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E66: American Character and the Influences That Shaped It · The Junto Podcast

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Hello, America. Welcome to the Junto podcast, where we promote the practical
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applications of critical thinking and bold creativity.
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I'm your host, Edgar Mills. Thank you for.
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Hello, America. Welcome to episode 66. Thanks for staying with me. I appreciate you all.
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So today we are talking about, well, the American spirit, American character,
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and some of the people that influenced the shaping of said character and spirit,
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and that still kind of shapes us today.
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Independence Day was this past weekend, and I saw a lot of patriotism out there,
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and that was awesome. I'm here for it.
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And I also saw the mayor of New York deliver a very carefully worded lecture,
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suggesting that we redefine America for the newest of us,
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The newest immigrants coming in And that's Well, I don't think that's right
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I think that's in contradiction to,
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All the Influential humans who shaped America thus far,
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So
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America was built on a, well, mix of, well, very bold ideas.
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I mean, especially from its earliest founding, right?
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Declaring independence from England, but, or Great Britain, but there was a
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lot of, well, courage for sure.
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Independence for sure, but also common sense.
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And that often gets overlooked the common sense piece of that and none of those
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were abstract ideas or intangibles, right?
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They were crafted and shaped by real men who lived out those ideals,
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and practically applied them in everyday life and we'll talk about some of these men as we go,
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and we'll look at what,
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The men that we're going to discuss, we're going to look at each one and what
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they gave us and how you still see the influence in everyday American life.
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And it's ideas like, well, self-reliance, standing on your own two feet,
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right? Fighting for real freedom.
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That's an early idea.
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Even in the Declaration of Independence when we say all men are created equal
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and we weren't living that, right?
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But still, one of the grievances preceding the Declaration of Independence,
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one of the grievances, and I want to say it was from Thomas Jefferson,
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talked specifically about slaves being,
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fully human, fully free men, or they should be.
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Anyway, and then functional character, right? Building your own character,
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improving yourself in a functional and practical way.
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And then also some of these ideas we're going to hit on is using plain talk,
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straight talk, or as I like to say, direct communication, and even some humor
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to kind of cut through the noise. Nonsense. sense.
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So we're going to start with the idea of self-reliance.
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So Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an essay in 1841, and it was called Self-Reliance.
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And in that, it gave us one of the, well, a very famous literary line that goes
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like this Trust thyself Every heart vibrates to that iron string.
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Yeah, trust thyself. He wasn't telling people to be selfish,
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and he wasn't telling people to go rely on someone else.
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He was saying that each and every one of us already have, well,
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one, a built-in moral compass to know the difference from right and wrong,
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regardless of what we see around us.
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And he certainly didn't believe that we need to look to institutions or the
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opinion of the masses to tell us what's right or to help us along our way.
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And that idea alone, I believe, helped to create the sort of distinctly American
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habit of questioning authority and trusting your own gut.
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And you also, you can see the effects of that in every single self-help book
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or podcast or whatever else, you know, talking about listening to your inner voice and whatnot.
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So it's there, Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841.
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We see those influences every single day.
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That's distinctly American. It's uniquely American.
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And on a side note, so speaking of trusting your inner instinct,
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there's a guy, Gavin DeBecker, and,
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he's the founder of an enormous security firm who does high-end personal protection,
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bodyguard type stuff for, you know, government officials, Louis Starrs, all of them.
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All the things and, and his, and what he said, and I'm paraphrasing,
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I'm going to paraphrase him, but that our intuition is, it's subconscious, right?
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And it, and it acts fast and that.
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Our intuition is able to process subtle little cues and inconsistencies faster
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than our consciousness can,
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so in the context of security that helps us to identify danger before you even
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really know why there might not be anything overt happening but you sense that there's a problem,
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and he calls that knowing without knowing why and yeah,
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So ultimately what he said, and I think one of his books is called The Gift
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of Fear, but true fear is a gift, right? That sharpens our intuition.
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Well, and that's in the security, the context of security.
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But we have that intuition also about the way we treat people and about the
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way we interact with people. You know if somebody's greasy or not.
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Well, you have an intuition. Now, you may be wrong. If you're coming from a
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judgmental position and you're, because we can shape our intuition.
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Yeah, we can shape it and we can train our intuition and we can train our subconscious to a degree.
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So, yeah, I think that same concept applies when it comes to the American character,
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when it comes to developing our own character.
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But as we develop our own character, even as rugged individualists,
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we are a part of the bigger picture. America.
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Anyway, that was a little side note Gavin Becker, I don't agree with him on
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every single thing But he is an authority in security,
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And intelligent Very seasoned, very experienced.
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All right. And moving on. So that was Ralph Waldo Emerson, and he had an impact.
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Who else? Well, one of the most influential human beings in American history is Benjamin Franklin.
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And he took that same idea of self-reliance and, well, he made it practical, didn't he?
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And he's got an autobiography that is, it's a quick read. It's not too long,
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but he also contributed.
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Well, I think it was a founder of Poor Richard's Almanac.
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And if I'm not mistaken, I think Poor Richard's Almanac became the Farmer's
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Almanac, if I'm not mistaken.
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I may be. But he, Benjamin Franklin, took big ideas and turned them into systems, man.
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Do you know what I'm saying? and to functional systems.
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And for example, he wrote out like these 13 virtues and a few,
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temperance, order, industry, sincerity, and so on.
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And he had a daily journal, Benjamin Franklin did.
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So there's your first step right there. That's taking the idea of self-reliance
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but self-improvement And then creating a functional way to, well, track that, really.
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And he did. He kept a journal, tracking his progress of when he was and was
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not hitting these virtues.
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So he didn't just talk about being better. He built habits and systems to be better.
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And he is an example, folks. I don't care what you think about Ben Franklin.
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Yeah, he might have been a boozer, and he might have been a whore chaser.
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But that don't make him stupid, and that don't make him a bad person.
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He was a brilliant, brilliant human being.
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If not for Ben Franklin and the Junto Club, the original Junto Club, what did that bring us?
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Yeah, public library The fire department,
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And never mind all the Countless inventions that Ben Franklin Lightning rod
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Do you know that Ben Franklin invented swim fins? Flippers that you put on your feet?
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Yeah, man Crazy stuff So when we today Celebrate a self-made man Somebody who
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started from nothing And built himself up That's the Ben Franklin playbook right
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there There's influence,
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and it's here today. It's still with us today.
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So don't hate it because it's something from the old days.
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I see that as being a tactic of sort of, well, I'm going to say the left.
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I ain't meaning to go political here, but that's a bit of a tactic.
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Everything from our founding fathers, because slavery existed,
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that they want to invalidate everything that was built.
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Yeah, it doesn't make any sense, really. It's not logical and practical to do that.
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And we're not going to remake America based on the fact that you don't like
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old stuff, old white guys.
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And speaking of slavery,
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Booker T. Washington,
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he espoused the,
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same principle of self-reliance and self-improvement, but under tougher conditions,
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right? He was born into slavery.
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But what happened ultimately? He founded the Tuskegee Institute and became an author.
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And most notably up from slavery.
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But he had a core message that I think is,
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you can see it today in many institutions or many organizations or groups,
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but it's notably absent also in a few of these groups, these political groups. And.
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His core message was that dignity comes from strong character.
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And he promoted that you build useful and practical skills and work hard.
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And that you not wait for someone else or the government to hand you a thing
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or to do a thing for you. Yeah, that's Booker T. Washington.
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And he built one of the most prominent models of vocational education in America,
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and gave especially black people a very positive,
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productive path forward.
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And so today, modern times, when people talk about personal responsibility and
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learning a trade or a skill to change your life, yeah, they're speaking the
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language of Booker T. Washington.
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And I think that resonates even more today. with a vocation over academic theory,
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like practical vocation over academic theory. Yeah.
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So, moving on.
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The idea that real freedom means freedom for everyone.
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Now, Mom Donnie alluded to this in his Independence Day lecture,
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But does he believe it And does it mean what What he thinks it means What I think it means.
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So we're going to look at, well, Frederick Douglass.
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He was an escaped slave and ultimately became one of the greatest speakers and
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writers in American history.
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And the narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass,
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he rightly demanded that the same natural rights listed in the Declaration of
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Independence belong to him and every other enslaved person.
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Yeah. Yeah, and he also believed that education was a path forward and that
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moral courage was a path forward and a way to get out of the bondages of slavery.
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I mean, institutionally as well as individually.
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So, and what he did was forced the country to face the contradiction of what
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America said it stood for on paper versus what it practiced.
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And again, I'm here for it.
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Every political commentator you see today, well, correction,
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every independent, truly independent political commentator you see,
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or all the political podcasts, they call out the contradictions every day.
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And, you know, the left happens to be a target-rich environment for hypocrisy, irony, contradiction.
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But don't confuse me, folks. The right is up there as well.
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And the administration, current administration, is up there as well,
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as has been all other administrations in the past.
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But that, the means, the willingness to call out the contradictions,
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well, that comes from, partly, from Frederick Douglass.
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So when we're talking today about equal dignity and opportunity and all that
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stuff, we're still using the
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moral standard, even though it may be manipulated a little bit, modern.
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We're still using the moral standard and the language that Frederick Douglass,
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helped to establish back then.
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Yeah. So the influences, the question is, do you know where these influences come from?
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If you cite someone from the 60s or whatever, where does their influence come from, though?
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Because in the 60s, nothing new was happening, right?
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By then, we were just going off older philosophies. Now, some of the guys I'm
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talking about today, they were very familiar with the philosophies of the Stoics.
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You know, Seneca or Marcus Aurelius or Aristotle or whoever.
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So a lot of these men, though slaves or though born and raised in the South
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or whatever, education is an individual event.
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Yeah, you have to see. And even if you're in a collective, you individually
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have to choose to engage.
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Because I can go along with the mass.
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I can jump into a crowd and mill about without ever having engaged my brain whatsoever.
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And partly I think that might be why people are in the masses.
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They like being an anonymous, faceless, voiceless number, I guess.
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I guess it's low pressure. You don't have to think much.
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The same note of that individual freedom and the rightness that all men are equal,
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coming at it from a completely different angle, Mark Twain tackled that same
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concept through the eyes of Huckleberry Finn.
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Now, Huck was a poor white boy, right?
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So he had to make the decision whether or not to turn in an escaped slave, Jim.
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But as the story goes, you see that Huck is realizing in his own gut,
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his own instinct, was telling him that Jim, he's a human being.
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He's not three-fifths, right? He's a human being.
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And that's the struggle there Or the realization And yeah, Mark Twain What I
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like, because I enjoy Mark Twain.
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He uses humor a lot Throughout his book Now it's humor of the time,
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right? He used the vernacular of the time and the place But it's still funny And But,
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The book itself is driven by the more serious question, right?
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Does societal norms and societal rules and air fingers, quote,
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respectability, does that make otherwise decent people do wrong things?
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Well, that's a much smaller scale of asking, can a mob rule or collectivism,
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consume individual thought and discernment? And you already know what my answer
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is. That's a big emphatic yes.
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So social norms can make otherwise decent people do wrong things.
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And we all know, folks, just because a thing is legal doesn't make it right.
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There's a moral standard. You got to see that all this comes back to rugged
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individualism. Think for yourself.
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So Mark Twain used plain speech and humor to expose hypocrisy.
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And he did it without preaching to us as well. It was entertaining.
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And that book, by the way, is still taught in schools because it makes readers,
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well, a little uncomfortable, a little uneasy. You've got to think in a reflective
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way. You've got to reflect, like, oh, man, what would I do?
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What was right? What was wrong? And it makes us ask what we really believe when
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the universally correct answer of the time,
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is wrong or it feels wrong.
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So we got to ask ourselves, what do we believe? That's where the goodness of
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that book is. So he did a similar thing to what Frederick Douglass did.
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And Frederick Douglass did it via Christianity, comparing the freedoms stated
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in the Declaration of Independence to the biblical standard.
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And he didn't use humor, right? Whereas Mark Twain did the same thing via humor.
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Well, I don't say humor so much as wit. Yeah, I think wit is the better word there.
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But humor, along with, I'm going to say plain talk, but direct plain talk,
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you know, sprinkled in with a little bit of humor or a little bit of wit and
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maybe even a little bit of sarcasm.
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Yeah, that keeps us honest, folks. That's how you keep people honest.
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You call them on their shit And you do it in a way that.
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Well they kind of have to answer So another one of my favorites In a similar
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vein of Mark Twain but Slightly more modern than Mark Twain,
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Was Will Rogers Now I like Will Rogers I thought he was awesome And.
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A similar approach using humor but he he was more directly humorous right he,
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some you could even say was a comedian to a degree he he was on vaudeville he
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was a like a rodeo texas jacks rodeo show cowboy well he was the cherokee kid by the way,
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he was a bronc buster but a rope you know and and then he started kind of getting
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into so he was a product of the he was born in the late 1800s,
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He came into manhood in like 1900s, zeros through the teens.
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And he was doing, through the 19-teens, he was, you know, cowboying and traveling
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the world. He was in South Africa. That's where he joined up with Texas Jack.
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He was a literal cowboy in Argentina.
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Yeah, so anyway, traveled the world, right? And you get something from that,
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from traveling the world.
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You get something from that That's Well profound But you also get a very strong
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appreciation For America And.
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He come to write Like in the 20's He was a newspaper columnist And he was,
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Did talk radio broadcasts And
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his voice Reached millions And millions of people during very hard times,
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and his humor kind of eased that angst, and he was a beloved guy.
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And his quote that I did just on the last episode, I never met a man I didn't like.
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Well, on the last episode, I talked about how that came from not a place of
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judgment, but a place of curiosity.
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And that's still correct. But I'm going to add to that and say that,
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vein that everybody's interesting in some way. Well, people are pretty much the same.
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In that we all have the same inherent needs.
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And so once you get past the titles and the politics and the pretense and the
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facades, most people are pretty much the same.
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And I know this to be true from experience if you take an Afghan man,
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who well we all have you know you take a human being two human beings one American one Afghan,
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when they're born there's fundamentally zero difference right and we get all
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these external things placed upon us but when you sit down and break bread together,
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and you talk about your family and you talk about work and you talk about the daily struggles,
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you will see that we are basically the same, minus all the external influence.
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Yeah, minus the external influence.
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And if you're an independent thinker and you're able to compartmentalize that
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external influence and keep it where
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it belongs and not become a zealot on either end of that, by the way,
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you'll see that we're basically the same.
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Of the problems that we have today stem from the fact that we forget that.
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We forget that everybody is basically the same. Everybody has basically the same needs.
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Air, water, food, shelter, love.
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Yeah. Understanding.
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Everybody has the same basic needs.
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And the problems stem from us forgetting it. Anyway, back to Will Rogers.
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Curiosity is how you get through the pretenses, isn't it?
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If you're patient enough to ask questions to get through the facade,
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yeah, that's how you do it.
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Now, Will Rogers was skeptical of the expert class, and he was pretty impatient with, well, fancy talk,
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superfluous talk, crafted up talk, much like Mom Donnie's speech.
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One of my favorite quotes, and this is not from Will Rogers.
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I want to say this is from Thomas Jefferson.
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Never use two words when one will do. I love it.
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But Will Rogers believed that common sense could cut through almost all of that common sense.
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Someone today, whether it's your favorite comedian or one of your,
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you know, whoever, whatever politician you follow or whoever,
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when they are able to cut through the noise with a little short story,
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a little impactful story or a little dry observation,
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yeah, they're under the influence of Will Rogers, whether they know it or not,
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and whether they like it or not. Yeah.
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So the American character and the American spirit comes from us building our
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own individual character.
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In a way that we can actually live that character. Practical.
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I told you, Ben Franklin kept a little, well, a little virtue journal.
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He tracked his, you know, if you're a gym bro, you probably track your workouts.
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If you're a high-speed shooter, grandmaster, you probably track your range sessions.
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Ben Franklin kept the Virtue Journal. Ralph Waldo Emerson showed us that the
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divine shows up in nature, for sure,
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but also in our own soul and shapes our own moral compass.
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It gives us our sense of right and wrong, and it is divine, by the way.
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Again, whether you know it or not, or whether you like it or not.
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Now, you can manipulate that compass, for sure, with externals, but we want to avoid it.
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Frederick Douglass drew his strength from Christianity, for sure, and he used it.
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And I don't mean used it superficially, but he used Christianity to demand justice
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without hypocrisy, because that's what Christianity demands.
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So again, there's the divine showing up in this.
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T. Washington taught us that our character is built through daily effort and
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useful work, being productive. Yeah.
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So those guys, what they shared was pretty simple, really.
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It can be made complex. All of it can be broken down and made complex.
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But really, it's pretty simple.
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Good character shows up in the way you treat people and how you handle your
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own life. It's not abstract.
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So when somebody today says that, yeah, this is a person of good character,
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or this lady, she has integrity,
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they're talking about the same practical lived virtue that all these men that I talked about.
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That's what they're talking about.
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So all of the six men that I mentioned, I chose those specifics.
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For various reasons, but they're men that I'm familiar with and have read and all those things.
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But they're extremely, they were extremely and are still extremely influential.
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And they have left us, they have left behind almost, well, some tools for us or some guidance for us.
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Make a daily habit of working on yourself.
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Yeah. Make a daily habit of working on yourself.
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Benjamin Franklin formed the Juneto Club for that very purpose.
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Those men came together, and yes, over probably many pints of beer,
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but they came together and they talked about things that would improve their
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environment, their community.
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How can we make things better or provide, build projects, develop systems that
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will be useful to the community?
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Yeah. It wasn't government doing that. That was just a bar full of dudes.
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Make a daily habit of it. Work on yourself so that you're the best version of
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yourself for your community.
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And then Emerson, along with Gavin DeBecker, trust your own conscience.
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Trust your own instincts.
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For sure, work on shaping those, shaping your subconscious to be,
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I don't want to say the word righteous, but to be good, to be fair, to be just.
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So yeah, righteous, I guess.
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So in your downtime, shape that. Take in things that help you build that.
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But also learn, be willing to open yourself up.
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I'm going to say some profound stuff right now. Be willing to open yourself
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up to yourself. Thank you.
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Experiment and just trust your own instinct and go do a thing.
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If it crashes and burns, guess what? That doesn't mean your instinct was completely wrong.
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Probably just the execution was, but open yourself up to yourself.
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Do some exercises where you have to use your instinct to make a decision.
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Make the decision and go with it.
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I'm a big believer of that, folks. Yeah, I'm a big believer of that now I do
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believe in kind of like signs and clues and things that kind of guide I believe in that.
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So, if I have a gut feeling about a thing, I will usually go with that gut feeling.
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Now, that's not to say, look, people, I have developed, this is me personally,
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just by the nature of my career, I have developed a decision-making process,
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painfully developed a decision-making process.
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And it went from being very formal to all the way down to very instinctual.
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And but even during the formalized decision making process,
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i still use my instincts and then i would just examine that instinct okay i
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take that instinct apply it to the formal process and then you know develop it out,
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so yeah be be willing to do that folks trust your instincts they're They're probably right.
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Now, if you're a psychopath,
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that does not apply. I'm speaking in general terms to the American people.
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If you're a psychopath, your instincts may be wrong.
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Your survival instincts may be very good, but your moral compass is all messed up.
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All right, and moving on. They all kind of pressed upon us, but specifically,
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Frederick Douglass and specifically Mark Twain,
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is the belief that true freedom has to include every citizen.
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Now, this process kind of developed, you know, back in the times of slavery.
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What it doesn't apply to, folks, now listen to me. You know I'm a libertarian politically.
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And if you listen to my show, you know I do not agree with just wild open border policy.
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Be a process to become a citizen. You don't just show up and get a freebie.
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If there's no distinction or if there's no benefit of being a citizen versus
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being illegal, then you just crapped on every citizen in America.
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And you've crapped on every immigrant that came here and did things the correct way.
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All right. So there's procedural stuff going on there.
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So understand that when I say freedom applies to everybody, freedom does apply
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to everybody and their space.
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And if you're an American, you deserve all the freedoms of America.
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If you're illegal, you need to do the process. There's 8 million reasons why
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you need to be counted and you need to be legal.
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There's 8 million reasons why.
35:39
And I'm not a big government guy, but again, our political process depends on
35:44
how many humans are in America.
35:48
And we don't even know that right now, folks. We don't even have the correct number.
35:52
As a sovereign nation, we can't even tell you how many actual humans are in America.
35:58
Yeah, about 350 or so citizens that we know about.
36:02
The numbers vary on illegals, you know, anywhere from 10 or 20 grand or 20 million-ish.
36:10
Who knows?
36:12
That's no good. All It's not good either, right?
36:17
But practically speaking, freedom, you're not free to go cut someone's head off.
36:23
You're not free to go rape a woman walking in the park.
36:27
So do we understand, folks, are you guys with me here? Are you understanding?
36:32
Freedom don't mean a freedom to go do whatever the hell you want and violate
36:37
the non-aggression principle upon other people.
36:42
I've done podcasts on this. And I think I'm coming from a logical, sane perspective.
36:49
All right, moving on. Yeah, I started getting fired up.
36:54
And this one's a little deeper than it sounds, and I'm going to expand on it
36:59
a little bit. The idea that character is built and not just claimed.
37:05
Character is built and not just claimed.
37:10
There are plenty of people out there claiming to be of strong character,
37:16
claiming to be of strong integrity,
37:20
claiming to do God's will, claiming to bring education to the people.
37:30
And they're not doing those things. There are plenty of people.
37:34
There's a multitude. You see them all over social media.
37:38
You see them all over television. You see them all over the halls of your state
37:44
house and Congress and the Senate.
37:49
Washington, D.C. is ate up with them. Political activists claiming righteousness while doing evil,
38:00
while doing wrong, because they believe the ends justify the means.
38:06
They don't know what integrity is or character.
38:10
And don't, listen to me, not only do we build our own individual character,
38:16
not just in word but in deed, but in deed.
38:20
Let the group overshadow your individual character.
38:27
If you're in with a group of people who present to you a thing that you instinctively,
38:34
know to be wrong, speak up and be willing to cut away from that group if necessary.
38:41
The problem is people get intimidated by the group so they go along,
38:45
to get along, be a strong individual, be an independent thinker,
38:51
make the decisions based on strong moral foundations.
38:58
Because morals, good people are not political. All right, dang.
39:05
And then the last one I'm going to say is they laid a groundwork for direct,
39:13
plainly spoken word and humor to help hold people accountable,
39:19
keep people honest, especially politics.
39:23
Yeah, especially politics. But yeah, and I'll point out one famous incident.
39:30
If you guys remember the Ricky Gervais Oscar host,
39:36
monologue he did where he absolutely ripped Hollywood pedophilia and secret society,
39:47
whatnot.
39:49
Absolutely brilliant. It was absolutely brilliant.
39:55
Yeah. That was humor demanding accountability and the faces on some of those
40:03
people in the audience was priceless, priceless.
40:08
But yeah, that foundation was laid long before Ricky Gervais came along,
40:11
long before Dave Chappelle came along.
40:16
George Carlin and Richard Pryor. Yeah.
40:21
So that's some of the things that I think that these influential men have left for us as.
40:31
Tasks to improve upon. Their words and their ideas have been so deeply absorbed,
40:39
into American life that many of us don't even know,
40:44
where they came from or that they even came from someone specific.
40:48
Some of these ideas just are sort of omnipresent. Like,
40:56
you don't even look at it as a specific idea. It's just all-encompassing.
41:02
And then don't even especially know where it came from.
41:07
And that's good. The good ideas should do that.
41:11
The good ideas should take over like that because those examples of those kinds
41:18
of ideas, they endure and they have endured.
41:24
And the ideas, and so here it is. You know, think individually within your group.
41:30
Whatever group you're in, you still have to think individually.
41:35
You have to make a decision for yourself, always.
41:39
And then here's the thing that a lot of people maybe don't do,
41:44
is you then have to test your ideas against real life.
41:49
Be willing to challenge your processes, your own ideas.
41:55
And then be willing to grow differently.
42:00
Sort of your moral growth, your improvement, your personal improvement,
42:05
treat it as sort of daily work. Like I need to work on myself today.
42:10
Don't get complacent thinking you're good to go. You're probably not.
42:16
So yeah, look, don't take my word for it, folks. The best way to clarify all
42:20
these ideas that I just threw at you and all the things I just said is to go read.
42:27
And everything that there's, these are going to be in the show notes and everything
42:32
that I just talked about.
42:34
Most of them are pretty short and easy reads.
42:38
Yeah. Most of them are pretty short and quick, quick to read.
42:41
And all of them are on the project Gutenberg website.
42:46
And most of them are free. I got links for all, for all of these things.
42:50
So yes, you know, pick something up this week, read it and see if it resonates.
42:56
See if you can connect up what you're reading with what's going on today.
43:02
Because these men that I just talked about, they didn't describe the American
43:05
spirit and the American character.
43:08
They created it. They helped to create it.
43:12
And they passed along to us the task of keeping it alive by living it, not changing it.
43:20
Not every time there's a new wave of immigrants changing our entire American identity. No. No.
43:27
Making the American spirit, the American character, and the American identity change.
43:33
Those who embrace it. That's what they pass along to us.
43:37
And that's what I have for you today. Yeah, that's what I have for you today.
43:41
I didn't think it was too political or too dark.
43:44
I'm still trying to be easy breezy and I find it difficult sometimes, but,
43:49
I do appreciate you guys listening. And I would absolutely love to hear your
43:54
feedback, especially on the books I talked about, but you know, other things.
44:00
Uh topic suggestions i would love to hear it topic suggestions guest suggestions
44:06
or even if you're listening here and you think you want to be a guest if you
44:09
got something you know you feel like saying i've got a little audience you know,
44:15
there's probably 10 or 12 000 people listening i think that's pretty significant,
44:21
to me i think it's great. So yeah, yeah.
44:25
All right. Yeah, that's it. So please, as always, good people,
44:29
please check out OspreyShootingsolutions.com.
44:34
We have shooting events in August. Two specifically, we have a pistol workshop,
44:41
and then we have a wild card day. And.
44:48
OspreyShoeSolutions.com backslash consulting. Now, I just had a conversation
44:53
yesterday with a guy who is, well, I guess he's fairly prominent in his church,
44:59
but about some of the offerings that I do for security consulting.
45:04
And he kind of casually blew it off and said, well, no, we're not going to be
45:07
able to carry guns in our church. It's not about guns, good people.
45:10
It's not, guns aren't a focus. Guns aren't, they're only a topic of conversation.
45:19
If your church leadership or organizational leadership wants them to be a topic
45:23
of conversation, quite the opposite.
45:26
I would rather you not even consider being armed if your organization is not
45:32
willing to train to the standard required.
45:36
Well, the standard that I set forth to carry a gun around other humans.
45:41
So, yeah, it's not about the gun, folks. It's about security awareness. It's about SOPs.
45:48
Do you have plans in place to react or mitigate and then maybe react to any
45:57
emergency, whether it be an active killer threat or a goddang tornado,
46:03
or a missing child or.
46:08
Any number of emergencies? All right, SOP development, that's what we work on, is practical,
46:16
actionable drills or actions to take in the event of X, Y, and Z.
46:24
Yeah, yeah, SOP development.
46:27
The threat and vulnerability assessment has nothing to do with whether or not
46:31
you're carrying guns. It has to do with, well, physical security of your structure.
46:36
Are you on the job? Do you know that all doors, how many doors are in your structure, even?
46:45
What's the most likely threat? What's the most dangerous threat?
46:50
Assessment is just, well, we will go together and do a very in-depth walk around
46:58
of your facility and then talk about ways to improve the physical security.
47:05
Yeah. And then we have sort of a small bite, right? We just take a small bite
47:10
and we have the security considerations.
47:14
Well, lecture and open forum discussion. Yep. Lecture and open forum discussion.
47:21
So that's valuable. Whether you plan to go any further than that or not, that's very valuable.
47:27
That's a couple of hours with us talking about all these things in relation to security.
47:37
And then we have the security awareness and foreign environments modules.
47:42
We have two major modules, one and two. And then each major module has multiple
47:47
sub-modules that can be done standalone.
47:52
And that whole course, Safe Security Awareness in Foreign Environments,
47:58
targets international travelers.
48:03
Missionaries, faith-based missionaries, humanitarian nonprofit organizations,
48:11
and mid-sized companies who send sales teams to third world countries and.
48:20
Journalists who, you know, you've got your own little podcast or your own little
48:25
news thing you do on the Internet, and you travel to Third World Country alone and unafraid.
48:31
You probably need some significant training to be more safe and more aware there.
48:39
And then possibly students abroad. If you're going to a place that's,
48:44
well, again, even Europe is getting kind of unpredictable these days,
48:48
especially England and especially France.
48:53
Well, all of Europe, I say Spain, Italy, they're all getting very unpredictable
49:00
when it comes to crime and political angst.
49:05
So anyway, please look into those things.
49:09
And then don't forget twoteamguys.com. All the courses at twoteamguys.com are
49:14
on demand, which means you get a group of four or more people and request a course,
49:23
and then we'll set something up individually.
49:26
Those are all great courses.
49:29
They're all focused on leadership development and team building with emphasis
49:36
on, you know, resilience and kind of tough conditions.
49:41
Yeah, there's a little adventure involved in some of them, but it's all about.
49:47
Making decisions under stress,
49:50
working those instincts that we talked about, developing your instincts to be,
49:55
right more often than wrong.
49:59
Because the reason we might find that our instincts are wrong is because we've
50:03
developed them to be wrong. We've believed a false thing based on some irrational fear or some...
50:14
Fear. So yeah, anyway, anyway, twoteamguys.com.
50:19
Those are excellent courses. And that's also where land navigation lives.
50:25
Yep. And that's, that's the one we, we do most often is land navigation.
50:30
So check that out. And then finally, please consider giving some money to givesandgo.com
50:40
backslash helpahomeyfund.
50:43
It's all voluntary. It's all grassroots. And it's all designed to help the lowest
50:50
level person to make it through the day.
50:53
Whether it's just buying a can of SpaghettiOs, whether it's buying diapers for
50:58
the baby, whether it's helping somebody get their brake fixed so they can make
51:01
it to work, or even getting their bike fixed so they can make it to work.
51:07
All right. So, or maybe even possibly helping someone out of a bad situation.
51:14
Now, we don't have enough money in that fund to do lodging and things like that,
51:18
but hopefully as we grow, we'll be able to help in bigger ways.
51:22
Right now, it's just small ways, but sometimes the smallest things make some
51:28
pretty big impact, folks.
51:30
Even if not physically, right? Maybe emotionally and And psychologically,
51:35
the thing we do might be the thing that helps them to make that decision to
51:40
like, okay, we're tightening this up.
51:43
I'm making a move. I'm making a change.
51:48
That also puts me out there just to be available for people.
51:51
So, yeah, please consider it. Help a homie fund.
51:55
Okay, good people. I appreciate each and every one of you. Thank you for listening. I love you guys.