Hello, my friend, and welcome to the monetize your voice podcast. It is so good to have you right by my side, James 'Fantastic' Hepler here.  Today we're gonna talk about freedom of speech.  I'm in the United States I've been having was. I'm an American citizen. I was born right here.

I can sit here in my backyard and look about 200 yards from here into the bedroom window that I was born in.  As of this recording, almost three-quarters of a century, I go. And so one of the founding. Principles here in the United States is a thing called freedom of speech. And from my perspective, I think some quarters of our society are trying to either limit that or squelch you.

And    I'm speaking out and I'm doing it in  I'm attempting to do it in a kind caring manner. So I'm going to talk about this in a specific incident that happened to me recently on what is a very hot topic here in America. And I  think it might be a fairly hot topic in most free societies around the globe.

But before I get to that, the freedom of speech and this particular incident, I wanna fill in that. If you go to James fantastic.com, there'll be a little popup window that comes up and you can apply for a 15-minute. Get together. With this young dude, and we will address what you feel is your number one roadblock, to being a confident communicator, to just enjoying communicating, listening, and all those other kinds of things    is a, it's a very complex

Art. That's why we call it the art of communicating confidently. And so if you like to do that, does whip over there to James fantastic.com and all this other stuff will happen. And it's pretty easy. It's pretty easy. So freedom of speech here in America, we have had a debate that's been going on.

For better than two years in regards to COVID and regards to mask wearing and how good masks are, unless they are a certain type of quality mask. And I think the labeling is a K-nine mask. Okay. The letter K H for the number.  Somewhere in that neighborhood, I've got some friends that are in the medical business, and basically, it has been pretty well documented that most other types of cloth masks and handkerchiefs and all that other kind of stuff are pretty, pretty much useless.

Okay. So anyhow. I happen to also have a hearing deficiency. And so  I was at a doctor's office very recently. And of course, here in, America, they are still required to wear a mask. And yes, that. Was a tone of my disagreement in doctor's offices. We can go everywhere else.  And I don't have a problem with anyone who wants to choose to wear a mask.

That's what freedom is about, but don't tell me, or dictate to me that I gotta wear a mask particularly. Those that there's pretty much scientific aspect behind it, that they are worthless play is simply worthless. So anyhow, I'm in doing the registration part of things. And of course, the lady on the other side has a mask on.

And I said   I'm having a problem understanding you. And I just commented that  I don't think that these masks serve too much purpose.  I may even have said, I think they're useless.  The lady next door to her who had nothing to do with the conversation, it jumps up and starts kinda overhauling me.

Look da. And we lost two people in our staff to COVID and this, that, and the other thing. And  I'm relatively certain that first of all, this person was not of American heritage. I think she came to this country. Quite recently, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Not a problem because that's what America is about.

There's the melting pot. However I said to her, look, ma'am, I'm just expressing my thought. I believe in freedom of speech. I do not agree with asking you to agree with what my thought is. And I just, I wanna have an open conversation, but I am not gonna shut.  If I feel that masks are useless, particularly  I had a cloth mask on and  I could tell the lady that you know, was taking care of me just by looking at her eyes that she was thinking, yeah dude you may hav