Han Solo from ‘Star Wars’ “SHOT FIRST!”: ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is also about Science Fiction

The release of the latest Atlas Shrugged Part 2 film in theaters all across America has again touched off a firestorm of debate in the media, as the gate keepers of the political left have revealed how deeply entrenched many of the parasite destined proletariats of progressive propaganda wish to propel The United States. They have like demons thrashed about as if involved in an exorcism involving Holy Water and the incantations of a sorcerer priest to dislodge the evil spirit from the body of an unsuspecting victim upon hearing the simple words…………….Ayn Rand—or Atlas Shrugged. The most universal attack against Rand by these progressive thinkers is to say that she was selfish, and that all her work is a mindless manifestation of capitalism that stands at odds with global socialism, and it is not to be tolerated. The characters of Atlas Shrugged have been attacked for being one-dimensional, lacking emotional depth, being self consumed, and in general being angry—reprehensible—and entirely too self confident. In fact, such utterances about the new film version of Atlas Shrugged Part 2 would have viewers believe that the movie was just a boring discussion about the virtues of capitalism versus socialism—that the lovers of socialism find the message of ASP2 a threat to their core beliefs, and their screams over the plot have masked the real nature of Atlas Shrugged as a story—which is that of science fiction. Yet it is, Atlas Shrugged the movies, as are the books, very much about action, adventure, and the unfettered exploration of the human soul against the sands of time, where the villains are those who wish to prevent the full development of the individual imagination. The picture shown above is from the new film, and declares that Atlas Shrugged is not just about political philosophy, but is a magnificent work of science fiction, and the roots of it predate some of the most beloved movies in American culture. In fact, the picture above reminds me of another film that virtually every American knows well—a film that when I first read Atlas Shrugged I felt I had uncovered a long-lost Rosetta Stone from the past. And the most popular character from that film went on to become the most popular film series in history and is a character that is right off the pages of any Ayn Rand novel. The movie is Star Wars, and the character that is undeniably Randian is Han Solo.

Atlas Shrugged the novel was written in 1957 and a young George Lucas in love with Jules Verne novels, Flash Gordon comic strips, and Walt Disney films without question ran across the work of Ayn Rand. You can see her influence in his film THX-1138, and in Star Wars, Atlas Shrugged is all over the very first film A New Hope. Lucas being a smart businessman who knew how to play his cards close to his vest knew not to show too much love of Ayn Rand publicly because of her controversy, so he changed many of the themes and events of Atlas Shrugged and set them in “A Galaxy A Long Time Ago in a Land Far, Far Away” and used Joseph Campbell’s great book The Hero of a Thousand Faces to build mythic themes for his space saga that would tell the vast story arc of Luke Skywalker, the rise of a Galactic Empire, and the sad fate of Darth Vader as a failed victim and perpetuator of a vast and tyrannical political system intent to crush individuality. But Lucas wisely and quietly used the character of Han Solo played by Harrison Ford to help all the giant themes go down the mind’s eye with a character right off the pages of Atlas Shrugged. Han Solo is a combination of virtually every hero in Atlas Shrugged–he’s competent, self-proclaimed to be out for himself, and he’s unstoppable. Han Solo is one of the two most popular characters from Star Wars; the other is Boba Fett, the bounty hunter and nemesis to Captain Solo. Solo is a pirate in the Star Wars films, while Fett is an independent assassin. Both characters come right out of the Sergio Leone films that Clint Eastwood played so effectively—The Man With No Name—who are also the type of characters apparently very influenced by Atlas Shrugged in the 1960’s. Bill Whittle below covers an intense recent controversy of how there was a lot of Hollywood pressure to re-edit the scene from the original A NEW HOPE in a classic gun fight scene involving Han Solo inspired from those same Sergio Leone films to meet the modern temperament of progressive thought–much to the discontent of millions of fans.

Lucas after his box office flop THX-1138 knew it was possible he’d never make another movie but his friend Francis Ford Coppola helped him make American Graffiti, forcing Lucas to learn to sell his ideas disguised behind contemporary plot devices. Coppola, was the director of The Godfather and it was the producer of those fantastic movies Albert Ruddy who purchased the rights to Atlas Shrugged in the mid 1970’s just before the release of Star Wars, and worked heavily with Ayn Rand to bring her book to the big screen. The deal almost worked, except Rand insisted on final script approval which Ruddy couldn’t give her. The film was killed eventually when Fred Silverman rose to become president of NBC.

Lucas watching all this activity by his film mentors placed into his Han Solo creation all the gallant traits of Ayn Rand’s classic heroes. But he sold it brilliantly on the screen by having Solo interact with the idealistic youthful Princess Leia, who represented the progressive feminist movement, and served as a vehicle for the audience to fall in love with Solo, just as the young princess did. Also there is Luke Skywalker, who represents the silly yearnings of all young people and their impractical quests built off good intentions. However, it is always Han Solo who saves everybody in the end. It is Solo’s bold rescue of the princess lured by Luke exclusively over money that would eventually save the entire rebellion effort against the evil empire, and Solo would save Luke on many occasions just at the right moment. Han Solo was chastised by Leia and Luke in the film for being selfish–conceited—recklessly bold—and a menace to the life of all mercenaries, but such accusations never pierce the thick skin of Solo.

At the end of A New Hope while the rebels are fighting to destroy the dreaded Death Star Solo is told by Luke that he’s “only out for himself” as Solo takes his reward and threatens to leave rather than get killed attacking the dreaded weapon of the enemy. In the end, Solo saves Luke without violating the rules of self-interest. Solo likes Luke and saves the kid out of self-interest without giving up his reward, or his independence. In fact the Death Star in A New Hope serves exactly the same purpose as Project X does in Atlas Shrugged. And Solo during The Empire Strikes Back would go through a very similar torture scene as John Galt had to undergo in Project F, near the end of Atlas Shrugged. Lucas had done with Han Solo something that no filmmaker in Hollywood has been able to do since; he brought to the screen the best rendition of Ayn Rand’s classic characters since Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood in a work of fiction that would sell the ideas without the contemporary fuss that we see in 2012. Without question the same people who criticize Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged as being a loathing work of selfishness and capitalist propaganda, most likely love Star Wars, and secretly love best Han Solo or Boba Fett—two of the space sagas most “selfish” characters.

George Lucas is a brilliant man. There are not many like him and nobody working in Hollywood today can match his unique ability to create characters like he has in his films. The later Star Wars films produced from 1999 to 2006 did not have a character like Han Solo in them to keep the audience interested in the story, and the films suffered as a result. In fact, there have been few movies made since The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 that have had characters anywhere close to being as strong and personally confident as Han Solo. Solo in the end solves his problems on his own, he wins the girl, and gains his wealth on his own terms, and he stays loyal to the causes he deems are important. When Lucas tried to appease the idealistic side of his sensibilities which he shared with many other Hollywood types then and since, Star Wars lost some of its power. In The Return of the Jedi where Luke saved Han Solo from the vile gangster Jabba the Hut, something ends up lost in the story. The movie was still fun, but it lacked the honesty and punch of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back—primarily because Han Solo was turned into the role of the victim. Solo also let his old friend Lando fly his beloved Millennium Falcon on another Death Star run which was a form of sacrifice that psychologically was rejected by millions in the audience. Another story failure was the scene on Endor where Solo showed Princess Leia that he could be “compassionate,” by giving her a hug when she was in a state of turmoil. Lucas was by this time trying to show the Han Solo had “evolved” as a character, which is standard fare in progressive Hollywood. He tried to show that Solo had learned to think of others more than he thinks of himself, and the story suffered as a result. Sacrifice as a theme in Star Wars is only accepted superficially in the standard dialogue that religions function. Deep in people’s hearts, it is Han Solo that holds the entire story together which Lucas seemed to learn as he progressed through the story. For Lucas, what started out as a simple plot device inspired by Ayn Rand’s classic novel became the glue that held the entire thing together and separated Star Wars from every other attempt in film history to duplicate, including Star Trek. If not for Han Solo, Star Wars and Star Trek would have very few distinguishing characteristics to separate one from the other. In Star Trek there is The United Federation, which is a socialist idea, and in Star Wars there is the rebellion against individual conquest. However, the means to get there is not through organizations, Jedi Councils, rebel Leaders, and these tend to always fail as they are rooted in collectivism. It is always through rogue pirates like Han Solo, and his belief in himself, for his own preservation that directly results in the success of everyone in his wake. It is because of him that rebellions succeed and wealth is created.

Han Solo is so important to Star Wars that even after over 200 books written since Return of the Jedi when Solo and Princess Leia go off to supposedly live happily ever after, Solo is still alive in his 80’s and still flying his Millennium Falcon, gun slinging bad guys and performing acts of death-defying bravery. His kids, his wife, his brother-in-law Luke, along with all their friends are all magical Jedi with super powers that defy logic. But Solo is always there when courage is needed and logic is in short supply. He has gifts that no magic Jedi can utilize and no author can overcome in plot necessity. If a story wants to be successful it must have characters like Han Solo, and since Star Wars came out in 1977, there have been watered down versions that were enjoyed, but never achieved quite at the same level of love as Han Solo. It was the character of Han Solo that made Harrison Ford a star, and without Solo, there would have never been an Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford would have lived out his days as a carpenter trying to get work in Hollywood as a bit player. Han Solo is the ultimate producer, the fearless advocate of individuality, and the bridge between common sense and fantasy. Without him Star Wars is just another mythic tale that would hit the movie screen, make a little money, then disappear from the minds of mankind forever.

But because Lucas wisely intentionally or unintentionally made Han Solo to resemble Ayn Rand’s classic characters Star Wars will forever be as loved as Ayn Rand’s books are. The film makers of the modern Atlas Shrugged films know they are doing something special and their enthusiasm comes out in scenes like the one shown in the picture above. When I saw the mysterious plane taking off in Colorado trying to escape from the pursuit of a hunter, I thought of the Millennium Falcon piloted by Han Solo blasting off from Mos Eisley in Star Wars: A New Hope. The modern filmmakers however are businessmen, so they tend to focus on the politics and business aspects of Atlas Shrugged. Lucas however being a lover of history, comparative religion and world mythology captured wonderfully the essence of what Ayn Rand created in her novels in the much beloved film series called Star Wars. But it doesn’t change the fact that the rules of plot dictate a severe discrepancy between what progressive media types and film makers acknowledge as truths, and stories that show strong characters in a reality that is subconsciously understood. This later idea is where Ayn Rand was functioning from, and this has caused much anxiety from the social reformers who wish to socially engineer these traits from the mind of all human beings. It is the same people who root for Han Solo to win in Star Wars who also try to commit society to the schemes that gave rise to the evil Empires in that galaxy far, far way—a long time ago. Their duality is a result of social sickness that has not yet come to terms with their inner workings and instead have attempted to achieve the work that creative people like George Bernard Shaw, and H.G. Wells tried to create—which Lucas attacked in Star Wars. Atlas Shrugged as a novel was the first of its kind to show what the potential of man can be, and George Lucas was the first to successfully place on the movie screen a character that Ayn Rand would have written if she had been the author of Star Wars. Instead the torch was handed down to the next generation, and yet again a new generation is struggling to maintain such heroes for the preservation of ideas that will propel into tomorrow the magnificent potential of the human race—personified by characters like Han Solo. It is that fight and tendency that critics of the new Atlas Shrugged film scream about in protest, and is also why there has not been another character like Han Solo in any film since 1980.

For the record, Han Solo SHOT FIRST and it will be up to the next generation to make sure everyone remembers it so that all the great heroes of the future can “Live Long and Prosper.” (Star Trek) George Lucas in the quiet of his home I think would agree, and it will take filmmakers like those producing the modern Atlas Shrugged films to help make a Hollywood who will defend Han Solo along with all the men and women like him, and not try to re-write history to fit the agenda of modern politics. Even the best and brightest sometimes lose their way when the wonder they gained from reading a book like Atlas Shrugged in their youth gets pounded out of them in the realities of life. As Lucas has said, sometimes while trying to tell the story of Luke Skywalker you can become Darth Vader lost in the blind devotion to a system not of your own making. And this is what happens to many good people who find through years of philanthropy that they lose the Han Solo in them and become Darth Vader, or even the naive Luke Skywalker–fighting for a sacrifice to something other than themselves. It is in those dark moments of “maturity” that these poor souls need Han Solo to save them from the crushing weight of service to a system that is brainless collectivism paving a way to hell with a brick road each marked with a good intention. It is in those moments when the question must be asked……………………….”WHO IS JOHN GALT.”

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Rich Hoffman

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Obama Hates Money and those Who Make It: The Masks of Communism

The biggest weakness of the Obama Presidency is his hatred of the wealthy, which was an undeniable fact concluded upon after the presidential debate with Mitt Romney on October 16, 2012. Obama has a real problem–that no matter how much he says in an election year that he loves the free enterprise system, and the art of business—his actions speak otherwise. The gist of Obama’s debate performance against Mitt Romney was that Romney was evil because he’s a “rich guy” and that he only paid 14% of his $13.7 million dollars made during 2011 to federal taxes. Obama painted a picture of Romney as a mean, evil, corporate executive that isn’t paying his fair share. The insinuation from Obama is that “fair share” is determined by some mysterious intelligence of a mythical “middle class” and Romney has a moral obligation to pay taxes at the level determined by that mob of democracy. If Romney tries to pay less tax money through deductions and oversea investments with tax shelters, he is in some way disingenuous—even crooked.

Repeatedly during the aforementioned debate Obama stated that Romeny was paying a tax rate that was less than the average person in the middle class. What Obama declined to mention was that Mitt Romney paid in 2011 $1.94 million in taxes to the federal government. The average “middle class” person would be lucky if they even broke paying $10,000 in federal taxes and around 49% of all American citizens don’t pay any federal income tax. So the comment that Mitt Romney and other wealthy Americans owe more tax money—far more than other people who are equal people in the eyes of the law, all use the same roads, the same government services, yet the wealthy are supposed to be happy about paying over $1 million in federal taxes while many Americans simply don’t contribute equally, is preposterous. Obama thinks that by feeding that fire of guilt Romney should feel guilty and inclined to pay even more than he does now which is absolutely laughable.

I have pointed out on many occasions that the root for this kind of thinking comes philosophically from Karl Marx and is by the most fundamental definition communism. Of course Obama doesn’t call himself a communist, but should not be surprised when people call him a communist, because when an argument is made that the “rich” owe the “poor” parts of themselves, their property, and their livelihoods, it is communism behind the mask of progressivism. It continues to be baffling how and why the media and society at large lets politicians like Obama get away with such criticisms. In the scheme of things Mitt Romney is a much more important person than the average “middle class” union stooge who works 9 AM to 5 PM and expects to be paid six figures to do basic labor work. Those ideas are the fantasies of communists, not capitalists, and America became a great country because of capitalism—not crony capitalism, but laissez-faire capitalism—the more pure, the more powerful the economy. Such statements are beyond dispute, and cannot be refuted by a logical mind not seduced by machine politics and half-baked philosophies.

Obama whether consciously or unconsciously is behaving as a communist because of his severe hatred of the wealthy. I’ve always suspected it, but for me the information was 100% confirmed when I realized that Obama and other political progressives were saying the exact same kinds of dialogue sentence for sentence as was used in the great novel called We The Living covering the events of the Red Revolution in the Soviet Union in 1917 through 1926. We The Living was published in 1936 and to this day is one of the most vivid examples of what life behind the Iron Curtain in Russia was in the beginning days of communism in that very large country destined for economic failure. These events brought to America what was called the Red Decade starting with intelligentsia from 1930 to 1940, which was a period where communism was offered to America as an offering to future economic growth. Out of that communist pressure came The New Deal and Social Security from President Roosevelt. The names were changed at the time to reflect the independence of America but progressivism in America has very few differences from the communism of the early Soviet Union. Is it any wonder that Obama is referred to a “socialist” or a “communist?” People who say such things understand the definition of communism and know they have at their philosophical roots a severe hatred of the “rich.”

Obama’s biggest failure is that he shares with world-wide Marxists, communists, socialists and progressives a lack of understanding of the value of money. Keynesian economics reflect this lack of value in their economic models and the same disconnect can be seen in the Obama Administration. This is why the debt has increased in such an out-of-control manner under Obama’s watch. This is also why he thinks it’s fair that Romney pay millions more in taxes than the average everyday person, even though technically Romney is no better or worse of a person than anybody else. The only difference between Romney and the average “middle class” person is that Romney makes millions of dollars each year. Obama views such money-making ability as though Romney is just luckier than everyone else and the money he made is part of some ridiculous finite resource like fossil fuels, water, or air. To people like Obama, money is a mystery to them, so they believe that Romney has a disproportionate amount of it because he’s greedy. It is completely foreign to communist minds that America could support millions of Mitt Romney’s if all Americans worked as hard and were as creative with their money-making opportunities as Romney has been. That is why in America under laissez-faire capitalism we term acquiring money as “making money,” because it is wealth that is created under capitalism, and money is not viewed as a limited resource. It can be made.

Obama clearly doesn’t understand this, and his anger at Romney for being a “fat cat” is obvious. It is no wonder the American economy is faltering, the President of The United States doesn’t even understand the basics of money or the value of it. All he seems able to do is recite the historical communist argument of his party platform as a progressive from the early days of the Russian Revolution. It is too bad that history is so easily forgotten, because the argument at these presidential debates could be elevated if only people knew what the President truly represented as a politician instead of hiding his hatred of money, and the people who make it, behind what is sold as legitimate politics accepted blindly by the types of people whose knowledge of history is as deep as a dried up-stream in a scorching desert. The hatred for the wealthy is the key to why America has a faltering economy, and is becoming more akin to a mob of fools addicted to government services demanding free money from the gods of productivity, and that people like Romney owe the rest of the world the gains of their investments as a selfless testament to existence for the end result of the destitute.

Rich Hoffman

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The “Pet Rocks” at Lakota: Teachers and their scam against the public

For my national and international readers, you might be confused by this article, but be assured; the contents of this essay do affect you. My conflict with the Lakota School System, which is my home public education institution, has been robust and much discussion has occurred at this site about it. So it must be discussed now that the State of Ohio has issued the report card for public schools over the more than 600 districts, what the intentions and results are of the report. The timing of the report card of course is to help schools who have a November levy on the ballot pass their tax increases, which is the political band-aid expected to perpetually kick the can down the road of public education sustainability. The report card in essence is a complete scam, and does not even begin to tell the story of why public schools need higher taxes on property in order to provide a baby sitting service for thousands of district parents at the cost of tens of thousands to generate the revenue.

The Lakota School District achieved an Excellent with Distinction rating yet again even after tens of millions of dollars have been cut from the budget and dozens and dozens of jobs have been removed from the work force. Superintendent Mantia knowing that I would point out this issue made a public statement, “When someone says we cut the budget by millions and the results are still just as good, we need to remember these results are from last year. We had many teachers who helped our kid’s learn this material who are not here anymore.” She knew that I would say………”see—I told everybody so.”

http://westchesterbuzz.com/2012/10/17/lakota-local-schools-earns-excellent-with-distinction-rating/

The reality is that Mantia is caught between a rock and a hard place. She is paid by the residents of the district nearly a quarter million dollars to play whatever political, and economic game she needs to in order to ensure that Lakota gets whatever rankings it needs, and to preserve a strong bond rating. But she is alluding to her statement that Lakota may be downgraded in the future because of the layoffs—which at some point she will need to do if she wishes to pass a school levy, because people like me will always point out that there is no reason to pay higher taxes if the district is getting more for less. However, if she allows that to happen she will be a failure as a superintendent, so she is literally caught in a perilous political position between letting Lakota become downgraded, or continuing to prove that Lakota can cut, and cut, and cut without losing the quality of its institutional education power.

Cincinnati Public Schools was downgraded by this same report card and they have spent increasingly more amounts of money on their schools, and they are currently selling their November levy as a fix for returning back to the column of a good school. However whether or not a school district is successful or not has almost nothing to do with the teachers or the school as an institution, but rather the schools are a direct reflection of the community. The myth of higher paid teachers’ equally improve schools has officially been busted. If the situation concerning Lakota didn’t prove it to the world, or the lack or performance in places like CPS or Lockland who was recently caught cheating on their performance ratings to maintain their statuses, money spent on education has virtually nothing to do with the end result of good student production.

I have said often that all the teachers at Lakota could be fired and replaced by clamoring idiots who know virtually nothing of the world around them, and the kids of Lakota would still be good, and the district would still be rated Excellent with Distinction. The reason is simple, at Lakota the demographics mandate that successful children will become somewhat successful adults because per capita, there are more homes with two parents in them who care about the quality of life for their children. There are more children not living in poverty. There are not very many apartment dwellers in the Lakota district allowing residents to move into a nice district without having a direct financial stake in the taxes paid. There are fewer welfare recipients per household. There are fewer homes that have step children co-habiting with mixed marriages. In other words, many of the parents at Lakota take an active interest in their children’s lives, they take personal responsibility for the child’s behavior more so than other school districts with much more chaotic family structures, and the average income of the residents of Lakota are higher, meaning the children have a higher quality of life to grow up in. Districts who have the opposite of the above mentioned qualities will tend to have declining results in education performance standards no matter how much money is spent on the school, because the school is only the tail that is wagged by the dog—the parent. The process does not work the other way around as the unionized teachers would advocate. For clarity on this issue all anyone need do is remember the teacher’s strike in Chicago during the summer of 2012. Virtually every school in America that has a teaching work force that is unionized has the exact same problems as shown in Chicago. The reality is that the teachers of these schools have sold the public a “pet rock” making their services sound better, and more valuable than they really are.

The biggest villain of the entire process is the trend (legal requirement) to only hire as Superintendents of these public schools former teachers who were members of the union in the past, and remain loyal to the teachers union even as members of management. Teachers with more than 15 years or more experience tend to become radicalized by their extensive time served in a labor union, and Superintendent Mantia has been shown clearly, and her comments reflect it, that she is willing to toss infinite amounts of money at teachers’ wages, which are the real drivers of tax increases on private property. The situation becomes simply a loaded scam designed to pay teachers for a job that is grossly inflated with value.

Who says that a teacher is worth $60,000 a year, and who says that they must have a Master’s degree to teach a 1st grader when home schooled children perform better than the public educated one in most every instance? Who says that a teacher should be paid so much for fewer than 8 hours of contracted work and summer’s off? Who says that districts should be required to pay for all this nonsense when the real value actually comes from the families themselves and not the school? The school is simply the benefactor of a good community not the driver.

http://www.pulsejournal.com/news/news/lakota-earns-11th-year-of-excellent/nSfnb/

So keep in mind all these facts when you go to the polls to vote for your local school levy. Understand that the school is simply a parasite to the good deeds of your family. And if your family sucks, your child will most likely grow up to suck. Paying more money in taxes will not change whether or not a child grows up to be a low quality person. Success cannot be purchased with a more expensive teacher. It can only be acquired through hard work, family love, and personal dedication toward the art of success. The correct thing to do would be to take away the money that feeds the radical labor unions behind the teaching profession and force them to come back down to reality. It is irresponsible to pass school levy issues for public education and not force the hypocrisy to the surface with the grim measurements of reality. And that reality is it is not teachers who make a student successful, they are only supplements to the work a parent do. The reality is that if the parent does not do the work of raising a child, no amount of money spent on the teaching profession can save them. And with that said, virtually every statement made by public schools is a bold face lie. For the proof, just look at the Lakota School District in Southwestern Ohio and everything else will be confirmed without effort. Click here for a review.

Rich Hoffman

If you like my work at this site then check out my books shown below, along with quotes, interviews, reviews, and ways to find them. Clicking the pictures below are your doors to even more adventure:

The Cry Baby American Teacher: Reasons why education reform requires a complete change

One of the most laughable documents I have ever read can be seen below, where a so-called “educator” by the name of John Kuhn utters his distorted vision of reality from the point of view of the American teacher. But within the laughs that are sure to come from the minds and mouths of any sensible reader, there are kernels of understanding that can be had from such diabolical diatribes. The most telling revelation to come from the below article is just what teachers instructing the American youth believe the idea economic/education system should be. The answer is that it is Scandinavia that they point to as the world’s most obvious success story. Scandinavia consisting of the countries Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland has developed a particular model of welfare, employment and economic governance based on universal access to tax-financed social services and social insurance. Scandinavian countries currently utilize full employment secured by expansive macro-economic policies and active labor market manipulation, highly organized labor markets, corporatist interest mediation, and so on. In short Scandinavian countries utilize central control of their resources by government with a large public buy-in with their tax resources, and American teachers are pointing to this cluster of countries as the utopian model they wish to instruct upon the future American society.

http://theeducatorsroom.com/2012/09/the-exhaustion-of-the-american-teacher/

Apparently John Kuhn, the author of that article has failed to realize that America is currently in another Revolutionary War, and the cause of the revolution is due to teachers like him. I for one do not wish to follow in the footsteps of Scandinavia, who as a cluster of European style countries are the least of the evil choices that countries long suppressed with kings, princes, and socialism have found that by introducing a few free market ideas—such as IKEA, that they can expand their economic influence. The people of these countries have long been defeated of their individual liberty and outlook for personal freedom. They are often happy to concede their incomes through taxation in exchange for lengthy vacations and hefty retirement packages. But Americans aren’t. In The United States a large number of people have tasted freedom and they don’t want any variation of socialism that Europe has offered, and this is the cause of the current Revolution in America.

John Kuhn complains that parents are not involved with their children, and this is why teachers are more important than ever. But what teachers who think like Kuhn don’t realize is that the same progressive policies that have put teachers as the bastions of democracy and social organization in every community across America, it is those same progressive policies that have destroyed the American family. It is those progressive policies of government intervention, and centralized control of the America family that have told parents that it is the school that will interfere with the power of the father if a child comes to school with bruises on their backs. The American teachers like Kuhn have injected themselves into the lives of many thousands of children and prosecuted parents for suspected abuse often. The modern teacher sees their role as protectors of children from their parents, and as the ultimate instructor of a child’s fate, and in response, parents have surrendered their authority to the John Kuhns in the teaching profession.

To understand why so many parents are on drugs these days and exposing their children to treacherous conditions at home, look to the progressive welfare programs that created no incentive to be productive adults. To understand why the divorce rate is so high look at a college education system that has produced too many lawyers who need divorces to pay for their occupations, and advertise the destruction of the family as a way to put food on their own tables. To ask why parents drop off their child at school and expect a teacher to do all the work look at the social intrusion that the school and their teachers inject in court rooms all over the country and measure that against the amount of money that a family pays in personal property taxes and the answer will present itself. If society is failing it is due to the largest influence in most people’s lives, their public education experience. The fault is on the teachers themselves who bred into society the kind of lackadaisical life approach taught to students in America that has degenerated every year since the inception of the Department of Education in 1979. The education system has been a failure. It has destroyed families, it has taught our youth the wrong values, and it doesn’t lead the world, it follows, and that is just not acceptable.

The reason for the rise in films against the union controlled education system like Waiting for Superman, and Won’t Back Down is because there are many in America who are sick of the job that teachers have done with American youth, and we want to be free of it. We don’t agree with the kind of education modern teachers are providing, and we want to reject the service in favor of something driven from the free market, not centrally located at the Department of Education that is locked arm and arm with The United Nations. We don’t give a rat’s ass what a bunch of stuffy comb-over bureaucrats cooked-up at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2002, where Scandinavia was presented as the education/economic model of the future. It means nothing in a country known for its innovation, where it has been recognized that such education philosophies will not take America were we want to go, and that is to be the “best,” not just a notable player at the table of a world economy.

I personally have no love for the European and in the type of revolution that I see coming, would not hesitate upon that day to plant the American flag square into the eye socket of a European socialist dandy serving on the board of the World Economic Forum. They have a right to their beliefs, but not into forcing my participation—and this is what they are demanding of all Americans, and why there is push-back against teachers. American teachers are the advocates of this European model, this copy-cat approach to education looking to Scandinavia to provide the world with the kind of mixed economy socialism offers in the ultimate utopia with just enough controlled capitalism to make a little money. I reject that approach and I will not participate peacefully. My squabble is not one where intend to impose my beliefs upon my neighbors, but when my neighbors intend to impose upon me with higher taxes, they are forcing my participation in a system that I utterly reject.

Educator John Kuhn is right about one thing however, the anger at education goes beyond corporate donations to education reformers and movies attacking the control labor unions have on public education. The old Bolshevik Revolution mantra about the plight of the proletariat fighting against the wealthy bourgeois is old and worn out, and is always at the heart of what these deranged socialist loving educators utter. It is also what they teach our youth—and it is for that reason that more and more people are beginning to think the way I do—that public education needs a major overhaul and cannot be saved in its current form. It is not the task of America to copy Denmark, Norway, or Sweden, and to a more limited extent, the other Nordic countries: Finland and Iceland. Scandinavian nations are noted internationally for their peacefulness, social and gender equality, strong labor unions and social democratic parties, expansive governments, and high taxes, just to mention a few salient features. They are a socialist oriented cluster of countries that is fine for them, but not right for America and it would be advisable that educators like John Kuhn who are so in love with such places on earth buy a plane ticket and move to those frosty climates to endure the communist dreams of their politicians. In America, I want the youth of The United States to learn from a much different type of teacher and that anxiety will only increase as this new American Revolution churns up past rhetorical ideas and turns to actual military maneuvers. But rest assured there will not be a quiet compliance to the direction intended by the minds of American intelligentsia because they are not acting on behalf of the nation that became the greatest in the world. Instead they wish to be one collective head in a global crowd, which is not even close to being acceptable by the standard of traditional America.

Conflict is unavoidable because the differences in philosophy are too great.

Rich Hoffman

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“Sons of Liberty”: ‘Assassin’s Creed III’ and the winds of REVOLUTION

For those who are curious as to what it looks like inside my mind—this preview to the new game Assassin’s Creed III is an accurate representation of my core beliefs.

At the end of my driveway next to my mailbox I have two poles sticking up about four feet tall prompting a couple of young people to ask me as they walked by, “what are those poles for?” I told them that those poles were pikes intended to proudly display the cut off heads of my enemies as I take their bodies into my garage and make belts from their hides. The two teenagers gave me an odd look and promptly headed down the road without looking back. In reality the poles are for displaying the battle flags that the owners of The Tampa Bay Buccaneers gave me a few years ago that I fly on game days. But since its Halloween, I thought a good story would fit the mood of the falling leaves and the cool air so I told the kids something to fill their imaginations. But to be honest, I do think such things and would behave as such if all of society crumbled and I no longer believed that The Constitution in America had any power. Such haunted house rumblings are fun in peace time, but during war, they would become standard practice, and those poles may be easily used for just such a function.

To the timid minds of America in the 21st Century, watered down with years of progressivism, let me establish that my ideas about The Revolutionary War are very dear to me. All through my life, I have flown battle flags from my hand-made forts as a youth, worn patches of American flags on my T-shirt sleeves, and I have been involved in violence in defense of the ideas I hold true, on more than one occasion. I am not a particularly sentimental man. I seldom visit the graves of deceased family members for the simple reason of keeping my mind focused on today and tomorrow and staying out of the past. But there is one monument to the past that gives me great, sentimental reverence, and stirs my emotions greatly when I see it. That monument is the Liberty Tree displayed in Walt Disney World standing proudly across from Tom Sawyer Island. The reason I love that tree is because it’s from the film that gave me my first impression of the American Revolution, the 1957 movie, Johnny Tremain. Listen carefully to this song, it is one of my favorites, and I hum it to myself often. It is the principles of that film, and that song that I think of when I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States of America. And when Walt Disney dedicated the film Johnny Tremain to the youth of America, my four-year old persona swore an oath that I would live by those ideas for my entire life, and that I would defend personal liberty at whatever cost. That cost now is simply name-calling, but if things denigrate any further, I can see a future where those poles at the end of my driveway will host my former statement instead of the later.

I love violence, I won’t misrepresent myself. I have engaged in it in years past, and I will engage in it in the future. But I have learned over the years to use my mind first to avoid the unneeded spilling of blood. Ideas are far more powerful than guns or swords. But let me just say that right now I am salivating and I mean literally drooling over the upcoming video game release of Assassins Creed III set to be released on Halloween 2012, that features a version of my old favorite movie Johnny Tremain that is much more akin to the sentiments of today.

When my wife and I were at a screening of Atlas Shrugged this past weekend, we were easily the youngest in the audience, and we are grandparents now. The youth of today has been programmed through progressive institutions to be slack-minded and physically weak by just about every sector of the global economy, except for video games. They were not at the screening of Atlas Shrugged learning about capitalism from a book written in 1957 and they have no interest in a slow-paced story from 1957 made by the long deceased Walt Disney also in 1957. To reach the youth with the important messages of today it has to be done through movies, books, and especially video games. So it is a great relief to me, that UbiSoft has designated for their newest Assassin’s Creed game a story about The American Revolution, because it will have an even more powerful effect on today’s youth, than the old movie Johnny Tremain did on me as a child.

The game will teach game players—adults alike—about the period of The American Revolution, and the politics that led to creating the freest country on earth. It takes fictional liberty by creating the Assassin character that will interact with famous revolutionary generals, like George Washington, and will paint the picture of what it was like in 1773 on through 1776 in Boston, Massachusetts where the American Revolution was born. Progressives have tried to paint those of us in the Tea Party movement with the derogatory name of “Tea Baggers” and finally there is a story that will show that the European influence that pushed the colonists in America toward more and more imperial control used much the same methods to ridicule the original Tea Partiers, of which the modern Tea Party gets their name.

If a simple story like Johnny Tremain from Walt Disney can create a resonance that gives me goose bumps to this very day whenever I hear the song, “Sons of Liberty,” and provoke me to visit the Liberty Tree every time I visit Walt Disney World like I’d visit the tomb stone of a long-lost family member, I can only imagine what effect a game like Assassin’s Creed will have on a society of youth purposely depleted by their educations to be restrained, progressive, and lack-luster, to learn suddenly that they have an obligation to fight for their independence, and to do whatever they must do to keep it.

As the teenagers walked away from my house I thought of them playing Assassin’s Creed in the weeks to come and finally putting together in their minds that the Tea Party they keep hearing about in the news, and on the tongues of their parents is from the same Tea Party that was shown in the game Assassin’s Creed, and that when the government decides to exercise an Executive Order of martial law, or utilizes the NDAA Act on the suburb streets of America that those same youth will be coming back to my house and asking me, “mister, can you teach us how to put our enemies heads on those poles at the end of your driveway?” I will respond, “Sure kids, step right up, I’ll teach you all you want to know and more,” and I’ll enjoy doing it.

This is where my gray-haired friends in the Tea Party and I differ. I know it makes them wonder about me why I don’t go to the phone bank meetings, and the various seminars about various political activities. I do keep my distance, it’s not that I’m rooting against them to succeed, but there is a part of me that hopes they fail to bring about a peaceful resolution. Because I do spend my time sharpening my swords, cleaning my guns, and staying sharp for the day when the word “RISE” will be more than a marketing campaign for a new video game. It will be the call of the land, and in that time, the plot of Assassin’s Creed will no longer be a fantasy. Because we are all “Sons of Liberty,” and that liberty cannot be maintained in the face of evil that lives and thrives through the phantom menace of collectivism.

Until that day, I will be playing Assassin’s Creed III and enjoying the fantasy of putting something other than flags on the poles at the end of my driveway.

Rich Hoffman

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Million Muppet March at the Mall: ‘Sesame Street’ and PBS demand tax money

PBS received $445 million dollars of the $3.8 trillion dollar deficit in outlays during 2012 and because there has been discussion over cutting that aspect of the budget, this has progressives up in arms, since it is their belief that by taking away that $445 million dollars it would mean the end of PBS. Michael Bellavia, 43, an animation executive from Los Angeles, and Chris Mecham, 46, a university student in Idaho, have responded to such a suggestion by separately coming up with the idea for a Million Muppet March on the mall in Washington D.C., just three days before the election to protest the cuts.

This exhibition of progressive ideology is exactly the kind of thing that has ruined America, and you know you’re in trouble when it is not possible to attack the $3.8 trillion dollars applied to the 2012 deficit by dealing with the easy stuff like Public Broadcasting. Rather than have PBS commercialize like everyone else to allow the marketplace to determine winners and losers, progressives insist with the same vigor that they advocate for public education that somehow, some way Sesame Street has a right to be on television, and that the programming done on PBS is of such importance that it be beyond competitive refute.

I personally like PBS. I occasionally watch documentaries and I do listen to the various radio stations since many of them play classical music, which is about the only kind of music I listen to on a regular basis. But the danger is that PBS has become, as it has always been intended, a mouth piece for progressive politics that directly feeds an expanding government. Taking for instance the issue of Sesame Street, which has been relatively creative in how they attempt to teach children, they have made themselves cultural mainstays among America’s youth, is not necessarily good when studied contextually against the back drop of results.

I don’t believe it is good for children to be exposed to the kind of fairness, and socialism that is displayed on Sesame Street even though the intentions are innocent. Big Bird is a social mediator in the lives of the Sesame Street neighborhood in a similar way that social parasites who push school levies and more regulation pry into the lives of their friends and neighbors in reality, and for many of these cellulite infested panicky parents of the future, they received their first impressions that such behavior was okay from Sesame Street where their busy parents plopped them down in front of the TV to watch instead of doing the parenting themselves. Oscar the Grouch is certainly a representative of the poor and downtrodden—after all he lives in a garbage can. Is it not the intention of Oscar to give young people an altruistic view of the poor so they will grow up and accept socialism as the primary driver of fairness in the economies they will contribute to? Is it not true that Bert and Ernie is a homosexual couple living together in complete neurosis and emotional dysfunction? How many young people before the age of 5 have set in their minds that they might want to be homosexual like Bert and Ernie when they grow up, instead of finding a wife or husband of the opposite sex to marry, and have children? Sesame Street is only 43 years old, so it is hardly a staple of American values, tradition and an advocate of self-reliance. It was a concept born out of the hippie era of the 1960’s and reflects many of the values of those gray-haired flower children who were bra burning scallywags in their youth.

All that is fine for First Amendment free speech, and if mothers wish their kids to see that kind of soft core progressivism, it’s certainly an option for them. The question is, if parents had an alternative, or if Sesame Street had to compete with other programs to gain hold of their share of the PBS operating budget coming from the $445 million dollars–would Sesame Street have survived for 43 years? Most likely not, because the product they are producing would have been crushed by competition, because the message they advocate would have been rejected by the public. But because PBS received tax payer money, just like the post office, just like teachers and their public sector unions, just like the deodorant saturated BMV workers, none of them care about market value because they are living in an entitled world where the money just drops out of the sky by mother government, and the content they produce reflects this anti-capitalist trend advocating socialism openly.

Isn’t there a connection between how screwed up and uneducated the youth of today are with the rise and popularity of Sesame Street? Have parents allowed Sesame Street and public education to do the job of parenting, because it was available, and surrendered their authority to the chaos of serving a career that led to splits in the family since the two spouses put their time and effort into values outside of the home? Hasn’t this left young people vulnerable to more government employees in the form of school teachers away from the home, and public employees on their televisions, because that’s what PBS workers are—they are public employees getting a check from the government.

Sesame Street has toys and a whole marketing wing designed to appeal to children, and if the money they generate is not enough to support their product, there is something wrong. I would happily see Sesame Street move from PBS over to Nickelodeon or The Learning Channel if for no other reason but to teach the filmmakers of Sesame Street that it is capitalism that rules in America, not socialism. The tax payers should not be forced to give a public television station propaganda money to work against traditional American values, and for PBS the temptation will always be to advocate for more and larger government, promoting young people to take part in government programs displaying the values established by progressive politics—because that’s where their money comes from.

Like all socialist and communist supporters, progressives when they want something protest in the same collective, squeaky wheel manner that labor unions employ to show democratic consensus. This is what Michael Bellavia, and Chris Mecham, age 46, a university student in Idaho, are doing. Consider the plight of Chris Mecham, a 46-year-old student—what the heck is he studying at 46 years old? When is that bird going to hatch and move on into the big scary world beyond Sesame Street and become productive? Unfortunately, there are a lot of grown adults like Chris Mecham who are not comfortable in the world of capitalism, since all their lives they were taught socialism was good, and they arrive at adulthood only to become professional students—afraid of the world around them. And when they can be students no longer, they cling to the teaching profession because it’s the next best thing to being able to live in the socialist imagery created by Sesame Street where everyone is singing, and playing well together in a world of bright colors and pixy dust. What they forget to notice is that the entire world is made up of puppets, just like the politicians who advocate socialism in the real world. This is what is behind the march on the mall by the advocates of PBS funding. This is also why the public money should be removed, so that the people desiring to advocate progressive policies using tax payer dollars should be eliminated from doing so. The kind of programming the money is spent on may be a drop in the bucket from a financial aspect, but the social damage done is far greater when plotted against the direction society has taken since Sesame Street first aired over 43 years ago. As innocent as it might appear, it would seem that Sesame Street planted too many seeds of socialism in the young fertile minds of children that stays with them well into adulthood only to be rejected when that same mind reaches their middle years and upon the first signs of gray in their hair begin the long process of becoming more conservative as maturity has finally instructed them with experience, the error of their progressive thinking—and the billions of dollars of potential economic damage they have instigated by supporting indirectly socialism which weakens American society through PBS funding.

Rich Hoffman

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‘Dirty Dancing’ Rebellion Against Ayn Rand: Why Hollywood is so far on the political left

(Note–the hotlinks on this page are full of support information. Click on them for more information to dive deeper into the history shown below.)

If it’s not yet obvious to the average person, there is a deep hatred for Ayn Rand in Hollywood, which has been infected with a collectivism ideology that runs deep in the entertainment culture. So when Atlas Shrugged Part 2 hit theaters last week, the ripple of anger resounding through the progressive community was one of utmost panic. But where does this anger come from and why is it there? For a hint as to the start of it one has to trace the origins of communist infiltration into Hollywood through the Democratic Party during the 1940’s and 1950’s that was very real in spite of the protests lobbied against the participants of the McCarthy hearings. Ayn Rand, Walt Disney, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Ronald Reagan and many others joined together to warn movie studios of this invasion coming into America through the entertainment labor unions, and prepared a pamphlet to protect themselves from communist influence. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ACTUAL DOCUMENT.

However, as more progressive political types came into power, and the old guard in Hollywood died off, people like Wayne, Disney, Heston, and Rand—leaving the next generation of film makers to control the financing of movies and what kind of actors, writers, and producers would be in movies, a shift into communist theory began to take hold. This is how Hollywood became so far on the political left. These events happened rapidly during the Reagan White House years as films simultaneously exploited violence and individualism while at the same time promoting collectivism. Studios had to make this concession because individualism is what Americans buy tickets to see, heroic actors like Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson, Arnold Schwarzeneggar, and Clint Eastwood all political conservatives were extremely popular at the box office while the communists worked their long-term plan, the gradual erosion of American value with small doses of collectivism that would add up over time so slowly that like the hands of a clock, were hard to see moving. To see a modern example of this mixed message Hollywood creation of a utopian existence that is the foundation of their communist background just look at the trailer of the new Tom Hanks film Cloud Atlas. (By the way, I’ll probably see the movie because it looks good, in spite of its collectivist, Kant-like philosophic message.)

Tom Hanks is a great actor, but is a byproduct of the modern Hollywood system. Actors by their nature are not persons of great conviction and they are very vulnerable to the type of diatribes discussed at dinner parties and fundraisers that they all attend in order to secure financing for their films. For the last thirty years, many of the people who have been funding films have been George Soros types who openly wish to turn America into a global community by destroying the wonderful images of the past, with demonized appraisal in the current time turning an entire generation of American youth against their parents and grandparents generation, which was carefully outlined in the 1958 book The Naked Communist. For Hanks to survive in Hollywood he adapted his thinking to the movers and shakers of the film industry and gradually they have separated themselves from the Clint Eastwood/Arnold Schwarzenegger ultra-man models. Progressive Hollywood financial backers have been so successful they have even managed to reinvent the ultimate male superman James Bond into a more progressive hero played by Daniel Craig. The modern Bond is much less sure of himself than the Bonds of Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Pierce Brosnan which is to reflect the progressive Hollywood goal of diminishing individual achievement.

Part of that erosion of the ultra strong male, and the ultra sexy female traits coming out of “old Hollywood” was an eradication of the old symbols. Walt Disney has been smeared as being anti-Semitic; Mel Gibson’s career was completely trashed as he was baited by the media continuously after his very successful film The Patriot—covering The American Revolution in a positive light and of course The Passion of Christ. But behind these schemes was an attempt to eliminate the literary material that Hollywood actors and producers secretly loved, because it made them a lot of money, and that was Ayn Rand and the ubermensch characters of her novels. Their image and their legacy would have to be destroyed otherwise collectivism would never manifest within the entertainment industry the way it was intended. And one of the ways that screenwriters wanting to suck up to film financiers under the advice of movie producers was to smear Rand in subtle—cleaver ways to shape the next generation of youth into a belief that Ayn Rand was the ultimate villain to everything that was good. One film that was produced in 1987 that was very popular, won Academy Awards for the songs it produced and played on top 40 radio stations becoming one of the most popular women’s film in history—the extremely progressive and fashionable film Dirty Dancing.

A year ago my sister had baby twins and while we were in the hospital waiting for their birth some of her childhood friends where there to greet my new niece and nephew to the world. Growing up my sister and her friends were absolutely in love with the movie Dirty Dancing which seemed innocent enough. The songs were catchy and what was the harm in a story, it was just fun—right. Wrong. The plot of Dirty Dancing covers many of the progressive issues so important to specifically the Democratic Party–class warfare, abortion rights, the breakdown of personal family value, and the demonization of Ayn Rand as a writer. There are also seductive allusions toward ménage à trois to help usher in the open sexual relationships and the un-possessive sex of communist utopian fantasy. When the villain of the movie name Robbie declares that some people are more important than others, he then pulls out a copy of The Fountainhead that is well-worn and apparently all marked up with personal notes. He offers it to the female lead character played by Jennifer Grey, who then heroically pours ice down the crotch of his pants and tells him that he disgusts her.

While at the hospital Cincinnati television station Channel 19 wanted to do an interview with me, so I left the lobby to go down into the parking lot to meet with the reporter and while I was gone my wife got an earful from some of my sister’s friends who live in our school district, which was the content of the interview. I was talking about all the reasons the local school levy should fail speaking out against the proposed tax increases which my sister’s friends supported. My wife of course defended me while I was gone, but the gist of the women’s complaints was that they had children in the district who couldn’t ride the school bus because of me, due to the district cutting busing to punish the tax payers for not passing the last school tax increase. My sister’s friends thought I shouldn’t speak out against the levy on TV because they were having a hard time driving the children to school because of the loss of public transportation. She wanted the tax increase to pass so that she had transport for her children to go to school, saving her the responsibility.

When I returned from the television appearance my wife told me what had happened and the rest of the day was stressful. I wasn’t about to back off my position, and they were blaming me for their personal situations. As young girls of 14 to 16 years old in 1987 Dirty Dancing was their favorite movie. Now these people are parents of their own kids, and they still have in their mind the values they grew up with, which films like Dirty Dancing helped shape. Dirty Dancing alone didn’t do all the damage, but it certainly did plant the seeds for progressive thinking. Women like my sister’s friends are more likely to vote in favor of school levies favoring the labor union position, more likely to vote for politicians like Obama, to vote in favor of pro abortion policies because their favorite movie Dirty Dancing was all about those issues, and they think of that movie while they listen to music on the radio to this very day and hear the songs that remind them of that film.

Ayn Rand warned about this, and as can be seen clearly now that hindsight is available to us, the makers of Dirty Dancing were taking the progressive political position against Ayn Rand and the types of characters, and personal philosophy she advocated. Of course the villain character in Dirty Dancing who liked Ayn Rand was a social climber was more like Peter Keating–the villain from The Fountainhead, and certainly not the hero Howard Roark. But young girls seeing Dirty Dancing as 14-year-old girls fantasizing about being Jennifer Grey dancing with a much older Patrick Swayze and they learned that The Fountainhead was the favorite book of the disgusting villain in Dirty Dancing. The result is that they would be against that book for the rest of their lives and would discourage their own children from reading it in the future.

This all comes into play in 2012 now that many of those young 14-year-old girls are now head editors of magazines, newspapers and communications programming positions all over the country. They now have subordinates fresh out of college eating out of their hands willing to scrap their personal integrity like the Bosom Buddies television star Tom Hanks willing to sacrifice their integrity in order to social climb. This is how the hatred for Ayn Rand has become so pronounced. Over the last twenty years, Dirty Dancing is but one small film in a long line of television, movie and popular songs passing through the entertainment culture that advocate against individuality and personal liberty.

The war over personal ideas is currently at a fever pitch. The Hollywood community is absolutely insulted that the filmmakers of Atlas Shrugged Part 2 would even dare to make such a movie in spite of Hollywood’s long term commitment to ending any mention of Ayn Rand. But the fight is not over. Like one of my readers here pointed out recently, and actually gave me the Dirty Dancing reference–she was one that has taken what she has learned today and re-evaluated the past so she could verify the extent of the danger. And the situation is dangerous. The Trojan Horse has already unloaded the communist enemies behind the protective mechanisms of our culture, and it happened so gradually, and so subtly that nobody paid any attention to the messages. Unknowingly, millions upon millions of young people, who are now adults, were taught that Ayn Rand was a bad person that was selfish, delusional, and a diabolical menace to society. The trouble is, Ayn Rand was a menace to society—to the kind of society that collectivists, and communist utopians desired to build for America behind carefully placed messages such as what was seen in Dirty Dancing and thousands upon thousands of similar products produced by the entertainment industry not only to make money for the creative artists, but to undo America from the inside out and to ensure the transformation of America into a society of panicky lovers of Dirty Dancing and the fantasy of progressive social infestation.

Rich Hoffman

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Review of ‘Atlas Shrugged Part II’: Finding “Atlantis” within America

Atlas Shrugged Part 2 is a bold, ambitious film that is about gigantic ideas, and is grand in its geography. It is limited only in the fact that due to the nature of the material from Ayn Rand’s classic book, it has had to operate with very small budgets more akin to modern independent films. As a person who attends independent film festivals with great enthusiasm I am amazed when a handful of very creative film makers produce a film where they are the directors, editor, actors, sound engineers, marketing department, financiers, and special effect technicians. Because Hollywood doesn’t have the temperament for conservative films, or figures of a pro capitalism message like Ayn Rand, they have not made films like what was released nationwide on October 12, 2012 in the great new independent film Atlas Shrugged Part 2. Hollywood will produce pictures like the new Matt Damon film “Promised Land” which is an environmentalist project that will prove far more restrained with boring dialogue than Atlas Shrugged, yet it gets made and has the star power from the Hollywood machine because the message is one that the entertainment industry enjoys, leaving only one memorandum of social collectivism to resonate from movie town in Southern California. Every other film produced through the rest of the world becomes an independent film which Atlas Shrugged Part 2 certainly is. Many working in modern Hollywood forget that the machine they enjoy today in a robust entertainment industry was built on the backs of filmmakers such as Douglas Fairbanks, Walt Disney, and Cecil B. Demille, whom Ayn Rand worked for as a screen writer. So it should come as no surprise that Atlas Shrugged written in 1957 is more like the great Disney film Island at the Top of the World than the polar opposite of Oliver Stone’s anti-capitalist film Wall Street.

Independent films have emerged over the last couple of decades in film festivals like Cannes in France, and Sundance in The United States to provide a format for stories that Hollywood doesn’t buy for the big stage to be seen by an audience in a theater. Because of the improvement in shooting techniques that has exploded due to the conversation of film to digital technology, filmmakers now have tremendous freedom to make whatever movie they wish, and Hollywood has incentivized such creative endeavors by sending agents and producers to film festivals to purchase ambitious films to show during the autumn and winter marketing periods making independent film a process of film making that is like panning for gold in California during the days of the great Gold Rush. The weakness in independent film is that Hollywood still controls the process. Always on the minds of independent filmmakers is to keep the content of their films on target with the kinds of projects that the big studios are buying, because investors hope for a Hollywood distribution deal.

Atlas Shrugged Part II is an independent film that was made in a lightning fast manner. It was green lit in the winter of 2012 and released in the fall. It is a very ambitious film with great special effects, especially for an indie film, most notably a train wreck that was far more powerful than the big budget studio train wreck in the film Unbreakable, and a flight action sequence that reminded me of Clint Eastwood’s Firefox. Critics of Atlas Shrugged Part II might be tempted to say that technology has come along that would allow kids to make special effects on their Mac’s as well as what was seen in Atlas Shrugged Part II, and that ‘s true. But those comments are also leaked from the Hollywood community run by labor unions who are very concerned that Independent films will put them out of business at some point in the future because more and more films are being made out of Hollywood, to avoid inflated unions demands. (ALL UNIONS USE SUCH TACTICS. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO.) One such film is the upcoming Hobbit by Peter Jackson, which is essentially an independent film with a big studio backing, and a lot of money to pour into the best special effects that money, and time can buy.

Atlas Shrugged does not have the luxury of money, time, or the safety net of Hollywood. In order for Atlas to be made into a film John Aglialaro, Harmon Kaslow and a handful of financial backers had to create a studio, and the entire infrastructure of film production just to make the movie, because Hollywood didn’t want anything to do with the film. With that said, there were some sentimental actors from years gone by in entertainment like Biff from Back to the Future, who played a bureaucratic board member. There was also the pleasant face Steven Keaton from the 80’s TV show Family Ties along with a number of surprising cameos. Every frame of Atlas Shrugged Part 2 oozed with ambition, including some impressive crane shots that I found very technically stimulating from the vantage point of behind the line camera talent. If Atlas played first in a film festival where Hollywood could control the process of the film being shown to the public, there would be a lot of praise for Atlas Shrugged Part II. But the producers of AS2 are not playing tidily winks, they are taking a real crack at penetrating the entertainment culture of Hollywood which makes films with a noticeably left leaning political message, and rejects films that speak to the political right—as though Hollywood believes they can control mass culture with such restriction. The filmmakers of Atlas Shrugged Part 2 went from a screenplay in December to shooting in the spring, to post production duties in the late summer to distribution in the fall, and they did it at a level with the big boys of Hollywood like Warner Brothers, Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, and other well known powerhouses.

I can think of many films put out by those big studios in years past that had cheesy special effects and bad acting, neither of which Atlas Shrugged Part 2 is guilty of. But the level of modern audience expectation, particularly among young people with the memories resembling an insect are very high without context against the history of film. Production values in all films and television have increased, and studios have evolved raising their internal expectations. But since Atlas Shrugged Part 2 is a measure onto itself the filmmakers are going through this process independently. The technological gap seen in Atlas Shrugged Part 1 is quite dramatic in relation to Part 2. The filmmakers of Atlas 2 graduated into a new technical level from the previous film to this one. CLICK HERE TO SEE MY REVIEW OF PART 1. The big studios went through the same process in the 80’s and 90’s that the makers of Atlas Shrugged are laboring through presently.

It is not the fault of John Aglialaro or Harmon Kaslow that they have had to learn as they go. The filmmakers of Atlas just wanted to see a film version of the great Ayn Rand literary classic, and nobody had tried to make it work in the past, mainly because the role of many filmmakers in Hollywood resorted themselves to controlling the social message of humanity. This is why filmmakers like George Lucas set up his operation near San Francisco and Clint Eastwood ran Malpaso from Carmel, another San Franciscan suburb. Peter Jackson operates out of New Zealand, so the filmmakers of Atlas Shrugged Part 2 are in good company with their film strategy. The internal politics of Hollywood make it difficult to function creatively, so filmmakers to preserve their own integrity move away from Hollywood so they don’t end up like Steven Spielberg, caught in a creative vortex that consumes all their ingenuity with Hollywood progressive culture. Spielberg makes great movies, but he could do better, as he has in the past. I am looking forward to his new film Lincoln, but he lost his magic touch when he allowed Hollywood to sap him dry, beginning with his first Academy Award for Schindler’s List. I thought of Steven Spielberg while watching Atlas Shrugged Part 2 when Richard Halley the concert pianist was performing before a crowded auditorium and when the curtain closed, Halley left the stage and disappeared for unknown reasons. The reason that Halley left was he realized that the audience had lost their ability to really appreciate his art, so he did what all the rest of the great minds of Atlas Shrugged did, they left society. Spielberg stayed in Hollywood much the way Hank Rearden refused to leave after others had left for the same reasons Halley did in the film. Hank stayed because he just couldn’t quit, and he let himself be manipulated off his emotional high ground. It is those kinds of messages that the Hollywood machine despises because there is more truth than any of them care to reveal publicly.

All these qualifiers are necessary so that historical context can be applied to just how big of a deal Atlas Shrugged Part 2 is to the film industry. Aglialaro and company have done the unthinkable, they decided to enter the filmmaking market completely outside the controls that were put in place with nearly 100 years of filmmaking, and it has ruffled the feathers of virtually everyone in show business. With that said, the product put on screen was very good. In the screening that I was at, people openly laughed when Dagny had to fill up her car with gas that was $40 dollars per gallon. And the train crash was visually stunning. The plane chase I thought was remarkably good, and John Galt’s plane was very advanced. It reminded me of something that belonged in Star Wars. The tension through-out the story was intense. People who haven’t read the book might find some of the events too quick and fragmented, but a lot of material is covered, and the filmmakers did a good job of presenting the most abbreviated versions possible. The “money speech” that is so well loved from the book was done powerfully, and Rearden’s court appearance was very effective offering a commentary that is directly pertinent to the politics of our current day. But for me the best parts of the movie were the mystery surrounding the mysterious engine introduced very early in the story. Atlas Shrugged Part 2 is a love story, a story of political struggle, an argument in favor of capitalism, but it is also wonderful science fiction adventure resembling a type of film that does not get made any more in Hollywood. I found myself mesmerized watching this mysterious engine come to life throughout the film as Dagny tracks down the creator. I found myself smiling when Dagny met the former employee of a factory where the engine she discovered was built, which gave her insight into the kind of man who built it.

I thought Samantha Mathis did a great job as Dagny. It is repulsive that many Hollywood insiders have made fun of her middle-aged appearance in the film, as she played the part of a very tenacious woman, that is strong willed, independent, vulnerable at times, but deeply passionate about always looking toward the next great thing. If Atlas Shrugged Part 2 were a big studio film by Paramount or Warner and played by Charlize Theron the role would win an Academy Award, but Mathis’ role in Atlas will be rejected by Hollywood because the film was made outside of their control. Samantha Mathis did a wonderful job and was cast realistically which was refreshing to see for a change.

Even with all the pressure, it was nice to see the filmmakers having fun with the film this time around. They obviously loosened up a bit with the script, and that made this film a noticeable improvement over the last, which was good in its own way. Atlas Shrugged as a novel is a very heady piece of work which is a challenge for anybody to put into visual form. In this film, the decision to abbreviate the material with humor was a dramatic improvement. I expected to like the film, but I didn’t expect it to have so many fun moments that drew laughs.

For those who don’t know the story of Atlas Shrugged, I won’t ruin it here. But the ending of AS2 was particularly powerful, and very satisfying. The filmmakers pulled off a stunt that the Disney Studios attempted to do with their animated 2001 film Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Atlas Shrugged Part 2 with all the discussion of political commentary, and left versus right dialogue, is a superhero story about the origin of Atlantis. And in Ayn Rand’s classic novel, Atlantis was not geographic, but metaphorical. The story of Atlas Shrugged is at a fundamental level an observation of political methods, but more than that it is the classic analysis as to why many believe in the mythical city of Atlantis, as described by Plato to hold the key to all civilization. All human societies over known history have fallen short of their utopian aims, and Atlas Shrugged is a study as to why. The adventurous journey shown in Atlas Shrugged Part 2 is all about finding the metaphorical city of Atlantis in the classical sense, and modern equivalent. The film is essentially a treasure hunt that must break free of the political shackles which hold humanity to the archaic diatribes of collectivism keeping us from seeing the answers right in front of our faces.

All through Atlas Shrugged Part 2 I thought of the many films I loved growing up, such as The Island at the Top of the World, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Around the World in 80 Days. Atlas Shrugged Part 2 is an adventure film trying to break free of the shackles imposed by a government obsessed with socialism–trying to answer all life’s solutions beyond the grip that has stopped the magic motor of humanity from being developed culminating during the movie. The answer to these problems is in Atlantis, which is what Dagny is trying to discover with all the gusto of any great adventure story. The film itself, like the characters in the movie is trying to break free of the kind of shackles that have prevented filmmaking and society to create a real life Atlantis. The ambition and great love for the Ayn Rand’s original material can be seen in every frame of film presented with great passion. Atlas Shrugged Part 2 is a good honest movie that is telling an intense story about superheroes and treasure hunts. It just so happens that the villains are all too reminiscent of the kind of politicians that currently occupy our government with all the collective greed that has ruined every civilization on planet earth from Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Incan Empire, The Mayans, all the cultures of the Indus Valley, on down through every culture man has ever created since—Atlas Shrugged Part 2 is an examination into the answer of how to avoid such a peril in America. And the answer is in a metaphorical and actual Atlantis, which the viewer gets to discover tragically and rapturously at the end of this very good film.

I would recommend repeated viewings of Atlas Shrugged Part 2, especially if the content of the book is not known before hand. Critics will not like the film for many of the same reasons that they did not like George Lucas’s Red Tails, which I adored (SEE MY REVIEW HERE). Many of the young people working in the media today were teenagers in the 90’s and have never seen a movie made before the computer age, so they expect to be entertained with special effects, not a powerful story so they measure everything in their lives off those faulty standards. But their weaknesses in perception do not make a film bad or good–they are not qualified to measure the worth of a treasure hunt, because so many people have given up on looking for the treasures in life. When it is asked, “Who is John Galt” it is the same as asking, “Where are the treasures that can save mankind.”

This is the ambitious quest of Atlas Shrugged Part 2 and the film makers hit the mark squarely. They did a wonderful job with the film and made a picture that is worth seeing several times. It’s a unique work of art that has a lot of style and grace but more than anything it oozes a love for Ayn Rand and a celebration of her ideas. I wish every movie made in America had just a fraction of the passion shown in Atlas Shrugged Part 2 because if they did, America would become the Atlantis described in Plato’s writings. And this is the point of this very good film, it’s not just a warning of political science, it’s an offering into why the willing shackles mankind places upon their own hearts and minds are done so methodically, and is the reason the “men of the mind” in Atlas Shrugged are dropping the world and leaving to live and thrive in a world of their own making. Atlas Shrugged Part 2 is the latest edition in a long line of adventure films that seeks to cut off the chains of politics and emotional bondage away so that the viewer can touch the face of genius and relish in what the entire world could be if only mankind had the courage to become—John Galt.

Rich Hoffman

If you like my work at this site then check out my books shown below, along with quotes, interviews, reviews, and ways to find them. Clicking the pictures below are your doors to even more adventure:

The Ghost of Robert Welch: Being right in a world that wished he was wrong

Robert Welch during the 1950’s and 1960’s was the epitome of a right-winged radical as defined by the left-winged radical fringe of progressive thought. Welch was so far off the ideology of the left, that he appeared extreme to most sensible minded Americans who didn’t wish to see the communist infiltration of The United States that was happening all around them. Everywhere Welch looked he saw a vast communist conspiracy that was a world-wide movement. He was so concerned about this communist infiltration that he founded the John Birch Society in 1958, a group that was so conservative that it denounced presidents Nixon and Reagan as being “too liberal.” Welch felt that the American people were divided into four groups, “communists, communist dupes or sympathizers, the uninformed who have yet to be awakened to the communist danger, and the ignorant.” His language was harsh, showing his Baptist, North Carolina roots where he was taught at home by his mother—a school teacher. He was a brilliant student and would later join the United States Naval Academy and Harvard Law School, but he dropped out of both to become independently wealthy on his own efforts. Welch was a man who was self-made, and held fierce convictions. His view of the world was untainted by cooperative endeavor so typical in most people who work for others, so he could afford to see the world in the “long view.” This led him to see communists everywhere, and he was at war with them using the John Birch Society as his club to defeat communism in America. In 1958 he gave the speech seen below, and in it, many of the crazy conspiracy theories that the political left tried to discredit can be seen coming true to this very day. Time and history have siphoned through the liars and the prophets separating the tin-hat kooks from the masks of thieves. In that process, Robert Welch has been confirmed a prophet, and all too correct as many of the far-flung conspiracies he suggested were rooted in truth, as confirmed by the status of modern America. Listen for yourself.

Welch was in his day the modern version of Glenn Beck and Beck has seen much the same level of scrutiny that Welch did from the political left. As modern history has shown, Beck has been much more right than wrong, most notably in declaring that the Muslim religion was attempting to form a Caliphate to unite the former Ottoman Empire, and hiding their actions behind religious debate and political sovereignty. Welsh in his day took the facts of his time into account and added them up to the logical conclusion that the communists were attempting everything they said they would during the Bolshevik Revolution, and that was to bring communism to the entire world. Leftists wish to practice evasion and not add up any facts, they only wish to feel their way through the world, so it is not hard to hide such conspiratorial plots from their un-inquisitive minds. But to people who are fully awake and observing the facts of reality for their true value, people like Glenn Beck in the modern age, people like Ayn Rand from the days of Welch, or Robert Welch himself, the facts point into one direction, and the events that follow are easy to predict once they are accepted as reality.

I didn’t know anything about Robert Welch and only learned about the events of his era, and his communist concerns by studying Ayn Rand and the events that occurred around her. I have said much of what Robert Welch said in 1958 here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom in the modern age through independent conclusions, by simply adding up the evidence and arriving at conclusions based on that sum. All that is required is simply acknowledging the evidence, and following it wherever it points, and in the case of modern issues, it is collectivism that is bringing much of the worlds evils upon the human race whether it is through religious rhetoric or political philosophy. Communism as Robert Welch feared was in fact imposed upon American culture through “The Insiders,” and such an insidious plot was hatched from the basic human need of collective acceptance. It didn’t require a great conspiracy of secrecy to induce; all that had to happen were that communists create a modern environment centered on collectivism and the world’s religions and political parties would fulfill the objectives of The Naked Communist also printed in 1958. CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW.

Leftists have attempted to paint me as a radical right-winged advocate just as they painted Welch, and Rand. But the reality is that my position is only considered radical compared to those who have accepted collectivism in various degrees out of rejection of personal liberty. My position is the one of reason and logic built upon evidence, not emotion. It is the advocate of emotional decisions that find their philosophies fall apart in their hands like water trying to run through their fingers. And to be fair, few people had a history behind them to show how well capitalism worked, so communism was very appealing to a society of soft minded intellectuals. It was easy to call Welch in 1958 a conspiracy theory advocate, because America was still riding the wave of near perfect capitalism seen in America from 1880 to about 1905. The impact of socialism in the American economy was disguised due to the impact of World War I and World War II wrecking the world’s economy leaving only The United States to profit. When Robert Welch gave his speech in 1958, people on the left and in the political middle giggled at Welch’s naive world vision. But as history would prove 50 years later, Welch was correct about nearly all his assertions.

Action is now dictated. A choice must be made, because the mixed economy in America that has been laced with collectivist communism must be removed before America can restart its economic engine. That requires an acknowledgment of what Welch stated half a century ago, and to understand that it has come true in our day and time. Such times require our personal courage to make the hard decisions, the unpopular social position that is against collectivism, which is the parasite of capitalism. The decisions of today demand an understanding that the best way to help everyone in the world is to convince them all to look out for themselves and to strive for independence in a way that has only been flirted with in the past, but never fully utilized.

But calling the prophets of American society names because they state the inconvenient won’t fix the problem. Ignoring the facts of reality won’t make them go away. America will not survive another 50 years of mixed capitalism induced from communist infiltration to such an extent that the original perpetrators are long since dead and have given birth to progressive spawns who no longer know the technical definition of communism, but instead call themselves democrats and progressives, or MTV viewers who get their news from Comedy Central and consider themselves “worldly.” Those same fragmented minds will always declare that people like Robert Welch were crack-pots who should be ignored. The reason is that they are the ones who advocated the evil upon mankind thinking that they were saviors fighting on behalf of collectivism. In reality it is collectivism that is the true evil parasite that is seeking to destroy life itself beginning with personal liberty on a long documented quest for power and conquest in the ancient tradition of candidacy into the priesthood on the shores of “Diana’s Mirror.” Intellectuals, the same fools who advocate collectivism know precisely what my reference to “Diana’s Mirror” is. If not, they can Google it. But it is there where the trend toward communism begins, and such roots must be pulled up from the mind of which they grow so that America can return to the foundations of freedom that made it the greatest country on earth, land of the free, and home of the brave, before communism rotted away the minds of the intellectual and seduced the hearts of the weak.

Rich Hoffman

If you like my work at this site then check out my books shown below, along with quotes, interviews, reviews, and ways to find them. Clicking the pictures below are your doors to even more adventure:

‘Tail of the Dragon’ Interview on the Doc Thompson Show: Detroit is a “WAR ZONE.”

“Tail of the Dragon is a cross between Smokey and the Bandit, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” That’s what I told Doc Thompson during his 1270 AM radio show in Detroit during the interview that can be heard below at the link. Doc Thompson and I go back a few years, and have fought many school levy battles and public union campaign issues on the airwaves of radio. Doc had me on to discuss a new crisis that is going on in Detroit where the police presence is advocating its support of Proposal 2, which is a state constitutional change to guarantee collective bargaining rights for public employees. Ironically this is one of the major villains that have wrecked the economy of Detroit leaving the town a devastated “war zone.” My visit to the Doc Thompson Show came on the heels of a police union stunt headed by Joe Duncan who had 400 of his officers passing out fliers to fans of the Tigers first playoff game against the Oakland A’s, declaring the city unsafe for entry. Doc and I had seen this kind of behavior before with Senate Bill 5 in Ohio during 2011, and it just so happened that this kind plot line matched the story of my new book.

On the flier Joe Duncan and his officers declared “Enter Detroit at Your Own Risk,” as fans poured into Comerica Park. “Detroit is America’s most violent city and the city’s police force is grossly understaffed.” The intention of the fliers was the old fear game that all public unions use to advance their cause—which is not safety, but financial security. Unions on the backs of the unwitting participants such as Duncan and his officers are caught up in a plot to hatch communism in America designed long ago, and has been gradually accepted over a long period of time using fear tactics of terrorism to advance their agenda. The protesting police officers don’t care about the history of communism. They are working a dangerous job, and they simply want to get paid as much as they can for doing that job. From their perspective it’s only fair. But what they don’t understand, or have the historical background to decipher is the communist infiltration in America during the Red Decade of the 1930’s brought labor unions and collective bargaining ideas to the closest thing of pure capitalism ever known in the world and corrupted it with the taint of collectivism.

Proposition 2 in Michigan is attempting to go the opposite way as Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana who are all working to reform their public unions from extortive control over public services. Seeing the writing on the wall, the Michigan public unions are seeking to protect themselves from these changes by putting “collective bargaining” into the state constitution, which is why the police were at the Tiger’s playoff game looking for sympathy and votes for Proposition 2. They want to ensure that collective bargaining is in place for their entire careers, because it represents why they got into public service in the first place—because the money is great and the retirements come early and is profitable. But what they don’t know is that collective bargaining is the direct result of the Bolshevik Revolution started in Russia in 1917 and is a product of communism. Most likely the police passing out fliers at the baseball game have never heard of a Bolshevik let alone read the Ayn Rand classic about the start of communism in Petrograd from her novel We The Living. I would doubt they read a TV Guide let alone a 75-year-old novel that describes why the police are the modern-day pawns of the communism movement in America.

Detroit is not dangerous because of the amount of police there are. Detroit could hire a 1000 police and they still could not stop all the crime that is happening there. What is happening to Detroit is the same thing that has destroyed the Soviet Union and is currently destroying China. It’s the same thing that has wrecked the economies of Greece, Spain and is about to push France under—which is the influence of Socialist International as a political party advocating a world-wide push toward global communism. In the past Detroit had too many labor unions, so the business left to manufacture in regions where the labor is cheaper. Taxes are too high, there are too many public housing developments, there is simply too much government involvement. Detroit is a victim of socialism and the destructive experiments of communism coming out of the Red Decade. It is those policies of social engineering that had destroyed the Motor City which once boasted a thriving economy into the crime ridden battleground that it is today. It is those same policies that created collective bargaining and a gradual acceptance of communist thought in America hidden on the backs of trusted public sector workers like firefighters, cops and teachers. The blueprint for this Trojan horse of communism in America was outlined in the book We The Living published in 1936 and Detroit is the result of the communist attempt in America.

This was all predicted by Richard Cloward, which I discussed in my book Tail of the Dragon using the fictional Governor Wellington Royce to pontificate the frustrations that many progressives feel to this very day, which is people have unpredictably voted with their feet. Cloward wished to collapse capitalism in the 1960’s in favor of a communist insurrection by toppling the American economy that was overwhelmed with welfare demands. In Detroit, as in every major city in the United States with the exception of New York and Los Angeles, the people with money did as the producers in the book Atlas Shrugged did; they left and took their money with them when taxes became too high. When the money and businesses that made the money left Detroit because of the unions, both public and private, the high taxes, the government bureaucracies, it left Detroit with only the poor government dependents to pay into the tax base draining the city budgets, and crime has exploded as a result. These are hard concepts to discuss which is why I placed them into the context of a very intense story in my book Tail of the Dragon. Detroit is only the most obvious victim of these progressive policies that have masked the intentions of communist infiltration in America.

Detroit is in trouble today because they let themselves be seduced by the fear mongering of many public workers like Joe Duncan in the past, which used fear the same way that a terrorist does, to change social behavior. The crime is high in Detroit because the productive people who created jobs and made all the money in the city left, only to leave the weak to fend for themselves on government programs in perpetual need of more money from a tax base no longer present. Joe Duncan and his officers only want to get paid, because their union has made promises to them that they accepted as an American idea, even though collective bargaining was born in Petrograd, Russia at the start of the communist revolution that began in 1917. The result of such communist dreams is the condition of present day Detroit.

The best thing that Detroit could do for itself is to rid itself of public unions, collective bargaining, and lower tax rates so businesses might wish to return. Detroit needs to create economic stimulation so that the poor and jobless can have a job and become a part of the free enterprise system and force government to get out of the compassion business. Compassion cannot be created by government or enforced through force, and that is at the heart of collective bargaining. It is only good for the recipients of a government pay check. It is treacherous for those who have to actually pay the bill. With that said the worst thing Michigan could do in this upcoming election is vote in favor of Proposition 2. Voters in that “dangerous” city will have to take a hard-line in the sand and stick to it if they wish to save their city. No amount of tax money, police hires, or increases in government welfare can save them from the Cloward strategy that bankrupted their city for aims that are foreign to most Americans. The only way to save Detroit is by voting NO on all tax increases, and expansion of government services, especially those involving collective bargaining.

Rich Hoffman

Tail of the Dragon

If you like my work at this site then check out my books shown below, along with quotes, interviews, reviews, and ways to find them. Clicking the pictures below are your doors to even more adventure:

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