.
h/t Holly O for the title of this piece.
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 
About 25 years ago, I sent out AJNock’s “Isaiah’s Job” as a Christmas Card to approximately 75 people. The next year–Davy Crockett’s “Not Yours to Give”. I never heard one word back from anyone–fancy that.
SLL has been a laser of clear, rigorous, challenging thought and a banner of the highest moral integrity for me trying to comprehend what has become more and more unfathomable.
Best of luck and success in all your endeavors and that we can remain in touch, Neil and Marcy
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Thank you and I count you and Marcy among those friends I’ve made for life through SLL.
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Sad for me I want get to read and share as many of your brilliant essays in the future. Extremely happy for you about the change in direction. Thank you!
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Thank you. I’m not getting out entirely, I’ll still post occasionally, but things are really heating up on the 4Ry side and I just don’t have the time to continue doing what I’ve been doing.
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Please see my post on TBP.
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Best wishes and thank you.
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Thank you.
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Enjoy your life, and semi-retirement from SLL, watching everything continue to go completely to the dogs. It will continue that way whether you’re here or not, because there is but a remnant.
The remnant is still here and there; and will continue to be — obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, we’ll rub along as best we can.
Your encouragement and bracing up has been appreciated more than you know, and likely, more than book sales and website hits may indicate.
Thank you for all your work.
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Thank you. I’ve really liked doing it and I’ve met some great people, in person and online. But it really feels like its time to scale down and move on to other things.
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Reblogged this on The way I see things ….
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Love what you have written. Read and devour what you are writing, aand look forward to reading more. Slow down, you move too fast. Got to make the sunshine last….. all the best and thank you.
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Thanks.
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Appreciate you Robert for everything you wrote or posted, I too have found, time to enjoy or be enlighten by.
That journey has indeed been much better for it.
God’s speed.
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mtnforge
You put up some the best comments ever posted on this site. Thank you. We’ll stay in touch.
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If you have changed just one mind Robert, and that effects positive change on this world, then I think your course you set out for yourself long ago has become a brilliant success.
It’s like Seneca the Stoic said how ideas and precepts once planted are like seeds, you plant them, and they grow, all outside of their diminutive beginnings.
Isaiiah’s Job really.
Even Jesus Christ, among everything else, he had to plant such seeds, the positive change Jesus effected only came about by way of how his message, his job, did indeed effect all of God’s green Earth. Because, and this is a radical idea to many, Jesus was a great revolutionary, the greatest who ever walked in mortal spirit.
But, planting ideas is all any of us can do. You can no more force a man to accept those seeds of thought than you can force me to give up my arms, or my culture, way of life. But I do need ammunition for those things in order to effect positive change at least within the proscribed boundary of my liberty, which those things constitute. And in order to do that, I need really good ammunition, ideas and precepts that is. And you Robert have provided me with more ammo than I required. An embarrassment of riches lets say.
So I say to you you have not failed, and this is what counts here, within the fertile ground as Seneca called it, the mind you plant such seeds in with your writing, it is not the obvious apparent quantity of readership, but the quality, because those minds now have seeds, ideas and precepts, they themselves go on to plant in other minds. An exponential propagation of ideas and precepts which effect positive change.
It is and always will be the purview of the “dirt” people to effect that positive change directly, there is no one else, not governments, presidents, messiah’s, not even the greatest leaders, this requires people for it to be legitimate, it is still people who must be that plurality who effect positive change.
That is the true value of ones “job”.
My thoughts, my comments are my own, obviously, but somewhere along the line ideas had to be planted in the fertile ground of my mind. And you Robert have done that since the 1st time I read your blog and your writings.
Think how many I then could have then because of your effect on my mind, thinking, have potentially effected in positive ways the ideas and precepts I go on to plant in other fertile ground?
That is how revolutions of positive change begin and go on to be successful. One mind at a time.
It is very difficult to detect. The landscape transforms so slowly, and more to the point below the radar, that one day everyone looks around and there is this great grass roots movement of people who seem to materialize out of nowhere. Maybe like a million Tea Partiers who showed up in DC, or a million bikers road there, only you would never know these things took place. But they did, and that is 2 million highly motivated people effecting positive change, among other just and rightful things.
How about 64 million Deplorable’s who totally outfoxed the largest organized crime syndicate in the world, the so called deep state? The deep state is in a tail spin, its never recovering, nor going back to its heyday of total raw naked power. Too many know who they are now.
These 64 million dirt people, myself included, we got the ideas and insights to wage color revolution, to coalesce into that plurality of people, from people like yourself, Andrew Skousen, Peter White, TL Davis, even from people like Malcolm X, his ideology notwithstanding, X had brilliant insights and leaps of critical thinking worthy of any Freeman.
As a contemporary Stoic Robert, you are one of the best out there, in particular fashion, you have insights uniquely yours, they may be diminutive in your eyes, which in my book is the humble thing, and that has a caveat of legitimacy all its own.
Me I’m a firebrand, I aint afraid of anything on this mortal coil, and have no qualms of making that plain to see. But I have learned to value being tempered by others, learn to respect and apply the lessons of ideas and precepts, the seeds others so humbly act to plant in fertile ground.
That to me are what makes up the great things. The things, which grow out of all proportion to their beginnings, things like what created the idea of actual living Liberty which led to us here today.
And you don’t get many things in history that effect such a positive change as Liberty, because of all else possible and follows.
All from tiny seeds of thought.
Not many of those kind of farmers around.
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I’ll never stop tilling the soil and hoping for a good harvest.
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Bravo!
Heard that.
The fuel injector thing sounds like a noble and practical effort. Imagine you guys probably have some other little nifty ideas too.
I’m trying to do my part stomping on Henry’s Rat.
Have a technological project of my own also. It is an 80% kit weapon project one can home workshop build, once I’m through successful R&D.
Hope to have a combat gear system to match. It’s is a holistic approach to small unit citizen infantry combat tactics.
https://mtntopforge.wordpress.com/2019/01/30/80-build-25-round-semi-auto-12ga-shotgun-kit/
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That too sounds like a noble and practical effort.
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Thanks. I hope so.
It is another way to shake our rifles in the tyrants faces. They need be reminded very well of their usurpations and what is not, and never will be theirs to diktat.
I aim to contribute.
That pun is intentional.
I can only imagine the corporate/crony tyrants efforts to undermine or destroy any and all competition or threat to their monopolies of power and wealth.
In particular. Those percentages of increase in combustion efficiency due to injector pintle design are enormous improvement in gross fuel use in world wide scale terms. 100’s of millions of gallons a day, that much more wealth the individual retains in their pocket.
The whole artificial price discovery of commodities created to strip mine us down to the last penny of the dollar of wealth we create by our labors, the only wealth that exists, has to be gone.
I think you put it in its grave by open source insurgency grass roots economic actions.
To my mind, anything that creates unfettered economic activity is absolutely essential to the blessings of Liberty. Without unfettered economics at the grass roots level, the entire sphere of Liberty is not possible for us to realize in all its facets.
I truly wish you success Robert. The corporate strip mining of our wealth must stop. I think we get there one Robert and one Doug at a time. It all begins with each of us.
This is great and noble leaderless insurgency, the open source kind. Its both resistance to tyranny and activity of liberty at the same time. Its creation of wealth, the idea being we keep it. Its not strip mined from us by corporate collision in cahoots with organized crime government, in the form of extortion and protection money racketeering.
And every day, as they outlaw more activity, and persons, more and more look up and think, gee, it is getting that bad, and they join the honorable resistance, they begin to home school, build their own, grow their food, they learn new skills, barter trade, go system D, and they realize Freedoms which do not exist under the totalitarian rule of the crime syndicate oligarchy.
At some point, the honorable resistance of the dirt people becomes a legion of free people. It is on the cusp of attaining that stage of freedom. Hard to say when that sublime paradigm happens or what catalyst is critical, but there is a zeitgeist, its happening, it cant be denied no matter what the “deep state” and their axis attempts. I think that moment has passed into history.
It appears to me they are in a state of inner turmoil. The first signs of their collapse takes the form of desperate action, not always plainly evident, but because they face a truly existential crisis of legitimacy, and they double down at every turn as is their SOP, on the things that are dangerous to their illusion of legitimacy, setting up a diminishing return cycle of raw naked power. Like “gun control”, employing divide & conquer tactics to get Americans to go at each others throats. A place coup to oust President Trump. Now thats a dandy right there. I keep wondering, how do they expect to oust 64 million Deplorable’s? Those 64 million are just going to drop to a knee and say, Yes Massa! Whatever you say Massa! We be good slaves to you Massa!
Not everyone, thank the Lord please, is an NPC and brainwashed useful dupe, or in the free shit army.
Lot of sharp, creative, industrious, inventive, plain good old hard working, God fearing American’s. We are real, and we still get to vote, not necessarily with a ballot either.
Lot of great stuff is happening under “the radar”.
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Oh Yeah!
PS Robert, I have you to appreciate now and in the future for your insightful words and precepts you have provided over the years here on your blog. Nothing is lost when you hold it in your heart & mind.
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Thanks Robert, i have appreciated most all of your articles. Logic is something many desire.
There seems to be a time when those warning and sounding the alarm decrease or stop. Perhaps we are nearing that point?
a follower, from the heartland of indiana. The waves are slamming us also.
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a follower
Logic is something everyone needs, its lack is why the world is the shape it’s in. I’m glad you liked my articles and thank you.
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As one of the annons, reading and skulking in the background for years.
Easy access to your mind – well appreciated and missed now, for the future.
All the best – thank you for the enlightenment.
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Thank you.
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Many, many “Thanks” for your excellent efforts, Robert! You are indeed, one of the “Masters” of this era.
Reminds me of last evening when I was listening to an absolutely superb performance of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony (by the Seoul, Korea Philharmonic Orchestra) and I recalled the query in 1808 put to Ludwig himself.
Q: “Why aren’t your works accepted and more favorably reviewed these days?”
A: “Mine is for future generations.”
Q.E.D.
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Centurion
Thank you, and the Beethoven story is spot on. I love aphorisms. He had a way with words as well as notes.
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Exit stage circumference? See ya at the new concord bridge on the colorado The wheel on the wetstone goes round and round.. Damn plowshares are soft steel won’t hold an edge. The old men in that cave by the poisoned river they know some secret about hardening hearts and metal.. I have a wagon full of dekalb seed corn signs been pulling them all the way since I left Iowa. Useless metal like the seed they anounce but they are colorfull to stare at in the fire light.
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You can’t beat the Boy Scouts’ Be Prepared.
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Best Wishes and continued success in all your endeavors.
May we all live long enough to throw a felicitous shovel-full of earth on the dead face of American socialism.
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Best wishes to you and yours. Your blog has been to me, a beacon of sanity and logic. In your words I have drunk deep of the cool water of wisdom, and always have come away enriched and satisfied.
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Thank you. It looks like I’m not the only one who has a way with words on this site.
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I guess that I’m an 84-year-old sort-of Remnant who’s enjoyed your writing. Thanks for your efforts, young fella. 🙂
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Thank you. Arnold Kelly is also 84, unless he had a birthday of which I’m unaware.
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‘r vs K’ reproduction theory
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Denninger, Woodpile Report, and some other founts of wisdom have also “signed off”
more than once. And then resumed posting. I think it’s likely that,
as events accelerate to a certain conclusion,
we’ll hear again from Robert Gore.
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Oh, you will.
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Be free and productive. It is a joy.
Reacting to bad actors and chronicalling bad philosophies interfered with my time as well. Yet, organizing my arguments against bad philosophies was productive, and definitely motivates me to be productive, to acheive my own objectives.
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
-Reinhold Niebuhr
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Thank you, and thank you for Niebuhr quote, which I’ve always liked.
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For Robert Gore —
I applaud your rationally selfish choice.
In the wilderness you are the rare sane voice.
You’ve already built a reference work of lore–
For those who need it most you are the door.
May your new venture productively arise,
A one-of-a-kind juncture in history’s eyes.
For look, 160 billion light years through,
The Universe kept on till it made you.
In all this span, each life just once appears
To carve its meaning from its earthly years.
So fill each unforgiving minute’s span
With all the verve and gusto that you can.
The Universe, the world, and humankind:
Their priceless heritage—the sovereign mind.
— Kate Jones
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That’s beautiful and I’m touched, deeply. Thank you.
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Thanks for all you’ve done Mr. Gore 😀
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Thanks.
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And I only just found you. Sad!
But I understand perfectly and look forward to buying your books. Thanks.
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Thank you.
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You will be successful. That is what is most important to me in this. Will always keep you on my radar.
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Thank you.
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Didn’t connect your real name to your handle on Galt’s Gulch the first time. If you’re ever in Albuquerque, look me up.
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I will. Been a long time since I was last there. Very nice place. I will let you know of any plans to go back.
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Thank-you and it has been a great pleasure and benefit to have read your posting over the years. I can appreciate the need to step back and take a break from a labor of love such as your outstanding blog. My gratitude sir.
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Thank you.
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I Love the YouTube video Underground History Lesson by John Taylor Gato. It’ 5 1/ hours long and he is wonderfull. He is a real educator. Thank You for all your insights on Mr. Nock, & the real scolorship & effort that went into it. I love Lysander Spooner No Treason The Constitution of No Authority video. & Massive Breakthrough in 9/11 Investigation videos. I love Ya buddy. Bye Eddie Willers
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Thank you.
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