Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:20 — 22.7MB)
NOTE: This is kinda long, which is why I split the blog posts up into 4 parts. But if you want to read the whole thing at once (it’s 20 pages), you can download the PDF via this link or grab it from Smashwords.com (free) for any kind of e-reader by clicking on this link. You can also listen to the whole thing via the MP3 player above, or the YouTube player below. – Frank
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I’ve gone through a lot of different seasons in my life. College baseball player, U.S. Army paratrooper, cellar manager for a wine auction shop, hospital administrator, voice-over talent, and more. But what I always did, in all seasons, through any weather so to speak, was write. Writing has been a life-long love affair that just refuses to burn out. It’s something I’ve loved doing since I was a little kid. So, I knew that my life mission would have to be literature-oriented. The question was how to manifest that in a realistic way to earn a living. Enter the Kindle and the 2011-era e-book revolution of Amanda Hocking, John Locke, Joe Konrath, and others. It quickly became clear to me that I needed to become an entrepreneur and publish my own novels as an “indie publisher.” I had run The Whirligig by myself for 6 years, after all, and turned it into one of the most respected underground literary publications going. So, I was going to have to do something similar with this new publishing venture. “Whirligig Media” it would be called—that much I knew, but not much else at that point.
To maintain an income base, I needed to enhance my day-job professional credentials, so I decided to embark on a long, 4-exam process which would protect me somewhat in the professional marketplace. This would be so grueling that I knew I couldn’t sacrifice any more time or brain cells to alcohol, so I decided to keep not drinking, at least until it was over. I also needed to boost my overall health, so I searched for a nutritional plan that might help me lose those stubborn thirty pounds or so that were becoming more than a minor nuisance. That was when I found The 4-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss. Highly recommended for life-changing body transformation.
I stayed sober, lost 35 pounds by following the Ferriss formula, passed all 4 excruciatingly difficult exams, started “Whirligig Media” and published 4 of my e-books, including my debut novel, Almost Home in 2011. In addition, I published 1 audiobook and 34 audiostories and poems, acquired an official USPTO trademark, gained over 7,700 Twitter followers and counting, and began investing in real assets for the first time, all while holding down that pesky day job. Are these things monumental, Tony Robbins-sized successes, where it’s as if “MTV Cribs” can use my house for an episode? NO, but they are a starting point. (In fact, I’m still living in my crappy “apartment of solitude.”) But they are the foundation of an upward spiral of positivity to which I see no end, really. The undeniable fact is that I’m just getting started.
This new, mature way of understanding the world, of understanding that it is no one else’s responsibility but my own to run and take ownership of my own adult life, led me to become more curious about how the defining principle of self-sovereignty could then apply to politics and government in America. I wondered if it had something to do with what the electorate allowed Turncoat Obama and all politicians to do, resulting in the current deplorable state of affairs in America and the world. I thought about the ice-pick-cold day in December outside Ivy’s when I had forgotten my gloves, and how much my world-view had changed from that day. How silly, childish even, my former mental self seemed to be. My friend “Alex” had been right all along. It seemed so juvenile to me now to think that the federal government should be allowed to interfere in ANY aspect of my peaceful life, or the life of my business, for that matter. To think that any federal government could “take care of me” is akin to thinking a fox can “take care” of a hen house, I now know.
But “Alex” wasn’t through with me yet. He sent me something in the mail called a “Pocket Constitution,” whatever that was. “Weirdo,” I thought. One day, though, I started reading it, and it dove-tailed perfectly with everything I was learning about self-sovereignty and a more mature outlook on life. I mean, it was all in there, in black and white, as it pertained to the relationship between man and state. “Snitches get stitches!!!” popped back into my mind. The government wanted Americans to snitch on their neighbors? All of a sudden, that act of vandalism took on a much greater significance in my evolved mind. The last thing in the world we needed to be doing was spying on each other and reporting back to Big Sis, especially when the chances of dying from terrorism are less than those of dying from a honeybee sting.
It seemed to me like the end of the Truman Show when Jim Carey has to choose which world to be in, and he chooses the world of risk, the world of uncertainty, the world where it’s not guaranteed that nothing will harm him. And he makes the right choice because a risk-free life isn’t worth living. It’s a prison, a slave plantation.
So, I started looking even more closely into what is called “freedom movement” consisting of people like the End the Fedders, Dr. Ron Paul, Ann Barnhardt, Alex Jones, Luke “WeAreChange” Rudkowski, Comedian Joe Rogan, Catherine Albrecht, Sheriff Mack, Mike “The Health Ranger” Adams, Nomi Prins, Adam “AdamvstheMan” Kokesh, Lord Christopher Monckton (the man Al Gore refuses to debate), Liz “Raw Milk Freedom Rider” Reitzig, David Icke, and many others. I watched their videos online, read their articles, read their books. (The Kindle has increased my read-rate by about 70%, I’d say.) All of the info now coalesced into a coherent, logical viewpoint, which, it seemed to me, actually made sense of the geopolitical events that only months before seemed completely assinine and incomprehensible. This philosophy, call it “libertarianism,” “constitutionalism,” “freedomism,” whatever you want, actually has the power to change the world for the much, much better. It actually makes sense, top to bottom, side to side, upwards, downwards, any way you look at it. Freedom was important enough for the American Founding Fathers to stake their lives on—and now it was clear to me WHY. Any other social construct ever invented inevitably led to tyranny and oppression of those at the bottom of the pyramid.
Most people, like my previous self, reared on television, vaccines, and sodium-fluoride-water, find these “freedom advocates” and their views radical or “fringe.” And before my awakening, I would have, too. But I now feel like if you allow others to have control and power over your life in any way, you’re effectively trapped in a prison, even if it’s not the kind of prison where you can see and touch the bars entrapping you. “A prison. For. Your. Mind,” as Morpheus tells Neo in The Matrix.
I now believe self-sovereignty is the only way to ensure freedom, peace, and prosperity both personally and for the country I love. The simple bottom line is that more freedom equals more prosperity equals more security.
FADE TO BLACK.
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Part 4 will post on 1/23/12.
About the Author/Narrator: Frank Marcopolos began writing as a kid in the evenings after summer days of competing–always unsuccessfully–against the older neighborhood kids (the evil “teenagers”) in the P.S. 207 schoolyard. After long, hot days of sporting failures, he discovered that by writing stories, his fictional heroes (almost always coincidentally named “Frank”) could always end up saving the day from the taller, menacing forces arrayed against them. He usually composed these stories by flashlight as he wrote in a black-and-white Mead notebook while seated on a shelf in his bedroom closet.
