EXIT Podcast

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Jeremy Kauffman is the founder of the Free State Party in New Hampshire. He organizes libertarians in New Hampshire through schools, community centers, homeschool pods, and other parallel structures, while encouraging them to engage in politics through the Republican Party. He presided over a recent (hilarious) campaign to disband the Libertarian Party.

We had him on the EXIT Q&A to discuss practical power, coalition politics, narrative strategy, and multi-generational community-building.

Topics:

* “Playing the heel” and expanding the Overton Window so that others can quietly accumulate power

* Managing relationships between establishment Republicans and libertarians

* Free State Party’s policy priorities, and concessions his people have won in New Hampshire politics

* Picking winnable fights in state/local politics

* Mobilizing small numbers of dedicated, competent people to outsized effect

* Building density of like-minded families to build healthy peer groups

EXIT News

* Weekly Full Group Call

* This week (10/6) we heard from Douglass Mackey on facing prosecution for memes, declining a pardon, and courage under fire.

* Next week (10/13), we will welcome Joshua Sheats to discuss his efforts to build a Great House, his homeschool curriculum, etc.

* The following week (10/20) we will welcome The Good Ol’ Boyz (Bog Beef & Maarek) to discuss the future of the GOP and finding opportunities for our friends.

* EXIT Events:

* 10/09, Austin: Annual EXIT Retreat. Jonathan has reserved an Airbnb in the Texas Hill Country for our third annual Austin weekend. Steak dinner, private tour of a MAHA intentional community southwest of town, hiking at Pedernales Falls State Park. (Members only.)

* 10/17, Dallas: Constitutional Action Beautification Event. EXIT and Constitutional Action are getting together to clean up a neglected cemetery in Oak Cliff. Sign up here to join us.

* 10/29, New York: EXIT + Passage Press Halloween Party. Join EXIT and Passage Press for a Halloween party at Pubkey in Manhattan.

* 11/07, Dallas: Manifest Destiny Ball. EXIT families across Texas are getting together for a black-tie event to celebrate our heritage and look toward our common future. (Members only.)

* 11/13, Salt Lake City: The Great American Weekender. In collaboration with Delphica, Frontier Magazine, and IM-1776, EXIT is hosting a weekend salon here in Salt Lake City. RSVP here.

* 11/21, Orem: Paideia Buildathon. We are hosting a youth AI buildathon — getting teens to build their own games, websites, etc. Sponsored by OpenAI. Admission is free. Sign up here.

* Monthly private dinner meetups for EXIT members (members can check chat.exitgroup.us or monthly internal newsletter for details):

* 10/10, Houston, TX

* 10/10, Phoenix, AZ

* 10/16, Atlanta GA

* 10/16, Washington, DC

* 10/17, Columbus, OH

* 10/19, Dallas, TX

* 10/24, St. Louis, MO

* Events with Friends of EXIT:

* 10/10, Knoxville: FORUM event + Football watch party. Join Mass Deportation Coalition and FORUM for a discussion of immigration policy with Ryan Neuhaus and Greg Bovino, followed by a watch party for the Vols game. RSVP here.

* 10/10, St. Louis: American Fiction Event. Join Oyarsa for an evening of readings feat. Theodore Judson of ARK Press, author of Fitzpatrick’s War and The Timerman, and John Jay Stancliff of Farthest Heaven, author of FEDBOOK. RSVP here.

* 10/19, Nashville: Peter Thiel Lecture Series with Pamphleteer. Dr. Bennett will be attending the fourth and final lecture of the series. RSVP here.

* 10/21, New York: Michael Anton book signing event. Reign (formerly Sovereign House) is hosting Michael Anton to discuss and sign his new book, Studies in Machiavellian Political Philosophy. RSVP here.

* 10/24, Atlanta: 1903 Club Exclusive Dinner Featuring Andrew Isker. Andrew will be speaking on his new book, “The Seed of Abraham.” Private four course dinner. Jacket required, ties encouraged. RSVP here.

[nothing below paywall — paywall is for access to full video conversation]

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit blog.exitgroup.us

Mike Shelby is a former military intelligence officer, contractor, author, EXIT man, and Founder and CEO of Forward Observer, a private intelligence service. The second edition of his book, The Area Intelligence Handbook, is scheduled for release later this month.

Starting this quarter, EXIT is collecting area studies from all over the country — starting with Mike’s book as a template — to identify targets for prosocial action between now and 2028.

Last month, Constitutional Action hosted Mike at the American Fork Veteran’s Hall, to discuss how ordinary Americans can bring their friends and neighbors together to push back against radical leftist organizing in their communities.

Notes:

0:00 Welcome & Constitutional Action intro5:35 Counter-organizing framework11:55 Low-intensity conflict explained16:00 Viet Minh organizing strategy21:31 Three sources of power25:39 Conditioned power & motivation29:25 The Campaign41:45 Next Steps

We had about 80 people turn out to hear Mike speak, and signed up 38 new members of Constitutional Action. (You can join us at constitutionalaction.org.)

At Mike’s request, his presentation is paywalled in full.

Become a paid subscriber now to receive this and other EXIT content, including full recordings of our Tuesday night Q&As. Upcoming Q&A guests include Curtis Yarvin, Jeremy Carl, Blake Masters, Ron Dodson, Kevin DeAnna, and more.

If you want to join us in building fraternity and organizing for power in your community, you can apply for full membership at exitgroup.us.

EXIT News

* Weekly Full Group Call

* This week (9/29), we had our Q3 Review/Q4 Preview and discussed the overall vision of EXIT.

* Next week (10/6) we will hear from Douglass Mackey on facing prosecution for memes, declining a pardon, and courage under fire.

* The following week (10/13), we will welcome Joshua Sheats to discuss his efforts to build a Great House, his homeschool curriculum, etc.

* EXIT Events:

* 10/09, Austin: Annual EXIT Retreat. Jonathan has reserved an Airbnb in the Texas Hill Country for our third annual Austin weekend. Steak dinner, private tour of a MAHA intentional community southwest of town, hiking at Pedernales Falls State Park. (Members only.)

* 10/17, Dallas: Constitutional Action Beautification Event. EXIT and Constitutional Action are getting together to clean up a neglected cemetery in Oak Cliff. Sign up here to join us.

* 10/29, New York: EXIT + Passage Press Halloween Party. Join EXIT and Passage Press for a Halloween party at Pubkey in Manhattan.

* 11/07, Dallas: Manifest Destiny Ball. EXIT families across Texas are getting together for a black-tie event to celebrate our heritage and look toward our common future. (Members only.)

* 11/13, Salt Lake City: The Great American Weekender. In collaboration with Delphica, Frontier Magazine, and IM-1776, EXIT is hosting a weekend salon here in Salt Lake City. RSVP here.

* 11/21, Orem: Paideia Buildathon. We are hosting a youth AI buildathon — getting teens to build their own games, websites, etc. Sponsored by OpenAI. Admission is free. Sign up here.

* Monthly private dinner meetups for EXIT members (members can check chat.exitgroup.us or monthly internal newsletter for details):

* 10/3 Orem, UT

* 10/9, Nashville, TN

* 10/10, Houston, TX

* 10/10, Phoenix, AZ

* 10/16, Atlanta GA

* 10/16, Washington, DC

* 10/17, Columbus, OH

* 10/19, Dallas, TX

* 10/24, St. Louis, MO

* Events with Friends of EXIT:

* 10/08, Singapore: Network State Conference. Third annual Network State Conference in Singapore with Balaji Srinivasan. Streamable. RSVP here.

* 10/10, Knoxville: FORUM event + Football watch party. Join Mass Deportation Coalition and FORUM for a discussion of immigration policy with Ryan Neuhaus and Greg Bovino, followed by a watch party for the Vols game. RSVP here.

* 10/10, St. Louis: American Fiction Event. Join Oyarsa for an evening of readings feat. Theodore Judson of ARK Press, author of Fitzpatrick's War and The Timerman, and John Jay Stancliff of Farthest Heaven, author of FEDBOOK. RSVP here.

* 10/19, Nashville: Peter Thiel Lecture Series with Pamphleteer. Dr. Bennett will be attending the fourth and final lecture of the series. RSVP here.

* 10/21, New York: Michael Anton book signing event. Reign (formerly Sovereign House) is hosting Michael Anton to discuss and sign his new book, Studies in Machiavellian Political Philosophy. RSVP here.

* 10/24, Atlanta: 1903 Club Exclusive Dinner Featuring Andrew Isker. Andrew will be speaking on his new book, “The Seed of Abraham.” Private four course dinner. Jacket required, ties encouraged. RSVP here.

[nothing below paywall]

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit blog.exitgroup.us

John Del is a writer at Steadermen and Junior Ganymede; a long-time EXIT man, fourth in a six-generation natalist project, and patriarch of a family of “debt-free tattooless virgins who love Jesus and their Dad.”

Basically, he has some extremely important problems figured out, and we wanted to talk about how.

Topics:

* The myth of “adolescent rebellion”

* Homes as center…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit blog.exitgroup.us

Today is Pioneer Day — a perfect occasion to release our extended conversation with Orania CEO Joost Strydom.

People discouraged with the political situation in the West will often lament that “there are still libtards in South Africa” — but Orania demonstrates how much can be built even under a regime as corrupt, and incompetent, and openly hostile as S…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit blog.exitgroup.us

Alex Petkas of The Cost of Glory Podcast and The Classical Society joins us to discuss Lycurgus, the primordial lawgiver of Sparta, and what we can learn from him about the birth (or rebirth) of a nation.

Alex’s Presentation (free to listen):

* Why Madison invoked Lycurgus in Federalist 38 to defend a Constitution penned behind closed doors

* Lycurgus’ sacrificial leader…

Ben Wilson runs the How To Take Over The World podcast. He is also an OG EXIT Man, and my co-founder at Constitutional Action — which began over steaks at the Utah Valley EXIT meetup.

Ben’s podcast focuses on great men of history, and the lessons we can draw from their lives in achieving our own ambitions.

EXIT is a fraternity dedicated to shorting managerial systems, and building the human institutions that come next. Learn more here:

Too often, the study of history devolves into materialist analysis — human outcomes unfolding deterministically, according to iron physical and economic laws. It locks analytical thinkers into the belief that nothing can change, nothing can be done, that individual human agency is irrelevant.

Like so many things, history can be either a tool that makes you powerful, or an excuse that makes you weaker.

Ben has spent years gathering practical insight from history as the biography of heroes and villains — asking in every episode, “How did this extraordinary man find solutions to the problems of his time? What did he see that no one else saw? What did he do that no one else was doing?”

In this podcast, we discuss the opportunities that lie in volatility.

Ben uses the examples of Napoleon, Alexander Hamilton, and John D. Rockefeller to illustrate:

* Why great men crave volatility: because it shatters moribund hierarchies and opens the way for new growth

* How great men use volatility: how they exploit new frontiers and patiently prepare for opportunities

* How great men survive volatility: how they measure risk, maintain discipline, and choose when to strike

We also discuss our plans for Constitutional Action: why we have to build now for the political and social changes that we can all see coming, and why Constitutional Action is the way to contest the regime’s legitimacy.

EXIT News

* Weekly Full Group Calls (Tuesday nights, 9PM ET/6PM PT)

* This week (5/26) we heard from EXIT man Nick on Boomer Whispering — how to find common ground and build what we need to build with our boomers (we love our boomers, we have the best boomers) in politics and business.

* Next week (6/2) we will have our Investment Showcase, with EXIT men presenting startups and projects for which they are seeking investment. (EXIT makes no endorsement of any of these projects, presentations are for educational and entertainment purposes only, everyone must do their own research and risk assessment.)

* The following week (6/9) we will hear from Kevin Daley and Davis Hunt on political action in Nashville. Davis is the founder of Pamphleteer, and has organized excellent events to connect aligned people, including the Erik Prince Q&A with IM-1776.

* EXIT Member Events (see group chat for details):

* 5/30: Utah Valley Constitutional Action Beautification Event

* 6/4: San Francisco Meetup

* 6/5: Stanford Meetup

* 6/6: North Bay Meetup

* 6/6: Utah Valley Meetup

* 6/12: Nashville Meetup

* 6/13: Houston Meetup

* 6/13: Budapest Meetup

* 6/15: Dallas Meetup

* 6/19: Atlanta Meetup

* 6/19: Denver Meetup

* 6/20: Columbus Meetup

* 6/27: Salt Lake City Passage Press Event

* 6/27: St. Louis Meetup

Subscriber Events (RSVP below):

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit blog.exitgroup.us/subscribe

The Free State Party invited me to speak at their event in Manchester, New Hampshire this week.

It was a chance to pitch what we’re doing and why to a crowd that was values-aligned, but not steeped in exactly the same memetic environment.

The “elevator pitch” for this thing is difficult, because you have to question so many premises and dispute so many definitions.

I could feel that they liked certain things that I was saying, but I was not quite establishing the connective tissue that made it all hang together: Managerialism [“what is that”], and therefore natalism [“what is that”], and therefore Great Houses [“what is that”], and therefore fraternity [“what is that”], and therefore entrepreneurship [“oh, ok”].

People recognize that family formation has collapsed, politics are out of control, they don’t live in the country they thought they did. It’s a relatively short walk from there to “liberalism as runaway civilizational entropy”.

But then to point to “where it all went wrong,” and what can be built that will survive the crisis, you have to cover some pretty difficult ground.

It’s not enough to say “we have to go back to 1950” (or 1650, or 600 BC) — that can’t be done.

In order to build for the future, you have to think about what civilization is doing, and why it has gone awry, and what is worth trying to save as we pass through this catastrophic historical bottleneck.

Preparing for the Free State Party event was a great exercise, because it forced me to re-examine the chain of thought that brought us here — but because I hadn’t accurately mapped out the conceptual distance between us ahead of time, I don’t think I was able to communicate to that room exactly what I intended.

So the above podcast is my attempt to do that plumbing a little more carefully. I still don’t have a pithy, 30-second pitch that gets people nodding along — and maybe that’s just not possible for this — but the essence is that we have to rebuild the engine of civilization, starting with family and fraternity.

The prompt they gave me was to discuss “iteration”: which is distinct from replication.

Our goal cannot be to rewind and replicate some prior civilization — nor can you replicate your own genetics or attitudes or worldview with any fidelity (and it would not be worth doing if you could.)

Instead, you have to cultivate people who cultivate themselves — fellow creators. (This is the actual meaning of the word “culture” — yet another term that has to be redefined.)

You have to recognize the children you raise, not as extensions of yourself, but as conscious, embodied expressions of what you love and value: works of living art. And then you have to build the economic, cultural, and political machinery that allows them to build families that reflect their highest loves and ideals (which, again, will not be — and should not be — exactly your own. The art is to beget artists.)

This deliberate approach to life and culture — life as art — is a matter of survival, because family formation has become an expensive and increasingly unusual “lifestyle choice”. You have to supply some compelling vision, or your children simply won’t do it.

In other words: your family (and humanity at large) is going to consciously orient toward a shared vision of glory and beauty, or it is going to end.

EXIT is a fraternity dedicated to shorting managerial systems, and building the human institutions that come next.

EXIT News

* Weekly Full Group Calls (Tuesday nights, 9PM ET/6PM PT)

* This Tuesday (5/19), we had our Member Q&A with Joost Strydom, CEO of Orania. A deeply inspiring discussion of the community they have built, against all odds, in South Africa. Full recording coming soon.

* Next week (5/26) we will hear from EXIT man Nick on Boomer Whispering — how to find common ground and build what we need to build with our boomers (we love our boomers, we have the best boomers) in politics and business.

* The following week (6/2) we will have our Investment Showcase, with EXIT men presenting startups and projects for which they are seeking investment. (EXIT makes no endorsement of any of these projects, presentations are for educational and entertainment purposes only, everyone must do their own research and risk assessment.)

* Events

* 5/30: Utah Valley Constitutional Action Beautification Event

* 6/5: San Jose Meetup

* 6/6: San Francisco Lunch

* 6/19: Denver Meetup

* 6/27: Salt Lake City Passage Press Event

Links to EXIT cocktail hours in San Francisco (6/5) and Denver (6/19) available to supporting subscribers here.

EXIT cocktail hours are the best way to get to know the guys in your area, and decide if full membership in the group is right for you.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit blog.exitgroup.us/subscribe

Below is my speech from Constitutional Action at the American Fork Veterans’ Hall, April 30th.

At last month’s meeting, we presented a historical model for what is happening in Utah, & how we got here — and I made the case that we need a state government willing to defend its citizens and their rights under the Constitution, instead of using the letter of the law as an excuse to ignore the spirit.

The question that I hope it raised in your minds is, how do we get there? Can we get there?

I’m here tonight to tell you that we can.

EXIT is a fraternity dedicated to shorting managerial systems and building the human institutions that come next. Learn more here:

I suspect most of you are here because, like me, you feel like you’re going a little bit crazy.

You grew up in a state that was arguably the most cohesive and functional place, in a much more cohesive and functional country.

Now, you’re watching as the Republican state government sells your home out from under you in a hundred procedural ways.

The Republican state legislature and governor appointed a single “expert” (who happened to be a radical leftist activist) to assess the performance of every judge in the state.

This year, through the Better Boundaries initiative, Republicans have handed one of those leftist judges the authority to unilaterally redraw our Congressional districts, creating a radical socialist seat in Salt Lake City.

That seat was just won at the Democratic state convention by Liban Mohamed, thanks to a Somali ethnic political machine that the Republican Party willfully imported, along with tens of thousands of “refugees” and hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, all protected by de facto sanctuary policies.

After decades of work by Republican lawmakers, Salt Lake City is as violent, depraved, and dysfunctional as any blue state capital, with the flag of the big gay empire hanging from every parapet — and every year, the tumor spreads further into the suburbs.

The Utah Board of Higher Education, hand-picked by the Republican governor, runs the leftist indoctrination factory where Charlie Kirk was assassinated. The State Board of Education — which is elected by the voters and is 88% Republican — employs the same insane Bolshevik teachers as every other public school system in America.

Again, this is the third most Republican state in the country — effectively a one-party state — and they are consciously, deliberately, systematically working to replicate the squalor and corruption of San Francisco or Minneapolis.

Maybe ordinary liberals in the 90s could not have anticipated how bad it would get — but how perverse would you have to be to walk into this with your eyes open?

Supporting newsletter subscribers receive access to our full library of paywalled member Q&As, and invites to local EXIT cocktail hours. You can also subscribe for free to get EXIT updates in your inbox.

But when you try to explain this to your friends and neighbors, they have no idea what you’re talking about.

The people who are doing this are world-class at evading responsibility, maintaining a stable decline, and keeping up appearances.

The trajectory of our state looks dramatic if you can remember what life was like ten years ago — but that’s just not how the median voter operates.

They’ll say, sure, Salt Lake County is a mess, but all cities are liberal — you can always move another 15 minutes out into the suburbs. Sure, the schools are bad, but you can apply for a charter school. Sure, there’s a drug problem, but not for you and me, not for our kids, right? Sure, houses are getting unaffordable, but that’s a pretty cool deal if you refinanced at 2.9% five years ago. Nothing a little conservative personal responsibility can’t solve. It’s not that bad, you can fly above it. Maybe you should get offline and touch grass.

And even if you convince your friend that these problems are real, what are they supposed to do? Are we supposed to vote for Republicans harder?

And then you get into a much trickier conversation. At a certain point you have to acknowledge that actually, the Republicans are the ones doing this to us.

Why?

Because the Republican Party’s purpose is to slowly fail.

In frontier America, including in the Utah territory, the federal government employed Indian Agents. These agents were sent to establish official relations with the local Indians — to create a formal channel that the Indians were supposed to follow if they had a grievance with the settlers or the government.

Of course, the intent of federal policy was always to move in and expropriate the Indians — but the Indian Agent’s job was to create the illusion of a diplomatic process — to continually make promises they couldn’t keep, to vent political energy, to prevent alternative constituencies from forming.

Today, that’s the Republican Party’s job: to negotiate the terms of your surrender.

The party recruits ambitious men who want a career in politics. They ensure that those careers depend on the national party infrastructure, the donor networks, and the consultant class. These are people who like making friends, and making money, and being taken out to lunch.

It is extremely cozy — for now — to be a Utah Republican politician who does not make waves. And not only that, the media will fawn over you, and tell you what a hero you are for abetting the rape of your country.

Now, the Plains Indians were in an impossible situation, hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned — but our puzzle is, Heritage Americans are still more than half the country, and the overwhelming majority in Utah. They’re way more than half the police and armed forces. Our Indian Agents tend to be local boys — and from what I’ve seen, we’re not sending our best.

Nothing about this feels inevitable.

How did they convince us to do this to ourselves?

Anti-Soviet dissidents in the Eastern Bloc faced the same confusion. The Soviets repressed the population with military force, but the actual officers and bureaucrats, the functionaries of the regime in East Germany were mostly East Germans; Poles in Poland, Hungarians in Hungary.

In his essay, Power of the Powerless, Vaclav Havel talks about the greengrocer who hangs his “Workers of the World Unite” poster in the shop window — not because he’s a committed Communist, but because it’s simply what you do — and if you didn’t do it, it would be noticed.

Do you remember the black square thing, during BLM?

That whole operation was designed around the scrolling grid of an Instagram feed — the whole grid was supposed to be blacked out, so that if anyone was saying anything else, it would stick out, and you could mob them and berate them for not complying.

According to Havel, the greengrocer is not expressing a political opinion. What he’s saying is: “I, the greengrocer, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.”

If that doesn’t sound like Utah.

It’s stunning how much of Havel’s essay, written in the Brezhnev era of the declining Soviet Union, maps to what we experience today, from the hypocritical language of human rights, to the judicial corruption, to the underhanded methods of punishing dissent — by threatening your job or your education, encouraging petty harassment, and so forth. It’s almost one-for-one — except instead of being conquered by Soviet tanks, we somehow voted for this.

How did they convince us to do this to ourselves?

Well, we talked a bit about how that happened last month — how the federal conquest of Utah created an institutional anxiety to conform — a tyranny of the people, by the people.

But the question now is, how do you break people of that?

You’ve tried talking to your friends and neighbors, and you’ve seen how that has gone. It’s easy to get discouraged.

But go read Havel’s essay. Havel was a playwright — he ran little gatherings smaller than this one, under a far more heavy-handed regime, with a much more openly corrupt political and legal system — and he won. Havel was the first elected president of Czechoslovakia.

I’ve spent the last five years — since we started EXIT — studying any parallel movement that I thought might have anything to teach us.

How did Havel go from being an underground essayist, running little reading groups and secret university classes, to taking the Presidency almost unopposed in 1989?

How did Lech Walesa go from being an electrician in an illegal trade union, to executing a 12-million-man general strike that crippled the Soviet government and ended the occupation of Poland?

How did the Founding Fathers go from anon poasters to fielding a conventional army and beating down the most powerful empire on the planet?

Some of you are anon poasters. Maybe you’ve been talking about politics on the internet for a long time, and from here that kind of victory may seem far away.

It feels like ideas don’t matter — it doesn’t matter how clear it is, or how right you are — your grandma is still going to vote for Spencer Cox, and Spencer Cox (or someone just like him, he’s not the point, there’s a thousand of them) is going to make sure that your dispossession is orderly, quiet, and complete.

But if your model of victory is that your grandma needs to get redpilled, you need to understand: that’s just not what politics is — neither transformative politics, nor even ordinary get-out-the-vote politics.

It’s not that ideas don’t matter, or that poasting never leads to power: in fact, almost all parallel movements start with poasting. The Founding Fathers had their pamphleteering, the Soviet dissidents had samizdat, the Ayatollah smuggled cassette tapes.

But the Founding Fathers didn’t win by getting the median American colonist to read their essays on political theory.

They won by mobilizing an energetic and dedicated minority to contest the regime’s legitimacy, and then contest its sovereignty — and that’s what politics is.

Each of these parallel movements began by building fraternal, economic, and social institutions among a small group of like-minded people, to replace the public square that repression had hollowed out.

They formed book clubs, neighborhood watches, mutual aid societies, trade unions, underground universities — they got to know and trust each other by building things that they knew their community needed. That’s what EXIT is doing as a fraternal organization, and Constitutional Action is the logical next step.

You don’t break the greengrocer’s habit of obedience by getting him to read your Substack. You break his habit of obedience by showing him an alternative way of life, by proving to him that he does not have to lie.

That’s what it means to contest the regime’s legitimacy — you contest its status as the default, because the greengrocer, or your grandma, is always going to do the default thing.

And the methods that a movement uses to contest legitimacy are, by definition, moral, lawful, and popular. They have to be, because that’s what legitimacy is.

You have to demonstrate, by doing what the regime purports to do, and promises to do, that all its compromises, all its hypocrisies, all its excuses for inaction, are lies.

President Bukele didn’t just call the Right in El Salvador cowards and hypocrites — he proved that they were cowards and hypocrites by doing in a matter of months what they said could never be done.

They said that attacking El Salvador’s crime and gang problem would be too unpopular, it would collapse the economy, it would trigger international sanctions, it would start a civil war.

Bukele showed the world that those politicians weren’t letting it happen because they were prudent or high-minded or pragmatic — and they sure as hell weren’t thinking about the rights of their citizens — they were just on the take. And now he is the most popular head of state in the world by far. But he couldn’t just say it — he had to prove it.

Lech Walesa was able to mobilize 12 million Polish workers because he showed them what it looked like when an institution actually organized and empowered workers — and by doing that, he showed them just how fraudulent the communists were. He broke the back of the regime’s legitimacy — but not just with a criticism. He had to show them.

I don’t know if you’ve read your county’s Republican Party platform, but it’s actually pretty good.

In Havel’s words: ”If an outside observer who knew nothing at all about life in Czechoslovakia were to study only its laws, he would be utterly incapable of understanding what we were complaining about.”

The Republican Party claims to believe in states resisting Federal power in accordance with the Tenth Amendment. They claim to believe in self-defense, traditional marriage, secure elections, public safety, and parents rights in education. They claim to oppose illegal immigration, birthright citizenship, and benefits for illegal aliens.

Now — you live in a state completely controlled by these people, from top to bottom — but they tell you that the reason you can’t have literally anything that they claim to want is that your Republican politicians are just that principled, that committed to civic virtue.

Of course that’s a joke — but we have to prove it.

So Constitutional Action is developing candidates for office who will act within their constitutional authority, to demonstrate what is possible in this state.

Anti-communists in Eastern Europe had the idea of life in America, or Munich, or Paris, they had smuggled Japanese electronics and Led Zeppelin albums, to prove that life could be different.

This was a mixed blessing, because it also meant that many people who wanted freedom and vitality simply left the country.

But freedom-loving people all over the nation are watching Utah right now — because for us, there is no Munich or Paris — there is nowhere to run. If we cannot hold the line in Utah, we cannot hold the line anywhere.

But this is also our opportunity. We can make Salt Lake City the most beautiful, vital, free city in the country — the example of what is possible to the whole nation. And we can do it by restoring the principles that made America the City on the Hill in the first place.

And in the meantime, we will do the work as citizens.

Friends who are watching Utah right now are ready to publicize corruption as we expose it.

We will clean up the squalor that the state refuses to clean up, and help the people they refuse to help — and we will document what we find, and ask them publicly, in city council meetings and town halls, why they refuse to help.

We want the people to see — and, just as important, we want you to see — the people with names and faces who are suffering in your state — and the people, with names and faces, who are inviting and intensifying that suffering — sometimes for money, sometimes for much less. We will make them look us in the eye.

We will use state public records law to obtain information that Utah Republicans don’t want publicized, about exactly who is being arrested in our state and who is being released, and for what crimes.

We will investigate fraudulent refugee and homeless initiatives connected to elected officials in the state, and expose the channels by which Utah Republicans get paid to betray their people.

We will monitor public schools and libraries to ensure that they act in harmony with the intent of state law, and we will hold administrators publicly accountable when they cover for abusive and anti-American teachers.

We will phone bank and knock doors to oppose the retention of corrupt judges, and to ensure that Blake Moore is not allowed to sell his Congressional seat to the radical left and then buy another one.

The purpose of all this is to punch a hole in the Republican apparatus of managed decline —

To bring state and national attention to incumbents who are used to doing their work in the dark.

And into that gap, we send our own people — leaders who will act to solve the problems we expose.

We will prove that Utah’s actual values can win, and that our people can govern themselves according to those values — that decline is not inevitable.

We will prove, in fact, as the Eastern Europeans did, that it is our enemies who are on borrowed time: that it is the lying — the absurd lying — that cannot go on forever.

And when it breaks — as lies always break — we will have built a city, and a state, and a people who point the way for America, as America once did for the world.

EXIT News

* Upcoming EXIT Group Calls

* 5/19: Joost Strydom, CEO of Orania, will join us to discuss how they built a parallel polis in South Africa. (2PM ET/11AM PT)

* Please note that this will be an afternoon call, to accommodate Mr. Strydom’s time zone. At the regular time (9PM ET/6PM PT) we will have a postgame members-only conversation, and discuss the establishment of the EXIT HQ/Clubhouse in Utah Valley.

* 5/26: Nick Weil will discuss the art of the Boomer Whisperer

* 6/2: Investment Showcase — an opportunity for EXIT entrepreneurs to give a report on their progress. (If you’d like to be included in the showcase, please reach out ASAP.)

* Events

* 5/16: Washington, DC Meetup

* 5/16: Sandy, UT Hike

* 5/18: New York City Meetup

* 5/18: Dallas Meetup

* 5/19: Manchester, NH Meetup and speaking event with Free State Party

* 5/30: Utah Valley Constitutional Action Beautification Event

* 6/5: San Jose Meetup

* 6/6: San Francisco Lunch

* 6/19: Denver Meetup

* 6/27: Salt Lake City Passage Press Event

Below the paywall here:

Cocktail hour invites for supporting subscribers in:

* Washington DC (5/16)

* Dallas (5/18)

* New York City (5/18)

* Boston (5/19)

* San Francisco (6/5)

* Denver (6/19)

EXIT cocktail hours are the best way to get to know the guys in your area, and decide if full membership in the group is right for you.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit blog.exitgroup.us/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit blog.exitgroup.us

John Carter joins us to discuss:

* Prospects for Alberta secession

* Bilingualism as gibs for Quebec in federal govt

* Why Poilievre was crushed by Mark Carney

* Chinese money laundering in China through banks and casinos

* How the occupational class sells the commons to India, China

* Emergent identity groups forming as geographic borders evaporate

* The blockbusting of Canada

* The role of fraternities and mutual aid societies in post-Westphalian society

EXIT News:

* Weekly Calls:

* This week (4/28), we heard from Alex Petkas on lessons from the founding of Sparta and Rome. Recording coming soon.

* Next week (5/5), we will discuss values-aligned venture capital.

* Constitutional Action meeting in American Fork was a great success — we filled up the veterans’ hall with about 100 people. Video soon to come.

* We will meet again Saturday, May 30th for a neighborhood beautification project in Utah Valley. Sign up here to join Constitutional Action and receive updates.

* Huge thanks to our volunteers, who have already begun assisting with logistics, security, A/V, web design, legal, and more.

* Below the paywall, invites for EXIT subscriber cocktail hours in:

* Washington, DC (5/16)

* New York, NY (5/18)

* Boston, MA (5/19) — JCB speaking at a Free State Party event in Manchester, NH.

* San Francisco (6/5)

* Denver (6/19)

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit blog.exitgroup.us

(Note: We posted this recording last week in error and withdrew it. This is a re-release to ensure that subscribers receive a working link in their inbox.)

Johann Kurtz is the author of Leaving a Legacy and the Becoming Noble Substack. His work, like EXIT’s, is the restoration of the multigenerational family as a sovereign institution — a Great House. He has left his tech job in London and relocated to Romania to write and consult for high-net-worth families full-time.

In this Q&A, we discuss:

* Johann’s relocation to Romania, and Eastern Europe as a place to build

* How his experience in the elite tech world colors his new project

* Why there seems to be so little imagination and ambition among the wealthy

* Categories of patronage that are still alive in high-net-worth circles

* Strategies that have worked in reactivating patronage relationships

The West is in the political and cultural doldrums because wealth has become totally decoupled from vision and ambition. The skills, temperament, and worldview that create great wealth seem almost anticorrelated with the will to change the world.

As the world becomes more volatile, much of this fake wealth and status will either evaporate or change hands. We have to build institutions that capture as many of these existing streams of wealth and power as possible, and convert them into something that will matter on the other side.

Next week, we will discuss Becoming a Pillar of Your Community: power is built by becoming indispensable to real people with names and faces. To join us on the call, apply here:

Below the paywall, Invites for paid subscribers to attend EXIT events in:

* Columbus, OH (4/18)

* Dallas, TX (4/20)

* Chattanooga, TN (4/24)

* American Fork, UT (4/30) — Constitutional Action Speaking Event

* Washington, DC (5/16)

* New York, NY (5/18)

* Boston, MA (5/19)

* San Francisco (6/5)

* Denver (6/27)