As seen in Wisconsin, doctors have been on hand to pass out “false” doctors excuses so those teachers protesting can still retain their jobs. As groups like SEIU and the Huffington Post have put their resources to work in an attempt to apply “mass” bringing in people from out of the state to make the movement appear larger than it is, the reality is that hotel rooms and local economies are seeing business that they otherwise wouldn’t have experienced, and that is good for the cities of these protests. The protesters do not have the financial resources to maintain crowds of 70K or more for long. They will run out of sick days and vacation time in the not too distant future. The shock factor and media blitz will wear off and the reality of the situation will become obvious quickly. The true majority will finally have its voice heard over these loud chants from the minorities that pack these state houses. For the way to beat the protestors is to take away their quick emotional victory and spend them into their own destruction, which is what, will happen.
So what’s going on in Wisconsin? Here is the platform for Governor Walker’s budget plans. Sounds pretty reasonable to me. The guy was elected by the citizens of Wisconsin to govern the state and balance the budget. If people wanted another democrat to further exacerbate their debts, they would have elected one. But they didn’t. So here is Walker’s proposal.
But listen to these people. Sounds like public education failed them miserably because they clearly don’t have a grip on reality. Where do they get these ideas?
Now, we’ve seen this locally, but it’s a national tactic, where teachers use our kids to fulfill their political and financial objectives. These children have no idea why they are at the rally. All they do know is that they are off school and doing what their teachers told them to do.
So what’s behind all this crazy stuff? That’s right, it’s good ol’ George. It’s all about ideological issues according to him, even though he’s smart enough to become rich, so he’s being misleading. What he really means is that the millions he’s spent pushing left winged agendas are being rejected by the part of the country that is in the political center and to the right of that center. The ideology that he speaks of is the mark he left through his influence on all the people shown above that are protesting something they don’t understand.
And of course here is President Obama’s position on all this. Obama is simply a spokesman to people like Soros who definitely have an agenda to subvert the Constitution. The victims of this activity can be seen in these protests.
I was playing a video game today called Left 4 Dead 2 which is a game where a bunch of thoughtless zombies try to suck your blood. It’s a fun game intended to be action packed and scary. The zombies in Left 4 Dead reminded me of these protestors. The protestors look like us. Talk like us, but they are sick and diseased with something that is dangerous to all of us. And I blame people like President Obama for doing his part to make those poor souls sick on his rhetoric. Obama is responsible for doing his part in creating the hostile climate we are seeing in Wisconsin.
Listen to the generals of this new kind of war. Because that’s what it is.
Yet explanations like what I provided in that video are just too simple for the people who have made careers for themselves out of confusing everyone and profiting off the chaos. And that’s what Union Thugs are all about.
What is the typical union thug like? I’m not talking about good people who happen to work in a unionized organization. I’m talking about the people who organize and participate in protests, strikes and the type of lobbying that goes on in state and federal governments.
I’ve received a lot of nasty notes and emails, which I enjoy. But there was one that I show below which wa clean enough, and hits the important issues that I think it worthy to publish here because it displays the mentality of many involved in protests of S.B 5.This is an organized effort to attack this bill, and the people who support it. These people are being fueled by their leaders through email campaigns, and it is through this type of attempted intimidation that the operating costs were increased to the level they are currently, and the reason we need S.B 5 to help Ohio sort through this kind of rhetoric and solve some budget problems.
I find your lies and destructive intent astounding. You display the outright greed and despicable corporate defender attitude that would make Boss Tweed very proud.
As a greed-first capitalist you are more than willing to complain that we aren’t sucking the Big Business teat enough…MORE for big business! More MORE!
(this is a common strategy for union bosses and radical members. They create an “us versus them” mentality that they are on the side of the little guy, fighting for the working class person. Then they try to paint their opponent, in this case me in a marketable and degrading way. Such as the “greed first term.” This person has no idea that I’m a greed first capitalist. I am a capitalist, but I’m certainly not greedy, never have been. And I’ve fought greedy people all my life. But this person knows that their members aren’t very smart so they have to paint the picture in duality, such as worker versus the evil corporation. And what’s my destructive intent. I think it should be illegal for public workers to unionize and I don’t want my tax dollars spent on that activity. How is that bad? You see, even questioning them makes you greedy. That is a designed strategy to make the mass of the REAL middle-class not to question them, because nobody wants to be called names.)
Oh, but teachers, those greedy bloodsuckers, THEY are ripping us off, robbing taxpayers blind. Right.
(I have been asking our local school board to live within their $160 million dollar budget and to not continue to come back to the tax payer for more and more taxes. Taxes are already so high in our district that it makes it unattractive for real estate investors. When I looked into the reason for the escalating costs it turned out to be “step increases” for teachers that were averaging $62K a year. THAT’s THE AVERAGE! And those same teachers had just threatened a strike in 2010 just before asking the community for a new levy. And in 2008 they threatened another strike and their primary issue was wages and benefits. As a result of that it was discovered that most of the school budget of $160 million was tied up almost 80% in wages. The taxes are already very high for residents of the community, so taxes should not be increased any higher. Yet the school board said its hands were tied because state laws required them to increase the budget size to fulfill the contract obligations. After the levy failed, the union made no attempt to work with the community. It was determined that the unions only care for their own interests, and not how they fit into the economics of the community. So legislation must be introduced to protect tax payers from union greed which shows no sign of ending. It is greed because when an organization expects more and more without caring where the money comes from, they are only thinking with their own needs.)
You are a sick disgusting (several extremely descriptive expletives deleted) who can’t wait to turn Ohio into a wasteland of stupid kids ripe for mindless thankless benefitless jobs that your beloved Big Business is more than happy to provide, especially when you wipe out the minimum wage (damned greedy poverty-level unskilled workers!), sick leave, and as much of the rights and benefits that workers have fought and died for over the history of this great nation as you can. You and your fellow Greed Over People party pals are well on your way.
What you advocate is nothing less than a return to sweatshops, eighty-hour workweeks, and non-existent disability or unemployment protection. You’ll do it with a thousand tiny cuts, and in the end the state of Ohio will indeed bleed. It will hemorrhage skilled educators and teachers, administrators and children in search of reasonable compensation or education beyond that needed to operate a drive-thru headset. Soon enough no one will have to worry about school levies in Ohio, because there won’t be a decent school or educator in the entire state to see it voted down.
(Here is the name calling. When someone is out of ideas and can’t argue facts they resort to name calling. And they also profess to be able to predict the future with the direst consequences, using such terms as wasteland, and sweatshops. This person also assumes I’m lock step with a political party, which I’m not. They say such things because it fits their small view of the world. The Progressive Party started in 1910 really, and then progressed in power till 1912 when Teddy Roosevelt took control of the party because Taft had won the Republican nomination. Roosevelt wanted so badly to become president again, and to beat Taft that he took on the platform of the Progressive Party which consisted of minimum wage and workplace standards, compensation for job related injuries, strengthen the pure-food law of 1906, institute a system of social insurance with medical coverage for the poor, an income-tax amendment to the Constitution, a commission to inquire into the rising cost of living, and the ability to regulate interstate industrial corporations along with the new concept of the women’s suffrage movement. Unions take credit for all those things, but it was wealthy Republican defectors that were on a religious crusade that split the party and started those ideas which 100 years later we have a report card of where it took us. Some things were good, some things weren’t. However, when unions attached themselves to the progressive platform they have made it impossible for us to go back and fix the things that were broken from that original ideology, and keep the things we find useful. And yes, religion was the centerpiece of the Progressive Party. They sung “Onward Christian Soldiers” while they had their National Convention in Chicago on August 6th 1912. Now progressives, like the author of this letter obviously is, even if they don’t realize that’s what they are, have lost the meaning of religion where it interfered with politics. They didn’t care if their policies were unconstitutional, because they were on a religious crusade to “change the world.” This author proclaims that society will go back to 80 hour week sweat shops. Such a statement is hardly worth commenting on, only most of these radicals protesting outside the State House, and pleading for the status quo actually believe that will happen, because their leaders, their shepherds tell them that distorted fact. And since they are often young, or over-paid and know they can’t make that type of money in the private sector put on the dunce cap and let others do their thinking for them. Schools will become good, and competitive at a much reduced cost. Bad teachers will be removed quickly and good ones will be inserted without a lot of fuss, which is how it needs to be. Teachers like Ryan Fahrenkemp of Lakota, and Stacy Schuler of Mason were hiding their devious acts behind the security of their very protective contract and nobody wanted to deal with it because it is too difficult. School Boards are toothless. The real teeth are in the unions. With S.B.5 teachers will be paid well because parents show they want teachers to teach their children. But the costs will be managed and not become outrageous such as the teachers that are making over 90K a year. At some point step increases must be controlled so the budgets aren’t broken by such behavior, and that is one of the greatest aspects of S.B. 5.)
I find it hysterical in a profoundly sad way that you think our (state’s) treatment of business outrageous (how can we get business if we don’t allow them to rape our state without lubrication for obscene profit?) but you think teachers should work for the sheer love of it, and the $10 a week you want to pay them. Idiot.
(Here is another common theme from these people; they don’t understand what goes on in the mind of a person that creates a job. Entrepreneurs need the ability to attempt and fail, and attempt again. When too many regulations are in front of business, they are likely to not bring business to the state in favor of a state with less regulation. For instance, OSHA is set up as a safety organization within the state. But like many such organizations the power it wields is subject to abuse. Instead of being a regulatory agency that protects the workers of the state they are known for fining companies as a way to raise revenue. A program started with good intentions ends up becoming just a troll charging to cross a bridge, it’s the cost of doing business as they see it. That’s the reputation anyway, so if you were a company wanting to locate to a Midwest location, would you pick Indiana, Kentucky or Ohio, with Ohio being known for having an extorting regulation arm of the government? High paid unionized workers are discouraging for potential employers because they don’t want to be stuck in the situation that the schools are currently in. Employers can’t go to the tax payers to bail them out, unless they’re a company like GM. So they’ll go to a state without such limits. Now the union bosses seek to impose on every state the same, so business will have no place to go. Currently, SEIU is on a campaign to bring unionized workers to every country in the world, so that companies cannot move their operations overseas. That’s how out of touch those people are. Everywhere they are strong, business looks elsewhere. That is why they are looked upon as a social disease to those that don’t directly benefit. And who’s the idiot here? I’d say it’s the fool looking o the past and clinging to the status quo)
You had better pray I never attain any level of public office, because you, Sir, are a traitor to this nation, a servant of corporate interests at the expense of our education, our health, and in fact our very survival. You would be lucky to escape being shot into the Sun on a fast rocket for your attempts to make our next generation sick, fat, stupid, and rightless.
(Now this is pretty nasty, calling me a traitor. To whom am I a traitor? And I should pray? Sounds like a threat to me. Where in the Constitution of the United States does it state I as an American am supposed to support unionized workers with tax dollars. And we are all servants to corporate interests, because without corporate interests there aren’t any jobs. Secondly, consider the mentality of this person, as the mind of a child. They are proposing that someday when they get to public office that they would be able to shoot me with a rocket into the sun? Just to construct that sentence reveals the mind of a child like presence, and this is a person to lecture ANYBODY on policy?)
You and your treasonous ilk will destroy any landscape, enslave any people, allow American citizens to die and go bankrupt and lose their house and see their entire life’s work utterly destroyed to pay your corporate masters enough filthy profit to build a solid gold garage next to their solid gold house to hold their solid gold Hummer.
(Here is more of that inflammatory rhetoric again. He is proclaiming that voting for S.B.5 will enslave American citizens. He says citizens will DIE, and lose their homes. The fear mongering is so extreme that he says people will lose their whole life’s work if S.B.5 is passed. How preposterous! I know a lot of people who don’t work for unions that are not part of the corporate machine, and do very well for themselves. These union types are so “addicted” to collective bargaining that they can’t even imagine life without it, yet life will go on. There will be more jobs, not less, ironically. Because these people don’t understand the basics of economics, they can’t understand how jobs will appear. It’s like explaining to a child why we have seasons. Children don’t have enough experience to see the difference in seasons let alone understand how they are caused by the earth rotating around the sun in an elliptical orbit. A similar principle is acknowledged in understanding economics. If the basics cannot be understood, all these union types know to do is complain and hold up signs hoping that in mass they can put peer pressure on lawmakers like a crying child screams for a candy bar in a grocery store. And why do these types of people all think rich people drive Hummer’s. I don’t know a single person that has a Hummer. This guy is just showing that he says what other people, union leaders in this case, tell him to think.)
This was not the “liberty” our founders had in mind, the ‘liberty’ to strip American citizens of basic human rights and turn this nation into a desperate, servile and defenseless labor pool much like the one China boasts. You deserve nothing less than to be stripped of your citizenship and deported forthwith for your efforts to undermine the people of the United States. F*** Y**.
(It is interesting that this guy proposes that I lose my citizenship for not wanting to fund unions off tax dollars. This patriotic slant from unions is an attempt to diminish the influence of Tea Parties. To justify this patriotism Progress Ohio has on it’s site a letter from President Eisenhower from 1955, well before the radical issues of the 1960’s, in a hope that unions would work well with the country in establishing healthy labor policies. This letter was an attempt to reach out to union leaders of the AFL-CIO in good faith. ……………………………………………………………………………………………. Dwight Eisenhower December 4th 1955 Mr. Meany, Mr. Schnitzler, members of the Executive Council, Delegates to this Convention and ladies and gentlemen of the AFL-CIO everywhere in America: You of organized labor and those who have gone before you in the union movement have helped make a unique contribution to the general welfare of the Republic–the development of the American philosophy of labor. This philosophy, if adopted globally, could bring about a world, prosperous, at peace, sharing the fruits of the earth with justice to all men. It would raise to freedom and prosperity hundreds of millions of men and women–and their children–who toil in slavery behind the Curtain. One principle of this philosophy is: the ultimate values of mankind are spiritual; these values include liberty, human dignity, opportunity and equal rights and justice. Workers want recognition as human beings and as individuals-before everything else. They want a job that gives them a feeling of satisfaction and self-expression. Good wages, respectable working conditions, reasonable hours, protection of status and security; these constitute the necessary foundations on which you build to reach your higher aims. Moreover, we cannot be satisfied with welfare in the aggregate; if any group or section of citizens is denied its fair place in the common prosperity, all others among us are thereby endangered. The second principle of this American labor philosophy is this: the economic interest of employer and employee is a mutual prosperity.
Their economic future is inseparable. Together they must advance in mutual respect, in mutual understanding, toward mutual prosperity. Of course, there will be contest over the sharing of the benefits of production; and so we have the right to strike and to argue all night, when necessary, in collective bargaining sessions. But in a deeper sense, this surface struggle is subordinate to the overwhelming common interest in greater production and a better life for all to share.
The American worker strives for betterment not by destroying his employer and his employer’s business, but by understanding his employer’s problems of competition, prices, markets. And the American employer can never forget that, since mass production assumes a mass market, good wages and progressive employment practices for his employee are good business. The Class Struggle Doctrine of Marx was the invention of a lonely refugee scribbling in a dark recess of the British Museum. He abhorred and detested the middle class. He did not foresee that, in America, labor, respected and prosperous, would constitute–with the farmer and businessman–his hated middle class. But our second principle–that mutual interest of employer and employee–is the natural outgrowth of teamwork for progress, characteristic of the American economy where the barriers of class do not exist.
The third principle is this: labor relations will be managed best when worked out in honest negotiation between employers and unions, without Government’s unwarranted interference.
This principle requires maturity in the private handling of labor matters within a framework of law, for the protection of the public interest and the rights of both labor and management. The splendid record of labor peace and unparalleled prosperity during the last 3 years demonstrates our industrial maturity.
Some of the most difficult and unprecedented negotiations in the history of collective bargaining took place during this period, against the backdrop of non-interference by Government except only to protect the public interest, in the rare cases of genuine national emergency. This third principle, relying as it does on collective bargaining, assumes that labor organizations and management will both observe the highest standards of integrity, responsibility, and concern for the national welfare.
You are more than union members bound together by a common goal of better wages, better working conditions, and protection of your security. You are American citizens.
The roads you travel, the schools your children attend, the taxes you pay, the standards of integrity in Government, the conduct of the public business is your business as Americans. And while all of you, as to the public business, have a common goal–a stronger and better America–your views as to the best means of reaching that goal vary widely, just as they do in any other group of American citizens.
So in your new national organization, as well as in your many constituent organizations, you have a great opportunity of making your meetings the world’s most effective exhibit of democratic processes. In those meetings the rights of minorities holding differing social, economic, and political views must be scrupulously protected and their views accurately reflected. In this way, as American citizens you will help the Republic correct the faulty, fortify the good, build stoutly for the future, and reinforce the most cherished freedoms of each individual citizen.
This country has long understood that by helping other peoples to a better understanding and practice of representative government, we strengthen both them and ourselves. The same truth applies to the economic field. We strengthen other peoples and ourselves when we help them to understand the workings of a free economy, to improve their own standards of living, and to join with us in world trade that serves to unite us all.
In the world struggle, some of the finest weapons for all Americans are these simple tenets of free labor. They are again: mart is created in the Divine image and has spiritual aspirations that transcend the material; second, the real interests of employers and employees are mutual; third, unions and employers can and should work out their own destinies. As we preach and practice that message without cease, we will wage a triumphant crusade for prosperity, freedom, and peace among men. To close, it is fitting that we let our hearts be filled with the earnest prayer that, with the help of a kind Providence, the world may be led out of bitterness and materialism and force into a new era of harmony and spiritual growth and self-realization for all men. Thank you very much.
Dwight Eisenhower December 4th 1955
………………………………………………………………………….. That’s how far back unions have reached in an attempt to find a position in which to bring patriotism to their cause. They are using the words of the Republican President Eisenhower as if they used those words on their own. We know the history from that point, which has only diminished as union leaders became drunk with power morphing into the tyrants they sought to protect people from. This brings us to the modern-day, where the unions hold so much power that the public officials elected to positions to do the business of the people, cannot do that business because those contracts formed under collective bargaining are too costly and restrictive that tax payers can no longer out of their good natures, continue to fund these activities at the expense to themselves.
And this uneducated, naïve apologist for organized labor has the belief to actually articulate the words that I should lose my citizenship for questioning collective bargaining motives is completely lost to what America is and has strived to be. These are only the mutterings of a radical that attempts with verbal intimidation in this case, or physical intimidation in others, and with mass protests and strikes to coerce out of employers a job with decent wages.
I have never wished to have a union position or the wages that are associated with them, because I always wanted the freedom to think and bargain for myself. I would never trade away that freedom for some collective herd mentality. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the money can’t flow forever. Collective bargaining is really just a hot potato game and when the music stops, nobody wants to be holding the ball. Union members for years have been hoping that they can intimidate the people who have their finger on the button to keep them from stopping the music. But the music has stopped, not because anybody pushed the button, but because the song finally ran out. And the people holding the ball now are scared, angry, and ill prepared because what was promised to them isn’t coming true. And they are so mindless that they only know to lash out at the people who point out to them what should be easy for them to see.
Instead they carry signs, make phone calls and try to intimidate anyone they can hoping the music will begin again, and they can return to their life of security under the umbrella of collective-bargaining. But that song will never play again. Not because the republicans are a bunch of “big mean people.” Not because the Tea Party people are “tea baggers” or because the corporations are out to kill Americans and all their babies. But because American society has been burnt by the greed of those union minorities, and the scam they pulled over the eyes of our constitutional obligations.
If anybody should be cussing people out it should be those of us that were lied to, an manipulated by the type of rhetoric leveled at me in letters like this. Because in those words is the heart of a thug that only care for themselves at the expense of taxpayers everywhere.)
Senate Bill 5 will start the process of taking the shackles off the State of Ohio that confine it by collective bargaining. The rhetoric provided by the sector of the population that is “addicted” to collective bargaining which has grown in influence since 1983, so long that many of those people don’t know any other form of life, is sickening. So sickening it makes me question completely the validity of public education, because these people didn’t learn the basics of American life. Their basic premise seems to be that if you can get a job, have a union protect that job for your life-time, then they are willing to sacrifice a life-time of freedom for some mundane “average” life. I personally find their view of the world repulsive and un-American. What I see in those crowded halls of protest at the State House is a group of people protecting their right to be “average.”
Old college professor hippies such as Francis Pivan, who has spent her entire life perpetuating progressivism is upset at the countries sudden desire to turn back to the Constitution, now that we know we’ve been scammed by people like her for decades.
Pivan is an old lady but she was around in the early days of all this change and she’s always been active in politics. And she opened herself to these name calling tirades when she said. “The strange stories that Glenn Beck creates with his chalkboard gain traction with Americans, who are made anxious by the large changes that have overtaken the United States, including the election of a black president and the increasing racial diversity of the population, deindustrialization and the decline of American power abroad, as well as cultural changes in sexual and family norms.”
Who are these people that I’m talking about? Is it just people like me, Doc Thompson, Ray Warrick, Glenn Beck or anybody else? No. It’s people like the comment below. This comment came to me from a woman that only knows me from these epic pages. And her comment speaks volumes of who exactly those Americans are that have now been awakened and will not sleep so soundly again. She was commenting on an article I did about John Meyer.
There are people in my life that move me. I mean…REALLY move me. They are few. My father, who gave me the tools to navigate through life..now and then as he was right when he said what I believe would waiver with experience. So right. My husband for letting me move in the direction that drives my heart and soul no matter what. Glenn Beck. Say what you may…he’s my people. He’s been saying what I’ve felt for years. Yes..I cry. All the time. And Rich, who has given strength and voice to those of us out there that share his passion and need for serious change on so many venues. We need you and those that stand by you in the fight for the simple morale and values we were taught to respect. I never thought in a million years I would be here. Last but not least…to John. Kudos to you for just handing it to them. I’m honored that you live in my county and Country. God Bless. You ARE a Warrior! Today..I am blessed.
Watching the Superbowl “event” on Sunday February 6, 2011 everything from the Star Spangled Banner to the Half-Time Show convinced me that finally the detrimental effects of the Baby Boom Generation had finally shown its dismal failure in Generation Y.
Listen to this simple-minded Generation Y Guy analyzing Glenn Beck discussing the Superbowl.
This Superbowl though had a peculiar blandness to it that was unique to 2011. This is the year we are collectively facing the massive bankruptcies that are challenging virtually every program created by government in this last century. This is also the first year that I have almost no interest in the films being nominated at the Academy Awards.
There is something cheap in films these days, much like everything else. It probably has something to do with the emergence of Netflix and the downfall of Blockbuster. The emergence of cheap, big screen televisions, and the film distributors and production houses banking on 3D to keep people wanting to go to the theater, and not waiting for the film to show up on their Xbox where all they have to do is push a button and the film arrives.
The music industry too is in the same boat, because of IPods and downloadable music, investment in music is on the decline. Where are the Michael Jackson’s or the Elvis’s today? The Black Eyed Peas earned my respect with the fantastic live performance on Saturday Night Live when they played Hey Mama. So I had high expectations that their half time show would be great. But what came out was four used up people who looked tired, as if the entire music industry was hanging its hat on them while they experiment with other revenue sources and commitment behind artists.
If you look at American Culture we are bankrupt in almost every facet you can think of. Our cars are behind. Our manufacturing is behind. Our aviation is behind. Our culture is behind, and preoccupied with a one world utopia, which Americans don’t want. (hint, hint entertainment industry. That’s why you’re revenues are down) Our financial institutions are stressed to the max, and our entitlements that we’ve built through politics are out of money. Things are so bad, that even American Football is on hold till a contentious labor dispute is settled, which I don’t think will happen in time to save the season. I think the owners will turn away from a season because it will hurt the players worse, and owners need to get their upfront money invested in players fixed. And they also have to listen to market demand which wants a longer season and they’ll find a way to provide that.
So who’s to blame?
Doc Thompson is asking the same questions and he discusses that here. His theory is that it all falls on the Baby Boomers.
He’s right.
I’ve never been happy with the Baby Boomers. Even when I was a kid I thought they were off. It never made sense to me why they seemed to count their lives in a declining value from the age of 30 on. They craved to always be 16 to 18 years old and built their whole collective psychology around that yearning. I’ve also despised that. Even when I was young, the people I most identified with were senior citizens, because they knew how to live and didn’t expect life to be comfortable.
When I came to work today it was hovering around zero degrees with a wind chill down around -10. There was much astonishment from other drivers who watched me drive my 1500 CC motorcycle down the frozen asphalt well before the sun came up. Most of those people were baby boomers and members of Generation X who were around my current age. I will have to admit that I have pity on almost all of those people, because they view aging as a regressing process. Many of the people of my generation and the baby boomers strive for their lives at the end of high school and start of college. Those are the best days of their lives.
I see my own life as improving each year. When I was younger I dreamed of being the age I’m at right now with the physical presence to do anything I want, and the wisdom to match it. Part of the reason I walk several miles a day, ride motorcycles in the cold and work with bullwhips and medicine balls like toys while my mind contemplates thousands of topics simultaneously, is because I love living life. Avoiding pain is avoiding life. I wouldn’t trade anything in the world to even go backwards one year. I enjoy every birthday as an opportunity to become even better than the last year. That’s why I name this site the way I do, because I’m always leaning forward to learn and be better. Complacency and failure are simply not options.
But complacency is the fad of the modern age and it started with those lazy, baby boomers. And they started the trend we see now, where a whole generation of young people are lost and clueless. You can see it in young people everywhere you look. They are overly commercialized and have lost the ability to think critically. They are a lost generation, and it’s really not their fault. It’s the fault of Generation X that didn’t solve the problems of the Baby Boomers and all the issues Doc Thompson brought up in his discussion above.
That’s why the Superbowl seemed flat to me, less spectacular than in years past, and somehow distracted and aloof. It was the first time I visibly noticed that the social problems we’ve all been holding back and pushing under the rug, started to show even above all the festivities of an American Ritual.
And this is how it’s supposed to sound! Don’t make a joke of it next year just to play to the younger crowd. They don’t know the difference. But some of us do.
Egypt is not the first and it won’t be the last to suffer the type of insurrection witnessed upon the final weekend of January 2011. The crime in that civil disobedience that has already claimed lives is not whether or not the radical’s clamoring to over-throw a ruthless dictator, only to inject a radical Muslim government which believes in killing all whom do not practice their religious ideology. It’s not that the United States has yet been caught again supporting such a dictator in order to maintain stability in a world still behaving with an infants mentality. You’d think the CIA and “other” forces would have learned from Saddam Hussein, and Osama Bin Laden and a long list of others that had support of the United States, to not attempt to manipulate governments with subversive tactics, because they almost always come back to haunt us later.
If you want to hear a great scenario of what’s going on in Egypt listen to Doc Thompson’s guest here:
The real crime here is in the destruction of history. The vandalism of the Egyptian Museum is a modern example of such destruction, and insight into the catastrophic devastation of our own world history.
Of course the official report is that just a couple of mummies had their heads ripped off, and there was some broken glass. I’m including here a number of pictures supplied by hyperallergic.com that show the extent of that damage. You can see the source article by clicking this link. The damage to this very fine museum is extremely alarming to me in this modern age.
I have been thoroughly enraged most of my life that the Romans burned the Library in Alexandria. Depending on what story you believe, Caesar set fire to the Egyptian Fleet when trapped and outnumbered and the fire spread to the city and destroyed the Library there. The information lost in that act of destruction most likely cost mankind a firm understanding of our past.
The constant trouble in Iraq and the Middle East in general has deprived many researchers from proper archeology of the region. Most of what has been done up to this point is just speculation supported with some artifacts. Because of the violence, research can’t take place openly. The loss of the Library of Baghdad was a tremendous failure.
Hitler participated in book burning, the Spanish conquistadors destroyed the Mayan codices, and the Qin Dynasty of China burned numerous books and buried scholars to suppress the past.
Here in the United States Anthony Comstock founded the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, founded in 1873 to prevent the spread of “lewd, objectionable” books. Under this Society was the destruction of around 15 tons of books, 284,000 pounds of plates for printing books, and nearly 4 million pictures. I first ran into the work of Comstock when I was a kid of about 10 or 11 years old. I used to subscribe to a Rare Books and Prints company in New York that would send me a quarterly catalog of rare books under their collection. Many of these books were several thousand dollars each, and were one or two of a kind, and Comstock had helped make those books so rare.
These days, the places I most enjoy are places like Barnes and Noble. I love the book store down on Newport on the Levy. And I love Books a Million. My wife and I often spend hours and hours in these stores every couple of weeks. I also adore Amazon.com because they sell, or can connect you with many rare books. One of my great treasures is a simi “rare” book by Claire Chennault called Way of the Fighter written in 1947 and published in 1949. I looked for that book for over ten years and my daughter had found it on Amazon and given it to me on Christmas one year. It’s in good condition and costs well over $100, so it wasn’t easy for her to get. That book isn’t as rare as others, but the point is, it shouldn’t be rare, because it was printed in the modern age. The story with that book is that Chennault was very; very critical of the United States policy in China which eventually allowed communism to take over the country after he’d spent 6 or 7 years defending China from Japan, and the rise of communism with just a rag-tag group of fighters called the Flying Tigers. Chennault, a brilliant general and tactician, predicted the rise of the conflict in Korea, and in Vietnam, but nobody listened. Instead, there was pressure from the government to the publisher to not print many of those books from that aging general, and to just let him fade away into obscurity, which is pretty much what happened to Chennault and his predictions.
What can be learned from this is that Chennault’s book is only 60 years old, and it is evidence of why a book had restricted printing, and gradually it will be completely wiped out as people die off, and sell books like that in garage sales and they end up molding away in a basement someplace. In a hundred years, they’ll all be gone. That brings us back to the Library of Alexandria founded sometime around 323–283 BC and may have had tablets and papyrus thousands of years old.
Here is the description from Wikipedia: The first known library of its kind to gather a serious collection of books from beyond its country’s borders, the Library at Alexandria was charged with collecting the entire world’s knowledge. It did so through an aggressive and well-funded royal mandate involving trips to the book fairs of Rhodes and Athens[8] and a policy of pulling the books off every ship that came into port. They kept the original texts and made copies to send back to their owners. [9] This detail is informed by the fact that Alexandria, because of its man-made bidirectional port between the mainland and the Pharos island, welcomed trade from the East and West, and soon found itself the international hub for trade, as well as the leading producer of papyrus and, soon enough, books. Talk about rare books.
And when there was a conflict even out in the harbor, and the fire accidently spread and destroyed the library, those rare books are now lost forever, and the history with it.There are more than a few modern educators, or people that make their money off education, such as union leaders, that think some of my articles on “cryptic” anthropological issues, such as the Giants of Ohio, and the Real Origins of the Human Race are hokey. These are the same type of idiots that ridiculed Isaac Newton, or Christopher Columbus for their beliefs. People who are “really” educated, not just making money off it, know that there is a lot that we don’t know and can’t know unless we do the research.
So when you see thugs, radicals, socialist, creeps, revolutionaries, soldiers of fortune, and other opportunists hiding in the crowds of protesters in Egypt, know that there is a serious risk of losing valuable aspects of our past that is already swallow at best. Seeing tanks parked outside the Pyramids of Egypt is a sad and pathetic site.
It is inconceivable how many archeological sites were destroyed in the Middle East because Woodrow Wilson and his conspirators after World War l created through the Treaty of Versailles countries like Iraq and Iran and other territories that were intended to be run by British and French interests, finally breaking up the Ottoman Empire. And for those that don’t understand anything about the Ottoman Empire, it looks as though these various factions are looking to recreate it with radical Muslim fundamentalism. Through these conflicts, we are going to lose countless artifacts that connect us with the past, which will prevent us from fixing our future. So while the news broadcasts talk about the increase in oil prices, and the struggle of Israel, the real strategy will go unreported and therefore is the real cost to society.
I wish George Bush had leveled with the American People about why defending the faults of Wilson and the gang was important to the United States now. Because we committed ourselves to defending the region whether or not we have a right to or whether the land should return to strictly Muslim rule. The real evil lays in the hands of the progressive view of the world everywhere and their soft little minds of sympathy that can’t see one foot in front of themselves. To back out from the region now would only invite more violence and create a united and dangerous enemy that would lead to a much larger scale war. It’s far easier to defeat small factions of tribes or political groups. But several countries united under a common cause, like what’s happening, can lead to a much more bloody conflict. The “oil” buzz word just makes a complicated situation easy for people to relate to. But when you get caught in that over simplification, like Bush did, it makes you look dishonest and incompetent. That’s what the revolutionaries in Egypt right now are saying about America and our support of their hated dictator.
The damage to the Egyptian Museum is a travesty to us all.
Now, for those out there that question the intention of Islamic extremists, read their strategy in a PDF file. Just click on the link below. The first half is in Arabic, but the second half is in English. Just scroll through till you see the English words.
Keep in mind that there are already sleeper agents in the United States, just as the Communist Sleeper Agents were put in place under the guise of “progressivism.” That means members of the media are playing a part as “sleeper agents.” And if you think that’s too conspiratorial, stop watching Sex in the City for a little bit and read the PDF file and educate yourself.
My wife and I had dinner with an instructor for Forensic Anthropology on Saturday and I learned how there is a shortage of Forensic Anthropologists. That little fact surprised me. “How can that be? Where do you find Forensic Anthropology employment? Who’s paying for them?” It was an honest question.
I received an honest answer. “The shortage is due to museums and other research facilities that are trying to comply with the “Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act”
“The what?” I asked. “What the hell is that?”
He proceeded to educate me which is most accurately described in this definition from Wikipedia.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), Pub.L. 101-601, 104 Stat. 3048, is a United States federal law passed on 16 November 1990 requiring federal agencies and institutions that receive federal funding[1] to return Native American cultural items and human remains to their respective peoples. Cultural items include funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. In addition, it authorizes a program of federal grants to assist in the repatriation process. It is now the strongest federal legislation pertaining to aboriginal remains and artifacts.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________ “Are you kidding me?” I asked. “What bunch of idiots passed that law? That has to cost a fortune.”
My dinner guest was agreeing with me, but being a man of science, he is eternally sympathetic to funding needs. Then I remembered when he and I had watched John Dunbar’s epic journey into the land of the Sioux Nation together around that time, then it came back to me. The film Dances with Wolves by Kevin Costner came out on November 21st of 1990. And the NAGPRA was passed just days before the release of the film.
The Heard Museum Report had been debated for three years starting in 1987 and had been passed by the 101st Congress as advanced copies of Dances With Wolves was circulating around Washington, after all Costner has just had a wild success with Field of Dreams. So there was a lot of buzz around the new movie about Native Americans. So with the usual sentimentality that engulfs the puffy coffee enriched minds of bureaucracy, they passed the NAGPRA without thinking much about the cost to science, or the tax payer.
“That is one of the dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard in the history of bad ideas,” I stated in clichéd fashion, knowing it was a cliché when I said it.
My dinner guest proceeded to educate me on various cases and pointed me in the direction of an article by Jan Bernstein:
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NAGPRA – Future Applicability Rule Article written for SPNHC by Jan Bernstein Does the institution that you work for have Native American cultural items under its control or in its possession and does it also receive Federal funds? If so, more than likely you already know that your institution is a “museum” and therefore is legally required to comply with 25 U.S.C. 3001, which is more commonly known as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act or NAGPRA. But what you might not know is that there are new NAGPRA compliance rules for what is known in the Act as Future Applicability.
These rules apply to the following situations: 1) The museum or Federal agency acquires a new collection item or finds a previously unreported item that may be covered by the Act (covered items are Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony; 2) A previously unrecognized Indian group is recognized by the Federal government as an Indian tribe. 3) An institution in possession or control of an item or items that may be covered by the Act receives Federal funds for the first time; and 4) The museum or Federal agency revises a decision previously published in the Federal Register.
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was signed into law on November 16, 1990, but it wasn’t until March 21, 2007 that the final rule for §10.13 Future Applicability of NAGPRA was promulgated. It was published in Federal Register Volume 72, Number 54 and it applies to existing and newly acquired museum collections. Those are Sections Five, Six, and Seven of the Act. It does not apply to inadvertent discoveries or planned excavations which are addressed in Section Three of the Act.
The Future Applicability rules became effective on April 20, 2007. And on that date it established statutory deadlines for completion of NAGPRA Section Five Human Remains Inventories/Notices of Inventory Completion and NAGPRA Section Six Summaries (unassociated funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony). For you organization, the first deadline may be October 20, 2007. The rule set a six months deadline to produce and distribute a NAGPRA Section Six Summary for a new holding or a previously unreported holding newly located that may be unassociated funerary objects, sacred objects, or objects of cultural patrimony. October 20, 2007 is the deadline for the Summary distribution if the new holding was acquired or found prior to April 20, 2007. Your organization has two years from the promulgation date or acquisition/discovery date to prepare a NAGPRA Section Five Human Remains Inventory/Notice of Inventory Completion in consultation with affiliated Indian tribes or Native Hawaiian organizations. If the new holding was acquired or located prior to April 20, 2007, you have until April 20, 2009 to do culturally affiliation consultation and distribute a NAGPRA Section Five Human Remains Inventory and publish a Notice of Inventory Completion in the Federal Register.
A newly Federally recognized Indian tribe has standing under NAGPRA and museums and Federal agencies covered by the Act are required by the Future Applicability Rule to send Section Six Summaries to these Tribes within six month of recognition. Federal Agencies and museums are also required within two years of recognition to prepare in consultation with culturally affiliated Indian tribes NAGPRA Section Five Inventories/Notices of Inventory Completion.
Maybe your organization didn’t receive any Federal funds between November 16, 1990 when the law passed and November 16, 1995 when the last deadline occurred. But since that time it began to receive such funds. Those funds may be flowing directly to your organization or to your parent organization. For example, maybe you are working for private college anthropology or art department and another department at the college started to accept Federal contracts or grants after 11/16/1995. Those funds have redefined your department as a museum covered by NAGPRA. If this is the case, your organization is required to comply with NAGPRA. If you find your organization is in this situation, you must within three years from the time the Federal funds were received or from the effective date of the Rule (4/10/07), whichever is later provide a Section Six Summary to Indian tribes or Native Hawaiian organizations that are most likely to be culturally affiliated. Within Five years of the date of receipt of Federal funds, or within five years of the effective date of this Rule, whichever is later, you must prepare, in consultation with affiliated Indian tribes or Native Hawaiian organizations, a Section Five Human Remains Inventory/Notice of Inventory Completion.
If your organization previously published a Notice of Inventory Completion, but the information has since substantively changed, the Future Applicability Rule requires a Notice of Inventory Completion Correction be published in the Federal Register. A substantive change is a change in the culturally affiliated Indian tribes or a change in the minimum number of individuals count. The National NAGPRA Program will assist you with this process.
What does this mean for those of you who represent a Federally Recognized Indian tribe? Well, I hope you will see some new Summaries hitting your desk as well as an increase in the number of requests to consult in preparation of new human remains Inventories. The rules can be found on the National NAGPRA Program’s web site. I wish you all great success in your NAGPRA compliance efforts.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________ “How can an anthropologist or archeologist be expected to return the remains of Indian Tribes when much of the tribal movements aren’t even understood by anybody yet? There are still completely mysterious cultures that no science organization understands regarding Native Americans.” I was thinking of Cahokia outside of St. Louis, and several of the mound builders in the Ohio Valley. The Shawnee had in fact migrated from Florida before settling in Ohio. Few tribes could be traced back for thousands of years.
The instructor laughed. “That’s part of the problem. There are a lot of finds and burial relics that predate 1492, so it is nearly impossible to return cultural items to specific tribes.”
I was getting angry. “What about the ancestors of Anglo Saxons that were fleeing tyrants of Europe to settle the frontier that were cannibalized in giant kettles and eaten like soup, entire families were slain for no reason what-so-ever.”
“That’s not politically correct,” he laughed at me.
“That’s politics, which is the same as what comes out of an elephants ass.”
“Well,” he said, “its business. Laws like that put people to work and make people feel like they’re doing something important.”
He mentioned Bernstein and Associates, who I looked up and read their literature.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Bernstein & Associates, LLC We work with Indian tribes, museums, universities, and governmental agencies on Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) compliance projects.
Services we provide to our clients
NAGPRA Grant Writing We write successful Consultation/Documentation and Repatriation grant proposals. Our clients have received over $1,000,000 (one million dollars) in NAGPRA Consultation/Documentation and Repatriation Grant grant awards. Annually since 1999, we have written at least one NAGPRA Consultation/Documentation grant for clients and every year we’ve had a grant funded.
Jan Bernstein teaches a two-day NAGPRA Grant Writing Seminar for the National Preservation Institute.
NAGPRA Consultation Support There is a tremendous amount of work that goes into NAGPRA consultation planning, implementation, documentation, and follow-up. Official tribal representatives frequently praise our culturally sensitive, insightful, respectful approach to consultation. Bernstein & Associates helps Indian tribes, museums, and federal agencies with all phases to whatever degree suits your needs: • Meeting planning • Consultation preparation including document research and assembly • Consultation documentation • Consultation follow-up
Since 1990, we have organized and facilitated several hundred individual and group consultations with tribes that have traditional territory in all regions of the country including Alaska and Hawaii.
Repatriation, Physical Transfer, and Reburial We have worked with tribal leaders, official tribal NAGPRA representatives, and traditional religious leaders in the Southwest, Plains, Great Basin, and Southeastern US as well as Peru (non-NAGPRA) to facilitate the repatriation and reburial of nearly 1000 individuals and hundreds of cultural items. Bernstein & Associates is available to: • Write repatriation grant proposals for up to $15,000 to defray the costs associated with reburial • Provide assistance in writing valid repatriation requests and repatriation claims • Write draft notices of intent to repatriate • Facilitate the development and implementation of reburial plans and agreements
NAGPRA Summary and Human Remains Inventory Preparation Because of the long-standing, positive working relationships that we have built with the tribes throughout the U.S since the mid 1980s, we are extremely successful in aiding clients in the preparation of culturally sensitive NAGPRA Summaries and Inventories. Every client utilizes our services in a slightly different way. Some of the many services we provided to clients are: . Assess collections to determine which tribes should receive summaries and invitations to consult on cultural affiliation for development of Inventories – Write letters to tribes using our tribal contact database, which is constantly updated with current contact information for tribal leaders and NAGPRA reps, as well as consultation style preferences – Initiate Summary consultation after initial correspondence – Facilitate NAGPRA consultation conferences
Strategic Planning
We help clients assess what needs to be done to comply with NAGPRA, how long it will take, and develop a chronology. We then break it down into manageable projects that could be funded by grants for museum clients. We provide clients with a written plan that can be used to track progress.
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“So it’s all about getting federal grants,” I asked.
He smiled and sipped his wine. “It’s always about money, and that’s why there’s a need for Forensic Anthropologists.”
Then our conversation over the rest of the wine migrated to the Kennewick Man, which I found a nice back story below.
__________________________________________ Source World of Forensic Science The remains of an ancient human found along a river in Kennewick, Washington, in 1996 set off a heated debate about the ownership and future of the skeleton. Scientists argued that the skeleton, dubbed Kennewick Man, could provide new information about human migration in North America, while Native Americans claimed him as an ancestor and wanted to bury him according to their rites. Forensic anthropological findings and cultural evidence were presented in court procedures over the course of nine years while the fate of the Kennewick Man was debated.
The story of Kennewick Man began in July 1996, when two college students watching hydroplane races found a human skeleton along the Columbia River. The young men turned the remains over to local police, who realized that they were probably very old. The bones were then given to forensic anthropologist James Chatters for evaluation. Chatters reconstructed the skeleton, which was 80–90% complete. He determined that it was from a man who was probably five feet nine or 10 inches and about 40–50 years old when he died. He showed little evidence of arthritis, indicating that he wasn’t used to carrying heavy weights and that he might have been a wandering hunter. Dental examinations showed that the skull contained 30 of the 32 teeth and that they were in good shape, indicating that he probably had a diet that included lots of soft foods like meat. He was taller and thinner than most ancient Native Americans and the back of his skull was not flattened from a cradleboard as is commonly observed in skeletons of ancient Native Americans. In addition, the man had a stone spear point lodged in his pelvis and there was evidence of severe trauma to his rib cage that probably limited the use of his arm. Using computerized tomography (CT), Chatters determined that the spear point was serrated and leaf-shaped and typical of the types of spears used between 8500–4500 years ago. He hypothesized that the skeleton was either from a European pioneer who had been attacked by native people using stone-age weapons or from an ancient human. Chatters sent pieces of the bones to a laboratory for carbon dating, which determined that the age of the skeleton was between 9,200–9,400 years old, making the skeleton one of the oldest, and most complete, ever found in North America. Once the age of the skeleton was determined, several groups came forward, vying for control of the remains. A group of five Native American tribes in the region, the Umatilla, the Yakama, the Nez Perce, the Wanapum, and the Colville, wanted to accord the remains the same rites given to any Native American, namely a speedy burial. They cited the legal authority of the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGRA), which requires the return of American Indian remains to tribes. As news of the unique find spread throughout the scientific community, a coalition of eight anthropologists and archaeologists petitioned for their right to study the ancient remains prior to burial. The scientists believed that study of the Kennewick Man could reveal important information about early human migrations into North America. The Native American group believed that any manipulation of the remains would show enormous disrespect to the dead and vehemently opposed scientific investigation of the skeleton, which they called the Ancient One. Because some of the features of the Kennewick Man, such as his height and the shape of his skull, indicated that he might not be of Native American ancestry but rather of European descent, a group of people representing the ancient Norse religion called Asatru also petitioned the court for the right to the remains.
The ensuing legal battle raged for more than nine years. One of the key questions of debate in the courts concerned whether or not the skeleton was subject to NAGRA. NAGRA requires that all Native American remains be returned to the tribe for burial, however it was unclear if the Kennewick man was of Native American ancestry. Eventually the court ruled that some scientific study was required in order to establish the origin of the skeleton and between 1998 and 2000, the Department of the Interior coordinated these studies. A 1999 physical examination of the bones established that the Kennewick Man shared most physical characteristics with people from Southern Asia. In April 2000, samples of bone from the Kennewick Man’s skeleton were removed and sent to two different laboratories for DNA testing. Because of the age of the bones, it was impossible to extract sufficient DNA for analysis and the results of the study were inconclusive. After a series of appeals by all sides, in February 2004, a U.S. Federal judge ruled that it was impossible to prove that the Kennewick Man’s ancestry was culturally affiliated to any of the Native American tribes in the region and gave scientists the right to go forward with their investigation. In 2005, plans were outlined for study three-phase study involving as many as 23 different scientists.
The dinner was over and it was time to go home. The impact of this NAGPRA has seriously hampered science by bringing politics into the whole business and allowed ourselves to be hampered by sensitivity. America had allowed our guilt over pushing the Native American’s westward to cripple us the same way we currently do over slavery, neither of which we can do anything about now. All we can do is learn from those experiences, which is what science is all about.
Instead of learning and expanding our worldly knowledge, we’re wasting time appeasing political factions, getting grants so we can move some bones around the country and argue over bones that pre-date our known understanding of history, which is shallow at best.
But that is the nature of politics. It’s equivalent to living life in a straight jacket. All I can do is shake my head at the invention of yet another useless government created position, a Forensic Anthropologist that spends less time digging and understanding the past, and more time filling out papers to qualify for federal grants.
It is terribly sad that Clarence Dupnik and Keith Obermann quickly seized the shooting tragedy in Arizona to attempt to erode the progress of the conservative movement.
Hey…………….guys, the kid was a screwball. One of his favorite books was the Communist Manifesto! That’s as far from the Tea Party movement as you get. Look at his Facebook page. He worked for “Children Protective Services, and wanted to be a woman someday.” Does that sound like a conservative leaning, tea partier?
Yet while the poor victims were still on the operating table, these two irresponsible people chose to seize the opportunity to take a shot at those who want to see the county return to traditional American values.
Here is the Sheriff in Tucson, Clarence Dupnik.
And here is Keith Obermannjumping quickly to capitalize on the progressive position well before the facts were in, hoping to erode away the effects of the recent conservative gains in popularity.
Who confuses who? Listen to this Socialist in Ohio spewing confusing rhetoric that is intended for young people.
And in tragedy those same leftists try to assign blame away from them, quickly, onto a faction of society that is trying to help young people like this kid desire to do something more important with their lives than trying to become a woman. Don’t let the facts get in the way of your opinion. I’ve been to a lot of Tea Party events and ALL of them are like this. CLICK HERE!
I have done plenty of reading to understand that there has been ever-present within the United States a clear and present danger to our country and everything it stands for. These enemies hide like cancer cells within the body of our society and use our Constitution to embed themselves into every aspect of our nation’s activity.
I suppose I was a bit shocked to learn to what extent communism had penetrated our society prior to World War II. Heck, even Ronald Reagan inquired about joining the communist party in 1938 when he was a young actor in Hollywood. I couldn’t help but think of Johnny Depp, George Clooney, or Sean Penn, today’s Hollywood socialists, and wonder what the common appeal is to the seductive power of communism.
Then there is this video which I ran across the other day about the New York Communist Society. I watched this video with intrigue, having to struggle to hold back my laughter while at the same time keeping myself from becoming sick.
Oh…..did you catch that? They like to be called Progressives. Not the “C” word.
What most of these communist’s have in common is that they are young, and particularly sheltered from the harsh realities of the world. They have not yet cast themselves into the fires of life to become battle hardened by experience. And in the case of Hollywood, where once you’re on the inside track, the money comes easy and minds go soft with inactivity.
I remember sitting in a trailer in Hollywood getting my make-up applied by the same woman that had just put on the make-up to Johnny Depp just hours before me, and she made comments about what nice skin I had. The reason that stuck with me is that Depp is a big time star, what some would consider one of the most attractive men in the world, and here was a make-up person that thought my skin was more favorable to work with. It put in perspective for me that much of Hollywood is image once you get behind the façade of things, and many of the actors that perpetrate that image, and the make-up people that apply the image to their faces. It’s about building images, and it is easy for simple minded people to become seduced by Utopian ideas, and in Hollywood beyond the catering trucks, the agents that sit in their cars with a phone to their ears and one on the radio, and the camera crews, well paid actors look out over the Hollywood Hills and travel the streets of Santa Monica, and Beverly Hills as if they lived on another planet.
Those actors create the image that young students attempt to live up to, and when you listen to these “hippie” types repeating what their favorite star has said in some magazine, or entertainment TV show like “E” they turn to these leftist oriented groups like this New York Communist Society to fulfill the dreams of their silver screen heroes.
I emerged from such make-up trailers to ponder these images and relate them to my own experiences. You quickly realize that they don’t like you personally because you represent a world outside their understanding, but they put up with you because you have something they want, otherwise you wouldn’t be there to begin with. And such experiences have given me insight into the pathetic dreams of communists.
The works of Marx and Engels is laughable as a philosophy, rooted naively in sensitivity that is contrary to the nature of all existence. What people who subscribe to those beliefs basically hold on to is that all wealth in the world exists like air, and the rich set themselves up like trolls to guard access to it. And if the trolls were removed, then all people everywhere would have access to that wealth.
The trouble is that wealth doesn’t just exist. The elements that make up wealth do, but the organization of those elements that create the flow of money have to be created from an entrepreneur, and capitalism creates the foundation of the entrepreneur.
I know several people that live in other countries, and particularly England. The Labor Party in England created an environment that ended English Imperialism, which they are guilty of maintaining an Empire at the turn of the last century. It is assumed that America, because of our close relation to England would pursue the same course if left to our own devices. But, what that Labor Party has brought to England is row after row of the same buildings, a tax rate exceeding 50%, and their ability to export virtually nothing. They have become a service oriented society. Those same floppy minds have their hooks in America, and can be seen in that video.
Ironically, it was when Ronald Reagan was working on a film at Elstree Studios in England that scared him away from communism. Living in that country and looking at the run down, un-motivated conditions of the employees, and the residents in the neighborhoods around Elstree Studios set Ronald Reagan on a pro-capitalist journey that would propel the United States to greatness, if only for a short time in the 80’s. Reagan returned from England to the labor riots at Warner Brothers and noticed how many communists had penetrated the labor movement in Hollywood, which Reagan was president of the screen-actors guild and had intimate knowledge of such things, and was on the front line when the McCarthy Hearings took place. Reagan had made the transition because he had enough of an inquiring mind to continue growing, where many of his fellow actors were just happy collecting checks and vacationing in the mountains. Reagan’s pursuit of capitalism cost him his marriage to his first wife, Jane. But Reagan learned, thankfully, of the foolishness of communism through growing up and maturing into a middle-aged man.
And that seems to be the pattern. Young people full of compassion and fresh ideas, hungry to reshape the world into their own images seem prone to the utopian ideas of communism. And entertainment is run by the young. Most studio execs are under 35, same as agents and publicists, as well as the clientele they represent. Sports are in the same situation, where young people rule and old players considered over-the-hill are 38. In a world obsessed with the young, it’s easy to understand how these boondoggled ideas emerged and how those goofy young people could even conceive wasting their time singing songs of leftist propaganda.
Yet it’s age and wisdom that have the real value, and typically once people get both, the move more to the right on the political spectrum is what happens. It would seem those that don’t move to the right after achieving age; have poor minds to begin with. I’m thinking of people like Francis Piven, and Bill Ayers. They are just delinquents at heart in adult bodies that haven’t developed in maturing beyond age 15.
A way to describe the situation is to compare communism, and doing one of the most difficult things which is to give an employee a review. I have had to give hundreds of reviews, and the temptation is always to sit down with the employee and only discuss the nice aspects of an employee, even though the real function of a review is to let the employee know what they need to do to improve them. You can determine the strength of many managers based on the type of reviews they give their employees. Compassion is often thought of as a high quality, but what it really does is allow people to use their weaknesses as handicaps. A good manager would find the weakness in an employee and encourage them to attack that weakness to become better. You may hurt that employees feelings, but in the scheme of things, you will not only make that employee better, but you will also improve your companies operations. I can say that being a compassionate liberal is much easier and mentally less taxing than a conservative that is pushing those around them to achieve all they can with the least amount of resources. Compassion as many people know it is rooted in weakness. Weakness is giving in to shortcomings.
Communism is a disease that is only attractive to the minds of the weak and lazy. Behind advocates of communism you will find the mind of a lethargic being craving the safety of the herd. Such people have no desire to contribute equally to anything, and there will always be people like this in the world. The folly of our times however, is that we’ve allowed those types of people to actually have input in our society because of our defense of free speech, and desire to give them equal footing in our society. But what it really equates to is asking your 5 year old how to drive to California from New York City. The wise of us would ask the opinion of the youngster and pat them on their heads for their attempt at an answer. But we’d use our wisdom and age to determine the correct route based on our experience and knowledge of the terrain. And the child would sit in the back seat and color in their coloring book.
That’s where youthful opinion belongs, in the back seat.
Let’s start off the New Year with yet another college professor, and former hippie radical that is helping to shape the world we live in today.
Meet Frances Fox Pivan, in her own words.
Here she talks about Glenn Beck. What’s interesting is that she admits that the progressive process was already a larger plan by the late 60’s.
Piven is all about subversion and undermining the power structure that exists in favor of a more level society. That’s called socialism. It’s easy for her to point at people who are calling her out on the issue and pretend surprise. But she has a long history of supporting that leveling of the playing field and revealing that the strategy of undoing America as a world power is the overall objective.
