Digital Judicial Combat

Preface

Sep 02, 2025

“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.”
― Confucius

By 1804 dueling had become a part of American culture. The most famous case of dueling involved the match between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr which involved Hamilton’s gun shot missing Burr and hitting a tree branch just above his head. Unfortunately Burr was able to successfully land his bullet in Hamilton’s abdomen which resulted in his death the very next day.

Like many American customs of the time dueling was adopted from European tradition. In those days many European nobles defended their honor in man-to-man battles. In fact, an earlier version of dueling was referred to as judicial combat because the belief was that God had allegedly judged the man that was in the right and let him win the battle as a result.

However, in a time period that was known for its bloodshed, judicial combat probably succeeded in preventing a lot of men from killing one another in the heat of passion. There were different codes involved with the process of governing the act of dueling in those days. Some of the rules changed and others would later be updated from the old European rules to a more modern Americanized version. This version would be written by the Governor of South Carolina John Lyde Wilson which appeared in 1838.

So you’re probably wondering how it was that dueling prevented men from killing one another in the heat of passion?

The set up for this process was very interesting. You see in those days when it came to a typical duel each party involved in the potential duel worked through a second (a representative).

Now the primary objective of the second, above all else, was to try to reconcile the offended parties without violence. In this type of scenario the offended party would send a challenge through his second to the party that offended him.

Now in this case if the recipient of the challenge apologized the matter usually ended right there. However, if the recipient decided not to apologize and to escalate the matter then the recipient could choose the weapons along with the time and the place for the fight.

However, the fight wasn’t necessarily guaranteed to happen, or carved in stone. Up until the fight apologies could still be given and received and the duel could be stopped. Furthermore, after combat began, the fight could be stopped at any point after honor had been satisfied.

So why did I bother to begin this discussion telling you about the historical significance of dueling?

The short answer is that it was a guaranteed way to resolve a dispute between two parties. The more detailed explanation is that the code and the process that was involved with the duel demonstrated many opportunities for the lines of communication to open between the two parties involved. The ability for one party to openly communicate through their second could serve to be an opportunity to find a sound resolution between the two parties leading all the way up until the point of the scheduled duel.

Now when looking at the heated scenarios that surrounded the circumstances of a potential bloody duel back in the day the thing that jumps out at me is how the communication was done through a second. Obviously in these cases you can understand that one party must have significant trust in their second to communicate an offense that could potentially lead to a life and death showdown.

After all, it could be debated that the process of a successful, or a failed diplomatic solution, here between two dueling parties could be decided by a second of either party. The way the process was set up is pretty much the way any other process of representation is set up these days regarding the pathway of communication from one party to another.

For instance, if you take the example of how the scenario of a potential duel plays out it seems like it should be pretty straightforward, or would it be? Basically, it boils down to one offended party sending a message through his second to another party that potentially levied an offense.

In this situation if the second finds himself in a scenario where an apology is communicated to him to de-escalate the tension, but he fails to effectively communicate the sincerity of the apology back to the party he’s representing, then his effort of diplomacy could fail. As a result this could potentially lead to an unnecessary duel with bloodshed.

If you take a moment to look at the duel by focusing on the role of the second it offers a different perspective regarding the entire scenario involved with dueling.

So why is this significant as it relates to my discussion here with you today?

If you take a moment to think about the role of the second, this position can also be compared to a politician such as a representative that is supposed to be advocating on yours and my behalf. They’re supposed to be an acting voice for our message to the public. Additionally, a modern day second is also a lot like these social media platforms that the big tech oligarchs control.

In other words, you can make this comparison using your Facebook, X, or Instagram account and how it works like a second in a way that you can communicate your thoughts on the platform to the public at large. In this comparison this modern day form of communication is very much acting as the role of a second which serves as a means of message delivery for you.

Of course, the assumption here is that the platform itself would supposedly deliver the message that you intend to the public, much like a second would deliver a message to a recipient to resolve a dispute in the days of dueling.

However, we both know that in the past several years our second, as it relates to social media, has been acting more as an adversarial actor rather than as a trustworthy representative. This is the case because there have been many scenarios where your thoughts were not communicated at all due to actions taken against both you and myself by our second (social media representative) in the form of shadow banning, so-called fact checking, and outright censorship.

Sugarcoating

After being in business for over twenty years one thing I’ve learned is that being able to take constructive criticism from others is vitally important for obtaining growth and for optimizing my production as an entrepreneur.

As a young adult I frequently remember older adults telling me in school to be prepared to be open to constructive criticism once I went on to pursue my career path beyond the walls of my education inside the school building. This is something I’m sure you’ve heard during your time in school as well, particularly if you’re part of Generation X.

Now truly constructive criticism is a valuable thing if the critic is honestly trying to be constructive in their criticism and if the person being criticized isn’t so sensitive that they’re incapable of handling the criticism that comes their way.

In today’s world there’s always a fine line between criticism that’s truly constructive and the recipient of the criticism being capable of receiving any criticism whatsoever. Much of this has to do with how effective communication flows between two parties and even then the process of the critic and the individual being criticized can, at times, get turbulent.

Now having said that the real problem in today’s world is that we’ve had a couple of generations that seemed incapable of initially taking criticism. This was largely because many of them were raised with an annoying sense of entitlement, along with being indoctrinated by a broken media and education system that has had a long infestation problem of nefarious nomenclature. I’ll let you guess which generations I’m talking about, but to give you a hint it’s not GenX and it’s not GenZ.

In case you’re wondering, that term nomenclature involves the process of choosing the names of things. This basically involves how some people engage in the strategy of influence with the use of effective word naming. By placing the term nefarious in front of the word nomenclature it communicates the intent behind the type of word naming that is involved in this practice.

The irony is that the phrase nefarious nomenclature is itself a direct example of how nomenclature works in today’s world for the purpose of using wordsmithing for influencing the political and cultural landscape. If you would, I want you to take a pause and think about that last statement for a moment.

To give you some examples of this, the communist left has successfully engaged in this practice for many years now. You can see this when they incorrectly refer to our Constitutional Republic as a democracy, or when they use the phrase gun violence, the phrase hate crime, or the big one involving our trade relationship with the Chinese Communist Party as being an act of free trade.

To clarify how the practice of nefarious nomenclature can mislead you with its use I’ll deconstruct the examples I just used in that previous statement here.

First of all, our nation is not a democracy. We are a Constitutional Republic where we, as individuals, have rights that are endowed to us by our creator. A democracy is nothing more than a demonstration of mob rule. We are not a democracy. We are individuals with rights, period.

Secondly, there is no such thing as gun violence. There’s only human violence and the weapons of choice that people use in those instances of violence may vary. When you really think about this phrase it’s truly absurd because if it were descriptively accurate then the assumption is that inanimate objects are by themselves able to commit acts of violence, and if this is the case then why do we never hear about acts of car violence, baseball bat violence, or swimming pool violence.

Thirdly, the phrase hate crime is another example of nefarious nomenclature because hate is a subjective thing that is based on a thought crime. This is as Orwellian as you can get and I’ll give you a real easy example for you to deconstruct this phrase.

For the sake of discussion let’s use a hypothetical situation and say that there have been two brutal murders committed against two innocent people. For this thought experiment let’s say that one of the victims was a black woman and the other victim was a white man.

Now given this example you have two innocent victims that have been murdered in cold blood, yet in the case of the black woman oftentimes the media and the authorities will include the tag of it being a hate crime. In this example, if there are two innocent victims who are equally dead and both equally killed in brutal fashion then how is it that only the black female victim is labeled as a hate crime and not the white male victim?

The answer is because the media and the communist left want to use every tragedy to sow division through race, and nowadays even with gender, in order to create a victim mindset among different groups of people.

Finally, the trading relationship between the United States and China has never been based on free trade. That’s a simplistic and reductive way of putting it. No, I’m being too kind. This is an absolutely stupid label to describe our trading relationship with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Share The Official Substack Of Brandon Richey

This form of nefarious nomenclature is highly dangerous because what it has been successful at doing is dumbing down the public’s effort to explore and acquire a clearer depth of knowledge on the issues of free market trade, mercantilism, and elite capture. I have spoken about this in previous episodes and this depth of knowledge is based on the historic founding of the country.

Of course, the left’s success in distorting, and outright lying, about the history of the country is also a major factor in feeding this problem which in turn props up our enemy here in this example involving the CCP.

With the post war liberal rules-based order the more recent belief in our history regarding the perspective difference in our view of wealth between the populists and the aristocracy (globalists) is the manner in which wealth is created and measured in the first place.

For instance, the understanding and the belief of Patriots is that our wealth comes from the production of labor and goods from our workers and our free market entrepreneurs, whereas the aristocracy simply believes in the accumulation of wealth alone as it pertains to a centralized ruling class of authority.

The reality is that the aristocracy has gotten a whole lot wealthier on the offshoring of our high level manufacturing to the CCP due to the cheap labor that the CCP can provide because they use slave labor.

Communism is basically defined as the government seizing control of the means of production and that the state serves as the centralized authority and ultimate decision maker in all things related to wealth distribution.

Now keeping that definition of communism in mind our aristocrats (domestic globalists) don’t believe in free trade whatsoever.

So how can I say this?

Over the course of many decades they have offshored a significant amount of our high-level manufacturing to a communist regime that hates us. In other words, we’ve allowed the Chinese Communist Party to literally seize the means of production for our manufacturing here in the states. Yet I hear aristocrats, anti-Trump libertarians, and the dying proponents of the post war liberal rules-based order screaming about President Trump’s tariffs being anti-free trade?

This is a level of stupidity that you just can’t make up. If their view of our trading relationship with the CCP isn’t a view of communism in real life application then I don’t know what is. Our domestic aristocrats (globalists) are anti-free trade, anti-free market, and anti-individual merit.

In fact, they are using the wealth that they have grafted from the nefarious mercantilism of their paymasters in the CCP to invest billions of dollars into artificial intelligence (AI) for the specific purpose of replacing human beings in every way possible.

Have any of these people ever worked this hard in protecting and investing any dollar amount close to this for the advancement of human performance?

The wealth of these aristocrats has been built off the backs of the Patriots and the hardworking American citizens through subsidies. Using subsidies is not free market, it’s cronyism and the advocates for those subsidies aren’t free trade entrepreneurs, they’re rent seekers.

You see, nomenclature matters just like the quote I led off with at the beginning of this article with Confucius and that’s not sugarcoating anything.

Our problem with correcting the nomenclature has been due to our digital second not properly representing us in the last several years, but fortunately that is changing due to the growing public support of guys and girls like me here on this platform and I’m grateful for that. Because of this honor is being reintroduced into this modern form of digital judicial combat.

The Wrap Up

The point here is that the intended purpose behind the founding of this nation has been distorted and lied about so much that the general public has fallen into an intellectual lull. This has resulted in a massive structure of a communist system that has been built and legitimized by our aristocrats.

In addition to this the intellectual lull I’m referring to has been largely perpetuated by the actions of a nefarious second that hasn’t served you, or myself, as an honest messenger. In fact, our second (social media platforms) have proven to be nefarious messengers altogether.

The difference in the criticism to the current societal changes that are coming from the aristocratic globalists vs. the MAGA Patriots is that the aristocrats only care about destructive criticism whereas MAGA is about constructive criticism.

Understanding how nomenclature works won’t only save a society, but it will transform your life on an individual basis as well. As a business owner I will tell you firsthand that understanding and having the knowledge of how such wordsmithing works will positively impact your personal and professional life in a massive way.

At the end of the day all the righteous should have a reliable second and we should all be a reliable second to someone else in today’s world.

However, in order to do that this is about rising to the occasion to engage in enhanced communication.

Are you as confused as I am when anti-Trump libertarians scream and advocate for free trade when supporting the offshoring of our means of production to a communist nation that hates us?

Are you in support of the United States engaging in an effort to economically decouple from China?

Please post up your feedback in the comment section below.

The Official Substack Of Brandon Richey

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?