The Fires of Freedom

Today's episode is on Freedom and being female. What better topic is there to speak about when being female is being erased by the corporate, government, academic, and cultural forces?Of course, they can't erase being female because it's an objective biological category. But I ask you. Why are they trying to? What do you make of that? Is there anything about trying to eliminate female and femininity as an objective category that makes sense?There is something about it that makes sense; that makes perfect sense, something absolutely logical. It just all depends on what your goal is.If your goal is to have healthy, thriving human beings then you would honor and support femininity and masculinity as separate distinct complementary categories. If you cared about human thriving you would celebrate the difference; you would do as the French say and do, “Viva la différence”, because only with healthy functioning females – of sound mind and body – and healthy functioning males – of sound mind and body – can there be a healthy functioning next generation.“Male” and “female” are not costumes or roles. They're two sides of what it takes to bring children into the world and raise them up – properly – and well enough to build a more robust and better future. They're the two sides of a family.If you think of a family tree as links in a chain, every single one of those links is made up of a male half-circle and a female half-circle, so the chain of life links together. As far back as we can recall and as far forward as we can imagine, only a person hostile and destructive towards society would want to confuse and disable femininity and masculinity on such a grand scale.In my opinion, that is exactly the reason for the transgender mania because the powers that be in this world – the too, too, too-powerful bankers and the way too-powerful corporate leaders, who view the world as their playground – quite simply want more power, more money, and fewer people.What better way to have fewer people than to disintegrate masculinity and femininity; to weaken it, to question it, to dilute it…

Today's episode is Freedom & The US Federal Government’s March to War.I don't know about all of you but I'm getting pretty fed up and disgusted by the attitudes and actions of the US federal government. It pains me to say this because I'm a veteran and an extremely patriotic person. But I'm not of the mindset “my country do or die”; my country can do no wrong. I'm not of that mindset at all.I'm of the most traditional mindset which says God then country. So, when I see my federal government – my country and my flag – doing things that are contrary to basic judeo-christian morals, that are an insult to God, I have to put my loyalty to God before my country.That's not to say that I'm against the country. That's to say that I love it enough to rebuke it and to call it out where it needs to be called out. The question for this episode is this. Are we going to stand by and let the federal government drag us into nuclear war or are we going to do something about it…

This special episode is entitled Freedom & The Texas Transactional Currency, also known as House Bill 4903 in the Texas House of Representatives Calendar Committee currently, as I record.I had the opportunity to testify briefly on the importance and historical significance – and urgency – of this bill last week but now that it's advanced to the Calendar Committee I felt morally obliged to produce this interview-style podcast specifically for the Calendar Committee so that they'll have a chance to fully understand the historic opportunity they have before them to rush HB4903 out of Calendars and into the Senate; to get it passed with us and for us as Texans and as Americans.So, I brought this to you in the format of an interview.I recently had the opportunity to talk about all of this with Frank Salvato the host of the Underground USA podcast. Frank seemed like the perfect person to be the interviewer and to tease out this essential information for you because he served as editor to numerous online publications including The Washington Dispatch and The New Media Journal. His analysis of important matters has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention.Honestly, I think HB4903 is, in a sense, a form of conflict prevention because we're living in very frightening and increasingly economically uncertain times. People up and down the economic scale are worried about soaring crime, soaring economic despair, soaring inequalities, and soaring non-responsiveness by our government. HB4903 is an opportunity to fix all of those things in one epic and historic bill together with its companion in the Texas Senate.So, I thought Frank's background and expertise were just perfect. I'm so grateful to Frank for participating in this interview so I could bring this information to you.And I want to let you know, if you're interested, Frank can be heard on The Captain's America: Third Watch radio program. His segments are broadcast twice weekly – Mondays and Fridays – on the Salem Broadcasting Network.And now, let's get into the interview…

Get ready for today's episode, my friends, because it's going to be both a trip down memory lane for some of us of a certain age and it will also involve a radical rethinking of one of the most fundamental lifebloods of society (well at least in the material sense).The topic of today's episode is Freedom & Money.Money. Everyone wants it. Ninety-five percent of the world's population struggles to have enough of it to meet their basic needs; for food, shelter, clothing, safety for their family, and education.What is money? Is it a means of exchange? A store of value? A ticket? A tool? A status symbol? The root of all evil? Or, is it a necessary evil?No matter what you think money is, there's one truth about money that applies to everyone. Money is something you trade your life's energy for. You pay for money with your time. This is something I talked about in one of my earlier podcasts.This definition of money comes from the book Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez. Money is a unit that allows people to exchange their lives energy with one another. Bartering is clumsy.For example. If I spend two hours making a pie I don't want to have to turn to you and say, “Can you cut my lawn and we'll swap?” So, money is a way of us exchanging our lives energy with one another; a way to take advantage of each other's skills and creativity. It's a unit that represents the most scarce and limited resource on the planet: A human being's time and creative energy.So, the big questions I want to ask are these. Is all money the same? And does it remain the same?For most of us of a certain age, our lived experience tells us that it is not and it does not, although it should. At the end of this episode, I will share some thoughts about how to fix money…

In today's episode, we're going to walk through Freedom & The Young.Freedom is a state of being in a country where the citizens have power over the government. From a political point of view, that's what freedom is. In any situation where the government has the ultimate authority over the people, there's no freedom.The United States has been, perhaps, the only truly free country because of our Constitution that guarantees the government works for us. Of course, it hasn't been working for us for a very long time and a key reason for that is this. We've taken our eyes off the health, well-being, and education of the young.Being young is supposed to be, in many ways, the best years of a person's life: physically, mentally, intellectually. These are supposed to be the years of growth, branching out from your family, maturing, and finding your place in society.Healthy young people are full of hope and promise and vibrant health, and even though every day isn't peachy, net-net they see the world as their oyster, as it ought to be, because when young people are given this space and this protection to develop they grow to be healthy links in the network of our society; they grow to be the torchbearers of freedom for the next generation and the next generation and for all of posterity to come.But today – and for quite some time, young people are suffering – badly. And so I ask you to ponder with me these questions: What is our role in midlife to the young and how does that role help protect our freedom…

Today's episode is a current and delicate topic: Freedom and trans identity.Trans identity is a topic you can’t avoid these days. It's everywhere. I decided to touch upon it because I believe at the heart of the question of freedom and trans identity is a deeper question and that is this. How do we judge what is good for human freedom from what is bad for human freedom?How do we do that as a species? I believe that lies at the heart of the question of freedom and trans identity and I think it's of critical importance that we're talking about it.If you listen to those from the Ivy League. they would say the question of what is good for human thriving and bad for human thriving; good for human freedom bad for human freedom resides in their circles. If we want to know what it is we should just ask the Cultural Elite.Well, I'm afraid their monopoly on the answer to this question has brought us to this place in history, which is not a healthy one.So, I have digressed a little bit, but the subject of freedom and trans identity is deeply philosophical and critical to overall freedom because it asks the question “How do we judge what is good for human freedom, bad for human freedom; good for human thriving, bad for human thriving?I believe that there are three areas in which trans ideology is bad for human thriving and bad for human freedom: 1) the destruction of children's minds and bodies; 2) the destruction of cultural values that orient the prefrontal cortex in the human adult and; 3) the destruction of sports in a way that completely alienates half of society…

Today's episode is on Freedom & Immigration.Of all the crazy things going on in the world and of all the questions being hotly debated – from the most minuscule one of how to address people who are, let's say far out of the norm with the way they express themselves, regarding the “pronoun question,” up to the level of the battles going on in the Catholic Church over what Christ really taught, there are battles raging everywhere. It's a war of the minds. It's a war of ideology. It's a war of what reality is and who gets to define it. So, what's that got to do with immigration? Everything.Aren't freedom and immigration the same thing as freedom and human movement? Isn't that the same question? Are we free, as human beings, to move from one place on earth to another place on the planet without having to show documents or without having to pass through some identity patrol that tells us whether we are or aren't welcome?In crossing over this arbitrary line on a map, as we've sat back and watched millions of people pour across our Southern border – are utterly wide-open Southern border – aided and abetted by Catholic Charities as well as very vicious Mexican drug cartels (truly strange to find gangs and Catholic Charities sharing a common view on the answers to these questions about freedom and movement) it appears that both groups Catholic Charities and the cartels – I don't know the names of the ones who are in control on our border there are probably many different groups it doesn't matter, suffice to say there's organized crime – are in charge of our Southern border on the southern side, and on the Northern side there's nothing but chaos; there's nothing but bureaucratic, illegal, gumming of the works and failure to enforce our laws.It doesn't really matter where you are on the subject of whether or not human beings should be free to move from one place to the other, although that's an important question, but any person of any good faith side of that question – be they cartel members, Catholic Charities, or ordinary people sitting in their American suburbs watching mainstream media and challenging their own moral view of the world – good people in good faith might be able to struggle with this question at a very very high philosophical level.But on a practical level, on a fundamental level, when one looks at what's going on, which has all the hallmarks of human trafficking, i.e. women and children being raped, people with terrorist backgrounds coming into our country, there are reports of children ending up selling their labor, older children who are able to do things, selling their labor to American companies who are willing to exploit them.Perhaps because they tell themselves that the morally right thing to do is to have freedom of movement that shouldn't be hindered and restricted in any way by the state, in any way by the views of the people in that particular country, in any way by any written constitutions, or in any way by any other moral, legal, ethical, or philosophical means…

Today's episode is about Freedom and The World Economic Forum.I believe the biggest threat to human freedom that humanity has ever faced is exemplified by the attitudes, ideas, and behaviors of the World Economic Forum.The World Economic Forum, you probably know, has about 5,000 members including heads of state heads, nonprofits heads, heads of cultural groups, Hollywood types, corporate types, everybody who's anybody in elite International circles is a member of the World Economic Forum.And it's led by Klaus Schwab, a German Professor born in the 1930s whose father happened to be a collaborator with the Nazis. But, you know…So, the World Economic Forum is one of the most powerful organizations in the world and throughout the years they've said some truly dystopian things and they've pushed some insane projects all of which you would think George Orwell had written, They've managed to creep and push these insane ideas out into the world via the very rich, powerful. and culturally powerful group of members.At the top of the list of crazy ideas that demonstrate what a threat to freedom they are is their vision for the future, which is a vision in which you will own nothing and be happy. Yes. You will own nothing and be happy. If you haven't heard that before, go and do a little digging about it because it was one of the World Economic Forum’s earliest marketing videos of their vision for the future.Of course, it's an absolutely insane idea in and of itself. It reflects very deeply into the minds of those at World Economic Forum.I asked you. Are you ready to tell your children they will own nothing and be happy? And that the State will provide everything they need within reason, and do so within a 15-minute walk? Are you ready for that to be the life for your children or grandchildren?That's the question to think about as we delve into some of the insane things and what these ideas mean about how they view humanity…

Do you remember the old Whitney Houston song? It was really popular in the '80s. It went, “I believe the children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way.”Well, Whitney couldn't have been more correct about the first line. Of course the children are our future, in every possible way. Without children there is no future for the human race. Children keep the world going forward. Children are our pride, are joy, and they're the future for all of humanity.So, she's right, of course, children are our future and yes we should teach them well, a subject that's become very controversial lately.What does it mean to teach them well? I'm going to touch on that a little bit in this podcast but, lastly, the “let them lead the way”...no, Whitney, I don't think that makes any sense at all.We need to let children naturally and in their own way and at their own time unfold, like a blossom. You don't want to force the blossom open, by any means. They should lead in their own development along the arc of their own natural course of growing and learning.Each child grows and learns and changes at their own pace, in different areas, in that way, yes, we should let them lead the way. But in the larger sense of what the world's all about and how to get by in this world and what to make your most important value, no, children should not be leading the way…

The topic for today's podcast is Freedom and Diversity.In my life, I've had the outstanding opportunity to travel and live abroad quite a lot, especially compared to the average American. I have lived in England, France, Japan, and Russia during the first decade after my graduation from high school.In addition to living in those four countries, I had the opportunity to travel for extended periods of time to places such as Brazil, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Okinawa, and Korea.I've been really blessed. I’m not trying to brag about my travels, just to say I've been really blessed.I’ve always had an adventurous spirit so I obviously sought out a lot of this world travel, first and foremost by joining the United States Air Force at age 18.But even after my discharge, I sought out opportunities to live and work and travel abroad because I'm really drawn to diversity.I enjoy and I'm fascinated by the differences between different kinds of people.So, the big question for this podcast is this. What exactly is diversity? And in what kind of ways is it our strength?

In today's episode, we're going to be talking about freedom and World War III.They are frightening days we live in. In the past couple of weeks, the World Economic Forum met in Davos, Switzerland to proclaim themselves the “masters of the future.” Those were Klaus Schwab's exact words. Easy to find if you're interested.John Kerry talked about how they've been “touched – as a group” – that they constitute a select group that has the extraterrestrial honor to sit in a room together and think about how to save the planet.In other breakout sessions at the World Economic Forum, they talked about using sound waves to control our minds, they talked about the ongoing series of vaccines the whole planet's going to need so that they can keep us safe from future pandemics, and, of course, they talked about the benevolent and thoughtful things they are going to do to save us all from “boiling oceans”; the exact words used by Al Gore, “boiling oceans.”So, they talked about the incredible things they're going to do such as restricting people to 15 minutes sitting (they've already announced they're going to be doing this in Oxford, England). It’s worth having a look at it if you haven't seen that horror. Bill Gates, King Charles, the head of the UN, the head of the World Health Organization, the head of NATO, heads of major multinational corporations, heads of very select academic institutions – in particular professors. and a wide variety of other people who consider themselves above us all. On and on they went, talking about designing and planning and creating the future for us all.They bemoaned what was going on in Ukraine; they wrung their hands and talked about how Putin must be stopped; he has to be stopped because he, apparently, is going to just gobble them all up. He's just going to roll across Western Europe if they don't stop him.And they've got big plans for Europe and beyond; plans that involve a Great Reset; plans that involve none of us owning anything, none of us having any privacy, and all of us being very happy with it. They certainly wouldn't want Putin to get in the way of their grand plans…

Freedom & Artificial Intelligence is the topic of today's episode.If you listened to the last episode, Freedom & Christianity, there was a lot of talk about what underlies woke values and how these woke values are being rolled out – and rolled over us – in a way that I called “supremacy.” I make the case it is an extreme form of supremacy.Artificial intelligence is being delivered by many of the same elite people who embrace and hold dear these woke values of which I am so critical. I believe Artificial Intelligence can be a great tool for humanity. It has revolutionized technology in many Industries and it has – and it – will solve some problems faced by humanity. But because of the underlying value structure of the people who are implementing AI we must ask ourselves: Is our embrace of AI, driven by the woke elite, an ultimate danger to our freedom?AI is still in its beginning stages and there's a lot we don't know about it but its dangers are being discussed openly and that's a very good thing, which of course is the reason I'm making this podcast.Stephen Hawking, the late legendary physicist, made the following comment about artificial intelligence:“Success and creating effective Artificial Intelligence could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization or the worst, so we cannot know if we will be infinitely helped by AI or ignored by it or sidelined by it or, conceiving, destroyed by it.”He's absolutely right and, as I think you know, Stephen Hawkings was an atheist.Well, let's talk about the five different exceedingly dangerous aspects of Artificial Intelligence that threaten society…

It's December and today's episode is going to be about Freedom & Traditional Christianity.I have questions and thoughts to share that I think are of particular value to non-christians, both educators and parents, during this Christmas time. This is not another rant about the war on Christmas. On the Fires of Freedom podcast, every topic goes to the heart of how and why are freedoms are slipping away before our eyes, and this Freedom & Traditional Christianity episode is no different.I'm dedicating this episode to the Undercover Mothers Group, a group of about 800 women fighting the ideological tidal wave of woke values that is sweeping through the nation's most prestigious independent schools, just as it is sweeping through all our nation's institutions.Woke values are overly anti-traditional Christian and Christmas and I'm going to make the case that the systemic disparagement of any group puts at grave risk the cognitive moral – and all other kinds – of freedoms for everyone I've ever met.Regarding the Undercover Mothers Group, I only follow them online. I have no idea if these women are Christian or not and I don't know what their political views are or whether they agree or disagree with mine. I do know that they're fighting for their children's right to bond with their parents, and for them to see their parents as authority figures. They're fighting for their parental rights to make decisions for their children and they're fighting for psychological and sexual boundaries for their children, standing up against a self-righteous group of people.They are fighting to reverse the overbearing tyrannical and moral influence of the National Association of Independent Schools on its member schools and in the influence that cascades down through the classrooms onto the students; overbearing tyrannical and a moral influence that reaches the sacred ties between parents and their children.This movement, like all other parts of the woke movement, wants to put the state authorities and experts in control of children's hearts and minds. Remember that phrase from the Bush lead war in Iraq, we're going to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqis? Something similarly destructive and equally unexamined or self-examined is happening in the NAIS. It is a supremacist attitude that screams “our values are so good, so righteous, we have the right to force them on others” even if it harms the family, even if it comes between parent and child.Now you may be thinking I have no connection to Independent Schools so what does this matter to me? Well, these schools have tremendous power and influence, and the vast majority of people in institutional power…

In today's episode I'm thinking at great length about the subject of freedom and coercion. Are you thinking about the same these days?It seems to me that there's coercion all around us. Now, it's perfectly possible that I am temperamentally more likely to notice people attempting to coerce me and that others may be less likely to notice it but regardless of a person's level of sensitivity it's important to know that coercion and freedom are opposites; diametric, mutually exclusive, opposites and they always – and without exception – will be.Coercion is compelling a person to act in an involuntary manner – in any way. So, it might not just be through the use of threats or the threat to withhold resources, although it can be in those ways. It can be at the point of a gun. It can be at the threat of not giving you access to food or water or medical care. It could be not giving you access to work; the ability to support yourself.Or, it could be more subtle things, such as allowing you some food and some shelter and some ability to work but treating you as an outcast or a less-than until you adopt certain ways of being that the coercive party wants you to. So, coercion is definitely on a spectrum and it can be hard to spot; more subtle in its forms, but these days subtle and overt forms are everywhere; all around us.And I wonder whether I am the only one who sees it…

In today's episode, the topic is freedom and censorship.Well, here we are. Elon Musk has bought Twitter and fired nearly everyone. He has reinstated Jordan Peterson and James O'Keefe of project Veritas (that's Project Truth for those who don't know Latin). He’s even reinstated Donald Trump, although as far as I know he hasn't gone back yet.So, we're in a different world than we were a year ago. New social media platforms are popping up and the conversation and the conflict is strong and steady on all of them.The conflict of ideas is not just among ordinary people. Ideological battles are raging within the Democrat Party, within the Republican Party. between factions in each of those parties, between populists and the elite who feel that experts should and could run the world better than We the People.That we are in an ideological civil war is pretty obvious. But we've been here before. I don't know if that's a comfort or if it’ll increase the fear level.We were here before and we fought a civil war over our differing ideas about humanity and about reality. This brings us to this episode.The important questions: Is censorship acceptable? Is it acceptable in peacetime? Is it acceptable in Wartime? And does any of this hold true for a civil information and ideological war?...

Today's episode is about freedom and politics.In the United States of America, politics is supposed to be for, under, and about the Constitution of the United States. There's a lot of room for discussion about how things ought to be under the Constitution but today both of our parties and many of our institutions are completely ignoring the Constitution.Politics is supposed to be about working out the power relationship among individuals or groups mostly for the distribution of resources or status or things like that. The question of the day is this. What is politics about today?I've had conversations with people and I've mentioned that politics is what we do up until the point we cross into war. Some people don't see it that way. They see it as politics and war – two sides of the same coin. It's an interesting topic and there's a lot to be said for looking at it through either lens.But I think what we can all agree on is that when a line is crossed and people start getting harmed or killed; there is an element of death and severe injuries are happening, we are either in the realm of the criminal or we’re in the realm of war.I've been thinking a lot about what's going on now. Our politicians look and sound and act like their enemies. Increasingly, day after day, they're acting as if they are enemies of We the People. I see things happening that are in obvious, open, and direct opposition to the needs of Americans.And when people speak up about it there's aggression and disdain; a dismissal of any discussion of the regular needs of ordinary people. At the same time, people like myself, who are patriotic and conservative, are being officially labeled as extremist – even terrorists – by our Department of Homeland Security.So yes, it feels like a threat to me when my own government comes up with a box and gives it a label and I fit into it and that label is “extremists” are “terrorist.”I see it very differently and I invite you to look at it differently because what I see is an administration that itself is beyond extreme...

Today's topic on The Fires of Freedom podcast is a very big and very fundamental subject: freedom and being human.With so little freedom in the world and the threats to it growing day by day, this topic – freedom and what it means to be human – ought to be the primary subject of study, of debate, and discussion that the young people in the coming of age years (say 12 to 25) should be having, especially so in the still very Christian USA.Nothing matters more than generation after generation being given the opportunity to learn about what others before them thought about these important subjects and to contribute to the conversation themselves. Nothing matters more because to understand freedom and the desire to be free – spiritually, cognitively, and physically – no matter how rare this condition is, this is nonetheless the highest manifestation of being human.Of course, this is precisely why the debate and the conversation and the history have been stifled and it's been stifled deliberately by the most opportunistic and power-hungry among us.Is this a conspiracy theory? No, my friends, this assertion is an easily understood biological fact. I'd even go further and say it should have been fully expected. Those who are themselves biologists and evolutionary psychologist along with all of those who have intellectual power, frame the questions of “what is a human being” and “what is freedom” incorrectly and they do so – consciously or unconsciously – in order to place themselves at the top of the totem pole; in order to position themselves as the ones who get to call the shots – not only on the definition of what is it to be human but on all the societal implications that flow from the answers to that question.Unfortunately, the academic elite world has incrementally, over time, again intentionally and willfully (or in some cases with unintentional blinders on) explored the question of what it is to be a human being and what it is to be free in a very constricted and limited manner, the constrictions of limitations they put on the contemplation of this question are quite convenient to them.

In today's episode we're going to be talking about the critically important subject of war and freedomThat Human Beings base biological nature is to be a warring animal seems to be indisputable. Throughout history, tribes have conquered tribes, Nations have taken over nations, empires have risen and fallen two external powers. Yes, unfortunately, the base model of human nature; the base model of some human beings - especially those who rise to the top of power structures, is to hunger for more power, more land, more wealth, and more dominating influence, and to seek it by taking over others.This fact of human nature is well-documented in history and biology tells us the same thing. Our nearest evolutionary relative, were told, is the chimpanzee. Chimps go on genocidal rages sometimes wiping out every member of a neighboring troop. Within nations, there have been similar genocides.As you well know, at various levels, genocides are both physical and cultural: the non-compliant in the Soviet Union (a topic will be talking about later); Jews, Gypsies, the disabled, and Christians in Nazi Germany; the Tibetans in China; the Muslims in Burma and in China right now; the Tutsis by Hutus in the early 90s; and yes, at times, American actions toward the Native Americans back in the mid 1800s.To ignore the cruelty and warlike nature of the human species is to be a fool or to be a manipulator. To embrace it for your own agenda - while labeling it good - is for the diabolically evil. The only way doing so is Progressive is that it's a more advanced form of deception. That seems to be what we're doing today.Supposedly, we're living in what our “elites” like to call the post-war era. That is academic doublespeak, in other words, it's a ridiculously inaccurate label. Post-war. What about Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, and Yemen, just to take a Western or US-centered Center view of recent war. All these wars were conducted under the self-proclaimed moral righteousness of the so-called liberal, rules-based, International order, this self-given title, also academic doublespeak.

If you haven't already, I'd like to encourage you to listen to the first episode. It was an introductory episode in which I sum up my reasons for starting this podcast, my intended audience, and I went over my background as an entrepreneur of an Inc 500 company, as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award finalists, as a US Air Force veteran, and as a private person creating this podcast out of a sense of duty to country and to all of humanity for that matter.Today's topic is freedom and truth. Freedom is not possible without truth. How can you discern who is telling the truth especially during an information war in which freedom of speech itself is being challenged in the western world?I'd like to quote Theodore Roosevelt:“Patriotism is to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. In so far as he efficiently serves the country, it is patriotic to support him. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that, by inefficiency or otherwise, he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth whether about the president or anyone else.I'd like to add that it's not just unpatriotic to not tell the truth, it's destabilizing to human minds and human institutions. In fact, it's disrespectful to human dignity.Telling the truth vs telling lies is one of the first lessons every parent teaches their child. People think of it as a moral question and, of course, parents are moral teachers so it makes sense that they would start there. But it's even more fundamental than a moral question: it's a reality question.The extent to which a person, a marriage, a business relationship, a K through 12 institution; its relationships with its students, its parents, a company, or country; to the extent to which any of these entities tells the truth and lives in the truth is exactly equivalent to the extent to which it lives in reality.Living in pseudo reality is destructive and psychologically destabilizing. Gaslighting, lying by omission, selective use of facts, being dismissive of people's concerns, throwing out red herrings in response to people's concerns, all of these things are forms of lying; they’re forms of protecting untruths. They’re forms of pseudo reality. All of these things lead to failure. Human beings who live in lies fail. Marriages living in lies fail. Companies living in lies fail. Institutions - including educational ones - living in lies will fail and countries living in lies fail, of course not necessarily right away - which is why lying can seem like a successful strategy for a while. But history tells us that eventually a lie’s growing complexity becomes unwieldy and the truth catches up and that's where, sadly, the world of education in the Western world is right now.And not just K through 12 and not just public and not just private but the higher institutions as a whole are running and being run by people who are promulgating and protecting a pseudo reality. It shouldn't be surprising that this is happening in the educational institutions because this is where the Western world - as a whole - is right now.Our country is on the brink of social implosion; the whole world is on the brink of implosion, including possible physical explosion into nuclear war and it's all the result of a vast network of lies and liars.

Welcome to The Fires of Freedom. I’m Katherine Novikov.You may know me as the founder and former CEO of Diamond Mind Incorporated, the nation's leading provider of payment processing software and services to K through 12 independent schools. I would like to state that I have had no contact or communication or any kind, or connection with Diamond Mind since 2016 when I sold the company to a private equity-backed organization due to a cancer diagnosis.What you may or may not know about me is I'm also a veteran of the US Air Force's Electronic Security Command. I'm the mother of sons who are Russian, Ukrainian, and obviously American heritage. I'm an American who's achieved the American Dream. And I'm also an American who's had a life of international travel and work that's given me the perspective of a truly multicultural global person. I never thought I'd add podcaster to the short bio of mine but here it goes.I have to speak out, out of moral necessity. Like everyone, I see and feel uncertainty and danger all around and growing day by day. Powerful people on the world stage - in the US and EU - are speaking and acting illogically. For example, banning fertilizer and fuel that reduces the world supply while simultaneously predicting famine. Top academics at Ivy League universities and luminaries such as Yuval Harari are promoting illogical ideas such as “only whites can be racist,” “men can have babies,” and “children should be sexualized,” “high school girl should compete with teen boys,” and perhaps worst of all that free will is a myth.Church and Faith leaders are going along with these crazy ideas trying to bend what they call faith to conformity with the humanistic ideas under a banner of inclusivity. So, like you, I see many serious threats to who we are as Americans as Westerners and even as human beings.So, while I never thought I would do a podcast, I now feel I have no choice. So, thank you for having a listen and I hope you'll share your reactions, responses, and ideas - both positive, negative and in between - with me so that together we can build a picture - a clear picture - of what's going on so that we can all make wise decisions for ourselves in the clear light of day.So, that's what this podcast is going to be about. Together we're going to dive deep into the topics of freedom and free will and how we're in danger of losing both; why and what we can do about it. We’ll take both a global and domestic view of the history unfolding before us. We’ll consider both taboo and critical existential questions such as: Are we headed into World War III; Is there going to be or is there already a civil war in the United States, as Bill Gates says there will be; Why isn't life in the United States going back to normal after the COVID event; In general, what the heck's going?Do Americans still live in a free country? Did we ever? What will happen to the West? How could the political turmoil affect us, all our families, our safety, our financial security? And what might I - we, all of us - do say and think to make a positive difference during these crazy times; when right and wrong so often seemed inverted.