Freedom Gardens, Speech Corridors, and Black Markets

July 8, 2024 by J.B. Shurk

Battered conservative syndrome is real!  We have gotten clobbered over the head so many times during the last decade that we’re almost numb to the pain.  Even worse, we’ve been conditioned to accept each new blow as if we somehow deserved it more than the last.  We do not.

We have seen how quickly Western governments will use every “emergency” to dispatch basic civil liberties.  We have watched American political operatives rig elections with mail-in-ballot fraud.  We have endured online censorship of our political speech.  We have been targets of gun-grabbing politicians seeking to disarm us.  We have suffered discrimination from banks that refuse us service.  We have remained mostly quiet as the DOJ treats J6 protesters as seditious traitors and blacklists the rest of us as likely terrorists.  We have put up with Marxist prosecutors maliciously pursuing us for our personal beliefs.  We have kept our heads down while corporate employers demand total obedience to their “woke” religion.

We also know what’s coming.  The technological infrastructure for “vaccine” passports, digital IDs, central bank digital currencies, online speech codes, race-based privileges, AI surveillance, and social credit scores is being built right now.  “Climate change” fanatics are making it harder and more expensive to grow food.  Digital prison walls are going up all around us.  “Green energy” regulators and technocratic snoops are creating a system that minimizes our freedom and maximizes their control.  The question, then, is whether we use this foresight to prepare for the future or to complain about its inevitability.

I ran across someone online warning that the “green energy” Nazis were driving up the cost of energy so quickly that we would all freeze to death during the next few winters.  Perhaps.  Or perhaps cold people will revert to collecting wood for indoor fires.  I figure that we will know when “Green New Deal” totalitarianism is “winning” when we see formerly law-abiding citizens illegally logging in protected forests and parks.  The more expensive energy becomes, the more likely that the skies above towns and cities will be filled with soot.

Necessity is a wonderful motivator.  People who are forced to choose between survival and subservience weigh their options more adroitly.  That’s why I’m ultimately optimistic about our future even though I know bad times are surely coming.  Some generations must witness the evil of totalitarianism before they finally recognize that unconstrained government power is as deadly as any disease.  After all, what caused greater social harm — the COVID virus or the government’s abusive lockdowns, economic destruction, and authoritarian mandates?

Now ask yourself how you can best prepare for the next time the police state demands total compliance.

A century ago, homeowners all over the country cultivated essential crops no matter how small their parcel of land.  During both world wars, the federal government actively encouraged citizens to grow what they could, so as to increase the available food supply for our fighting forces overseas.  Fast-forward to the present, and government agencies are actively discouraging homeowners from growing their own food.  Municipal ordinances and neighborhood covenants prevent citizens from maximizing the benefits of land ownership.  Environmental regulations turn home gardens into potential legal liabilities.  The federal government harasses Amish farmers and other experts in husbandry for ignoring bureaucratic rules written by cubicle kings who don’t even know how to farm.  

Does it seem a little strange that government know-it-alls work so hard to prevent Americans from growing their own food when people around the world suffer from hunger?  Wouldn’t any government that pats itself on the back for being “progressive” and “humanitarian” find great benefit in increasing America’s production and supply of basic crops?  A cynical person might conclude that the U.S. government does not want Americans to be self-sufficient because a self-sufficient population is much harder to manipulate.  An even more cynical person might suggest that the World Economic Forum and its fascist friends can never force Americans to “eat the bugs” unless Americans are first starving.  After all, how can the WEF’s Malthusian enthusiasts reduce the planet’s human population, unless those who wish to cull us also control what we have to eat?

What’s the obvious answer to this increased fragility in the food supply?  Americans must reacquire rudimentary farming skills.  They must experiment with potatoes, corn, legumes, and other nutritious crops and understand what is required to produce even small amounts of food.  They must rediscover the benefits of gardening.  The more they learn now, the more likely they will survive future hardship.  If they choose not to prepare today, they will be left to the mercy of those who control what’s left to eat — such as bug-enthusiast and synthetic food investor Bill Gates — should they ever find themselves starving. 

During times of crisis, growing food is like growing currency.  Whatever a person has to eat becomes a medium of exchange.  “Battered conservatives” who see the erection of totalitarian CBDCs in our future often assume that little can be done to avert their imposition.  Once runaway inflation hits a point when debts cannot be repaid and people cannot afford basic necessities, central banks will have the perfect financial emergency to justify a transition toward digital government funny money.  With such a system in place, government agents will control not only what you can buy with digital dollars but also the purchasing power of what’s been allotted to your account.  It is the ideal vehicle for creating a society where nobody owns anything (aside from the central bankers) and everyone receives the same income regardless of skill, merit, or hard work.  CBDCs give Marxist globalists what they want — a communist oligarchy in which a small number of technocratic “elites” totally control the lives of entirely dependent serfs.

What’s the obvious answer to this increased fragility in the financial system?  To put yourself in a position in which you own valuable commodities beyond the reach of CBDCs’ totalitarian control mechanisms.  That doesn’t mean you need a private vault of gold, silver, or copper.  It means you need to develop the skills that will allow you to grow food for future exchange.  In a dystopian world where central bankers supervise all transactions, any market that arises beyond their control represents a small island for freedom.  Even in our relatively stable financial system today, illicit black markets account for anywhere from ten to thirty percent of the most developed industrial economies.  How do you think the imposition of CBDCs will affect those numbers?  My guess is that black market transactions will quickly grow to rival those of the official CBDC-controlled economy.  Why?  Because under such a communist system, black markets will become the last refuge for free markets.  The time to prepare for such potential future difficulties is now.

Some might argue that in a world where authorities censor speech and monitor all communications, working outside of the government’s reach would be impossible.  I would counter that an entire generation of dissidents residing in the Soviet Union and under the Iron Curtain managed to communicate with each other and spread important ideas with nothing more than pens and sheets of paper.  However effective AI proves at spying on what we say, people who value freedom will inevitably develop workarounds.  Wherever State-sponsored censorship becomes the norm, free speech corridors thrive underground.  

All of which is simply to say: hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.  Just because many of us have become accustomed to being hit over the head with Big Government’s truncheon doesn’t mean we should pencil in future beatings.  We cannot trust our government to protect our liberties because our liberties are a threat to its power.  We must remember how to band together and take care of ourselves.  Forewarned is forearmed.