640: The Road to Texas Independence

Brian Nichols  0:11  
On the road to Texas, the session. Yeah, let's talk about that instead of 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. Wow, happy Friday there, folks. Brian here on The Brian Nichols Show. Thank you for joining us on another fun filled episode. i Hi. And as always, your humble host joining us live from our Stratus ip studios, here in lovely Eastern Indiana. Don't let cyber attacks or outdated Business Technology put your company at risk. Learn more at the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash Stratus ip Stratus ip Business Technology simplified Texas. Are you going to do it? Are you actually going to be the state that says we're going to take the step away be the ones to be the first domino in the chain of 49 other dominoes that is the question that has been raised over the past year or so especially as the Texas secession movement has taken charge and returning to the program to talk all about the latest happenings. Joining us today is Daniel Miller from Texas. Daniel, welcome back to The Brian Nichols

Daniel Miller  1:27  
Show. Hey, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Brian Nichols  1:29  
Absolutely. Great to have you back right to talk about all things, Texas. But first, let's go ahead obviously reintroduce you to the audience. There's been a lot that's happened since your last in the show. And I was talking about it beforehand. You got you got to sit in my seat over on Tim pools, Tim cast, but I think unfortunately, you got usurped by President Trump decided to to run for reelection. Surprise.

Daniel Miller  1:53  
I did. And look, I'll be honest, you know, doing running commentary on Trump's announcement was fun it was. But I will say I was woefully under caffeinated at the time. So probably probably not as good as a kind of band.

Brian Nichols  2:07  
Hey, but you still you still rock and roll over at Tim cast. And I know, you've mentioned that they said that you're going to be able to come back. So that's always a positive as well. But hey, let's do a really quick reintroduction for us. I know last time we are on the show, we did a deep dive into the background of Texas. But for the folks who didn't catch that episode, give us a quick recap. Who are you? And what is Texas?

Daniel Miller  2:29  
Yeah, so for those who don't know me, I'm Daniel Miller. And I'm president of an organization called the Texas nationalist movement that was founded in 2005, to secure and protect the political, cultural and economic independence of Texas. And of course, that has manifested in what most people know about about our organization, which is the tax ID issue, which is effectively giving Texans a vote on the issue of whether or not to reassert our status as an independent nation become a self governing, independent nation among nations again.

Brian Nichols  3:02  
So when you are talking, and we talked about this last time, a little bit more talking to your average person, they hear the word secession. And I think the worst case scenarios instantly pop into mind. Right. And we talked about this again, last time civil wars, the incident first thing that pops into people's heads. Are you experiencing that still today? Because I hear more frequently, maybe it's my circles, but I'm also hearing outside of my circles, the idea of national divorce being floated quite openly and casually. And actually, in many places, in places even in blue states, in an OK type of mentality. I think they're even starting to see, well, maybe we don't all have to be in this one big 50 state bubble bath together, maybe we should all be able to do our own thing.

Daniel Miller  3:49  
Yeah, look, it's a dysfunctional relationship. And you know, if you want to talk about the taboo about the subject being removed, the survey USA poll that was released over the summer, where 66% of likely voters here in Texas said they would vote for it. I mean, there's That's huge. That's, you know, that was like 74 76%, Republican 54% Democrat and 53% of independent voters. Right. So, you know, the the taboo about the discussion is not only gone but but really so is the resistance to I think everyone's coming to grips with the fact that states when forced into this federal system, are really being subjected to this one size fits none policy agenda from two and a half million unelected bureaucrats in Washington DC. But you know, the thing Brian, that I think we need to do is and and, you know, one of the things that you don't hear me do very often is use the word secession. It's a real kind of 19th century term for a whole lot of different separations, right. And so, as you move into the the early 20th century, and particularly Right after World War Two, you've seen this 75 to 80 year evolution of thought, where we can't use blanket terms like secession right now, people will still use it because it's short, it's handy. But it really doesn't describe what we're talking about here with the states. You know, secession would be your turn, if you believe that the states were this whole one incorporated body into something called the United States of America that in fact, the United States of America as an institution, has supplanted and fully absorbed the sovereignty of the states. But we know that's not what the Constitution says, We know, that's not what the framers intended. Instead, what we're looking at, and one of the reasons that we talk Texas all the time, is we're talking about an exit from this entity, an exit from a relationship of equals among the states, you know, and it's effectively withdrawing our membership from this political and economic institution called the United States of America, which is very different than America, right? America and the United States of America are really two different things. But that's a whole other conversation.

Brian Nichols  6:11  
So talk to us from where we were last time to where we are today. I know, last time this was starting to gain momentum in Texas, and I think we were discussing that legislation was getting ready to be drafted. And I guess rumor is that we're at that point where we're getting to maybe looking at 2023 as a real viable option. This it's the ballots. Is that the case? Daniel? Yeah, that's

Daniel Miller  6:34  
the case and really to catch everyone up if they didn't see the previous interview. You know, our organization outside of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is the single largest political advocacy organization in the state. Okay. You know, we dwarf every other one. Our campaign staff, our organizational staff out in the field is larger than Greg Abbott's campaign staff, which, you know, he's our governor here, and bordering on being the size of the Democratic Party's entire party staff here in Texas, right. So this has been moving for a long time. Texas has a true part time legislature, it meets for 140 days, every other year. And so last session, we had a major breakthrough when state representative Cal Biederman filed our bill, the Texas Independence Referendum Act. And of course, it got stymied by House leadership. They wouldn't even give it a hearing. But there's been a steady build of momentum since then, you know, we've had, again, phenomenal poll numbers come out that show that if this goes to a vote of the people that wins, we had that you know, that survey USA poll that I cited earlier, plus a handful of others. In addition, you had the Republican Party of Texas, which is the dominant political party here in Texas, at their convention ad, not one but two planks to their platform, calling on a Texas vote, one calling for it and 2023 and one calling for it at some date uncertain, right. So as you can tell from the timeline, we're getting ready to move into a legislative session, which starts in January. And so we have as an organization released the draft legislation for the next session, one of the legislators has put it into the process. So it goes through what we call our legislative council vetting process here, which is the first step in preparation to actually formally file the piece of legislation that bill passes. And then in November of 2023, Texans will be able to go to the polls walk into into a voting booth, and they're on their ballot will be the question, should the state of Texas reassert its status as an independent nation?

Brian Nichols  8:44  
And then what? So let's just say, Texas says yes, yeah. Then what happens? Daniel things I'm sure will get very interesting.

Daniel Miller  8:53  
Yeah, I would like to say that, that that would be the day that I get to finally go on a vacation after doing this since 1996. But alas, that's not to be just not yet. Because the thing people need to understand is Texas are really the exit of any state. It's not an act. It's a process. Okay. So literally, that vote comes back. The legislation calls for the creation of a legislative committee, very similar to what they do in relation to like when they did convention of the states, that legislation, some of the others, but it's it's basically, a committee comprised of both houses in the bill actually lays out very specifically what the committee has to do. Right. And that committee is tasked with creating a transitional plan, dealing with constitutional issues, statutory issues, international covenants, treaties and agreements and finally, the negotiated issues with the federal government to present at a time when the governor either calls a special session or until the next legislative session, Gamble's in and then Texans will get another say, in those cases. institutional changes and statutory changes. I mean, it launches a process. So it's not something that happens overnight. The process, the kind of the next steps are all laid out in the legislation. But again, what I think is really interesting about the way that we've crafted the legislation is that it allows for a compression of the timeframe if the situation with the federal government deteriorates, and let's be honest, that's highly likely.

Brian Nichols  10:32  
Yeah, yeah, no, not only is it highly likely, I think we're seeing it now before our eyes. So I guess then that leads to getting there, right there. And let's be real, and I'm sure you're experiencing already, obstacles that are so certain to be in the way we saw what, just right, we saw in the Twitter files, Twitter, working hand in hand with a Biden administration to censor individuals who are going against their narratives? Well, I'm sure you guys are gonna be facing some uphill battles. And rumor is, you're currently in the process of suing the Google Facebook, talk to us about that. And it wasn't now meta. Yeah.

Daniel Miller  11:09  
Yeah, interestingly enough, starting about October, we notice that no one could post links to our website that contains all these answers and rebuttals to the common misconceptions that are spread by the opposition about Texas, right? Like what happens in Social Security, the US military will invite you know, we have about the 100 100 most asked questions answered in excruciating detail at Texas now.org. So starting at the beginning of October, when we when our supporters would go and try to post links, the Facebook gods would determine that we were unworthy. And so through some subsequent investigation, what we found out is that they were classifying us is a dangerous or harmful organization. And so since then, not only have they blocked us, but they have been going back through links previously posted up to two years ago in removing those posts from people, right. So we we said, Enough is enough, you know, if we're getting ready to go and fight this battle, in, you know, this, this battle to give Texans a vote on Texas independence, we cannot surrender the most used social media platform in Texas. We can't surrender that to big tech oligarchs that want to slap a muzzle on the protests at folks. So we, we sued meta, we filed suit, based on a law that was passed in the last legislative session that essentially said that Facebook could not do what Facebook was doing. So we filed that the lawsuit was filed in early November. And oddly enough, we're still waiting on our first emergency temporary restraining order hearing. So I expect however, I will say that meta has finally responded to the lawsuit. I mean, they've responded almost immediately. But their first move was to have it removed from state court in the federal court. And that that came down the pike on the seventh. So when we were supposed to actually go to court for the hearing, they filed a motion to have it removed to federal court, and we filed it as a class action lawsuit. So our intention is to ride this out until Facebook takes the muzzle off of Texas supporters. And let's put this issue on an equal footing. If they're going to allow the opposition to post fear mongering and misinformation at a minimum, they can give equal access to Texas supporters who can rebut that information.

Brian Nichols  13:46  
So this kind of goes into my second question, and this is beyond Facebook, but same church, different pew kind of thing. And we see this right now with you mentioned the tech oligarchy. And this is across the board corporations really being kowtow to this ESG type of mentality. I'm sure you guys will face pushback, let's just say we get two texts from a lot of these large corporations. What What will you be able to do then like, do you see Texas having to have a lot of homegrown companies? Or do you think that a lot of companies are gonna say You know what, no, we're still gonna do business with Texas, Texas, the darn.

Daniel Miller  14:27  
Yeah, I mean, look, Brexit was very instructive on this issue. So if anyone wants to look at a pretty clear analog of what this has looked like, and what it's looking like, and kind of what it will look like moving forward. Brexit is probably at least on the campaign side of it, very instructive. Now. There are some negative lessons that people can learn from Brexit but but to that point, right, we talked about that later if you'd like. But but to this point, one of the things that we saw very clearly During the Brexit debate, was corporations making those sorts of assertions, right where they said, Look, we'll move our headquarters out of London, we'll stop doing business. And you know what happened? Well, it wasn't that what happened was, those companies realized that the UK had a much more friendly climate to business than the European Union did, which was one of the major reasons for Brexit in the first place. Well take that over to Texas, Texas has got one of the most business friendly climates out of all the states. I mean, during the Obama administration, I think for seven or seven of eight years, Texas was the number one job creator in in during the entire time of the Obama administration throughout the entire United States. Texas has always had a business friendly climate, I think it could be better. But you know, we have to begin that process of making it better by removing the 180,000 pages of federal laws, rules and regulations and federal regulatory accumulation. That destroys the bridge from poverty, to prosperity, entrepreneurship. So you know, these companies, ultimately, they made bluster, they may thump their chest, they may virtue signal that, you know, they love the federal government and, you know, President put in pop up there, but at the end of the day, you know, at the end of the day, they've got to make a decision that matches that really adds to their bottom line they have shareholders to answer to, and there's not a better place in the United States or in North America to do business right now than taxes.

Brian Nichols  16:31  
Just imagining Joe Biden having to respond to texts. It just makes you

Daniel Miller  16:37  
look when you said that Twitter was was working with him hand in hand, I have to tell you here in Texas, we refer to that as working with the Biden administration, nose to hair,

Brian Nichols  16:47  
especially if their kids got and you know what, that's just a whole separate thing. Like we've known him for being a creep ever since he was like, found in those pictures when his VP it's like, what are we doing here?

Daniel Miller  17:01  
That got look when when he when he ran? I looked at my wife and I said, get ready for entertainment because that guy is a walking gaffe machine. And and to watch the media cover up his gaffes, like a cat covering a turd on a concrete floor is even more entertaining. I mean, it's it's infuriating, but to watch the gymnastics they have to go through to cover for the federal government's mismanagement and misdeeds. It really tells you that mainstream media has become official state prot the state propaganda arm or the federal government. Yep. Well, we just saw Brittney Griner.

Brian Nichols  17:43  
She's coming home. And with that we got rid of we gave up the head arms dealer for Russian terrorists in response, and Micah Parsons star linebacker and just MVP my opinion of the Dallas Cowboys, which happened in my favorite team. And I'm sure Americans team, right. He was saying he's saying this is ridiculous. And he and not only did he say that, but he tweeted, he's like, we still not gonna vote for you to Biden, and he had to retract it, unfortunately. But then he responded, being like, you know, hey, no, I'm not a fan of this at all. You know, he's not really a fan of Trump either. But he said, I'm not a fan of Biden. Especially because, you know, he, I think he represents a lot of other people out there who just see him for what he is they see the administration for what it is. And I guess it opens up the question, what do we do? And this is the answer I think a lot of people are looking for is something like what you're doing a Texan, right? Because it's one thing to talk about this stuff in your Facebook groups until you get banned, or on social media until you get censored, or go out and have this conversation in real life until people like you have three heads because it sounds so alien until you realize that no one will actually think this stuff. They've just been afraid to to actually express it. I think that actually speaks more to our social media world that we're in in our self censoring because of the fear. And that's, I mean, that's a whole other can of worms. But I guess that opens up the the reason by texting is so popular.

Daniel Miller  19:09  
Yeah. Look, it's you know, for us, I mean, you have to understand this, this didn't happen overnight. For us. This has been this has been a lot of work. You know, my my, my my start in this happened in in 1996. And really

Brian Nichols  19:23  
quick and you talk about like how the opinion of you from then like when you brought this to the table to where it is today. And the reception from folks has changed. Will you

Daniel Miller  19:33  
look I'll tell ya, that's what I was getting to the first nine years that we were at this, it was pretty much the same experience that you talked about people would run either really hot or really cold and most of the people that were running hot were very few in number. So starting about 2003. We gathered together a bit of a brain trust. And we did we did an exhaustive two year study of independence. What's around the world? Right? And what prompted that was honestly the thing that really connected the logic of exit for me back in 1996, which was that statistic from global paradox that book by John Nesbitt, where he talked about that, since at the end of World War Two, there were roughly 54 recognized fully sovereign countries around the world. And by the time of the book's publication in the mid 90s, there were 192, right? So they didn't, the earth didn't get any bigger than in fall from space, right, they had to be people like us that just wanted to enjoy the ride of self government. So what we did is we started this exhaustive study of independence movements around the world, both those that have succeeded, those that have failed, those that were still in process, we studied it from, you know, things that have become now known as the 51st, state movements to outright hard exit tears, right. And then we overlaid that with Texas law, sort of political reality. And out came the organization. And we entered into the field in 2005, with a strategy and a plan that involved getting, getting the voters to deal with this issue to to really open up about it, to go out and do retail politics in the real way to treat this as a real issue, because that's part of it. When went from a mindset perspective, when you approach someone about this issue, and you act hinky about it or you think something's wrong, you know, and you're sheepish, then they're just going to reflect that back at you. And so you know, you have to be confident in it. And what we found out in, you know, from the years of 2005, to 2009, was we found that when we talked to Texans about this issue, there was excitement there, right, there were legitimately excited people that were excited to see that something concrete and real that wasn't crazy, or fringe was being done. And I'll tell you, and I know, we talked about this last time, but if if there are those people out there that are wanting to, at a minimum, start having this conversation, because I believe the conversation itself is extremely healthy to have. Right. But but if you want to have this conversation, the approach is has got to be very different than we should have our state leave, right? Some people aren't there yet. They haven't made the connecting logic. They at a visceral level understand that the federal government is unfixable? Right? They understand it's on a trajectory that they don't agree with, regardless of their partisan affiliation. Right. But but they're not understanding it in the terms that the rest of the world does. And so what we do, and what we encourage others to do is just ask the simple question. If right now your state was already a self governing independent nation among nations, you had control over your own border and immigration policy over your own monetary and taxation policy, your own trade agreements, your own travel agreements, you had your own embassies and passports you had, what 200 other self governing independent nations around the world have right now. Okay. And instead of talking about withdrawing from the union, instead, you were talking about whether or not your self governing independent nation should give all that up and join the union. Knowing everything you know, right now about the federal government today, would you vote to join the union? Absolutely. And that's how you have the conversation, because most people don't think about it in those terms. But ultimately, this is this is really a question of regaining control of your own political destiny, right, right now in our state in the way that we look at it. If if all 17 million Texas voters went to the polls, and voted on an issue 100% At this moment, that decision can be overridden, at the stroke of a pen by an executive order, or an unaccountable unelected federal judge, or some act of the United States Congress. I mean, that's, that's just the the way that it works. If all Texans if our entire congressional delegation, all 38 of them, you know, voted a specific way right now, we are outnumbered by math in the United States Congress. So you have to fundamentally recognize at the moment that you look at the federal government and say, it's broken, it's going in a direction that we don't want it to go, whether that's over debt, whether that's border immigration, whatever that direction is, right? You realize that even if you did everything you had all of your voters, all of your population, all of your congressional delegation, all saying, Hey, we we don't want to go this direction. Understand that mathematically, it's not in our favor. Right? So we can't we can't make that happen. And for us, that just means grabbing back to what the framers and the Founders intended for states to be sovereign self governing, you know, entities rejecting an institution that has rejected the principles on which that union was founded, and reclaim our right to be a self governing independent nation among nations. It's as simple as that is as

Brian Nichols  25:19  
simple as that Daniel Miller, we could go on and on and on. And unfortunately, we are already hard pressed for time, which means that we're already at the heart of the show, are we gonna go ahead and do final thoughts, I'll kick things off, why not. And that is, folks, you hear when we're talking about exit. One of the important pieces to this, one of the the recipe, or the ingredients to the recipe, let's say is you had to have part of the political process, this would not be able to be going into the draft legislation without someone actually being in political office. So knowing that it's important if you want to go ahead and start something in your your community that will turn into something bigger, like what we have here in Texas? Well, it starts with you. And I understand there, there's a lot of barriers to entry running for local office, it can be tough. So what we're doing here at The Brian Nichols Show is we started candidate schools. So what we're doing less than $10 a month, if you are either a already running for local office, and you're just looking to learn the basics, fundraising, messaging, how to structure your campaign, all those little basic things, and maybe you're like, hey, I want to learn a little bit more, so I can get more acclimated to this world of politics, we're here to help out or Option B, you're maybe a little uncertain. You're thinking about tossing your hat in the ring, but you're not too sure. No worries, join us. We're gonna be having experts on the show who do this stuff all the time talking about what works, what doesn't work candidates who have won, but also more importantly, I think lost their elections. What worked but what didn't work. We're gonna learn from that and more head over the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash Candidate School sign up today. Daniel, what do you have for us for final thoughts?

Daniel Miller  26:56  
Quite simple. For anyone out there that is, is losing hope or has lost hope. I'm just going to give you some encouraging words from Article One, Section two of the Texas Constitution, which says that all political power is inherent in the people and all free governments are founded on their authority and instituted for their benefit. And the people have at all times the inalienable right to alter reform or abolish their government in such manner as they may deem expedient. You know, those are pure words that deal with the issue of self government, but they key in on the thing that is important that we all understand. And that is, it always must be a movement of the people that changes our governing situation. And my friends, you're a people, right? gathering people together starts with one person, you may not know a single person out there who believes like you do if you want to exercise that right of self government, but start having the conversation go out, find your people, and then go embrace your right of self government because it's an inalienable right.

Brian Nichols  28:01  
And we talked about this many a time here on the show recently, but I gotta bring it up. Again, from the late great, Andrew Breitbart politics is always downstream from culture. So it's important for us to play the political and the cultural game as well. Daniel, thank you for joining us. Always a pleasure. And, folks, if you got some value from today's show, I'm going to ask you to do me a favor, please go ahead, give today's episode a share. And when you do, please go ahead and tag yours truly at B nickels. Liberty, Daniel, where can folks go ahead? Tag you but also go ahead and continue the conversation?

Daniel Miller  28:36  
Yeah, I would encourage people to visit our website at Texas now.org. Or you can hit me up on all social media at the Texian the EM,

Brian Nichols  28:44  
there you go, folks. And to make it easy for you. We'll include all those links for you in the show notes. All you got to do if you're on the podcast version of your show, when people hear it, click the little artwork and your podcast catcher, it'll bring you right over to Brian Nichols. show.com where you can find Yes, all three No, I'm sorry, not three 600 and almost 40 episodes here on the program, which just still is in fact mind blowing. But also folks, we do have a video version of the show which launched their beginning of last year. So we now have I think over 200 some odd maybe 300 videos. I don't know, go check out over on our YouTube rumble over on Odyssey either way, do me a favor, hit that little notification bell and subscribe button so you don't miss a single time. We go live and we have awesome guests like Daniel here on the show. And by the way, did you check out our awesome conversation we had yesterday where we had our good friend Carrie McDonald returned to the program from fi she was talking about educational entrepreneurialism, how COVID-19 has sparked an entire generation of educational entrepreneurs teachers leaving the government schooling system and starting their own little micro schools. It's such a really cool story to hear that there are so many folks out there who are doing this brand new way of teaching and guess what it's getting rid of the old By way of doing government schooling changing the way we're looking at the status quo, much like Daniels doing when it comes to talking about taxes, but with that being said, Go Have yourselves a great weekend. Brian Nichols signing off. You're on The Brian Nichols Show for Daniel Miller. We'll see you on Monday.

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