1. Turn off or throw away your T.V.
2. Think for yourself.
3. Question all so-called ‘Authority’
4. Get out, and/or stay out, of debt!
5. Use cash, trade or barter as much as possible, rather than debit cards and credit cards
6. Get rid of grocery store ‘discount’ cards –grocery stores provide this information to insurance companies.
7. Bank at a Credit Union, or any alternative to the ‘TBTF’ Banks, that participated in the 2008 Banker Bailout.
8. Invest as much as you reasonably can in precious metals – especially silver.
9. You have the right to own a firearm, to protect yourself,and your family. Read the 2nd Amendment.
10. Buy products “Made in America”
11. Start your own garden
13. Meditate or pray – reduce your stress!
14. Get exercise!
15. Read a book (here is an excellent book recommendation: Psychological Warfare and the New World Order:The Secret War Against the American People
http://www.amazon.com/Psychological-Warfare-New-World-Order/dp/0932367232/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310394551&sr=8-1 )
16. Listen to soothing classical, jazz, ambient, or other alternative music
17. Watch ‘Freedom to Fascism’–a film by Aaron Russo (can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUpZhhbKUBo)
18. Watch ‘Why We Fight’–a film by Eugene Jarecki (can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…r_embedded)
19. Watch ‘Endgame’–a film by Alex Jones (can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-CrNlilZho)
20. Below is advice from John Perkins’ book, entitled THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE (The Truth About Economic Hit Men,Jackals,And How To Change The World), pp. 322-329.

“AVOID SHOPPING AS ‘RETAIL THERAPY’ (Instead, jog, meditate, read, or find some other solution).
SHOP CONSCIOUSLY – if there is something you must have, purchase items whose packaging, ingredients, and methods of production are sustainable and support life.
MAKE EVERYTHING YOU OWN LAST AS LONG AS POSSIBLE
PURCHASE AT CONSIGNMENT AND THRIFT STORES –where everything is recycled.
Write letters telling Monsanto, De Beers, ExxonMobil, Adidas, Ford, GE, Coca-Cola, WALMART, and other labor exploiters and environment destroyers
why you REFUSE TO PURCHASE FROM THEM.
CUT BACK ON OIL AND GAS CONSUMPTION!
DOWNSIZE (your car, home, wardrobe) – everything in your life (and don’t buy what you don’t need)
SUPPORT/SEND MONEY only to non-profits, radio stations, and other organizations that promote JUST causes.
VOLUNTEER your time and energy to such organizations.
SUPPORT LOCAL MERCHANTS
ENCOURAGE stores to buy from local growers, producers, and suppliers.
Shop at your LOCAL FARMERS’ MARKET
AVOID DRINKING WATER THAT IS FLUORIDATED (only your toothpaste should have non-industrial fluoride)
INSIST that those who use your money – banks, pensions, mutual funds, companies – make socially and environmentally responsible investments.”
21. Invest in precious metals (especially silver).
22. Research every company whose products or services you buy
23. Research every organization to which you donate your hard-earned money
24. Vote with your dollars!
25. Watch ‘The Secret of Oz’– a film by William T. Still (can be found here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swkq2E8mswI)
26. Get prepared for when the U.S. dollar TOTALLY COLLAPSES – You’ll need 1) Water, 2) Food, 3) Vital Medicine 4) Gun/Ammo, etc.
27. Global, non-violent, NON-COMPLIANCE is the answer, of We the Plebs, to the ‘elite’ New World Order!
28. Find alternatives to EVERYTHING that they’ve set up, to entrap you in THEIR system.
29. What would happen if 200 MILLION AMERICANS refused to pay their taxes, in 2012? (Just a hypothetical question)
30. Familiarize yourself with the concept of BOYCOTT
31. Corporate Membership in the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations):
http://www.cfr.org/about/corporate/roster.html
32. Don’t ever join a ‘secret’ society
33. Watch ‘Global Warming or Global Governance’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u81qXOYfKg )
34. Educate yourself. Thomas Jefferson: “If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be.”

Expand the above list,and share it with everyone you know!

Localists fight by being local. We won’t have to fight; we will have to (re)build local economies that work for us.

Love your site!

Today we are intoxicated by oil based economic results, but I am not sure that this really impacts the core of Americanism. Certainly there are those who know nothing better and cannot conceive of anything more substantial, yet I am not sure that these people constitute America. Despite many prevailing indications, I am optimistic that the core of America is sound and that the difficulties will be locally overcome, although I am also certain this will be a violent and horrible experience. I still hope to enjoy my own vine and fig tree.

The Republic, drunk with wealth and conquest, slowly converted itself into the Empire while the people slept, drugged with Bread and Circuses.

Indeed, the people welcomed Ceasar and Ceasar Agustus. Why? Because they brought competence and peace.

Why should it not be the same with the American Ceasar? Why should he not free that country too of it´s fractious and useless Senate?

Salyers cheeky unification of dereliction held by we Americans and the Persian Kings also apt.

Accordingly, I might suggest that Deneen go “over the top” a little more often so that in the resulting Prison Break, a few more nougats such as these are exposed.

Would that the term “reconciliation” actually be one of measured, if calculating prudence rather than its current usage as a term of art describing the ability the Majority Party of Congress to completely ignore the Minority. (the fitting ignorability of the minority notwithstanding …leading to the question, how might we come to ignore both?)

“Peaceful economic growth” remains a subject whose full “darksome depths” aint quite yet been plumbed beyond the precincts of the winner.

I find the little side-note on Rawls, peak US oil production, and the year 1971 kind of fascinating, though…1971 to my mind was also key in being the year the counter-culture and the larger culture came to a sort of implicit agreement that while an actual revolution wasn’t going to happen, a gradual acceptance of many of the counter-culture’s key propositions regarding sex and personal freedom was…a situation symbolized for me, at least by the release late that year of David Bowie’s career-defining Hunky Dory LP, especially its song “Changes.” As I’ve said elsewhere, “by 1971 it was clear that a revolution had occurred in the sexual morays and psychic tenor of society–the question was what to make of it and where to go next. The song seems to be Bowie’s effort to reassure those (of whatever generation) frightened by the changes, and to rein in the pride of those celebrating them.” And of course 1973′s Roe v. Wade represents the decisive and very Rawls-esque constitutionalization of the sexual revolution in U.S. politcs.

So, ha-ha, the simultaneous appearance of “Changes,” Peak U.S. Oil, and Rawls’ Theory of Justice CANNOT BE A COINCIDENCE! Nutty that, if pointing to causal connections, but not so nutty if pointing to connections in spirit, whose effects on causality remain ever elusive.

As for the broader “stratification and equality” idea, supplemented by the idea of “growth,” my mind runs back to Coriolanus, to Shakespeare’s and Machiavelli’s meditations on the meaning of Rome. That is, doesn’t every effort at any sort of republican form of government always run up against the necessity to somehow reconcile equality and stratification? Yeah, yeah, the ancients didn’t have Locke, Bacon, joint-stock companies, etc., so their “equality” and especially their “stratification” were very different from ours. But didn’t Coriolanus (and those stick-in-the-mud patricians like him) represent a refusal to accept that clever (indeed somewhat insincere) “reconciliations” is what republican politics must depend upon, given the tragic (or fallen) nature of man? Of course, Rome’s survival, running against the grain of die-hard virtue-crats like Coriolanus, turned out to depend on the “growth” of empire that reconciles plebe and patrician. I didn’t say the reconciliation of equality and stratification was a happy smily thing. But to pretend we can be for republican government, but against both straight-up empire-growth (or, the creation of confederations that have empire-like strength, and which thus necessarily might be corrupted into empires) AND against the modern and comparatively quite peaceful economic growth, (which I deny HAS TO BE “imperialistic” toward other nations’ markets or towards the earth’s resources) is perhaps to, well…pretend.

So, in the pessimistic straights these FPR thoughts have apparently brought us to, let us ask a question that I remember Patrick once rhetorically put to (the very wise, and very Christian) Robert Kraynak: “Monarchy, Anyone?”

P.S. Happy New Year, Porchers.