Bonus Episode - My Conversation / Intervention with Justin Stapley

Justin Stapley and I have been on similar journeys these past many years seeking to better understand our worldviews and the ever-changing political moment and how best to restore sanity and integrity to our politics. But while I've been diligently producing podcast episodes for these past seven years, Justin has launched a dizzying array of projects. In his own words:

There's an ongoing joke between myself and @svngelephants that every time I'm on his podcast, I've rebranded. And he's not necessarily wrong, lol. Here's the various blogs and efforts I've done since 2016...

Never Tyranny was my first anonymous blog in 2016. I started writing while I was briefly working in the Global Services Center for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as I was transitioning from one police agency to another. Very much a 2016-esque #NeverTrump blog, with the moniker "Never Hillary, Never Trump, Never Tyranny." I was inspired to start writing after reading the "Against Trump" issue of National Review, an issue that also introduced me to a host of writers, most of them at @NRO at that time, that I continue to read to this day, such as @JonahDispatch, @DavidAFrench, KD Williamson, @EWErickson, and @jpodhoretz. As you can tell from the borrowed image from "Washington's Spies," this first blog was very unpolished as I kind of stumbled my toward becoming a better political writer. While this blog never really took off, I did get a small bump when Rush Limbaugh used the term "Never Tyranny" on his show, though he didn't use it in a anti-Trump context.

After Donald Trump's 2016 victory, I wanted to transition to an anonymous identity that was positive and forward thinking, that was about what I was for as opposed to what I was just against. In my hopes that the Trump presidency would lead to a broader re-embrace of federalism across the spectrum, I chose to name my new blog "The Millennial Federalist" and began writing under this moniker in 2017. This blog was far more widely read than Never Tyranny was, and was well known among certain segments of the 2017 #NeverTrump movement. This blog became particularly attached to the short lived Federalist Party effort and it's mildly popular #FedUp hashtag, as well as to @RealFedCo (now defunct), where I first released articles under my real name.

Sometime in 2018 and 2019, I decided I wanted to create a more collaborative effort and create a blog where liberty-minded conservatives could post articles and engage in debate and dialogue. My idea at the time was that libertarians and NeverTrump conservatives could come together and throw their weight behind a a candidate who could attempt to challenge Trump in the 2020 GOP primary and pivot to either an independent candidacy or get on the Libertarian Party ticket. This idea became what I chose to call the Liberty Hawk. Within the blog, I wrote under my own name and then hosted any other writers who wanted to be published there. (This effort was when I first became acquainted with @ConservaMuse, who published several articles at The Liberty Hawk in his senior year of high school). While my vision for a "fusion" candidate in 2020 came close to realization with @justinamash, the idea was thwarted both by Libertarians who refused to work with "statist" conservatives and by NeverTrump personalities and organizations who felt a strong third option would risk undermining Joe Biden. It was at this point that I broke from #NeverTrump because I didn't want to belong to an effort that boosted Democrats.

Self-Evident was a moniker I used twice. First as my next effort after I transitioned away from The Liberty Hawk and then for the last year or so as well. In my frustration with the direction the #NeverTrump effort had taken, I pivoted in mid-2020 to the idea that I would involve myself less in direct political activism and instead focusing on illuminating the "self-evident" truths and first principles of free government. This was also when I began my first podcast, also called Self-Evident, but I only released episode intermittently, adding up to only 15 episodes over the course of several years. I blogged at Self-Evident and engaged online throughout 2022-2023 even while deployed to Kuwait and Syria with the Idaho National Guard.

During my deployment, I completed by Bachelor's degree and envisioned returning home and starting a 501(c)3 with an associated publication. I attempted to follow through on this idea by founding and leading The Freemen Foundation and establishing The Freemen News-Letter. For a little over a year, I we published tremendously relevant and high quality articles from many figures across the conservative intellectual community. During most of this time, I worked full-time as the founding director and president of the foundation, and as editor in chief of the news-letter, but was only mildly compensated as we ran into the difficult realities of securing funding for such an audacious project. I chose to wrap up the effort late last year because I felt the excellent writers of the effort deserved compensation and deserved to have their articles more widely read. I also had returned to college to complete a Master's degree and could no longer commit the kind of time I had been committing.

And that brings us fully up to date with my newest project, The Conservative Underground. Less audacious in scope than the Freemen Foundation, but hopefully still incredibly impactful. I'll be publishing a weekly podcast and weekly newsletter moving forward under this banner.

https://conservativeunderground.substack.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@ConservativeUnderground

Clearly, an intervention is in order. In this bonus, cross-over episode Justin and I explore the paths that brought us to where we are today and where we might be headed.