The lawsuit against Apple by the Department of Justice is an astonishing maneuver made by an organization that is under criminal investigation itself. Yet even with all the scandals that it is currently being scrutinized for such as cover-ups, criminal deceit, and murder, the Department of Justice is engaged in an outright attack against the Apple Company for an e-book price-fixing anti-trust busting lawsuit. For a review on my thoughts about anti-trust cases created under the Sherman Act, please refer to the following link, where I break down the history and hypocrisy of these government cases revealing what is really behind them.
The federal government operates currently the largest monopoly on the face of the earth with their vast support of price-fixing through government labor unions. For examples of price-fixing that is much more destructive than anything Apple has done look no further than the local teacher at your government school, look at your friendly neighborhood IRS agent, or any bureaucrat working for the federal government in virtually any direct capacity. The government is not qualified to pass judgment against Apple for price-fixing. But in this case, as in most anti-trust cases, the intention is not to find justice for the “public” but to shake down the prosecuted for money through bribes, court settlements, or campaign donations to political parties. If the roots of this case were traced back to a cause, one of those three issues was the motivation. Because Apple did not grease the wheels of government “properly” they are now being prosecuted. It is that simple. For proof examine the statements below as reported by CNET regarding this anti-trust case, and read carefully the words used by Justice Department attorney Lawrence Buterman.
Apple shouldn’t “be rewarded” with the same sanctions as the e-book publishers that settled with the U.S. government, the Department of Justice argued ahead of a court hearing Friday. “Apple has been found to have orchestrated and facilitated a…price-fixing conspiracy — amongst these very publisher defendants,” Justice Department attorney Lawrence Buterman wrote in a letter dated Thursday but made available for viewing Friday. “Apple should not be rewarded with the same terms received by those that chose to settle to avoid the risks of litigation.”
The Justice Department last week issued its proposals for ways “to halt Apple’s anticompetitive conduct, restore lost competition, and prevent a recurrence of the illegal activities.” The three big pieces of that proposal were that Apple would end its existing agreements with the five major publishers, let other e-book publishers’ link to their own bookstores in iOS apps, and staff an antitrust monitor to evaluate its business for five years. Apple fired back last week, calling the government’s proposals vague, overreaching, unwarranted, and even “draconian.”
In a filing Wednesday, the five major book publishers weighed in, arguing that one of those stipulations — ending the existing agreements — would completely eliminate a pricing model that’s become the industry standard. The publishers also said it would break agreements the Justice Department made with each of them when they settled.
Hachette, HarperCollins, Holtzbrinck (also known as Macmillan), Penguin, and Simon & Schuster filed an opposition to last week’s proposed remedies against Apple by the Justice Department, arguing that the plan would “effectively eliminate the use of the agency model” for e-book distribution for the next five years.
“…Under the guise of punishing Apple, they effectively punish the Settling Defendants by prohibiting agreements with Apple using an agency model,” the publishers wrote, adding that the move “directly conflicts” with the settlements the publishers reached with the Justice Department before the Apple case went to trial.
“Despite achieving their stated goal of returning price competition, Plaintiffs now seek to improperly impose additional, unwarranted restrictions on the Settling Defendants, thereby depriving each publisher of the benefit of its bargain with Plaintiffs,” it goes on to say.
The “agency” model is where publishers set e-book prices to retailers, while retailers get a commission. That’s as opposed to the “wholesale” model, where publishers set the list price and the retailers can sell it at whatever price they want. (Read CNET’s in-depth explainer here.)
Basically what all that means is that the Department of Justice wants to shake down Apple because they did not settle out-of-court as the five major publishers did so to avoid a damaging public court case. The DOJ is using this excuse to inject its authority into the company for five years to monitor Apple business practices. The DOJ also intends to use this case “to halt Apple’s anticompetitive conduct, restore lost competition, and prevent a recurrence of the illegal activities.” Those are amazing statements by a government entity that is itself a functioning monopoly excessively guilty of anti-trust violations of their own. They are even more amazing statements considering all the other criminal investigations that the DOJ is currently under itself, but cannot be prosecuted for because there is no higher law enforcement authority than the Department of Justice—who works directly for the President of the United States. (This is why it’s important what kind of president Americans elect).
There is only one motivation by the Department of Justice in this. They do not care about the pricing of e-books on the open market. They only care about entrenching themselves into the publishing business any way they can so that content can be “influenced” in subtle ways. The message to the five major publishers couldn’t be clearer. They took the settlement like most companies would, to take the path of least resistance. It didn’t mean they were guilty, just that they took the option with the least immediate cost to them. The real crime is that the Department of Justice injected itself into the capitalist marketplace with socialist standards of regulation that do not belong in America. If not for Apple and those five major publishers, there wouldn’t be an e-book market. The DOJ is functioning from a socialist economic model whereas the publishers and Apple are operating from capitalism. Apple is not guilty of anything but operating as a capitalist enterprise. The DOJ is operating as a socialist enterprise. The difference between the two is one of philosophy, not function. The Department of Justice view of itself might be more appropriate in China, or in Europe where socialism and communism are practiced much to the restriction of ideas and financial enterprise, but they have no place in America and never had since the concoction of the Sherman Act so many years ago. The anti-trust busting that has been so publicly advocated by the government is simply the actions of a gang of thugs who want to shake down the profit makers of a capitalist economy under the guise of “equality.”
Every American should be outraged by the attack of the Department of Justice against the Apple Company. If it can happen to Apple, it can happen to everyone. Microsoft as a company never recovered after their anti-trust case in the 1990s. And now Apple, without the leadership of Steve Jobs to pull them back out of the mud after this incident with the DOJ will find themselves overly, and needlessly cautious toward anti-trust accusations that will directly hinder their marketing strategies, and innovation for many years to come. The cost of this lawsuit against Apple by the DOJ will resonate for the next century in America not in lost competition, but in lost innovation by a company that is among the best that America currently has to offer. The government, as usual, is standing in the way of prosperity, hindering capitalism, and openly seeking to undercut technological growth through a thuggish strategy of short-sighted shakedowns against a good company to appease a blind and stupid mob who democratically elected criminals, scumbags, and despots to enforce laws that they make up as they go to serve only themselves and an ever-expanding government.
To state that Lakota, like most government schools these days, is operating as a deceptive enterprise built upon open manipulation of the taxpaying public and are dangerously malicious is not inaccurate. Lakota has said recently that without levy approval in the fall of 2013, the distinct “will” decline. Those are words from an Enquirer article featuring statements by Lakota Superintendent Karen Mantia who told the school board, “We have balanced our budget but now we’re at a baseline and that is not a good place to be.” This prompted school board president Joan Powell to declare, “We are in danger of becoming a second-class district.” Lakota and its administrators are pushing a 5.5 mill levy for the upcoming November 2013 ballot which will raise the taxes per $100,000 in evaluation by $192 based on the premise that they have cut, and cut, and cut till they can’t cut any more, and if they cut any more, every citizen in the district will suffer. Well, the Lakota members of the administration who have said these things are guilty of deception, manipulation, and malicious action, because there is a very important factor that they did not reveal to the public in these levy talks which they did discuss in the same newspapers at the start of the 2013 year. However the issue is a bit complex prompting me to explain the situation with one of my bullwhip economic videos. Check it out. I explain to Lakota what they should already know themselves. I use a bullwhip to cut a soda can in half as a proper metaphor to what is in Lakota’s employment future.
The cost of the levy for the average property owner is quite excessive. The figures I used in the above video were off the top of my head, which I refined further below. Most homes in the Liberty Township/West Chester area are well over $200,000 each. The tax increases on homes per year at $200,000 with voter approval of a new Lakota levy will be $384 per year. At $300,000 a year, which is not at all uncommon, the taxes will be $576 more per year. And at $400,000 which is quite the standard in Wetherington, Beckett Ridge, and Four Bridges, the tax increase per year will be $768 per year. But that’s not all. Commercial property is taxed at the same rate as residential property. Buildings that are valued at $5 million will go up on that one building $10,000.00 in additional taxes. Buildings valued in this range are typically small strip malls housing several small stores and that cost will be passed down to the 5-7 tenants, who are all small business owners. Their costs per year will increase about $2,000.00 each, and that’s tough on people with small margins and continuing rising costs in other areas. In many cases, a tax increase like what Lakota is proposing could shut the doors on many small businesses operating at minimum margins.
The assumption by the government school of Lakota who does not have to do anything performance wise to obtain their profit margins except beg for tax increases, is that if residents can afford a home that is $300,000 to $400,000 in value then they can afford to pay a little more for a tax increase to “help the community’s children.” They also believe that a property owner with a strip mall or restaurant that is $1 to $5 million in value will happily absorb an extra $10,000 in yearly taxes because they are already “rich.” What’s a few thousand dollars to a “rich” person? As ridiculous as that sounds, it is precisely how the administrators of Lakota think, and those who jump on the bandwagon to support the levy. This is why I call them Lakota Levy Zombies, because they mindlessly pursue tax increases without considering what the impact of that increase will have on the people who pay it.
But worse than anything is the carefully concealed study performed by the McKibben Demographics group who co-conducted an enrollment study for Lakota late in 2012 at a cost of $20,000. The results of that study indicate that by the 2022-23 school year Lakota will have lost 2,300 students due to declining enrollment trends. What this means in terms of jobs at Lakota is that the staff will have to be cut by at least 85.1 teachers who would normally teach 27 children per class. By 2022 Lakota will have to reduce their work force to meet those new enrollment needs. Over the next 10 years Lakota will save $5.1 million in just teacher salary at an average wage of $60K per year. That does not consider all the six figure administrators that Lakota will not need to manage those 85.1 teachers. Lakota will have to close down school buildings and consolidate resources that could easily save between $10 million and $15 million dollars without cutting a single program to the community just because the enrollment numbers will be less. The projection numbers at Lakota were over 18,000 students during the 2010 school year but will decline to 14,950 by the year 2022.
In addition to those numbers Lakota’s treasurer Jenni Logan stated that Lakota has lost 672 students to other public, community, or private schools, which is a trend that is likely to continue. Lakota has over the last couple of years taken away busing because their tax increases did not pass. They have also cut electives for students, and they have raised sports fees. Parents have reacted by voting with their feet and simply leaving. Meanwhile Lakota administrators continue to brag about the “tens of millions” of dollars they have cut out of their operating budget attempting to sell those cuts as a “sacrifice” to the quality of their education service, but in all reality, the cuts have been on par with the reduction in enrollment. In just the last couple of years from 2010 to 2012 Lakota has seen a drop of around 1000 students. By 2015 the enrollment numbers will be around 15,913 and continuing down from there. If Lakota continues to complain, and sell themselves as ineffective, more people will vote with their feet and simply leave the community taking their children with them, exacerbating those numbers further. If that happens Lakota could see a yearly enrollment of 10,000 by the year 2020.
The cause of the decline in enrollment according to Mckibben is that the population in the Lakota district has aged. Over the next 10 years most homes will be those of empty nesters as the current average age of the Lakota resident is 40.7. McKibbean explained this trend to the Lakota school board at a January 28 2013 meeting by saying, “You have a very high graduation rate and very high post-secondary participation rate. Your kids graduate, go off to college and don’t come back.” However, McKibbean declined to finish that statement. He didn’t want to insult the people who paid $20K for his study after all. The reason kids don’t come back to the Lakota district after they graduate college is simple, they can’t afford to. A twenty something with an average college debt between 50K and 100K cannot afford to purchase a home in the affluent Lakota community where average homes range between $200K to $300K. I know this first-hand because I have children in this age group, and they have moved back to Lakota to buy a nice home of their own in that price range and they looked all over the Cincinnati area for the best opportunity. They are unusually successful as a professional couple. They were able to buy a home in the Lakota district. They are unlikely to use the Lakota school system to teach their children, however they are tax payers in the community. But most young people their age are so saddled with debt; they can never hope to make enough money to purchase a home in that price range. This means families with children who might want to use the Lakota school system will not be able to afford to move into the community because property values are so high. Only successful adults with grown children will be able to continue living in the Lakota district. That is what is driving the Lakota enrollment decline.
Yet, even knowing this information, Lakota’s administration is ignoring it choosing instead to pick and choose their facts. They want to give their teachers who average in salary over $63K per year a raise when the collective bargaining agreement with the union is up in 2014. They are not planning for any reductions in force, or even working their salary structure to meet the community budget established through the election process. Instead, they are relying on fear tactics to win over voters which is dishonest, and negligent. Fear tactics like saying “Excellent with Distinction” (at Lakota) is in jeopardy without new tax money. We are in danger of becoming a second-class district.”
Without context the situation is complicated at Lakota, which is why I explained it with a bullwhip economics video. Most people take these professional government workers at their word which is a mistake. People are too busy in their lives to compare the notes of what was said in the media by Lakota eight months ago and what they say now after they examine Lakota’s need for more tax money not due to economic conditions of the Lakota community, but the administration’s own desire to cave under the union demands for a collective bargaining agreement in 2014. To say anything other than the truth is misleading and after all that we’ve been through at Lakota the administrators still think the taxpaying residents are too stupid to see through their sham. The facts of the matter is not that Lakota needs a tax increase, but rather they need a major employee reduction of nearly 100 teachers and administrators over the next 10 years. They should be able to achieve such a reduction with tax decreases over the next decade instead of the other way around, but they will never utter such a truth—because that’s not what they are about. As government workers they want to do one thing, and one thing only, to grow jobs through government off the backs of tax payers never putting their eyes upon reality in a hope that the formula will never collapse on itself. But the formula is in serious jeopardy, not just at Lakota, but every school district in the country that is filled with an aging population that isn’t having as many children as they once did, and the children they do have aren’t making enough money to support the tax demands of the growing government. The recipe for disaster is upon us, and is just now beginning to be seen in the embattled land of Lakota, in Liberty Township/West Chester, Ohio.
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What is the strongest beacon for freedom in the world today? Is it Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, John Stossel, or any other modern commenter, publisher, or financier? I would say not. Is it the multitude of freedom oriented websites like FreedomWorks, or American Thinker? I would say not. Rather, I would say that it’s a new force to the entertainment world. Several years ago the former Fox News star Glenn Beck started his own news organization called The Blaze—which is changing the way the news is delivered. As an online publication that rivals traditional magazines like Time, Life, and People it also specializes in providing the latest scoop on news stories in the way that made the Drudge Report so important to the art of breaking news stories. But it’s not even The Blaze that I’m speaking about—not as a website based news source. In January of 2013 Glenn Beck created The Blaze Radio Network which is an all internet radio station that broadcasts online outside of FCC regulation. Normally these kinds of operations are fly-by-night and built with pure heart, but little money. Well, not anymore. Glenn Beck has invested a considerable amount of his personal fortune into the new Blaze Radio Network and brought in top talent like Doc Thompson and his partner Skip to provide 24 hour a day seven days a week news and entertainment radio that is unparalleled anywhere.
I was very disheartened to learn that my friend Doc Thompson was leaving Cincinnati. I have been a talk radio fan all my life. I used to lie in bed as a kid and listen to radio broadcasts from 700 WLW and WMOH till the pre-dawn hours while the rest of the world slept, literally and figuratively. During my working years, I would listen to talk radio through long hours of 2nd and 3rd shift hard labor. As I grew older and had started participating in talk radio actively I enjoyed being more than just a listener, especially on Doc Thompson’s Cincinnati show. I respect the art of being a talk show host. But Doc was a bit too freedom oriented for the sports talk stations of Cincinnati, and was too big of a name to put on a station that didn’t have a voice equaling his own booming enunciations. So it didn’t take long before Doc moved on to the Detroit market leaving a void in Cincinnati, and the freedom movement that was so strong here.
There are other voices, but on FCC controlled radio stations, they are somewhat handcuffed by their station managers, and the advertisers who essentially control the content. Doc has been a breath of fresh air wherever he has worked, but the stations he worked for never allowed him to utilize his full potential of talent consisting of humor, deep political analysis, and a tremendous range of topics that he can discuss. But more than anything, Doc is the opposite of the kind of radio host that Howard Stern has been—he has deep convictions and tries to be a good person. He wants to do good with his microphone, and that has hindered him during his long career………..until now. Glenn Beck hired Doc Thompson in January to start off his new Blaze Radio Network with the 6 AM to 9 AM morning show just ahead of Glenn Beck’s national show and the gloves have come off. For the benefit of my readers here I have placed two of Doc’s recent shows on the following video clips so that they can be listened to on demand in their entirety. I would suggest playing them and filling your day with their contents. There is a lot of comedy, loads of great information, and some deep sincerity from Doc and Skip which is typical of them in what I consider to be one of the best radio show in the history of talk radio that was only made possible because of Glenn Beck’s innovative, and bold investment in the enterprise.
The reason I consider The Blaze Radio Network to be the purest beacon available for the freedom movement is because it is free, and it is not under the regulation of the government in any way. This allows the programming on the Blaze Radio to be unusually unconcerned with regulators who can threaten to pull their license if at least a balanced approach to statist concepts isn’t adhered to. Every television, and radio station in America is typically concerned about these federal regulations, and it does water down the content, even on programs like Rush Limbaugh’s.
Doc and Skip are for the first times in their life completely free as talk show hosts, and they are making excellent use of that liberty. Before any organization can hope to be a beacon of freedom to the listeners they service, they must in fact be free themselves. Because of the commitment of Glenn Beck into The Blaze Radio Network, it is the most “free thinking” broadcasting anywhere in the world. It functions the way that The Constitution intended with the 1st Amendment of the Bill of Rights, to use free speech not in a destructive way to boost ratings with sex, and deviant discussion, but with high quality content from people who care deeply about the topics they discuss. And for the first time, radio hosts who work for The Blaze have a boss in Glenn Beck who is just as committed to liberty as they are.
I know Doc Thompson personally. I have been to dinner with him where he and Skip would not stop doing research for their radio show even at 1 AM in the morning. Doc never turns off his engine. He never completely shuts down. Radio work and the matters of current events are his number one passion. He is constantly analyzing material for his shows, and he ruthlessly looks for fresh content. Doc is one of the hardest working people I know, and in entertainment/news, this is certainly the case.
Doc has been fighting for a chance to do what he is currently doing for more than 20 years of radio in cities all over the United States. In one of his darkest days of recent past, he never let up off the gas. I remember vividly when his wife Yuna Lee left her television job in Richmond, Virginia so she could finally marry Thompson after several years of a long distance relationship. Finally they were going to be together, living not only in the same house, but in the same city. Yuna boldly left her job to take a job at Channel 2 in Dayton where she works to this day. But the very moment the two were married, Doc lost his job in Cincinnati. He was always a bit too passionate, too “wholesome,” and too “Tea Party” for the Cincinnati stations, which left him jobless again looking for a home. Even in those moments when he was most tempted to change his style to fit the producers of radio shows, he didn’t. He held tight for a syndication deal because he knew he was that good and he needed someone to believe in him with financial backing.
Glenn Beck was that guy, and the benefit to freedom is that finally Doc Thompson has NOTHING in his way to be a serious pain in the ass to statists, progressives, communists, union thugs, race baiters, education empires, and every parasitic entity hanging from the halls of government. For the first time in his professional life Doc Thompson is free to provide the kind of radio that hasn’t been conceived since the very early days of radio broadcasting before the FCC put its claws into the lives of every radio listener. Doc takes full advantage of this freedom, as evidence in the over 5 hours of broadcasting played above. I hope you took full advantage of those clips to let Doc’s voice bring the sounds of freedom to your ears. The Blaze Radio Network it has nearly replaced all my old news sources. I play it all the time, at home, in the garage, in my back yard, in my car, on my iPod—especially during flights, on vacation, in the middle of the mountains, and in the deepest valleys while camping. Because The Blaze is broadcast across the internet, and podcasting is always available on Soundcloud, every show Doc and Skip do can be listened to on demand. By loading his segments onto my iPod I can attend business engagements pausing his information, then resuming when my time frees up. When riding my motorcycle, I can broadcast Doc into my helmet through my iPod, which is a completely new technology. Years ago the only way to listen to a radio on a motorcycle was to have a bulky device attached to the handle bars. Now I can hear Doc anywhere at anytime of day and the information is free. CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO FIND DOC’S BROADCASTS ON SOUNDCLOUD:
For traditional radio talk show listeners, The Blaze Radio Network has a full staff that broadcasts out of New York the news at the top and bottom of every hour just like most other AM stations. They are doing much better work than Fox News is, and certainly leaps and bounds above CNN, MSNBC, or any other news source. The Blaze guys are on top of just about everything 24 hours a day 7 days a week. They are always there.
For these reasons listed above Doc Thompson on The Blaze Radio Network is the best and most authentic example of a voice for the freedom movement that there is in the world. Doc works harder, plays harder, and has the tools in his tool box given to him by Glenn Beck to be a monstrous success, which he and Skip are well on their way to becoming. What they are doing is the wave of the future, and the most effective form of new media there is. I trust The Blaze in ways that I have never trusted any other news source. Their news is good even when they don’t agree with what the other side has to say. Such as in this example:
The Blaze is a game changer in the news business, and Doc Thompson working for the Blaze Radio Network is a game changer in the world of radio. The radio business will never be the same again, now that Doc Thompson is loose and able to communicate the truth where it lives most brilliantly, at The Blaze operated by Glenn Beck and managed by hundreds of wonderful people who deeply care about the state of America and it’s role to the rest of the world who look with longing eyes toward the freedoms that only we have. I would recommend dear reader that you tune in to this wonderful tool for freedom and support it with your attention which will be mutually beneficial for many years to come.
We often think of welfare recipients as the inner city single mom who has had children recklessly in order to receive more government benefits. Or the retired crack addicts who spent their youth and money on drugs only to become born again in the eyes of God but penniless, toothless, unemployable adults. Or the reckless young people who have been taught that they should apply for welfare at every turn by their public schools serving as sign up centers for government assistance promoting reckless behavior so that recruiting for welfare programs is higher. There is another class of welfare recipient that very few talk about which costs more money than all those demographic stereotypes combined. That class would be the political class, of which people like Barack Obama and Speaker John Boehner are a part. In fact the most expensive public housing project in the country by square foot is The White House where the recipients who live and work there are all welfare recipients living off the public dime. For a breakdown of this political class of welfare takers listen to Darryl Parks from 700 WLW where he brought his usual stats to an epic broadcast which will forever live in infamy. Listen carefully!
After listening to Darryl is there any hope that any politician from the local trustee, to a federal senator or congressman will ever do anything to cut off the welfare from which they are empowered to give so much money to themselves? Does anybody think that John Boehner will reform federal spending which would take money out of the pockets of the House he resides over–of course not; otherwise they would not have picked him as their leader. Boehner was not picked by members of the GOP in the House because of his high ethical standards, his moral authority; his understanding of law—but rather for his ability to keep the members of the federal government firmly entrenched on welfare. Under no other operation could any worker anywhere hope to make as much money as people like John Boehner have made in the federal government.
As Darryl Parks stated, the reason politicians like Boehner have been in government for so long and is considered a leader of his party is because he has the ability to raise money. I personally know some of the people who give a lot of money to Boehner– I’m only picking on him because he is my congressman—so I have firsthand knowledge of the guy. I know Boehner is a nice fellow who my in-laws spotted in their early days at the Beckett Ridge Country Club where my wife and I were married. They knew him through his family as being an up and coming star in politics. Paul Ryan as a young whipper-snapper at Miami University down the road from John’s home actually put out yard signs for Boehner’s first congressional run in areas like Trenton, Lakota, Fairfield and his college campus. The speeches politicians give to get elected are all the same, but the result never changes either. In spite of all the campaign promises what the members who lobby themselves into the political class are really after is easy money where all they have to do is sign up for the vast number of welfare programs offered by the federal government disguised as salary.
I have been to fundraisers where the plates are $500 a plate so the welfare recipients can make appearances to the public. Knowing of John and his family most of my life as next door neighbors so-to-speak it shocked me recently to see some friends who were worth millions of dollars willingly pass out invites to one of these John Boehner fundraisers. These very financially wealthy friends looked toward the event as though they were school girls who had back stage passes to the latest boy band concert. Boehner had been made up to be a celebrity because he was the third most powerful person in the entire world—according to the media, and that designated celebrity status.
But when I look at John I only see a welfare recipient. He’s a guy who makes his living making rules, and that is a very parasitic existence. That certainly doesn’t make him a celebrity in my book. But worse, he does virtually nothing to earn the vast sums of money he takes as a congressman. Sure he does a lot of “wheeling and dealing” in Washington, but how much of it is for the good of the country? Not much. Most of Boehner’s wheeling and dealing is done for the good of his party, so that he can use the celebrity created by the media to generate money from my friends who are willing to pay $50 to $500 dollars a plate to raise money for his “war chest,” so he can win more elections and gain more welfare wealth.
Does any of this make John a bad guy? No. It just makes him a parasitic welfare recipient that our modern statist system of government uses to create celebrity status so more people turn to government for their riches, instead of private enterprise. To stay in power politicians like John need to convince people of real power—those who are wealthy, that their campaign donations are worthy of his celebrity status—an image created by the media for the benefit of all welfare recipients, from the crack whore of the inner city to the residents of The White House. Once John raises his money and stays in power, he then makes his money by appeasing the mob in congress who often gives themselves raises, while enriching themselves with insider trading and lobbyist bribes. John claims to have a clean record with lobbyists, but he wouldn’t be House Leader unless he turned his head the other way so others could abuse the system.
Yet the only way that the debt ceiling can stop climbing its way back from the $17 trillion dollar mark is for congress, and the senate to spend less money, and to do that, they have to stop taking so much themselves. At some point in time they have to stop viewing federal office as a treasure chest full of pirates looting and pillaging as though there were no tomorrow. The result of that behavior is what we have seen in modern Detroit. California is next, followed by the entire nation of America. Politicians robbed Detroit blind just as they are now against every taxpaying district where most of the money collected goes to inflated government pensions, and wages that are not representative of the skill level purchased. For most of these workers that in the federal government pay near six figures in salary, their actual work is only worth bare minimum wage in the private sector. There is a reason that Washington D.C. has the highest per capita worth anywhere in the country. It’s not because they make wonderful cars, or airplanes, or even computers. All they make in Washington are deals from one welfare recipient to another swapping money stolen from the American tax payer for the benefit of themselves.
To some degree or another anyone who is employed off tax money is a welfare recipient, including those who work at NASA. If the federal government is involved, the employees are welfare recipients. Not all of them are diabolical menaces to morality, and some actually contribute to the betterment of science. NASA has done many great things for America and the world, so in some cases, the money can be worth it. In most situations however, as in the present day political landscape, politicians were never intended to become so wealthy as social servants under elected office—and they were never intended to make life-time careers out of the election process. So long as the desire for easy money in politics exists, con artists, lawyers, social parasites, and comb over, insecure womanizers will desire to occupy those halls of power that are built off the sweat of the American tax payer—where looting off of goodness is so common that the violations are as frequent as the raindrops of a summer storm in a monsoon soaked region of the world prying for daylight.
Recently I stated that I was in open rebellion against the “establishment” and felt that a real definition was required so that the objective can be known. We need to know what the establishment is exactly? When the “establishment” is identified as a villain what is it that we are considering? Who brings it forth, and why? Where does the semblance of impoverished drabness which always follows the establishment come from–the tired routines, the stagnant monotony of the so-called “cultured activities” from the movie screen, to literature, to the allegedly intellectual publications? Anyone is still free to say, write and publish anything that they please in America, yet men and women keep silent as their culture perishes around them from an entrenched, epidemic of institutionalized mediocrity. Why? That is what we need to understand before we can rebel against anything. I encourage you dear reader highly to watch every one of these videos. If you love yourself you’ll do it. If you love your children, YOU’LL DO IT!
In 1971 the National Institute of Mental Health granted Dr. B.F Skinner $283,000 to write a book called Beyond Freedom and Dignity. The book argues that entrenched belief in free will and the moral autonomy of the individual (which Skinner referred to as “dignity”) hinders the prospect of using scientific methods to modify behavior for the purpose of building a happier and better-organized society.
Beyond Freedom and Dignity may be summarized as an attempt to promote Skinner’s philosophy of science, the technology of human behavior. His conception of determinism, and what Skinner calls ‘cultural engineering’.
Skinner invented the operant conditioning chamber, also known as the Skinner Box.[7] He was a firm believer of the idea that human free will was actually an illusion and any human action was the result of the consequences of that same action. If the consequences were bad, there was a high chance that the action would not be repeated; however if the consequences were good, the actions that lead to it would be reinforced.[8] He called this the principle of reinforcement.[9]
He innovated his own philosophy of science called radical behaviorism,[10] and founded his own school of experimental research psychology—the experimental analysis of behavior. His analysis of human behavior culminated in his work Verbal Behavior, as well as his philosophical manifesto Walden Two, both of which have recently seen enormous increases in interest experimentally and in applied settings.[11] Contemporary academia considers Skinner a pioneer of modern behaviorism along with John B. Watson and Ivan Pavlov.
Skinner discovered and advanced the rate of response as a dependent variable in psychological research. He invented the cumulative recorder to measure rate of responding as part of his highly influential work on schedules of reinforcement.[12][13] In a June 2002 survey, Skinner was listed as the most influential psychologist of the 20th century.[14] He was a prolific author who published 21 books and 180 articles.[15][16]
The direct result of Skinner’s work was that it began to be accepted in public schools the tendency of some students to be “hyper active” in relation to other students and that this behavior should be identified and turned down so that the collective whole could function better as an institution. Skinner of course justifies this by his term ‘cultural engineering.’ Not many people read Skinner’s book at first except the “academic elite” who would then postulate politicians at charity events, fund-raisers, and other social occasions on the merit of the esteemed Harvard professor and his studies into social behavior, and how they could then be corrected in young people starting in public schools.
Eventually after a decade or two of such postulating the criteria for ADHD began to take root in public consciousness as “established practice.” After all the studies came out of Harvard! Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD, similar to hyperkinetic disorder in the ICD) is a psychiatric disorder[1] or neurobehavioral disorder[2] characterized by significant problems either of inattention and/or hyperactivity and impulsiveness. These symptoms must emerge before twelve years of age for a diagnosis to be made.[3] There are three subtypes of the disorder: predominantly inattentive (ADHD-PI or ADHD-I), predominantly hyperactive-impulsive (ADHD-HI or ADHD-H), or the two combined (ADHD-C), which shows all three difficulties. Often people refer to ADHD-PI as “attention deficit disorder” (ADD), however, the latter has not been officially accepted since the 1994 revision of the DSM. ADHD affects school-aged children and results in restlessness, acting impulsively, and a lack of focus that may impair school performance.
Inattention, hyperactivity (restlessness in adults), disruptive behavior, and impulsivity are common in ADHD.[19][20] Academic and social skills difficulties are also frequent.[19] The symptoms can be difficult to define because it is hard to draw a line at where normal levels of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity end and clinically significant levels requiring intervention begin.[10]:p.26 To be diagnosed as ADHD, symptoms must be observed in two different settings for six months or more and to a degree that is greater than other children of the same age.[21]
The symptom categories yield three potential classifications of ADHD—predominantly inattentive type, predominantly hyperactive-impulsive type, or combined type if criteria for both subtypes are met:[10]:p.4
An individual with predominantly inattentive-type may have symptoms including:[22]
Be easily distracted, miss details, forget things, and frequently switch from one activity to another
Have difficulty maintaining focus on one task
Become bored with a task after only a few minutes, unless doing something enjoyable
Have difficulty focusing attention on organizing and completing a task or learning something new
Have trouble completing or turning in homework assignments, often losing things (e.g., pencils, toys, assignments) needed to complete tasks or activities
Not seem to listen when spoken to
Daydream, become easily confused, and move slowly
Have difficulty processing information as quickly and accurately as others
Struggle to follow instructions.
An individual with predominantly hyperactive-impulsive type may have symptoms including:[22]
Fidget and squirm in their seats
Talk nonstop
Dash around, touching or playing with anything and everything in sight
Have trouble sitting still during dinner, school, and story time
Be constantly in motion
Have difficulty doing quiet tasks or activities
An individual with predominantly impulsivity type may have symptoms including:[22]
Be very impatient
Blurt out inappropriate comments, show their emotions without restraint, and act without regard for consequences
Blurts out comments better left unsaid (not always innapropriate)
Have difficulty waiting for things they want or waiting their turns in games
Often interrupt conversations or others’ activities.
According to the “establishment” some children, adolescents, and adults with ADHD have an increased risk of experiencing difficulties with social skills, such as social interaction and forming and maintaining friendships due to impairments in processing verbal and nonverbal language. About half of children and adolescents with ADHD experience rejection by their peers compared to 10–15 percent of non-ADHD children and adolescents. Training in social skills, behavioral modification and medication may have some limited beneficial effects. The most important factor in reducing emergence of later psychopathology, such as major depression, criminality, school failure, and substance use disorders is formation of friendships with people who are not involved in delinquent activities.[23] At least, according to the “establishment.”
In other words the threats to the established order that the government paid “B. F.” Skinner to write about in his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity is children who have “compliance” issues as listed above in the diagnosis for ADHD. Psychiatric professors with grants of their own using Skinner’s work as their foundation proceeded to frame their work to fit their grant criteria, which was to nudge their testing results into the direction of Skinner’s work, which is proven to have the ability to obtain federal grants for their intuitions of learning.
Very indirectly, the statist federal government has shaped and created “established” thought about the roles that government schools should have in superseding parental authority into making children into subservient within the schools of which the education institutions have a monopoly. In just a few short decades using the grant system and federal funds to gain power over local authority, the federal government has shaped the thoughts and minds of an entire American population into believing that their hyperactive, imaginative child fidgeting in their chair day-dreaming too much is actually sick, and needs to have their minds turned off so that the entire school can function better under rules of statism established by college professors eating out of the palm of the federal government with $283,000 checks to write books for the academic class to slowly, surely, become the new generational authority from which everything else will follow. This is the process that creates “the establishment.”
That is what I mean by rebellion and what the target is. It’s not people, political parties, or even buildings in Washington. It’s the philosophy that supports them all with beliefs that are detrimental to the cause of liberty and desire for every living life to function from free will.
It is impossible to have any kind of republic which is the governing principle of The United States if the people who make up that republic are not intellectually engaged. There is no way to elect representatives to the republic if such disinterested manner is placed on elections. The fault of this social awareness of course falls on the education system which has failed to ignite in the minds of the youth any interest in such things, even though a passive interest in the affairs of the American Republic is more important than learning mathematics, English, or even general history. Instead, schools have allowed their teacher unions to lobby law makers into watering down the education curriculums into radicalism against American tradition to fulfill progressive strategies—the same kind of strategies that have destroyed Detroit in the present day. The public education system chose radicalism focused on social issues over republic representation of quality as a teaching method. The result is a society of lost minds who do not know what to do with the facts of our day. A vast majority of the American public is disconnected—and happy to proclaim it, because their public school institutions have taught them that such a social position was good.
I remember what it was like in public school and I hated every moment of it. In my entire 13 years of attending I can’t remember a single day that I enjoyed. At an early age I had the deep suspicion that the teachers wanted nothing to do with any truth. They were intent to reshape minds into a direction guided by some invisible hand that went by the name of “legislators.” The reason I didn’t enjoy school was because I liked my mind, and didn’t want it shaped by anybody but me. I remember feeling this way even in kindergarten. Naturally teachers didn’t know what to do with me because I wasn’t following the “formula.” So I was in trouble all the time and being much more stubborn than they were, I held out like an inmate in a prison for 13 years always looking for that graduation day where I’d be free of them once and for all.
I could tell many stories about my public school days, but the short of it was that I was always in trouble, my parents were constantly called with attempts to shove me in some direction which I continuously resisted. I was constantly grounded as a student at home because of my rebelliousness at school making the experience a miserable one for my young mind. And all along, I had a very keen understanding of what I was resisting. I was resisting the tendency to be a social buffoon. As I moved into high school the pressure escalated and I pushed back even harder and a lot of people were hurt. Once I was able to drive and have a job of my own, the groundings at home, the constant peer pressure at school to be a mind numb debacle for the human race began to subside a bit because that long desired goal of being free of the public school system was near. To let “them” know they had not beaten my mind into submission I routinely wore a sport coat to school with a tie to let the statist know that they had failed utterly in their breaking of me—and I relished the audacity. The constant detentions, the threats, the many, many trips to the principal’s office, the calls to my parents, the attempt to pit other kids in the school against me had all failed spectacularly and I enjoyed seeing the looks of disappointment on their faces.
Back then I had a USA Today newspaper delivered to my first period class which I carried around with me and read throughout the day. The newspaper was a window to the outside world. It was like a light through the window of a prison cell that was way too small for me, and I enjoyed reading about disruptions in the Middle East while the students around me were passing around love notes to each other declaring how drunk they wanted to get at the next Friday night football game. I had a few friends, and they thought like me for the most part—people brought together by common values. In some cases those friends were intellectually smarter than the rest of the administrative staff with genius level intellects, and in some ways other friends were physically superior to even the best athletes, and were heavily recruited to play sports for the school which were declined out of sheer rebelliousness. At the Friday night football games my friends and I would sell those same stupid kids cases of beer out of a car trunk saving them the disgrace of trying to buy beer from a convenient store only to be turned away by a clerk who carded them. I enjoyed this because it allowed me to punch back at society from two fronts, I was thumbing my nose at the laws politicians made for underage drinking, and I was violating the stupid policy of letting the school believe football games were anything but an excuse for the kids to get drunk. This would go on right in front of the school administration and the police both of whom had no idea what to do about the practice. I had learned at an early age the hypocrisy of statism and knew that there was nothing they could do to me. They had already punished me in every way possible for over a decade, and as a young high school kid I was making as much money as most of the kid’s parents between all my jobs. Earning money was my freedom from the statism of public education, and the first minute I could do it, I did. I mowed lawns, worked as a bus boy at an upscale restaurant for tips, and started dating girls who were in their mid-twenties when I was 15 and 16 who would then buy the beer I could sell to the high school kids. Around the time I was doing all this the Tom Cruise film Risky Business came out and when I went to see it, I realized that I was living that life, except more violently.
My motives were to use capitalism to escape statism, and as a kid who grew up in the 80s under President Ronald Reagan, that was at least possible. As I look around at kids today, having raised two of my own and meeting many of their friends, I don’t think they even have those same opportunities. Instead of reading a USA Today, kids at least have the internet on their phones to escape from the statist environment, but instead of reading about current events, they keep their minds on entertainment related topics. For me I was able to beat my captors by being smarter than they were. And when that didn’t work, I was more willing to resort to physical confrontation than they were. It was no secret then and it’s no secret now. I still live by those same rules—because they work. As I look at the public education system now, I am sure there are kids trapped there like I was, but even lack a president to admire. Most of them have been put on Retalin or some other drug to numb their active minds, as public schools have found that the way to beat students like me was to get them on mind numbing drugs so early that nobody knows what kind of genius they could become. They call this these days ADHD. I openly campaigned for Ronald Reagan in the 7th grade when the other students were busy contemplating which bands were good over others, but since him, there hasn’t been a president that young people could even get excited about.
For me the fight against statism has always been present. I fought it then as a captor stuck within the system. Upon my graduation traveling back from UD arena in Dayton I passed the future superintendent of Lakota schools on I-75 south, a man who tried to pin me down with every trick known to the book of school administrators. I slowed down to match his speed and look him in the face. My friend sitting in the passenger’s seat toasted him with a beer. Between him and me we were living the movie version of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The future superintendent had tried to catch me time and time again for doing something wrong and often I would do things just to prove to him that I couldn’t be caught. On that day now that I was free of them, I slowed my car down behind his speed and dropped back about 200 yards. Then I gunned the engine to my Pontiac Firebird and flew past him on the highway at 110 MPH. I drove by him so closely that my passenger’s side mirror almost hit the mirror on his car. I maneuvered so closely to him because I wanted the air from my car to rattle his at that high-speed. Many reading this will wonder why I was so aggressive about this maneuver, and those that came before, and many that came after. Because I hated him, I hated the school, I hated the administrators, and I hated the system they all represented. For many, hate is a strong word, but for me, hate is the correct term. I hated him, and I wanted him to know it.
I hated that system then and I hate it now because it produces the kind of people who can watch a city like Detroit die of progressive philosophy without feeling an urge to defend the city from the parasites. There is no fire in the minds of the people Matt called on the air, because that fire was put out by their public schools, and that is why I hate them. I like to see fire behind the eyes of human beings. I like to see energy, passion, and imagination, and too often those elements are destroyed in children before they get out of their first year of kindergarten. Some manage to retain some of those traits and not be destroyed completely, but virtually all lose massive amounts of their future potential in those first two years of public school. I didn’t know in the early days why I fought, but just knew that I should. I am proud now that I have a grandchild to say that I have never yielded to statism, and I never will. But it always makes me sad to see so many lights out in the minds of mankind. And Detroit, as Matt proved, is bankrupt and morally lost not just because they ran out of other people’s money to give away, but because the light is out in the minds of the residents—a light that was put out during their years in public education.
In the video below Rush Limbaugh breaks down the mentality of the typical liberal nicely. By his use, the word liberal covers everything from moderate Democrats to radical communists. Between those book ends are socialist, progressives, race baiters, feminists, public school advocates, and statists of every kind, some of which have the term Republican next to their names. Limbaugh’s conclusion is one that I have been beating the war drums to for many months now as I have discovered and reported on these pages what he is saying. Liberals cannot in any kind of debate rely on facts to win their arguments. The only way they can win anything is by applying emotion so that they can create an anti-concept for which logic can be distorted and manipulated to their liking. In this way, liberals have re-shaped the world into the mess many of us have observed and felt regulated to shaking our heads at in hopelessness. Listen to Rush Limbaugh’s very good summation of a liberal here:
I have been arguing for a while now that these liberal types must be treated as enemies against traditional America. It has become fashionable to treat them with respect, honor, and civility because conservatives tend to be kind, religious, and never-the-less willing to display public humility to prove that they are not all the nasty things that liberals say about them. In the school levy arguments around Cincinnati I have argued every level of logic there is. In the winter of 2012 as I watched my district of Lakota proceed with cuts to their offered programs after three failed levies and a whole lot of charts produced, public arguments made, and meetings attended I saw firsthand the festering threat that the liberal represents, a parasitic existence that uses sentiments of kindness as a military maneuver against righteousness. I learned that under no circumstances would liberals ever look at the facts that logic presented to them because solving problems is not what they are after, and it has never been. The number one objective of the liberal is to destroy traditional America, the type of America that could be coined exceptional. Liberals wish to destroy America by undoing its philosophy of self-reliance and reacquainting it with the philosophy of dependence known for centuries in Europe. For the liberal the Revolutionary War never ended. They are still trying to connect North America permanently to the European Union and they will stop at nothing to get there.
In my levy fights, as others all over Ohio have now done, I proved beyond reasonable doubt that the cause of the tax increase requests for public schools was 100% caused by unreasonable and unsustainable wages for the government employees. At Lakota I told them as a representative of the 18,000 people who voted against the tax increases that they needed to take a 5% cut in wages to meet the standards of budget that the community approved at the ballot box. Instead of complying, the government school collectively like an ant colony of mindless insects went on a public relations campaign that contained not one single fact about what caused them to run a budget deficit. For anyone who stood in their way, they attacked without a care in the world for reputations, participated in friendship severances, boycotts, and any vile form of manipulation they could gather under their wings. But they did not deal with a single fact even when pressed to the extreme. This is because of what Rush Limbaugh stated in his broadcast—because they can’t. They never can, and they never will.
This is why it is important to stop viewing liberals as equals on the battlefield of ideas. To be equal, they would have to produce ideas—and they don’t. All they ever advocate is collective re-distribution of wealth that someone else creates. They are typically lazy specimens who do not like the act of creation, so they want what others create by proclaiming fairness. In the case of my public school example, the teachers and administrators at the school have convinced themselves that they are an important social role to the construct of America even though what they teach children is mindless drivel and social collectivism setting students at an emotional deficit at an early stage of their adulthood of which many will never escape. When it all comes down to it, those employees fear actual productive existences which is why they work for a government school. They fear getting up in the morning and creating something at their job. They just use the government to extract wealth from those who do all the creating and offer back emotional reasons for their lack of productivity.
There is no fair fight with a liberal. They do not participate in the battlefield of ideas, because they can’t. Their only strategy is to move every debate away from facts and logic and to replace them with emotional pleas. It is time to end this practice in America. It is time to view these strategies for what they are, maneuvers against traditional America for the purpose of destruction of our way of life. It is time to treat the liberal as an enemy for the sake of self-preservation as a free nation. Limbaugh is 100% correct, liberals are not for freedom. They may in the short run advocate public nudity, open sex in every direction, drunkenness, mind altering drugs, godlessness, and the absolute destruction of the American family, but they are not for freedom. They are only for the destruction of human values because they are too mentally and physically lazy to measure up.
Liberals do not want peace in that a deal could be struck with them to “live and let live.” It is time that traditional America took the advice of the old Paul McCartney song, “Live and Let Die” and come to grips that the liberal can never be reasoned with, they can never be appeased, they can never be treated on fair terms because they are not about any of those things. They simply want to destroy America as it was constitutionally built, and remake it into the land of Europe, the slums of Paris, the box houses of England, and the dinky housing shacks of Spain. They want nothing else but destruction. This is why the liberal must be seen as the enemy in a second revolution. A distinct difference is needed to disassociate those types with the minds of reason before any problems can ever be solved and before that can happen it must be realized that the liberal has nothing to offer but more destruction and emotional chaos to camouflage their parasitic nature as a social organism more akin to termites than anything else.
‘’American Exceptionalism tends to set off tempers from the type of people who have been taught their entire lives that America should follow the trends of the rest of the World and not proudly proclaim the wonderful attributes that have come out of the freest country in the world-such as capitalism, human rights, individual freedom, and quality of life that is unmatched anywhere.’’ Did Rich or El Rushbo write this? Funny I was a Rush baby, some of us grow up and actually learn history, economics, free-markets, and real Conservative, ex. Russel Kirk, TS Elliot, Edmund Burke, and M.E. Bradford (who was originally appointed by Reagan for national endowment position, but sidelined by Bill Krystol for neocon Bill Bennett (Lincoln lover)).
The listener’s name is Ben Cowan and he is attempting to display that he has the superior argument by stating he has grown up and away from the way of thinking of Rush Limbaugh. People who use such arguments with a direct attack like that try to gain supremacy through insult instead of the quality of their statement. Cowan then proceeds to establish that he has a vast knowledge of history to draw upon as if I do not. He has obviously not read the more than 2 million words here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom, so if he starts now he may be qualified to make such statements in about 6 months. But until then he is functioning from ignorance. I enjoy the work of T.S. Elliot particularly “The Wasteland.” The point of his statement is to say that Cowan has evolved intellectually into thinking beyond Rush Limbaugh which is supposed to qualify everything that follows as fact, and everything he says about me as inferior to his arguments. This is a trick Cowan learned from the progressive intellectuals which he reveals further in the next section.
Notice how weak Rich’s arguments are that he portrays anyone who gets frustrated with Decepticons aka neocons using the term American Exceptionalism as someone who supports Obama or his ideology. As to Rich’s Bill Maher clip, I actually agree with some of Bill’s sediments in this clip. This is probably the only time that I have agreed with Bill Maher, but our solutions and reasons are much different. Did you notice how I separated the two complaint/Solutions without emotionally driven comments like Rich uses?
Prof. Kevin Gutzman liked this part of the main article ‘’Under the American Constitution, slavery was abolished- a move happened nowhere else in the world.’’ If the point is that slavery wasn’t abolished under the US Constitution outside the US, well duh. Slavery was abolished in Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Barbados, Bahamas, Suriname, Guyana, Trinidad, and Nevis. –Response by Prof. Kevin Gutzman (Author of Who Killed the Constitution).
Cowan attacks my arguments as weak without identifying the argument which is an anti-concept trick that was perfected by the political strategist Saul Alinsky. It is used, copied and heavily studied by radical groups to this day. People like Cowan pick up the behavior through observation and interacting with people who use the method. The premise of his attack is that my statement about Obama and his ideology is weak because it points to American Exceptionalism as strong, and that such a broad brush is not appropriate under the terms Cowan established in his anti-concept. By my definition of American Exceptionalism I am stating the concept “America is good.” The reason this angers people like Cowan, who believes that he is an evolved conservative to some degree, or just defining himself as some degree of libertarian, is that he has accepted that the concept of American Exceptionalism is a myth at some point in his past and he is defending his foundation beliefs from the concept of goodness. He then uses Bill Maher as validation to support his theory in the same fashion that he uses Kevin Gutzman as a crutch the way most academics use quotes and references to support collectively their own thoughts and beliefs. The implication of their need for reference crutches is their insecurity to their own thoughts. They attempt to build a public consensus by pointing at others and what they say as if to justify their own thoughts. The truth about slavery is that The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage was the first Americanabolition society. It was founded April 14, 1775, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Anthony Benezet and others, and held four meetings.[1] Seventeen of the 24 men who attended initial meetings of the Society were Quakers, or members of the Religious Society of Friends. Thomas Paine was also among the Society’s founders. It was reorganized in 1784[2] as the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage,[3] (better known as the Pennsylvania Abolition Society) and was incorporated in 1789. At some point after 1785, Benjamin Franklin was elected as the organization’s president. The society asked him to bring the matter of slavery to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. He petitioned the U.S Congress in 1790 to ban slavery.[4]
During this time there were similar movements happening all over the world as many were questioning the practice. But the big driver in changing the culture of slavery was The United States in their fight for independence. Once that revolution was won other countries looked at their own situations and made adjustments. Smaller countries like Haiti, Cuba, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Barbados, Bahamas and so on were able to abolish their slaves more quickly than larger countries with more bureaucracy. My example of American Excepetionalism is that if America had failed in their revolution then other countries would have stepped back from such a task. It took America to lead by example. Cowan would then point out that many of those movements took place at the turn of the 1700s into the early 1800s. Yet they were using America as their example as many of the discussions taking place in the colonies from those Philadelphia meetings were exported all over the world through commerce. When America defeated the British, many countries became more embolden in their pursuit of individual freedom and passed anti slavery mandates. Sadly, many of those same countries Cowan mentions would submit to socialism just a few years later falling back into social slavery of a different type.
Capitalism is great and the best system in which people can move up and down mobile in a free society. Capitalism predates the Union of States and American Exceptionalism. Did it occur to Rich that Britain lead the 1st industrial Revolution, followed by Meiji Restoration in Japan, and the 2nd industrial revolution was led by the United States.
Yes, it did occur to me, yet Britain failed in their economy falling to socialism as they allowed Keynesian economics to ruin their capitalism, and Japan of course could not leave their feudal social functions once they submitted themselves to an emperor. To this very day many large countries make the mistake of attempting to emulate Japan for their manufacturing standards believing them to be of higher quality than American standards. The failure in this thinking is that the Japanese place themselves before their individuality in nearly every case. Their programs of lean manufacturing work well as their people do not question the methods. Their service to their country and business come before their own desires. American strength in manufacturing has always come from their ability to think outside-the-box as individuals, not blind compliance to a greater good such as country, company, or even community. America adopted foreign lean manufacturing methods as a direct assault against the American labor unions which infected manufacturing from the Red Decade with communist philosophy. It was the only way that companies could force the unions to not destroy their businesses with non-productive effort. Because the unions put a lock on productive output, American companies were forced to use foreign collectivist methods perfected abroad to keep the unions from destroying their companies that were legally allowed to organize against industry for the collective gain of the many. Even with these severe handicaps most new ideas still come out of The United States. Most literature, films, music, art and technical innovation are generated by free people with the prospect of profit blowing wind into their sails. Even with all the best lean manufacturing techniques produced for collective motivation of work forces, creativity is what makes American Excptionalism. Creativity is what is missing from all other countries that have stepped away from capitalism, and to this day seek alliances with others to disguise the fact that they are nations of suppressed thought praying to their religions for inspiration. In America, innovation is invented because the mind is free—that is the backbone of American Excepetionalism.
‘’Americans have been taught by their gov’t that the United States gained everything it achieved by consuming too many resources and stepping on the rights of others across the world.’’ -This is what would be taught at a progressive college, that so called conservatives send their kids to and help support and perpetuate. Many fake conservative send their kids to progressive colleges so Johnny and Suzie can watch people run into other people on Saturday afternoon and ‘’what’s the score of the game mindless thinking.’’ Again, Rich is using the absurd progressive logic to lump real Conservatives like myself into, to push ‘’American Exceptionalism’’, which is the progressive rights term invented by a Frenchmen, and used to spread democracy by force to any country whether they want it or not.
Not sure that I disagree with Cowan here. He uses my name in a way that implicates that my statement is wrong, but then he agrees with it, because I had just said the same thing. Americans have been taught such things as I stated and most colleges are infected with progressive thought. If Cowan doesn’t believe such a thing I’m not sure what planet he’s living on.
I enjoyed Rich’s definition of a neocon! How terrible of the social freedom of the people in the 60’s. Was Steve Jobs one of those people?? A neocon or decepticon is someone who left the Democrat Party to join the Republican Party in which they brought their FDR progressive foreign policy with them. They also brought the mentality that morals should be controlled through the Fed gov’t. They were Nationalist that the great founders feared, and why some didn’t sign the Constitution fearing the Union would end up like as it is now.
Steve Jobs had a good idea and left his indoctrination education to invent his own way. He used capitalism to bring a great product to market, so not all people who smoked dope, and listened to the garbage music of the 60s was a diabolical hippie menace. I would say that George Lucas was cast of the same mold as Jobs, and I’m sure that George loved the 60’s although he was more of a loner than his friend Francis was at their first studio set up in San Francisco where hippie mania was rampant. Somewhere in that drug induced haze Star Wars was born which I love. But these guys are rare examples that managed to rise to the top even as statism was increasing to put shackles on the mind of mankind by suppressing capitalism. The second part of Cowan’s statement I agree with for the most part, even though it’s pretty general. The real situation is more complicated, but Cowan is learning so I’ll give him a gold star on his paper for at least thinking.
The founding fathers wanted to be immortalized for their writings and their accomplishments ‘’Fame of our Fathers’’, they however were very humble; they had humility which Rich doesn’t seem to grasp! Jefferson studied Scottish philosopher David Hume, Switzerland’s decentralized country, the Indians free trade, and the ancient Greeks who prior to Alexander the Great were successful for centuries with their small [r]epublics in which Math, Science, Art, Philosophy, architecture, and sport was mastered in small [r]epublics of people. Jefferson wasn’t arrogant as to say he created our ‘’written gov’t’’ on his own without researching other countries and philosophers. Rich’s progressive right term “American Exceptionalism’’, he points to ‘’American Experience’’ of 1776, which I noted to Matt Clark in my response.
‘’The benefits of capitalism and the American Experience produced a unique type of person that had only been contemplated by philosopher fantasies prior to the declaration.’’ Again the arrogance of Rich’s comments, Madison and Jefferson both used Adam Smith’s a Scottish Philosopher book ‘’Wealth of Nations’’ as a guide to preventing a National Bank and advocating the market to work!
As to Cowan’s point, there is nothing “progressive” about my term other than such an identification about American Exceptionalism is needed to defend what’s good about The United States against the progressives. Other than that, Cowan is indulging himself in wishful thinking to believe that I adhere to something because of some progressive invention that has not been carefully considered from all angles. In this paragraph the real weakness of Cowan begins to emerge, his real gripe with me. As a victim of a mixed economy he believes certain things. As a flawed human being who probably has events from his past that he regrets, he chooses to maintain a view of the world that supports notions that flaws make humans, “human.” Many people wish to believe such things because it would be hard for them to get up every morning and put on their shoes. But I am very aware of the origins of Jefferson’s belief and studies of Scottish Common Sense, which I have written about elsewhere, CLICK FOR REVIEW. I have said on many occasions that the work of John Locke was inspired by the pirate Henry Morgan, which then also showed the colonies how to shake off a nation the way that Morgan took on Spain nearly single-handedly with their presence in the Caribbean. But the fact remains that these elements came together not in Scotland, England, Spain, or France where they were talked about. It was only in America where the dialogue was able to move away from dinner tables, congregations, and card games to become part of the governing philosophy of a country on the rise.
Now to deal with the “arrogance” portion of this debate–being humble is a taught theory by statist oriented groups, be it religion or government to force compliance of the masses to the desires of institutionalism. Grace in victory and humbleness are often confused to be the same thing by people like Cowan, but they are not. It is often perceived that confidence is “arrogant” by those who lack it which is to say that such a declaration is just another anti-concept. By calling me arrogant Cowan hopes to dismiss everything I have said and place himself in high esteem with a reader who identifies their internal value with humbleness, which is sheer nonsense. The concept of serving God with humbleness may be what the majority of human beings believe, but that belief was created during the Dark Ages of Europe and should be confined to the corners of one’s own home. Humility and “duty” to something greater than oneself is a statist concept that was created by the churches of Europe to maintain political control over their flocks. Under the rules of engagement for people like Cowan he is quick to associate humility with arrogance so that he doesn’t have to deal with the root cause of the word. It is the tendency toward humility that Eric Holder continues to lie directly to the American people, it allows Barack Obama to lie about the impact of the scandals he’s at the center of, it allows scum bags like Anthony Wiener to lie, lie, and lie again to anybody and everyone about his sexual lust for other women making his wife look like a buffoon who will forgive anything just so she can be married to someone in a powerful public office—like her mentor Hillary Clinton. These predators all have in common a desire to use the humility of civilization to hide their true intentions. Humility is not a good human trait, kindness is, intelligence is, even compassion, but not humility. Yielding to ones faults, which humility implies, is a sin against the individual soul of every human being and people everywhere will continue to live in bondage to social parasites so long as they believe in the kinds of things that Ben Cowan believes, that humility has value, and equals arrogance. More on this in a bit because it’s not the only time Cowan uses the term. But as far as how to behave when you win, the following videos are from the bullwhip competitions that I was at when Ben started this little fuss through Matt. Notice my behavior when I win. I expect the same from every American. You don’t rub people’s face in it, but you don’t cower away from it either. When you have something to be proud of, be proud of it.
‘’Life in virtually every facet is better in America because of the philosophy of personal independence that is much larger than the ‘’American Experience.’’ This is so obnoxious, that is the American Experience, limited gov’t. The founders referred to their states as countries, they didn’t speak in homogenized tongue like Rich! The South traded throughout the world (off the backs of slaves) and the Northern States were protectionalist!
This is the kind of thing that caused Cowan to start this dialogue off with an anti-concept attack instead of fact based thought. He does not understand the American Experience in spite of all his supposed education and conservative thought. He doesn’t understand it as a graduate of Rush Limbaugh thought so he finds my statement, “obnoxious.” He lacks perspective to see the world through common sense instead of memorized standards which is why he surrendered his statement to some implications of racism and isolationism—both agreed upon violations of universal understanding. The American Experience is being born in a free country with no hooks into the soul of the child. Many believe that the World Bank owns us all, but at least philosophically, in The United States there is at least the assumption of personal freedom that is held in high regard. In America one does not have to social climb to be successful. That is a European trait. One does not have to marry someone else to become powerful. That is a European, and Asian trait. One does not have to become a member of the political class to gain wealth. That is a European trait. In America one can be just about anything they want to be and they can be it anytime they want to. Just as a byproduct of American culture, which is a direct result of the American Experience, look just at Comic Con in San Diego. America is dedicated to the products of the mind, and no place else in the world is there anything like Comic Con. There are other countries that attempt to host such events such as the recent Star Wars Celebration in Germany, but the products displayed there are not developed in other countries, it is in the United States that they were created. Or consider the British Invasion of music that came out of England during the 60’s, a period that Cowan seems to enjoy. They came to America to be superstars as England had too small of a stage to gain such fame. That is the American Experience. Cowan because of his very weak position again took a page out of the progressive notebook of anti-concepts and attempted to use racism and isolationism to gain control of victory in the debate without having any facts to cover his emotional lack of understanding about the American Experience.
Walt Disney should be honored as a great entrepreneur that used determination, creativity, and thrift which is missing in today’s culture. People don’t know what thrift is, these days!
Rudolf Diesel a German inventor invented the diesel engine, which we use very much in the Union today. I could see German’s going around saying this is German Exceptionalism. I have never heard German’s speak in that tongue, but I detest our countrymen arrogantly beating their chest say we are the Awesomest of the Awesome! People don’t like pompous people, they are attracted by humility, what you don’t have Rich.
This is where I get really angry, and why I took a few days to cool off before answering Cowan directly. Let me start on a positive, which I agree with Cowan on the thrift issue. I would like to see a return to that type of mental exercise. And the German’s would have every right to proclaim German Exceptionalism. It was they who produced some of the finest engineering feats in the world during the 20th century and even as members of the European Union, they manage to be so productive that the rest of their European neighbors continually want to borrow their money. German BMW and Mercedes automobiles are fabulously engineered earning them the right to beat on their chest about that particular field. But here is where people like Ben Cowan are deeply flawed human beings bringing in the front door the tyrants of our modern age because they fail to project the proper mentality to combat attacks from villains who prey on humility.
When making a point that most of society will reject people who do not display humility he is right, but wrong. Being “liked,” being “popular,” or having people think you’re “awesome,” is the furthest thing from my mind. I don’t have humility because I don’t want it Cowan. I do not conceal from hangers in my closet skeletons of shame, I do not fear violence by my attackers, or need to be liked in any fashion. I do have people who like me, who share my values, but I have no desire to be liked by people who do not share my values, which is very few. If I had such a thought I wouldn’t say half the things that needed to be said in this day and age. Even people who read here every day get angry with the things I say. But it doesn’t change my stance and it never will. When you start caring what people think of you, you are finished in the philosophy business. When you desire to be loved, you are prone to be corrupt, to be bought, to allow enemies to gain emotional leverage over you. People should like you because they share your values or respect you, not because you pander to their own weaknesses. It is that process that has turned our entire society into a nation of fools led by idiots, and I would guess that many of them think just like Cowan.
Cowan believes he stands on high moral ground backed by historical fact, but all he stands upon is a pile of his own metaphorical feces created by years of such thinking. It is because of this weakness in him personally that he attempts to skirt around the edges pretending to be a sophisticated conservative that is beyond refute. But in reality he is a child of the mixed economy that has bought into some of the statism that is rampant in American culture, much of it culminating in the 1960s a period Cowan appears to enjoy.
A defeated person uses an emphasis on humility, weakness, or accusations of pompousness to justify their lackluster existences. It is easy to be an armchair philosopher, a casual listener of a radio broadcast, and a Facebook junkie that comments on things other people do. It is quite something else to be the leading edge of an ice breaker, to crash through all opposition knowing that the pain will never ever go away so long as there is ice to smash through. To the broken ice, the ice breaker is a villain, a un-compassionate destroyer, an uncompromising force of sheer will and something to be feared. To me the value is in the ice breaker who can smash through the progressive ice even if people like Ben Cowan have built cities upon the ice believing that the surface was sturdy underneath. They believe such things until they see the ice breaker coming and to cover their fear of seeing for the first time the waters under the ice, they attempt to direct the ice breaker somewhere else so that it doesn’t violate the cities of thought they have built upon progressive corruption. That is the motive behind their diatribes of humility, arrogance, and pompousness. Notice in the events shown in these clips that I was competing in as Cowan sent me his half-baked diatribes, that I don’t rub anything in when I win events. But I don’t show modesty either. If you are good, you are good and should not be ashamed of it. People like Cowan mistake pride, confidence, and determination for evil vices created in the courts of Europe for the determined strategy of controlling the masses to limited thinking and self imprisonment by social shackles.
Instead of comparing us to China, India, Spain, and Russia, how about you compare us to Switzerland, Estonia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Chile. We are the 10th freest country in the world now! Using the left/right paradigm gets old. It is now Nationalism vs. Federalism, Limited gov’t vs. Central planning. Obviously you want the Fed Gov’t to plan social cultural norms. Steve Jobs was a capitalist; he listened to the Grateful Dead and was an advocate of LSD. I don’t own any apple products, but luckily he was never jailed for 20 years with your authoritarian leaning positions. How many jobs did Steve Jobs create Rich?
I didn’t try and put Matt on the defensive. ‘’American Exceptionalism’’ comes off as arrogant to the average person and turns them away from limited decentralized gov’t that the good founders embraced! It also gives the average person the mentality that we need to export our awesomeness to other nations, which is the opposite of the founders. ‘’American Exceptionalism, is a term that Hitler would have embraced if he were American, getting people to believe in the good of the state. He detested divided gov’t and decentralization. He wanted to instill Nationalism in the German people, and he commended Lincoln in his book Mein Kampf for Nationalizing the US and trampling the states. No critical thinking allowed in their worlds, similar to Rich’s.
And here is why I find Cowan such a repulsive parasite that is more dangerous than the average progressive, because at least those threats are easy to identify. Cowan sells himself as a logical conservative, but since his value system was threatened by my statements he has retreated to comparing me to Adolf Hitler! Cowan, America needs to export its awesomeness to other nations! You bet your ass! I’ll say it again. “AMERICA NEEDS TO EXPORT ITS AWESOMNESS TO OTHER NATIONS!” Other countries would be much, much, MUCH better off if they adopted American ideals of independence, economic freedom, and creative enterprise.
As for celebrating in sports, I don’t watch those main stream sports! I play sports that are gentlemen’s games, where you can call a penalty on yourself because the people who play have virtue! Humility and lack of explaining in a story of how the Union came about and how the founders studied other countries to help craft written documents such as the ‘’Declaration of Independence’’, ‘’Articles of Confederation’’, and ‘’The Constitution’’ is what is missing today. Broad rhetoric and arrogant phrases ‘’American Exceptionalism’’ detour people from discovering our founding generation’s great works!
Just as the definition of Welfare 250 years ago, ‘’it was a deliverance from evil’’, which now means gov’t assistance. The American Experience is the correct term in which to use! I have served my country and I am a small business owner and it makes me upset when people use terms that confuse people into thinking the person is bragging about America or is trying to invade another country and impose its Exceptionalism on them! So let’s teach kids limited gov’t and to promote trade with countries we don’t see eye to eye with. Encourage kids to read about the great risk takers and inventors of our country and the rest of the world!
Finally what Ben Cowan is really about; he considers himself a gentleman, something of a Victorian gentleman at that. Well, dude, it was considered against the “gentleman code” to attack during bad weather or other adverse conditions, but George Washington attacked the Hessians at Trenton anyway against every kind of “gentlemanly” code of conduct there was, early in the morning, right after a holiday, and during bad weather. Then again at the fall of Yorktown, Cornwallis attempted to send his surrendered sword by Deputy General Charles O’Hara to give to General Rochambeau. When Rochambeau rejected the offer O’Hara had to give the sword to Benjamin Lincoln because Washington refused to allow Cornwallis to avoid acknowledging the American General as his superior in combat. Cornwallis was a gentleman. Washington was gracious in victory, but demanded respect—which is a lesson we should all be embracing! I can only imagine what kind of “gentlemanly games” Cowan is talking about, Croquet, basket weaving, coin collecting? I hang around knife throwers, gun marksman, and bullwhip artists. CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW. The “gentleman code” is just another anti-concept. There is a difference between being respectful of other people, and then pawing off inaction, indecision, and just plain being a pussy to behaving like a “gentleman.” Cowan, you be a gentleman all you want. I’ll take the win, I’ll take the American Excepetionalism, and I’ll take the freedom that comes with it. You keep the European terminology and keep calling me arrogant. It lets me know I’m doing the right things.
This is where the fun begins. Justin after his testimony went on the air with another friend of mine Matt Clark of WAAM Ann Arbor, Michigan to speak about the treacherous actions of the IRS and the results of the hearing. There is a level of anxiety among some in this modern rebellion who fear that the IRS scandal will be swept under the rug with the large brooms of the establishment. But Justin understands that these things take time as he and Matt discussed the nature of the IRS investigation and the pursuit of justice on WAAM radio.
Below is the rest of that interview as Matt went straight into the MSNBC clip referenced. Jay Carney hoped that he was in friendly territory on the progressive network, but even there the hosts can see through the treachery of the IRS scandal for what it is, and things didn’t turn out well for the White House spokesman. It is a shame that only a few people in the country watch MSNBC and missed this important broadcast. Luckily Matt Clark is always watching as a fevering instrument of festering rebellion, he uses his vast media and technical knowledge to save the Republic one broadcast at a time. Few remember that during George Washington’s handling of America’s first rebellion from the time of his major victory in crossing the Delaware to the magnificent victory at Yorktown four years of hard war transpired. There were many heartaches during that revolution such as the winter at Valley Forge and betrayals most epically displayed by Benedict Arnold–victory did not come easily. Guys like Matt Clark and Justin Binik-Thomas understand how long it takes, and they diligently chip away day by day.
Meanwhile Justin continued on with his media parade informing all what had transpired at the hearings. Below he appeared on Fox News with Greta Van-Susteren where he has become a frequent guest. On these broadcasts Justin wisely kept his tongue reserved yet gently blew on the winds of liberty with a keen understanding of what he’s doing and how long it takes for rebellion to take hold. The aim of this rebellion is not armed conflict of course, but is strictly in the pursuit of justice which has been deeply suppressed by the modern progressive establishment.
But after the cameras were turned off and radio broadcasts ended, Justin took a moment to vacation in the heart of capitalism in America where the blood of rebellion pores most keenly, Gatlinburg, Tennessee and once there he visited another friend of mine, Ron Johnston. Justin was an early reviewer of my novel Tail of the Dragon which was written by me with the intention of modernizing Thomas Pain’s efforts who wrote pamphlets during the first revolution. Ron is the guy who ignited my imagination to write the novel. I’ll make no bones about it, I not only intended to blow on the flames of liberty to help them spread–I wrote Tail of the Dragon to throw gasoline upon that fire. After reading the book Justin had this to say:
Rich – Your book is exceptional. The race/chase scene had me on the edge of my seat.“Tail of the Dragon” is a dynamic action-packed thriller seamlessly integrating love for America, homage to our history, and true liberty. We ‘live’ it first hand through a NASCAResque race through the hills of Tennessee and North Carolina – a trip that captures the hearts of the citizens and even the President of the United States
– Justin Binik-Thomas, Owner, Conservative Media Group
What all these people have in common besides a love of liberty is their love of Tail of the Dragon. Ron Johnston loved the book and upon reading it instantly gave me rights to use the name he created for the title to my novel. Matt Clark as a modern-day youthful media wiz references the book often during his radio broadcasts as he has read it many times enjoying it more each time as the complicated themes come together more thoroughly each time. And Justin after all that he had been through, who is also a lover of Tail of the Dragon, sought refreshment in the land that I described in the novel from the battles with the progressive establishment. After reading the book he wanted to visit the actual place with his family, and it appears to have done everything he had hoped.
It gives me great pleasure to know that the “establishment” does not like my book which is fitting because I don’t like them. As the author of Tail of the Dragon I did not hide my feelings about the “establishment,” nor my love of rebellion. But people like Justin, Matt, and Ron do love my book and there are more and more every week that are discovering that rebel rousing work for themselves for the first time, and like Justin, they seek to make a pilgrimage to the actual spot to see what all the fuss is about. Once they get there they discover that the Tail of the Dragon where Ron Johnston has his store is the heart and soul of the liberty movement and it is there that the pulse of American independence can be seen most clearly in a land far removed from politics where the residents are not afraid to show their disdain for intrusive government and nanny state politics.
It brings my mind great comfort to know that the story of Tail of the Dragon is touching so many with profound impact. It was never my intention to have a traditional novel that dominated popular culture on the New York Times charts for a few weeks then faded off into obscurity not long after. Rather, I always hoped to touch the minds of youth with the story of Rick Stevens and provoke there a desire to join in rebellion against establishment politics and the stagnation that lives in those fecal waters. Witnessing Justin’s one week journey from a mutual friend in an Ann Arbor, Michigan radio show to the sharp mountains on the North Carolina/Tennessee border the common thread for all involved was a love of Tail of the Dragon the novel, and the spirit of rebellion that is its central message. A rebellion that is not only justified, but mandated as the necessary means to bring joy to the human race globally as this second revolution is not just about a few colonies in a New World, but the entire earth. It is time to stop allowing philosophies that don’t work to harm innocent people with tyranny and social compliance that is detrimental to their very souls. It is time to behold a philosophy of freedom that will finally bring the world peace and prosperity—but it will not be easy. Those who want to maintain the current establishment wish to continue this suffering because they profit from it. It is against those people who this new rebellion is directed, and the means to the end are outlined in my novel Tail of the Dragon, that is slowly building up a nation of freedom fighters to their Yorktown moment. And I love it!
Boorman was not new to the Tail of the Dragon area. When he was 8 years old he spent some time just to the south when his father was filming Deliverance on the Chattooga River. The plot of that famous adventure film was three Atlanta businessmen were intent on seeing the fictional Cahulawassee River before it was turned into one huge lake. Outdoor fanatic Lewis Medlock takes his friends on a river-rafting trip they’ll never forget into the dangerous American back-country. The Chattooga River (also spelled Chatooga, Chatuga, and Chautaga, variant name Guinekelokee River) is the main tributary of the Tugaloo River. Its headwaters are located southwest of Cashiers, North Carolina, and it stretches 57 miles (92 km)[1] to where it has its confluence with the Tallulah River within Lake Tugalo, held back by the Tugalo Dam. The Chattooga and the Tallulah combine to make the Tugaloo River starting at the outlet of Lake Tugalo. The Chattooga begins in southern Jackson County, North Carolina, then flows southwestward between northwestern Oconee County, South Carolina, and eastern Rabun County, Georgia. Charley’s father directed the film with brutal honesty and a sense of adventure that has never been duplicated and is a film classic. But Deliverance isn’t the only film shot in the area. Hollywood is well acquainted with the Tail of the Dragon.
To those coming from the North Carolina side, the Dragon begins at Fugitive Bridge with a view of the Cheoah Dam where Harrison Ford jumped in the movie The Fugitive. It ends 14 miles across the mountain at the Tabcat Creek Bridge in Tennessee. From Fugitive Dam US129 climbs through The Slide, a steep series of “S” curves where one would not want to meet one of the tractor-trailers that comes this way at times. The road then levels and straightens until a series of curves approaching the Crossroads of Time, one of the main hangouts for visitors. Next is Deals Gap and the Tennessee State Line. For the next eleven miles most people just remember curve after curve after curve and the run of their lives.
In addition to the 1993 The Fugitive, three other movies have been filmed along this road. The first feature film made on US 129 was Thunder Road. This 1958 Robert Mitchum film about backwoods moonshining had scenes at the power line easement at about mile 4.5 on the Dragon map and you can see the old wooden “safety” posts on the corner. A few of the posts still remain.
Part of the 1971 classic movie Two-Lane Blacktop was filmed on the Dragon. There are scenes of the state line sign, some of the curves, the old Esso Gas Station, Crafton’s Motel and Café, along the Little Tennessee River and the original single lane bridge at Tapoco Dam. These scenes are at the end of the movie. Then there was In Dreams (1998) with Annette Bening which was filmed on Moonshiner 28, Tapoco Dam and Calderwood Dam.
Charlie’s love of adventure would become a global endeavor and began with a father who directed one of the greatest adventure films of all time in the mysterious land which became the modern-day Tail of the Dragon that is synonymous with classic Hollywood adventure films. So it was a bit of a book end that he would return to that area after all his globe-trotting escapades to see my friends Ron and Nancy Johnston at their Tail of the Dragon store. In that store Ron has on the wall the story of how Deliverance was filmed in the area prompting Charlie to autograph it for all visitors to see in the future. When I came up with the kind of personality that became Rick Stevens in the novel Tail of the Dragon I thought often of people like Charlie Boorman, but were not as fortunate as Charlie to be born into the entertainment industry where eccentricities can be openly explored. Boorman has had opportunities that many men struggle to gain and he has not squandered them. My character of Rick Stevens is one of those types who has the adventurous soul of a Charlie Boorman without the Hollywood connections to allow him to embark on such grand adventures. Rick Stevens because of his limited options takes the first opportunity that came his way—a political coup between governors in a run for President of The United States. Adventurers always find a way and don’t uses excuses as a crutch.
My son-in-law and I are still planning our trip from Alaska to the bottom tip of South America but if Charlie beats me to it more power to him. I will enjoy his wonderful documentaries on the subject as I have enjoyed all his work. Doing my own share of long distance hard riding, and riding a motorcycle every day even in snow, heavy rain and below freezing temperatures I have a grand appreciation for the work that Charlie and his friend Ewan have done for the sport of marathon motorcycle riding. Charlie Boorman is the kind of man I wish there were many more of, a kind man, a passionate man, but more than anything a man who plays at life-like a kid yet with the intellect of an adult. He is the kind of man who every young child should hope to grow up and become.
One of the most satisfying aspects of my life is in being the facilitator of rebellion. That is what is going on these days; it is a full-blown rebellion against the establishment that has controlled the American people subtly. I don’t like that “establishment,” and along with many others we are forming up against it to rebel. The extent of this modern rebellion became known to me recently when a friend of mine, Justin Binik-Thomas testified in front of the chairman of the House Policy and Legislative Oversight Committee. The hearing was located at the University of Cincinnati College of Education, Criminal Justice and Human Services on July 25th at 1 P.M
In a lot of ways Charley Boorman was the inspiration for my novel Tail of the Dragon. My son-in-law, Paul is from England and made me aware of Boorman’s infamous Long Way Round, and Long Way Down television series featuring mammoth motorcycle rides around the world and across Europe to the tip of South Africa with his acting friend Ewan McGregor. Recently my friend Ron Johnston ran into Charley as he came to the Tail of the Dragon to ride it at night in the rain. 
The Overmanwarrior 