In Donald Trump’s speech at the Libertarian Party national convention, he said that if elected he would grant clemency to Ross Ulbricht, who has been sentenced to two lifetimes and more in jail for having been the administrator of a website. Trump said that he has already served 11 years and that is enough. He pledged that he would grant clemency immediately upon being sworn in.
The audience cheered. The prospect that Ross will be out in January is thrilling to contemplate.
Why the passion and focus on this case? It’s not because Ross’s website mostly sold marijuana products that are mostly legal now. Remember that this was ten years ago before pot shops popped up everywhere. In those days, users had to take enormous risks to their personal safety to obtain their product. The website exchange—a peer-to-peer service so that the admins never saw the product—was safe, with user ratings and market-based accountability.
Yes, the Silk Road also made real narcotics available but it’s not as if they were otherwise impossible to get. Indeed, during this exact period the opioid crisis of approved prescription drugs was sweeping the country. The difference was the user ratings and the safety on many levels: from being mugged, killed, or poisoned. The point of the project was experimental, to show that there was a better way than the drug war that enriches cartels, empowers police, and overcrowds the prisons.
The reason why the libertarians cheered Trump’s announcement was that the sentence was profoundly unjust and crazy, and because Ross is an intelligent, good-hearted, and wonderful person whose work in this realm had nothing to do with a fixation on illicit drugs. It was about an experiment in market freedom, which he undertook because the technology allowed it. His purpose was simply to show that free markets work. Nothing more.
There was plenty that was fishy about the arrest and prosecution of this man who did only technical work, including the way in which named and unnamed accomplices were treated with kid gloves while Ross’s head ended up on the platter. The plaintiff’s arguments to the jury included accusations that were never even made in the indictment or came up in the course of the trial.
We can be sure that Ross is only one person among thousands or tens of thousands of people caught up and caged as a result of a criminal justice system that cares nothing for fairness or human rights. We might ask how it came to be that so many people held up signs with Ross’s name on it and why the former and likely future president, in addition to the independent Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., have taken up his cause.
There have been many wonderful people who have tried to raise awareness of his case over ten years. But one name stands out above the rest. Her name is Lyn Ulbricht. She is Ross’s mom.
Back in 2014 when she first started advocating for her son, hardly anyone could be bothered to care. I recall these days well and I was disappointed and astonished at the indifference toward his plight. The libertarians didn’t really raise a fuss either. Too many facts were in dispute, and there is always a risk associated with lobbying for a jailed convict.
But that didn’t stop Lyn. She figured out early on that if she was going to make any progress at all, the libertarians were going to be the most receptive. After all, she had not had much success in just posting signs on storefronts and telephone poles, which she also did tirelessly. She was happy for any audience even if only mildly interested. So she went to every possible meeting, at her expense.
She flew around the country. She raised money. She spoke to countless audiences. She traveled around the world. She would talk for hours to podcasters and media people, anyone who would listen. She mastered all the legal details, and was very precise in her language. She hosted events. She passed out bracelets and signs. She established social media accounts and humanized the life that he was enduring in prison. She gradually made progress. It was due to her tenacity born of a deep love—a mother’s love—that has been the background power of this movement for a decade.
Her faith never flagged. Not once. Yes, she cried often, prayed, and talked about hardly anything else for ten years. Even when appeals were denied and pushes for leniency were rejected, and Ross was transferred from one place to another, she did not give up hope. As a mom, her job was to do the impossible for her son even if the rest of the world regarded the cause as hopeless.
In her mind, there was always hope. She just needed to find a way.
As I saw the signs in the crowd this weekend, and heard two presidential candidates make an appeal for Ross to be freed, I immediately imagined the joy in Lyn’s heart. I’ve not spoken to her but I know her and I know it is there. This is a woman of incredible faith, boundless energy, unstoppable passion for what’s right, and a seemingly infinite ability to push, press, and lobby for her son’s life and freedom, with anyone who would listen, anyone with some minor hope of influencing outcomes.
If that story doesn’t fill you with inspiration and respect, there is something wrong with you. What we see in Lyn is something that is almost not of this world. But you know what? It is, in fact, very much of this world. It is all around us. It is the divine in everyone among us: the fire of a mother’s love for her child. Watching this all unfold should remind us all of the remarkable power of this beatific force at work. It is unstoppable, more powerful than all the lobbies and even the armies.
We’ve seen the power of maternal love strongly at work in the world over the last year. It was the moms who demanded that the schools be open. It was the moms who saw what their children were being taught and formed large and influential organizations to stop and block the corruption of the curriculum. It is the moms who are out there now demanding the right to have knowledge of medical procedures being pushed on the kids. It is the moms who are demanding choice over the shots being forced on the kids.
And what a gigantic difference it has made! The schools did open because of it and they are being reformed because of it. It’s the moms who have marshaled the energy to push back on the Great Reset and draft the kids into a creepy psy-op experiment in gender transitions. They will have none of it. It’s the moms that are fed up with seeing their daughters’ sports programs raided by boys in drag.
And looking back in time, it was the moms who demanded the carve-out legislation that made homeschooling possible. And it is the moms today who are getting ever more engaged in hugely important causes like food and medical freedom, without which we have no health.
This is what happens when you cross the moms: you face a power that is not of this world. The politicians have begun to understand this, and fear it.
I’m not speaking of some vague and ideological form of abstract “activism” promoted by the likes of Hillary Clinton and Melinda Gates. These are people who deploy gender as an ideological weapon against society.
I’m speaking of something far more pronounced and real, a tactical passion unleashed under particular conditions, one rooted in love. No amount of money can buy it and nothing can stop it once it is unleashed.
For viewers of TV who saw those signs and heard Trump and Kennedy say some guy’s name they did not recognize, they need to know the background. The reason this is happening is because of something awesome, something inspiring, something truly beyond what most mortals can comprehend: boundless and deep love. No state in the world, much less the global state, can match it.
“A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world,” said Agatha Christie. “It knows no law, no pity. It dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.”
And you know what? I’m willing to bet that it is his mother’s love that keeps Ross going too, against all odds. God bless Lyn Ulbricht.
