Daniel Miller opened this Late Night Coffee Talk by connecting two threads from the week. Wired magazine had run a hit piece on the movement after the Abbeville conference yet refused to print the rebuttal, which raised an obvious question: if nothing is happening with independence, why spend the ink? Then came the answer from abroad. Alberta crossed the threshold to hold its own referendum on independence. Miller noted that the establishment, here and worldwide, treats self-determination as a contagion, something that spreads once a people sees a peaceful vote succeed, which is exactly why a development a thousand miles north still matters in Texas.
The night’s deepest answer came on surveillance, a subject squarely in Miller’s lane as a working tech consultant. Asked about VPN bans and the spread of license-plate and facial-recognition cameras, he argued that bans only punish good people while malicious actors route around them, and that the real story is bigger than any one vendor. He pointed to Flock cameras, to local governments wiring private Ring and business cameras into their control centers, to Palantir’s IRS contract, and to central bank digital currency, framing it all as the government outsourcing the violation of our privacy to private companies the way the prior administration outsourced social media censorship. As long as Texas is tied to the federal system, he said, the fishbowl only gets smaller.
Much of the hour returned to a single point: federal supremacy makes Texans’ agreement irrelevant. On birthright citizenship and mandated digital ID age verification, Miller kept asking what people planned to do before the courts weighed in, because either way an unelected judge or the next president can flip the outcome with the stroke of a pen. He argued that the country can no longer agree on the fundamentals of governance, using a bridge anecdote from former state representative James White to show how far the ground has shifted, and that the way out is for Texas to govern itself. He also previewed the return of the Runaway Scrape, an invitation-only retreat for leaders and activists, and confirmed there would be no coffee talk during Holy Week.
Questions answered in this episode
- With VPN bans spreading and cameras everywhere, do you see that coming to Texas, and how do we protect our liberty before independence?
- What can we do if birthright citizenship is upheld by the Supreme Court?
- What should we do about the threat of mandated digital ID age verification?
- How many businesses would actually leave if Texas seceded?
- What could Texas keep militarily if it left the Union?
- Are there concrete legislative actions hoped for if the economic risk management resolution makes it onto the RPT platform?
- What should we make of El Paso County’s convention vote on a secession-related constitutional amendment?
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