...just a quick note to say that you'll find more of my commentary and other posts over on my Substack Publication, "On the Banks."
I still keep this blog updated with big things, and podcast episodes, etc. but if you want all of my commentary, that's where you'll find it.
Thanks for reading!
A few years ago, I had an idea. It was more than an idea - it was a compulsion. It was an urgently felt need to create a space where people who care about the human flourishing that happens when we are free could come together.
That was it. Not a plan for saving the world, just a place where we could hang out with each other, share our ideas, commiserate, and feel at home. And maybe, by virtue of doing all of this, we would come up with some ways to make a real difference in the world. Or maybe we would just feel a little less alone in that world.
I spent some time brainstorming with a friend about setting up some kind of platform for this, and finally decided to launch my idea as a podcast. And in March of 2020 - the week that California Governor Gavin Newsom decided to forcibly shut down our lives - I recorded my first episode, with Jeffrey Tucker, then with AIER, and soon to become one of the brightest lights in the battle against Covid tyranny. I’ve recorded many more episodes since then, with some of the best and most interesting advocates of liberty, at a time when human freedom is under unprecedented assault all around the globe.
I’m proud of my podcast. But it’s not quite what I set out to create. Mostly: It’s not very interactive. And so after a lot more brainstorming, I’ve decided to launch a new online community: Building Parallel Solutions. It’s a little different from my original idea, in that it is focused on creating solutions rather than just hanging out together. (Although there’s certainly room for that too.)
We’re starting out on Substack, as a private publication, I’ll be adding a private group on a social-media platform (probably MeWe), and we will also have occasional online video meetings. I will also be adding a paid membership option for those who want a little more direct support in creating solutions - I’ll post more about that later.
For now though, I think that what I said in my podcast manifesto fits nicely here:
It's the "nearly" that I'm interested in.
That–possibly very small, possibly not so small–number of people who can see and think for themselves. Who understand for themselves the difference between right and wrong, who don't need to have anyone else tell them that it is wrong to make another person your slave, or to lock another person in a cell when they have harmed no-one.
That's who I think of as the audience for my podcast ("What Then Must We Do?") You might call what I'm doing "preaching to the choir", but that's not it. I'm looking to reach the people who already recognize the problem, and who want to do something about it…
Maybe none of us is powerful enough to defeat the violence that is the state. Maybe even together we are not enough. But I am certain that if there is any hope for us at all, it lies entirely with this group of people.
Oh, and if I sound a little elitist, as if I think the "Non-Nearlys" are somehow inferior to the "Nearlys"… well, yes, I do. I do think that thinking for oneself is superior to not thinking for oneself. I also think that great masses of people who don't do much thinking for themselves, who don't have their own moral compasses, are one of the most deadly threats to all of humanity, and always have been.
But here's the thing about being among the "Nearly" (or, as Albert Jay Nock called them, the Remnant): it is a choice. Anyone can choose to start questioning what they have been taught their whole life. Anyone can choose to listen to their own conscience over the values and opinions that are fed to them by the people and institutions around them. Anyone can do this.
"What then must we do?" I honestly don't know. The forces arrayed against individual human beings just living their own lives as they choose seem more powerful and more entrenched than ever before. So, do I know how to change that? To defeat the people and institutions that wish to (and do) rule over us? No, I don't. But I do believe that between us–between all of the "Nearly"–we can figure this out.
“Building Parallel Solutions” is an invitation-only publication for people who are serious about - you guessed it - building parallel solutions. If that’s you, and you’d like to be a part of this, just drop me a line at [email protected], with “Please add me to BPS” in the subject line.
I look forward to seeing you there!
I'm giving away ten copies of my children's/fantasy/libertarian/maybe-not-just-for-children's novel "Annabel Pickering and the Sky Pirates, book 1: The Fantastical Contraption" - you can read what Kirkus Reviews had to say about Annabel here, and you can enter to win yours here:
Giveaway ends March 31, 2022.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.
Image: Public Domain.
I spoke recently with Kerry McDonald, Senior Education Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education and author of Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom, for her newly launched “LiberatED” podcast.
We spoke about my family’s reasons for leaving California, the challenges in pulling up roots - even for someone like myself, who has picked up and moved to new places and new cultures more times than I can count - as well as why it is so important to speak up and fight back from where we are too.
Kerry asked what advice I would give to families contemplating leaving one of the more tyrannical jurisdictions… and I do my best to give a helpful answer.
I also talked about my independent education venture, Freogan Fellowship Learning (the education arm of my private membership association, Freogan Fellowship), and how we’re helping to revolutionize education.
You can listen to the whole thing here.
Freogan Fellowship Learning's classes for teens start next week!
We're very excited, and we think you should be too. We are launching Freogan Fellowship Learning with classes that address two of the most critical issues facing our world today - especially for anyone who cares about ever again living in a free society:
"Propaganda and the Personal" explores the ways in which information has been manipulated throughout the ages for the purpose of manipulating human beings, and how to avoid falling victim to it...
...and "Our Common-Law Foundations" looks at both the philisophical and practical underpinnings of a society based in law that protects rights vs. law that protects rulers.
Our regular price for each of these classes is $320, or $640 for both.
But now, if you sign up for BOTH classes, we will drop the price from $640 to $499!
See the posts below for class descriptions, or contact FFL for more information, and to register for classes.
And yes... for now, these are for teens (and some pre-teens) only. Sorry adults! We may add some classes for you in the future.
Freogan Fellowship Learning is the education arm of Freogan Fellowship Ministry, a private membership association, serving members only.
UPDATE: The recorded video is up here.
Mothers forced to give birth in masks; family members prevented from being with loved ones in hospitals; increased efforts to force vaccines on those who don't want them. State infringement of our rights in the realm of medicine and healthcare is nothing new. The time is ripe now for some practical solutions, and Bretigne Shaffer has some ideas, based in common law and the tradition of nullification of laws that violate our rights.
Please invite your friends and colleagues to join the discussion and ask questions.
Tomorrow, Weds. August 11, at 1:00pm Pacific Time, 4:00pm Eastern.
https://YourFreedomHub.com/sanctuary
A year ago today, I posted my first ever podcast episode. The state I live in had just "locked down" vast swathes of our lives, and my guest was the fantastic Jeff Tucker, of the American Institute for Economic Research. Since then, Jeff has distinguished himself as one of the most outspoken and articulate opponents of the lockdowns and other draconian restrictions, and I am honored to have had him as my first guest, and honored that he continues to grace my show with his presence from time to time.
You can listen to that interview here. Or watch it here:
I remember that day vividly. I was actually feeling physically ill that morning. Not because I was sick, but I think because the enormity of what had been going on for several weeks already, culminating in the Soviet-style shutting down of businesses and normal activities across my state, had suddenly hit me on a physical level. And it was so encouraging just to talk with one more person who recognized the insanity of it all - as well as the gravity of what was being done and what it would mean for so many people months and even years down the line.
It still is encouraging. One of my goals in starting my podcast - which I had dreamed up many months before "all of this" started - was to provide a place where those of us who recognize the danger of the state can connect, share ideas, and feel a little less alone. It's still not as interactive as I'd like to make it (maybe I'll start going live in the coming year and inviting some audience participation?) but from the feedback I'm getting, "What Then Must We Do?" is doing a little something toward this end.
So, Happy Birthday to "WTMWD"! And a heartfelt thanks to all of my listeners who make it worth doing, and of course to my wonderful guests. I know it's still rough around the edges, and yes I do plan to record an intro. soon and even add some music. Who knows, maybe I'll even figure out a real backdrop and a way to keep the chickens quiet. But all in all, I think the content itself has been pretty awesome if I do say so myself. So thanks again, get ready for some incredible guests and topics in the coming months, and if you haven't already signed up for updates, please do so here!
Can Urban Yogini defeat the forces of fear and division? Find out in the Christmas installment in the Adventures of Urban Yogini: A superhero who can't use violence.
Order from me directly (BretigneATgmailDOTcom), this week only, and you can get the Special Dystopian Christmas Price of only $8.00 (includes shipping within the continental US)!
This week ONLY, I'll be offering signed copies of Annabel Pickering and the Sky Pirates, and Urban Yogini: A Superhero Who Can't Use Violence, at special discounted prices. Because... you know... Christmas and everything.
To get the special price, you just need to email me directly (BretigneATgmailDOTcom).
"Annabel" normally sells for $14.99 on Amazon - the special price (this week ONLY!) will be $10.00, including shipping within the continental US.
"Urban Yogini" is normally $17.88 on Amazon - this week's price is $15.00, including shipping within the continental US.
And "Urban Yogini, the Christmas Episode" is normally $9.45 on Amazon - this week, it is $8.00, including shipping within the continental US.
Again, you need to email me directly to get the discounts, and yes, I can give a slightly bigger discount for bulk purchases!
People should be free.
People should be free to live their own lives. To decorate their homes as they choose, to plant their gardens, to run their own businesses. They should be free to read the books they want to and laugh at the jokes they want to. To grow their own food, to follow the recipes their grandmothers gave them, to eat and drink and smoke what they like. To choose for themselves what goes into their own bodies and those of their children–and what does not. To buy and sell what they like, and to trade with whomever they choose. They should be able to raise their children as they see fit, to wear the clothes that make them happy, and enjoy the quirky jokes and references that only they and their spouse, or their sister, or their best friend, get.
Every little bit of that is put in peril by the institution of the state.
Maybe not for your family, maybe not even in your neighborhood. But somewhere in the world, the government you think of as "yours" is terrorizing someone else's family. And somewhere, the state that rules over that family (if they don't live where you do) is terrorizing someone else's. Through war, or through economic sanctions, through laws that criminalize non-criminal actions, or just through brute force when they get in the way.
It's what states do.
This battle for civilization–to restore it, to preserve it, to try to make it so that our children and grandchildren get to live in peace–it is for the most part a battle between human beings and the institution of the state.
Words and ideas are some of the state's most powerful weapons, and it uses them against all of us. In the country where I live, it has done a phenomenal job of teaching nearly everyone from a very young age that the state is good and necessary. That policemen are your friends, that democratically elected politicians are your representatives, that sometimes markets "fail" and must be replaced by the state. Above all, it instills the belief that the state–some form of people ruling over other people–is necessary. That civilization could not flourish without it.
I almost wrote "teaching everyone." I had to go back and correct it. Because it's not "everyone." It's nearly everyone, but it is not everyone. And that is critical, because not only did not "everyone" go to their schools, even many of those who did go to their schools and take in their lessons, didn't properly assimilate all of the beliefs they were supposed to.
It's the "nearly" that I'm interested in.
That–possibly very small, possibly not so small–number of people who can see and think for themselves. Who understand for themselves the difference between right and wrong, who don't need to have anyone else tell them that it is wrong to make another person your slave, or to lock another person in a cell when they have harmed no-one.
That's who I think of as the audience for my podcast ("What Then Must We Do?") You might call what I'm doing "preaching to the choir", but that's not it. I'm looking to reach the people who already recognize the problem, and who want to do something about it.
These are also the people I'll have on as guests. I'll be asking them about the things they are doing in the service of peaceful, civilized coexistence. We won't always agree on the solutions, and we probably won't even always see the problem in exactly the same way. But we all have a commitment to creating a world where people can just live in peace and freedom.
Maybe none of us is powerful enough to defeat the violence that is the state. Maybe even together we are not enough. But I am certain that if there is any hope for us at all, it lies entirely with this group of people.
Oh, and if I sound a little elitist, as if I think the "Non-Nearlys" are somehow inferior to the "Nearlys"… well, yes, I do. I do think that thinking for oneself is superior to not thinking for oneself. I also think that great masses of people who don't do much thinking for themselves, who don't have their own moral compasses, are one of the most deadly threats to all of humanity, and always have been.
But here's the thing about being among the "Nearly" (or, as Albert Jay Nock called them, the Remnant): it is a choice. Anyone can choose to start questioning what they have been taught their whole life. Anyone can choose to listen to their own conscience over the values and opinions that are fed to them by the people and institutions around them. Anyone can do this.
"What then must we do?" I honestly don't know. The forces arrayed against individual human beings just living their own lives as they choose seem more powerful and more entrenched than ever before. So, do I know how to change that? To defeat the people and institutions that wish to (and do) rule over us? No, I don't. But I do believe that between us–between all of the "Nearly"–we can figure this out.
Back in March, Kirkus Reviews had a profile of me, in which I discuss my writing, my life, and especially Annabel. You can check it out here.
From the profile:
In Annabel Pickering and the Sky Pirates: The Fantastical Contraption, 13-year-old Annabel, a latter-day Pippi Longstocking, gets ensnared in a battle between authoritarians and freedom fighters after her parents are kidnapped by the police, who turn out to be the bad guys. She finds herself assisted in her own escape by rebel pirates, who turn out to be the good guys.
Bretigne Shaffer, a journalist who has turned to full-time fiction writing, considers themes of betrayal in Annabel Pickering. The middle-grade adventure book follows Annabel’s steam-powered adventures, which transport her from an elite girls’ school to the rule-breaking world of buccaneers. Set in an alternate 19th-century England—illustrated via Florian Garbay’s black-and-white images—Shaffer explores Annabel’s psychological changes as she sees loved ones’ darker sides. Shaffer explains that she wanted to show children the “nature of empire and war, freedom of speech and thought, [and] how prohibition affects society.” She also, she admits, is interested in pirates, having briefly written about piracy in the South China Sea in her past life as a journalist.
In Shaffer’s novel, which Kirkus calls “an engaging introduction to a world of wonder and intrigue,” children are brought up to respect the queen and the near-autocratic rule she enforces over her kingdom. When Annabel’s parents are abducted, she manages to evade capture and takes refuge with eccentric spinster Miss Doubtweather. Eventually Annabel, Miss Doubtweather, and her niece escape with the band of ill-mannered, law-breaking, fabulously brave pirates.
As Annabel’s understanding of the complexities of intellectual and social freedom evolve and she learns that her kidnapped parents were part of a secret society of freethinkers, she begins to view them as moral heroes. This is heady stuff for middle graders, but Shaffer makes it accessible and age-appropriate. It’s also, she believes, essential for younger readers, particularly American ones, to think about the price individuals and societies pay when respect for authority turns into reverence.
I'm not complaining. Annabel has been getting mostly really great reviews (including the ones here and here.) But I saw a new review on Amazon a few days ago, and it just made me sad. When I was writing Annabel, I knew the book wasn't going to be for everyone. No book is. I knew that some would enjoy it and some would not, and even that it might piss a few people off. Some, I'm sure, won't even make it past the dedication.
But I wasn't expecting this. I wasn't expecting to feel that it had hurt anyone. Yet here this is:
Sad story-wasn't for me:
The main girl (Annabel) gets bullied by people she thinks are her friends. There are a couple other characters that are deemed "crazy" by everyone. Lots of bullying going on. Not a story my 11 year old daughter enjoyed.
All of these things are true, of course. But, at least in my mind (I know, I'm not the reader, so it doesn't really matter what I intended), they are laying the groundwork for the very positive things that come later. That doesn't matter though, because now I've made someone sad - and it looks like her 11-year-old daughter too. So now I'm sad.
I wasn't prepared for this.
Hitler Learns that Sweden is Doing Fine.
The effort to control the narrative about Covid-19 is failing miserably, and poor Adolf is upset.
Annabel (and also me) is featured on Kirkus Reviews today. Check it out here.
Bretigne Shaffer, a journalist who has turned to full-time fiction writing, considers themes of betrayal in Annabel Pickering. The middle-grade adventure book follows Annabel’s steam-powered adventures, which transport her from an elite girls’ school to the rule-breaking world of buccaneers. Set in an alternate 19th-century England—illustrated via Florian Garbay’s black-and-white images—Shaffer explores Annabel’s psychological changes as she sees loved ones’ darker sides. Shaffer explains that she wanted to show children the “nature of empire and war, freedom of speech and thought, [and] how prohibition affects society.” She also, she admits, is interested in pirates, having briefly written about piracy in the South China Sea in her past life as a journalist.
Cowboy Bob is having a tough time.
It's an economic crisis, and he's trying to explain to people why laws against "price gouging" are not a good idea, how they don't help people but actually make things worse.
And it's not easy.
Cowboy Bob is one of the characters from my book, Urban Yogini: The Christmas Episode. He roams the country, educating people about basic principles of economics. Kind of like Johnny Appleseed, but for thinking.
I wrote the first Urban Yogini book back in 2014/2015, and I wrote this one in 2017. They both seem remarkably relevant to events happening now, if I do say so myself.
Please join me tomorrow (Wednesday, March 25th) when I'll be talking about ALL of my children's and teens' books, on the Freedom Hub Working Group webinar, at 4:00pm Eastern Time. You can sign up to listen and ask me questions about teaching liberty through literature, right here.