A R Salyer and his book The Nation State of Texas

Shannon interviews AR Salyer; an author, visionary, and political hack. Enlisting in the US Navy, he served on Trident nuclear submarines, serving as a battle stations helmsman. From bouncer to bartender, electrician to car salesman, front-man guitarist to Senior Manager for a Fortune 100 company—each role and every stage shaped his unorthodox lens on life.

His book, The Nation State of Texas: How to Secede Without a Tinfoil Hat, A CLEAR VISION . . . OR SCIENCE FICTION? As soon as anyone mentions Secession, people immediately picture them with a tinfoil hat on their head and decide to socially distance themselves, if not avoid them altogether.

And in most cases, rightfully so.

This book isn’t what you think it is. And it might be much more. It all started with questions asked many years ago.

What is the “end state” for governance? What’s the true goal?

Despite thousands of years of complex human history and different political models to draw from, there is still so much strife in politics.

In Texas, there has always been talk about breaking away from the union.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Welcome back everybody and um hope this is gonna be a great day for you. This is the latest episode of the Bookworm Mom. Very excited to have this author on with us. Earlier this year, we did a book review of a book entitled Revolt. If you remember, that book was fiction and it delved into the possibility of a small town in California deciding to secede from the United States and doing so through a vote through a referendum. So this gentleman has picked up a similar theme, and he has written a book entitled The Nation State of Texas. Now, for those of you who are unaware and don't know your history, Texas actually was a republic from 1836 until about 1845 before it became one of the United States. So interesting to take a look at how it could potentially become once again uh a republic, or as he calls it, the nation-state of Texas. So I'd like to introduce A.R. uh Saulyer. So uh A.R., what uh can you tell us about the inspiration that made you decide to sit down and actually write this book? And uh, you know, so tell us what what was your your listen, I'm so fed up with this craziness in the United States that I think that there is some reason for and you know stepping away from the the country. So what led you to do the book?

SPEAKER_00 1:36

And you you kind of captured it. So the big thing that I had when in writing the book is I would sit around while talking with people about politics, I would say, you know what, in my nation, state of Texas, this is what I would do. So really it's not the the book is about maybe one eighth of it is about actual secession. Everyone thinks it's a book about secession. Right. So it's not kind of discussed, but it's really more of a vehicle of how to get there. Like I couldn't just say, here's the promised land and you figure it out. Um so the inspiration of the book is, yeah, I I do think that America is fundamentally broken at this point in time. I don't want to go into modern politics too much, but if we look at the Save Act, what's going on with that right now? Right, could we ever pass a constitutional amendment? So if the one vehicle to actually make changes that cement how we want to do things going forward is implausible, if not possible, then what does that say about our full system? What does that say about our political parties? Um, you know, people playing whackable all the time, where hey, we fixed this and now three other things are wrong. Oh look, there's hundreds of millions of fraud in Somalia that have been stealing from or uh sorry, in Minnesota by Somali fraudsters that have been taking money out of people's pockets. And we just keep finding new stuff every time we turn over our rock. So is it not there or two states? Is it not the adult conversation how to go, this is not working? Maybe we should look into an alternative so we can have a controlled burn instead of an out-of-controlled fire. And that's the reason why I wrote the book, is because I I don't think that we can fix all the things that are wrong without finding 15 other things that are broken every single time we fix something.

unknown 3:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

So why not just look at the reset? You see that a lot on online. Look at the reset button. Well, here's the map on how to do that and what you want to look like when you get to the other side. That was the inspiration.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

And you know, I think it's interesting because the way you frame the book uh in terms of secession, it it's not some tenfold hat wearing concept, as you note, uh right there on the label. Uh, it's not a fringed conspiracy, but rather a serious exercise in trying to imagine how we can improve the governance um, you know, drawn out of our 250 year existence and we're getting ready to celebrate. Uh, and what are the most important structural or constitutional changes that you actually propose?