Introduction

"“[I]t showed me that the more a man knew, the more interesting life became.” That quote comes from a Louis L’Amour book called Tucker... That quote sums up what drove me to go to law school."

So… what to write? I guess I’m not sure. I’ll start by giving my backstory and explaining why I was inspired to write. Then, I’ll try to explain what I hope this page becomes.

My name is Mike Flinn; I’m a 26-year-old law student at Creighton University. I am set to graduate this May. Even though I am in law school (and doing very well), I’m not sure I want to be an attorney. I’ve had tons of interviews throughout my two years in school. I’ve turned down several offers, and now I need to figure out if being an attorney is in my future. Sure, I’ll have the title. I’ll take the Bar Exam in July, and after I pass that, I’ll be an attorney. But will I be employed as an attorney? That remains to be seen.

I took a somewhat interesting path to get to law school. Unlike most of my peers, I graduated undergrad with an accounting degree. And unlike pretty much everyone my age, I spent a few years as an asphalt plant operator. Those years were a fantastic time in my life, and it got me back on track after a tumultuous time in college.

I had just left the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota without a degree after three and a half years of rarely going to classes and repeatedly dropping out of courses I didn’t attend. I thought I was depressed. It makes sense why I felt that; I was diagnosed with depression and spent a week in a hospital for suicidal ideations in 2017. But it turned out all I needed was something I cared about doing. At the time, school was not enough. Especially because I was still getting good grades when I showed up to take tests. I didn’t need the class to get a good grade. I only had problems in classes where the teacher mandated attendance. But there were a few too many of those classes, so my time did not end well at St. Thomas. I couldn’t bring myself to attend classes where I could learn the information independently, and I had no real goal I was working towards. So, I came home and worked.

Now, I was lucky. This asphalt company I worked for had been in my family since 1888. We had two asphalt plants, a large one in Omaha and a smaller one in Norfolk. I worked at one of the two locations every summer since I turned 18. When I finally left St. Thomas after years of struggling through, I was able to come to work full-time for my father. That was February of 2020, just before COVID shut everything down.

The virus didn’t affect the Omaha asphalt plant much. We could still operate the plant, and I was splitting my time between helping in the finance office and with the plant operation. We had two plant operators on the payroll then—me and the guy who operated the Norfolk plant. There was a lot of uncertainty about the Norfolk operation at the time, so the Norfolk operator ended up operating the Omaha plant at the start of the season. I would fill in when he was busy. My days went on and on like that for months, switching back and forth between the control room of the asphalt plant and the desk in the finance office. Oh, and I started taking online classes through Arizona State. So, it was work from about 7 A.M.  to 4 P.M. every day, then classes each night until about 10 P.M. I typically stayed at the asphalt plant at night to do my classwork, so I spent all day there.

One morning in June of that year, I was working in the finance office. My father called me from his office and told me to get ready, as he was coming to pick me up to take me to lunch. While eating tacos and enchiladas, my father informed me that he had recently closed a deal and was selling the Omaha asphalt plant. That plant had been in the company since 1974. I was told to put a notice in everyone’s paycheck that as of July 6th, Flinn would no longer be the name on the asphalt plant.

I took this hard. I grew up at this place. Some of my favorite memories of growing up are spending my Saturday mornings at the asphalt plant with my dad. I would be there playing Backyard Baseball on the computer or outside climbing the rock piles. When I got older and started working at the plant, multiple customers told me they remembered seeing five-year-old me on top of the rock piles when they would come years earlier. It was a second home for me, especially in the first half of 2020, as I spent nearly all my time there working and studying. And I loved operating the plant. Absolutely loved it.

To be honest, I was angry. This asphalt plant had been my dad’s entire life, and now he was cashing out. That is the goal of nearly every person who runs a business; I get it. But that was never the goal of the people in my family. Since 1888, going back five generations, the company was passed down. It was doing great; we had a large customer base and a good reputation in the city. But my father still sold it. He told me that it was becoming harder and harder for family-owned companies to make it in the asphalt world. It was hard to find good employees, find paving jobs, and beat the large competitors in price. He also feared that future regulations would make it harder and harder to operate with cost efficiency. Ultimately, he said he wouldn’t want me to take over for those reasons. While I disagreed, and even today I don’t entirely agree, the decision was made. And the Flinn Paving Omaha asphalt plant is now history.

So, what did I do next? I went to Norfolk. That’s Norfolk, Nebraska, by the way. I’ve had too many people think I am talking about Norfolk, Virginia (even people from Nebraska, who definitely should think of Norfolk, Nebraska first). The old Norfolk plant operator worked for the new company in Omaha, and I operated the Norfolk plant with help from an independent contractor who knows absolutely everything about asphalt plants. He ran the loader; I operated the plant.

That was my life for a year and a half. Our customers in Norfolk were the state DOT yards. They only worked four days a week in the summer. So, I was in Norfolk four days a week, living out of a cheap hotel. I would be at the plant from about 6:30 A.M. until 4:30 P.M. After work, I would go to the hotel and do homework. Thursday nights, I’d drive back to Omaha, and on Friday, I’d be in the new office where my dad and the finance guy worked.

Now, this is where the story starts to shift. In Norfolk, I began to really pay attention to what was happening in the world. I had some easier classes than earlier in the summer, so I had more time to myself. And in a small town, I could spend my time at the local bar or stay in. I chose to stay in and watch the news. I have always been conservative and grew up on Fox News. I started to watch Tucker Carlson and Hannity every night in the hotel. And they got really tiring, really fast. It was as if they always said what their listeners would agree with. I tried the liberal news networks. And I knew enough to know that they misrepresented basically everything that conservatives believed. They came off as very dishonest, and I can’t listen to dishonest people. On Fox, the anchors seemed to be telling the truth but would avoid things that might make them unpopular with their base. With CNN and MSNBC, I felt that the anchors didn’t even believe some of the stuff they came up with. Keep in mind this was the summer of 2020. Somehow, COVID had been bad enough for everyone to be locked down, but as soon as the George Floyd riots started, it was suddenly not so bad anymore… unless you were a red state that allowed people to live their normal lives.

Suffice it to say I was not a fan of the mainstream media. I decided to look elsewhere to get my news. The first podcast I listened to shocked me. It was a prominent conservative I had heard about and seen some videos of but never really listened to. But in that first podcast I listened to, he did two things that stuck out to me. First, he criticized Donald Trump. A conservative willing to criticize Trump? Someone willing to go against what his listeners believe? Amazing. Second, he told his listeners that we should go listen to Pod Save America to get a liberal perspective on what he was speaking about. He actively pushed his listeners to listen to someone on the other side. He was openly saying that his show is opinion, not always fact. I had found the honesty I had been looking for in my news.

And who was this conservative? Ben Shapiro.

I know, I know. I didn’t expect it from him either. He was nothing like what the internet led me to believe. I had seen the videos from him on college campuses destroying the libs. I had seen the articles calling him a crazy extreme right-winger. I thought he would be no different from what I had been watching on Fox News. I thought he would just be talking about how terrible the liberals are and how great Trump is. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Don’t get me wrong, there was plenty of bashing the liberals. But he also seemed desperate to tell the hard truths to conservatives about why he believed conservatives were making mistakes. It was refreshing for me to hear.

As the days and weeks went on, I continually listened to Ben Shapiro. I became a Daily Wire member and listened to some of the other hosts. I quickly found that they all had different ideas but had one thing in common—they would tell the truth about conservatives. None of them are afraid to tell their listeners what conservatives are doing wrong. This may sometimes cause them to lose some conservative listeners, but the truth matters more than anything to them. It’s that commitment to the truth that has made their company so successful, becoming what I believe to be the most influential conservative company in the country.

2020 was a crazy year. Along with COVID and riots, we also had an election. A hotly contested election, before and after the votes were counted. Ben Shapiro would regularly break down the Trump lawsuits and talk about the different legal theories at play before giving his opinion on the outcome of those cases. And, hopefully after what I said above, this won’t surprise you; he consistently said Trump lost the election and his legal theories were garbage. But these legal discussions about the law and the Constitution fascinated me. I was informed about the world and learned things I never would have understood.

After Biden was officially sworn in and 2021 rolled on, I continued to work at the asphalt plant and take accounting classes online. In August, I finally completed my degree. I graduated from Arizona State with a Bachelor of Arts in Corporate Accounting. I thought that would be my final class ever. Undergrad was over; I could move on from school life forever. But wow, was I wrong.

When I started working in Norfolk, I knew it wasn’t a forever job. That plant was too small, and the work just wasn’t there. I thoroughly enjoyed what I was doing and would have loved it if that could have been forever, but I knew it wasn’t possible. I had talks with my father all the time about how long he would keep the Norfolk plant and potential plans for after he does sell it. So, even though sales at the plant had more than doubled in the one-and-a-half years I was there, it was no surprise when he called me and said he had an interested buyer who wanted to look at the plant.

The buyers came on a hectic day at the plant, but things ran smoothly, so they decided to buy it. After the season ended, my father signed the contract to sell the plant. I drove to Des Moines and picked up the check from the company that bought it. And now all that was left of Flinn Paving was some pieces of equipment that needed to be sold (some equipment still hasn’t been sold to this day, so the company still exists). But now I needed to figure out what was next in my life.

The natural step for me, and what I thought I would do, was to get my CPA. I had enough credits; I just needed to sign up for the test. When I went to sign up to take the first CPA exam, I found out that my degree in Corporate Accounting didn’t qualify me to take the CPA. For some reason, many classes I took didn’t count for the requirements. I should have looked up that before signing up for the degree, but it was obviously too late at that point.

I had a choice to make. I could find a job or go back to school. I spent about a month trying to decide what to do. I talked to the CPA my father used, and at that time, I also met the attorney he used. I didn’t see law school as a strong possibility for me, but my mother mentioned it a few times, so it was on my radar. When I met the attorney, he told me I should get my CPA. So, I thought law school wouldn’t happen.

But then I thought back to 2020. I recalled all the time I spent listening to Ben Shapiro discuss the lawsuits. I thought back to how engaged I was while listening to those podcasts. I remembered how I felt like I knew what was happening in the world because I understood the legal arguments behind the biggest news stories.

“[I]t showed me that the more a man knew, the more interesting life became.” That quote comes from a Louis L’Amour book called Tucker. L’Amour was one of the most prolific writers of westerns the world has ever seen. That quote sums up what drove me to go to law school. I wanted to learn. For the first time, I felt like I was passionate about learning. The 2020 election made me realize the truth behind that quote. The more I know, the more interested I will be. I wanted to go to law school. I wanted to know everything about the Constitution and how the court system works. I wanted to be able to follow any future storylines, understand the legal theories at play, and come to my own conclusions. I wanted to understand major Supreme Court decisions without relying on other’s analysis. I wanted to hear a story and think critically about it in ways I never could have before. Simply put, I wanted the world to become more interesting.

Once I decided that, I signed up to take the LSAT the next morning. Surprisingly, it was the last day to sign up for the February LSAT. I signed up, then didn’t think about the test until about two weeks before the test date. I studied over those final two weeks and ultimately got a good score. Then, it was time to apply to schools. I went in thinking that law school was a three-year deal. And, for most places, it was. But when I looked at Creighton, I saw they had a two-year program starting in May. I applied for it and was awarded a full scholarship. I then had a decision: Should I go to the school in my hometown despite its low ranking, or should I go to a highly-ranked law school? The advice I was given said that if I want to live in Omaha, I should go to Creighton, despite it being ranked in the 120s of law school. So, two weeks before school started in May, I accepted Creighton’s offer before I even heard back from many schools.

Looking back over my time in law school, the desire to learn has stayed with me. While it’s not like I have never missed a class, I haven’t failed any classes because of attendance. I love to be in class, to read the textbooks, to listen and engage in the discussions that take place. I’ve primarily accomplished what I had set out to do in law school. I can think critically about news stories and Supreme Court opinions. But recently, I have felt a desire to know even more.

My favorite podcasts to listen to all have one thing in common—they know more than just the law. Ben Shapiro is a downright historian. Michael Knowles is deeply versed in philosophy and theology. Andrew Klavan is a master of the arts. And Jordan Peterson is, well, he’s Jordan Peterson. I recently realized that I cannot connect news stories to anything other than the law. That’s nice, but I want to learn more. I want a more well-rounded education; I want to be able to think as deeply as I can. I want to be the one connecting stories to religion, philosophy, and the law.

I believe there is only one truth—the truth—and the truth can be discovered through reason. I am on a journey to develop my reasoning skills. The best way to do this is to read. I’ve been reading a lot lately: religion, philosophy, history, classic novels, and I’ll throw in some modern novels for fun as well. All of it can help a person become a well-rounded thinker, and I want to become one.

I am only 26, and I have just recently started this journey. I plan to use this page to practice my thinking. That may sound dumb, I know. However, to become a reasoned thinker, you need to practice using your reasoning as you think. Again, it sounds dumb, I know. But it’s true. You don’t become a deep thinker just by reading; you must practice using the knowledge you gain. One can do that on their own; I probably should be doing it on my own and not for the world to see. But I’ve learned that writing is the best way for me to work through anything—my thoughts, feelings, and emotions. And I know that I will slack in my writing if I don’t have a place to put my writing.

This dedication to finding, speaking, and sharing the truth gives me a goal. I don’t know what I will do for work, but if it supports my journey to find the truth, I will be motivated. I will never again go back to feeling how I felt at St. Thomas. I have a goal in life—to live for the truth in everything I do.

So here I am. Writing on Substack. Writing to nobody. Writing for nobody but me. I’ll post these online in hopes that I gain a following. I want others to chime in and give their thoughts. As the title of this page says, I am on a journey to find the truth. When I post something, I believe what I say is true. If I didn’t think it to be true, I wouldn’t believe it. But I know that I have a lot more to learn. I know that whatever I believe to be true now may change as I learn more. Some random person who reads my page may have thought deeper about the topic or made a different connection than I did. I welcome those comments. I want to know what you believe the truth to be, hoping it can further lead me to the truth.

I plan on posting multiple times a week. I see myself scouring the internet for stories that stick out. These stories will likely be something political, or they could be something related to a movie I’ve seen or a song I’ve heard. Whatever it is, it’ll be something that catches my eye. And my mind. Then I’ll write about it. When I write, I hope to find a connection to something else. That connection may be a philosophical idea, a religious doctrine or idea, or a historical event or era. I will use my reasoning to find some truth embedded in a story, movie, or song.

And I want you to join me on that journey.