575: When You're Explaining, You're LOSING - How to Reject False Narratives & Replace Them with Your Own

Brian Nichols  0:04  
focusing on winning arguments. We're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Well, happy birthday there folks flying on The Brian Nichols Show in another fun filled episode. I am as always your humble host. Today, we have a returning guest, who is joining us from the Free State and talking about a lot of the moves that the Free State is making. But first, we're gonna go ahead and give a shout out to today's sponsor, and that is the shop over at The Brian Nichols Show, head over to the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash shop where you can join our friends over at proud libertarian. And of course, check out this awesome new design is the magic money tree and you can go ahead and grab yours make sure you use code TBS at checkout for 10% off at checkout. And this year is fun. If you look at the shirt, it is in fact the Fed and every single one of those leaves is in fact money. And we have our Magical Unicorn and leprechauns there because it is in fact the magic money tree. So if you want to get in get yours for 10% off, use code TBS at checkout at Brian Nichols show.com forward slash shop. Alright, folks. So on to the episode we have a returning guest today. I'm looking forward to having her back on the show. Again, she's joining us from the free states, particularly the Free State Project. Carla Garrick. Welcome back to the program.

Carla Gericke  1:28  
Hi, thanks so much for having me. I love that T shirts. I talk about the magic money tree all the time. Isn't that great? Yeah.

Brian Nichols  1:36  
So you know, where are you gonna get it now, Carla, when you go ahead and check it out. So I'll send you a link afterwards. But hey, welcome back to the program. How you been? What's been new up in New Hampshire?

Carla Gericke  1:44  
Oh, my goodness, there's so much going on. I don't even know where to start to be honest. It's you know, as I said before the show started. It's election season. So that always means that it hots up here in the Free State. You know, I've had the The New Yorker has been out the Boston Globe, the New York New Yorker, there was a front page story in The New York Times, maybe in the last two months, on the Sunday papers. So certainly everyone seems interested in our story. It's because we're getting a lot of successes. And it's a really, really fun time to be here in New Hampshire.

Brian Nichols  2:22  
Yeah, it's been fun to watch the success you guys are having because it seems like every single headline I see coming out is is a win after win after win. Whether it's school choice, whether it's concealed carry, you guys are leading the charge. And frankly, we need folks like you guys to be leading the charge because if you look out there, things are getting a little weird Carla, and folks are looking we talked about this about all the way back in October of last year, we talked about how New Hampshire was becoming a sanctuary state for folks who were looking to escape the COVID tyranny and insanity. And you fast forward to today that is more true than ever. I'm seeing a heck I escaped from when we last spoke. I was in Philadelphia, I'm out here in New Castle, Indiana now, because I wanted to get out of the Northeast because I saw how bad it was getting. I'm seeing friends family making the same kind of moves as well. So talk to us, the Free State Project has been having success not only planting the flag up in New Hampshire, back, what, 1015 20 years ago now. But now leaning forward to being a state that actually offered people a real place to go when things got weird.

Carla Gericke  3:27  
Yeah, and things certainly got weird. And totalitarianism is great for the Liberty business. So, you know, in some ways, I feel like for me, personally, I moved out in 2008. So I must feel like I was a little early. But you know, it's it's validating to see that, you know, it's the right strategy. So basically, why New Hampshire, low taxes, great quality of living, it, you know, live for your die. That's the ethos of the state. So yes, we did see a lot of growth last year with you know, with COVID, the COVID Mania, the COVID madness, we came out of that very strong in terms of our community. Really the selling point, I think for New Hampshire truly is the community, right? You want to be surrounded by like minded people who share your values. And you know, and that's basically live and let live and hey, property rights, those things are important. And so we did see massive growth last year, you know, back in 2008, when I moved, we were sorted the Big Ron Paul wave, there were about 1000 movers who came in around about that time, and then it was sort of a little, you know, steady clip. But definitely last year, we saw, you know, a really big wave come in again. Now, that's exciting because of course, you know, there's residents who requirements for folks to run for office. So So you know, as the election heats up, and I'm running again, you know, I'm running for State House this time, not for Senate because my Senate district Gup C, redistricted and gerrymandered which by the way, I learned today, gerrymandering was named for men whose last name was Jerry, Jerry. And he Yeah, and he was an old dude who was totally anti he was, you know, the Federation. He wanted to just keep the Declaration of Independence. He didn't even want the Constitution. And now the poor man's name is attached to something that would probably literally make him turn in the grave. I only learned that today. So I thought I'd share that with the listeners. So yeah, it's just you know, it's been bananas, I could tell you like, off the top of my head, probably like three crazy quick stories if we have time for it. All right. So the first one is last week, we had a thing in front of the ballot Law Commission. So the ballot Law Commission is this commission that's set up, it's like five old gray haired dudes. And they figure out things that have to do with election law. So a real life Karen introduced a petition to disqualify from election, 14 representatives, Republicans, all of them who supported cacr 32. Now, what was cacr 32? It was a bill that was introduced. It's a constitutional amendment. And basically what it said is, hey, New Hampshire is going to peaceably declare independence from the United States of America, we're going to become our own sovereign country. Literally, that was it. This lady did not like that. So she was like, You know what, I don't think any of these people should even be eligible to run for office. In fact, I think they have violated the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution. And they are in rebellion and insurrection and traders like all these crazy angry words like enemies of the state. Right. And so the ballot Law Commission was like,

Yeah, lady, no. So they unanimously rightly decided that they lacked the jurisdiction should that to hear this and that, of course, something like this should rightfully be decided at the ballot box. Right. That's why we have elections, is if you don't like the dude, who's in there on the lady that's in there, yep. Vote the bums out, right. So. So that was pretty exciting, what I really liked about it, because I am personally pro independence. But I'm also someone who supports that, you know, I'm Apollo interest. So of course, people kind of have to be on board with it, we have to be able to persuade people that this is a great idea. And so the AGs office who weighed in on this did is now on record, to say quite clearly that the insurrection and rebellion because these are like scary words, right? And they throw them around to intimidate people and to try and keep us in our box. And the AG is on the record saying insurrection and rebellion involves use of violence. And it's not about words. And I was really heartened by that. Because that means, you know, we can actually have this conversation. And here's the thing about the conversation. And this is why I suspect that they are trying to like nip this in the bud before we can really have the real conversations is I serve on the board for the foundation for New Hampshire independence. And that's a 501 C three federally recognized, tax free educational nonprofit. So that IRS said we could make a nonprofit that says we want to secede from the Union. So like, I feel like hey, if the IRS is on board, then it's all good. Right? Well, so we did this official survey from the foundation for New Hampshire independence and 29% of Granite Staters overall supported secession today, 29% 52% of Republicans would support secession today. So a majority, right. So this is why they don't want to have the conversation. And something that I found really heartening and you know, because I'm a common piece, I'm a peaceful person. I think we can have conversations, we could talk about ideas, and if you don't like it, I'll try and persuade you. You try and persuade me and that's how life should go right. Only 3% of respondents in this officially official poll said they would support violence by the federal government against the state that wanted to go its own way. And actually in the same survey, 42% of people who responded did say that they would support it as a you know, as a ballot initiative or in our case in New Hampshire, it has to be a constitution. amendment. Now for that constitutional amendment to happen, it's a high bar and has to pass the House and the Senate by 60%. Our house has 400 representatives, our senate is 24. Senators. So that's 424 People of which 60% have to support it. And then if it goes on the ballot, and we have done constitutional amendments here over the years, I think we've done three in the 14 years I've lived here. So it is possible. But in order for it to become a constitutional amendment, it would need 67% of support from Granite Staters. So this was like an ongoing conversation where at the start, there were really only 13 reps or 14, if you count the guy who submitted the bill that supported at this time, that's obviously kind of getting our butt handed to us. But it's the start of a conversation. And if we've learned something from politics, you have to start somewhere, you may as well set your Overton window as far that way as you can. And this has been to open up the discussion for nullification of bed federal bills. So I'm pretty excited about that one.

Brian Nichols  11:13  
Yeah, as you shouldn't be. I had a gentleman my show, we were talking about Texas, which is, you know, the approach of Texas nationalism down there in Texas. And you're seeing right now across the board, there has been more of a conversation, especially with what happened during COVID. Because things got weird. Like I saw it firsthand in Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, how when you see what your governor on TV saying, Yeah, we're going to separate people into essential versus non essential. And then you watch as all of a sudden, all the restaurants you used to frequent not only closing but shutting their doors for good. And it got pretty spooky when you saw the people you thought you knew going like just silently along with everything, not even questioning it. But more. So actually going ahead in many cases, full throated Lee, enforcing the effects of the state on others around them, either by social shaming, or or actually going out and shaming them in person, like making them feel terrible. You see this across the board. This happened. And I know it's still happening in a lot of areas. So yeah, it's nice to know that there are states who are fighting back and standing out. And frankly, this is what you guys have been doing up in New in New Hampshire, that's been having so much success. And also it's been drawing so much higher, you guys have been leading, it seems that headlines in attack have in terms of the success you're having, because you are taking down a lot of what would be considered the more established way of doing things. You're You're disrupting this the status quo. And we talked about this in sales. Carla, that's one of the main things we're doing we're not selling a solution. We're not selling a product or service. At the end of the day, what we're trying to do is we're selling change. So talk to us about selling change, what has been the means of success that you have found when selling change to fellow New New Hampshire rights, New Hampshire ins.

Carla Gericke  12:58  
Granite Staters, is what I call them. Yes, for men is a good one, too. But you know, it doesn't include the ladies, how do we sell liberty? You know, there are a lot of approaches, I think the first thing right, so words matter definitions matter. So I do find like, if you're gonna get it into an in depth conversation with someone, make sure we're all talking about the same thing. So one of the things I like to do recently, just because of the way that they're coloring conversations about Free Staters, is, you know, people like to throw around the words radical and extremist. So you know, what, what's the what's the opposite of radical. So the opposite of radical is basically conventional stayed stuck in your ways. You know, uninteresting, boring, doesn't work, you know, the list goes on. So when you actually put the two terms side by side, if you're not radical, in political terms, you're part of the problem. You're the status quo, you're the person who put us in this mess. So I like to take that sort of approach, especially with the word radical. Now with extremist, you know, I get really, really, really, really early, because here's one of the things I'm seeing is people aren't fighting our ideas, right? No one wants to talk about why does public education costs double? What private education in New Hampshire costs? There is no perceivable reason why that should be the case, right? Except if there is a profit taking somewhere, if some hands are being grievous that people are being paid the wrong amount or whatever, if the private sector can do it for $10,000 per student, then the public sector should not be costing us $19,000. Right. So instead of fighting us on ideas, they're making it very personal, and they're throwing in this sort of extremist language. And then of course, it's like white supremacist language. So one of the other issues that just came up recently is it was on the front page of the newspaper last week and it's about out woke churches. So literally, we don't have members in the Free State Project, we have participants because people come and they participate in this project. We're decentralized, everyone's doing what they think is the best idea. And I can quibble till the cows come home about some people's other ideas about what the right way to do this is. But that is what freedom looks like, right? Dr. Paul always used to say to us, Freedom is messy. It's true, life is messy. So this guy, a Christian in New Hampshire generated a list of churches, it is he's building out a wiki, it's called Liberty when.org. People can go look for themselves. It's a Wikipedia with a lot of lists of different things. One of these lists, there are a lot of them with different categories is about religion. In the religion category, there was a list of churches for Christian churches, they're doing a Jewish church, they're gonna do mosques, and then they're gonna do Buddhists and you know, other other religions. Right? So they just started with the question was, so on this list, religion, churches up, there's numerous categories, different churches, and then one of the columns is, and this was his categorization was woke or based. And he put in what he meant by that, and that was it. So the Free State Project tweeted out that list as hey, here's a resource for people. If you're moving to the state, and you're looking for churches, you could want a woke church. I don't know, like, why not? Right. So our participants are all over the place, you know, it's so anyway, was literally provided as informational like, Hey, here's a list of churches that went from that tweet. And you know, and there are hundreds of tweets, where there's genuine things we can talk about, this was not one of them. But somehow this got picked up. And by picked up I mean, I got a Google alert from, I think it was Businessweek. India. I mean, it was from some news source in India. And they were saying, like they were making this massive to do about these extremists. And in this time of violence and threats against Pete and I was like, how did you get from this dude's wiki page list to this narrative like it is 100% made up manufactured, and nonsense, right? And so the thing that really got me there, and I'm not even sure if I'm answering your question, and maybe you have some advice for me. But what deeply offended me in that tweet was it? What's this quote about the dog whistles? Like the dog whistles to racists, right? And I think really grappling with that from the past week. Because I'm like, so these people are claiming

to know something in other people's minds that only racist can hear. I don't hear it. No one I know hears it, they hear it. So I'm like, Are you guys still racist? Like, what is going on here? How can you ascribe intentions by claiming you can read another person's mind you're not basing it on words, you're not basing it on actions, you're not basing it on anything factual or real. You're literally saying, I imagined these people think that and I'm like, that's crazy.

Brian Nichols  18:38  
Well, and this Karla goes by back to why on the show here, we talked about the idea of not responding to narratives, but I think resetting narratives I actually this is one of the things I brought up on Tim Poole when I was over on his show, like we see far too often and conservatives do this. Libertarians are notorious for this is that we, we like to respond to whatever the crazy claim is. So like, you hate poor people. We don't hate poor people. We actually like poor people, poor people, because and then we go through trying to explain when you're explaining, you're losing. So I always think it's important for us to instead reframe things in a way that we reject the narratives entirely. And instead substitute it with our own. That's the old Adam Savage approach over on Mythbusters. For those of you playing on the home game, that's a throwback, by the way, a great show that getting the day. But know that that is the approach we have to take. It's especially important because we have to be reaching and meeting people where they're at on the issues they care about, not about this nonsense stuff that the corporate press tries to make people care about. Now, there are people unfortunately, who are not in our target market who are going to buy that BS and that's that's just the unfortunate reality. However, there are an entirely entirely different group of people out there who we haven't really spent a lot of time focusing on. And I say we as the Select the Ritter liberty movement. Because I think, by the nature of us being interested in the liberty movement, we are more political, meaning the people we're speaking to tend to be more Politico's, whereas the people who actually will help us get our ideas more than just being ideas and get them into action are actually the people out there who are, dare I say, your average person who aren't necessarily engaging in these conversations, but rather, are sitting back and having conversations at the dinner table saying, Yeah, this is stuff that's impacting me and guess what the things they're talking about are the things that we have solutions for. So instead of wasting our time arguing with people online, who never going to agree with us, and frankly, are wanting us to spend our time wasting our time with them, we should be going out speaking to people face to face at the very least meeting them where they're at on the issues they care about. That's my thoughts, Carla. And then you know what, that's my final thoughts for the episode. And unfortunately, we're already getting over the 20 minute mark, which means I gotta turn it over to you, for you to give us your final thoughts of the episode, Carla?

Carla Gericke  20:57  
Yeah. So I mean, I think you're 100%. Right. We should go on the offensive. I think we are doing that in New Hampshire. And certainly for in my experience, you know, having run for office now. And we've seen a lot of Free Staters getting elected over the years. That really is the point, right? Like you're going door to door and in order to get elected people have to actually, you know, agree with your ideas, or at least support what you're purporting to stand for. So, you know, we I run and I'm like, Hey, I'm for small, limited government, hopefully small enough to, you know, drown in a bathtub as Grover Norquist always like to say, yeah, so I mean, I guess, life in New Hampshire is good. You know, we were growing, we are looking for more people to move here. You know, people can find out more@ssp.org. Of course, always we have a ton of events, we actually have a ton of fall events coming up. So if people are curious about what's going on here, fall is the best time to come to New Hampshire, the trees turn into candy. It is hard to resist. I mean, it is just splendid and beautiful. And I love it. Love it. Love it, love it. And people can go to fsp.org forward slash calendar that will give you all the information about events that are coming up. It'll also blow your mind because you will just be like, Whoa, there's that much happening all the time. Yes, there is. We have our winter event, Liberty forum will be coming up. And then of course, next year, a third week in June pork fest that is por CFEST Like porcupine, that will be our YTF 20 Pork fest, which blows my mind and explains the gray hair now. But but you know, it's super exciting. And I just want more people to come. What are we trying to do here in New Hampshire, we're trying to build an actual libertarian homeland so that we can show people these ideas work, you know, I sort of liken it to America 2.0. You know, the federal government screwed things up big time. And so we got to show people again, and I think what New Hampshire is going to end up being the vanguard of is the return to federalism and we're seeing it already. I mean, that is one thing that I think Trump did well under COVID Is he was just like, ah, hands off. It's talk to the states. And then we did see different responses. And now we are actually able to compare the data over time for people who want to learn a little bit more about me. Carla Garrick you can find everything my Twitter, my Facebook, my Instagram, Insta is on fire, it's got this sick as means everyone should be following it. And then I have a book of the aesthetic pessimist stories of hope that's available on Amazon. It's a really good read. Nick, Nick Gillespie of reason magazine concurs. So that is, you know, it has some essays about my activism over the years here, and then also has some like artsy fartsy stories from when I did my Master's in Fine Arts in New York before I moved out here fsp.org, that'll get you started. Also, for people who are listening, who might want to talk to a real person, ask questions, find out what this is really about. What would life be like here we are doing these polling parties. And so if you go to the website, you can fill out a form, and then we can directly call you and have that conversation. We have a lot of volunteers. Everything about the Free State Project is human action. We everything runs on volunteers except for to staff and roles. So it is the passion of the people. And we're looking for doers. We're looking for people who want to come and build come help us build this libertarian place that we can show people because I want peace and prosperity and I want it for all people and we you're trending trending trending in the wrong direction. And so if we can reverse it, or remind people through examples through human action, that these ideas work, we can fix the economy. We can have sound money, we can spread prosperity, we can end this poverty, we can fix these problems. We can get people healthy again, that's a big stick for me as well. Check out my cooking show freedom. That's on YouTube. Carla Garrick TV. I've got a lot of content there, actually. And really, honestly, if they have to follow me up, so shadow Ben, I can't get anything to get any traction. But it's worth it, I promise you. So I guess that's sort of my list of stuff. And yeah, thank you so much for having me on again.

Brian Nichols  25:45  
Absolutely. Well, Carl, thank you for joining us on today's episode. And folks, yeah, there's a lot there. So well, I'll make it easy for you guys. I'll make sure I include number one, all the links that Carla mentioned there in the show notes. And all you got to do if you're on your podcast app, all you got to do is click the artwork, and they'll bring you right over to the Brian Nichols show.com where you can find today's episode, the entire transcript of today's episode, you'll find the video version of the show. So by the way, if you hit over the YouTube version, please do me a favor make sure you hit the little notification bell subscribe button, give us a like when you're there as well. But also, folks, you can go ahead and if you if you really enjoy the episodes that we're doing here with The Brian Nichols Show, by the way 575 or so episodes, I mean, just saying and I would love to hear about it, please email me Brian at Brian Nichols show.com. And also, if you are enjoying the content we here at The Brian Nichols Show, I'm going to ask you to go ahead and make a donation if you would be so kind head over to the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash support become a monthly supporter $5 A month or if you aren't, go ahead and just make a one time donation 520 $100 whatever it can be. Everything goes right back here into The Brian Nichols Show to help us keep the lights on and having amazing guests like Karla Garrick here on the program. So folks, but that being said, if you enjoy the episode again, please go ahead and give it a share. And you do give Carla a tag and give yours truly a tag as well. Oh, also, by the way, did you catch my awesome episode? Yesterday, I went through four different speeches from four different presidents where we can learn from awesome sales pitches. I'll make sure I include that link right here below. But other than that, that's all I have for you today. So with that being said is Brian Nichols signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for the one and only Carla character. I'm the freestate up in New Hampshire. We'll see you tomorrow.

Unknown Speaker  27:25  
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