What I believe
My purpose is to serve order and fight entropy: to create, protect and enable life, and to turn chaos into something productive and beautiful. I start with what's within my reach and build outward, because anything great has to be good in every one of its parts.
The short version.
The mission, expanded
Life is order that arose from chaos. If we evolve far enough, maybe we can even reverse entropy.
Find, create and enable life. In the spirit of Star Trek — go out and find new life, create new life, and help it thrive.
Build, don't just break. I oppose destruction for its own sake. I'll accept creative destruction when it builds something better.
Work outward. Start with the closest circle — my kids, then my community, my country, and then humanity.
The business is the means, not the end. rebel Financial is the vehicle that funds and builds a movement. Darevia is the moonshot engine that lets it go further.
Roots
Integrity, honor, justice and hard work. Learned at home first, then drilled in at West Point.
Virtue, wisdom, courage, justice and temperance. Two thousand years old and still the best operating manual I've found.
How I try to live it
I respect your freedom, but I keep my integrity. People can do what's legal — I won't compromise my own conduct out of loyalty. I'll talk it through, offer another route, or step aside.
When I'm sure and it matters, I speak up — in the room, right away.
When I'm not sure, I get curious. I ask questions and debate to test my own view. Humility to question myself, conviction to act.
Your freedom ends where it destroys someone else's. Free people cooperating by choice is the highest, most elegant form of order — forced order is fragile.
The keystone
Love keeps the mission from becoming monstrous. Every person counts as they are, not for what they achieve. And love includes accountability — I hold even my own kids to the standard, except where the rule itself is unjust.
I'd rather lead by example and persuasion. The aim is to stop the power-hungry, not to become the destroyer. I keep people around me with standing permission to call me out — and this page is one more check.
How it fits together
An arch is just a pile of stones until the keystone goes in. Then every stone holds every other one up. That's how I think about the virtues: each one matters, but love is what locks them together and keeps them from turning into something cold.
Integrity
Courage
Wisdom
Love
Justice
Temperance
Hard work
A big mission can justify almost anything if you let it. Love is the check. If the plan treats people as fuel for the goal, the plan is wrong.
Not for what they achieve, earn or produce. It's the lesson of stories like Moulin Rouge and Forrest Gump: the people who love without conditions are the ones who get it right.
Loving someone means holding them to the standard, my own kids included. The only exception is when the rule itself is unjust. Then the rule is what has to change.
Courage, wisdom and integrity
Courage and wisdom can look like opposites: one speaks up, the other holds back and asks questions. For me they're the same habit, pointed at different situations.
Am I sure, and does it matter?
Yes: courage
Waiting until later, or saying it to someone else, is how small problems become big ones. If I'm sure and the stakes are real, I say it to the people who need to hear it, while it still counts.
No: wisdom
If I'm not sure, my job is to find out, not to win. I ask questions and argue the other side to test my own view. Humility to question myself, conviction to act once I know.
I respect your freedom, but I keep my integrity. You can do what's legal. I won't compromise my own conduct out of loyalty. Here's the order I take it in:
1
Talk it through
2
Offer another route
3
Step aside
Justice
Keep laws light so people stay free, and rely on a shared moral sense for the rest — with humility and compromise when views collide. When something's wrong, I sort it into one of three tiers.
Tier 1
Leave it alone. Not everything I disagree with is my business.
Tier 2
Compete. Build the better alternative and let people choose. That's exactly why rebel Financial and 4Advisors exist.
Tier 3
Take up the paladin's mantle and fight — whatever it costs.
Freedom and order
People often treat freedom and order as a trade-off: more of one means less of the other. I don't think that's right. The strongest order there is comes from free people cooperating because they want to.
Chaos
No shared rules. The strong take from the weak.
Forced order
Rules held up by fear. Looks solid, but it's fragile and breaks under pressure.
Chosen order
Free people cooperating by choice. The highest and most elegant form of order.
The one limit: your freedom ends where it destroys someone else's.
Hard work and temperance
What I'm best at is outlasting people. I'll keep going through pain long after most would stop. I'll be honest: that's also a compulsion. So I give it a mission worth what it costs, and I run every big commitment through one test.
Does this serve the mission?
Yes
Give it everything.
No
It waits.
Serves the mission, and makes the people around you stronger.
Serves itself, and eats the people around you.
Family isn't a sacrifice I make for the mission. Loving them well is the mission, at its most basic level.
Leadership and accountability
I'd rather lead by example and persuasion. I only take control when there's real injustice going unchecked, the third tier above. The goal is to stop the power-hungry, not to become the destroyer. Anyone who wants that kind of responsibility needs checks on them, so here are mine.
1
Someone close enough to see the whole picture and tell me the truth about it.
2
A few people with standing permission to call me out, no invitation needed.
3
Writing my values down in public means anyone can hold me to them.
4
Useful as an honest second opinion. One check among several, never the main one.
From values to action
Values only mean something if they change what you do. Here's where I've put them to work.
How I'd fix government, the law, healthcare, defense and taxes, and which value drives each idea.
See the platformI mean it. Questions and pushback make the ideas better — and they keep me honest.
Tell me where I'm wrong