Ancient Greek philosophers encouraged their followers to ask why. Kids ask their parents why all the time. But Rick Jordan, a nationally recognized voice on cybersecurity, business, and ethics, believes that in today’s pandemic times and quarantine rules, many of us have forgotten to ask that pivotal question.
He’s hoping his latest documentary, Liberty Lockdown, which debuted in September, will change that.
“There has been so much contradictory information about everything over the past six months,” said Jordan, CEO & Founder of ReachOut Technology and the author of the best-selling book “Situational Ethics.”
Jordan says his motivation behind the film is to “bring unity back to America,” and back to the principles that the United States was founded on.
“The ones that are written within the Declaration of Independence specifically, and then onto the Constitution,” he explains. “While they are not perfect documents that cover every single scenario, it comes back to that we were founded on a principle of liberty. It’s about saying ‘I choose America.’”
Liberty Lockdown condenses 180 hours of footage into a gripping one-hour documentary that is directed by Jeff Roldan of Creative Realm Entertainment, produced and hosted by Jordan.
“Constitutionality is what is at my core. When it comes to freedom and liberties, there is also freedom of choice,” says Jordan, a consultant to the intelligence community. “Americans should just be able to think for themselves, so they need to ask ‘why?’”
The film includes interviews with epidemiologists, former members of the CIA and national security advisors to Ronald Reagan, heart-grabbing human interest stories like salon owner Lindsey Graham from Salem, Oregon, and church pastors who struggled to keep first amendment rights to freedom of religion.
It also includes man-on-the-street interviews with those who attended Black Lives Matter protests or Freedom Rallies.
“When we started interviews and I saw it going more conservatively, I absolutely wanted to hear the other side,” said Jordan, who was featured in Roldan’s Cyber Crime documentary, which debuted in 2019 on Amazon Prime.
Jordan discovered that both sides really just want the same thing. “But it’s the methods at which they go about it that are different,” he says. “Most want to have a healthy, happy America where people are not dying and where we can lean on officials that we’ve elected to actually do the right thing, rather than acting only in their own self-interest. However, a lot of the humanness has been taken away over the past six months in the name of science and whatever else.”
Another purpose of the documentary, according to Jordan, is to highlight government overreach which can happen on both sides.
“Socialism is a virus to entrepreneurship because socialism is also the lack of choice,” said the CEO and thought leader, who points to the interview with Lindsey Graham who defied local government orders to re-open her salon, citing the need to provide for her family. “We need to get back to the principles that our country was founded on that are written within the Declaration of Independence.”
Jordan hopes that the audience for the documentary leans more toward the undecideds.
“Those are the ones who are actively searching for information versus those that are just hardlined one way or the other way,” he said. “In the beginning, there was a lot that was unknown and a lot of fear comes from not having information.”
With hours of footage left on the cutting room floor, Jordan hopes to take it and extend the documentary to become a docu-series on a platform such as Netflix.
“There’s way more to the story that could be told than just in this hour,” he said. “For example, the long-lasting effects of millions of lost jobs, education pressures on families with e-learning, the entire entertainment industry shut down. In addition to emotional tolls causing the rise of depression, domestic violence, and human trafficking.”
Jordan hopes a docu-series highlights some of what happens after this moment in history.
