Foreword

In an age when the machinery of traditional nation-states has grown too vast, too distant, and too compromised to honor the dignity of the individual, Freeport ariose as a deliberate act of reclamation. We do not seek to reform empires; we seek to step outside them, to plant a flag on ground that belongs neither to geography nor to history's tired scripts, but to the human spirit itself. We are living proof that people may still choose self-determination, not as a slogan shouted in protest, not as a dream deferred to some distant revolution, but as a covenant, renewed each dawn by every member who awakens beneath our banner.

It began with us, the founders, former citizens of the United States, who could no longer lend our hands, our taxes, or our silent consent to a system drenched in the blood of war, rape, murder, and genocide. We watched as prisons swelled with the broken, as borders were policed with bullets and children were torn from their mothers' arms. We saw the machinery of empire grind on, fueled by the quiet complicity of a people who told themselves they were powerless, that their votes were prayers and their taxes were tithes to a lesser evil. We refused to remain part of that guilt. Every dollar withheld from bombs, every voice raised against the slaughter, every act of withdrawal from the beast was a brick in our foundation.