To those that want to know the answers to everything they are right in front of you. Literature, even though considered a harbor for the liberal arts degree, thus creating just another damn hippie to cast their unproductive concepts of love and peace in a world that is quite the opposite, literature is about truth ultimately. It is in the interpretation of that truth that everything gets distorted.

This is what happened in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which I’ve proclaimed openly, is my favorite book. Zarathustra came down out of the mountains to help “mankind” understand that they can become “better” than just human beings. That’s where the Ubermensch idea comes from translated loosely into English as “the overman.” I learned about Nietzsche reading a lot of Joseph Campbell and was drawn to Nietzsche’s anti-institutional ideas in quotes that littered the massive body of work known as The Masks of God, which is a four volume set that Campbell spent many years writing based on the course he taught at Sara Lawrence College. One thing that Campbell was doing in his comparative mythology work was breaking down the differences between collective societies, such as you find in the east, and individual oriented societies that you find in the Occident, otherwise the west.

Where the west fails, and I’m thinking of Europe in this case is when they attempt to copy the east with their own culture. Somewhere in that attempt progressivism was created, and has been and will always be a disease to the creative power of the individual which propels all society.

There is a reason that you don’t find development in Africa except what the American or European mind brought to it. There is a reason that China spent many years as a stagnate country. They had periods of renaissance, one such period during our European dark ages was quite explosive, but fizzled out only to be reawakened once England handed Hong Kong back to the Chinese in 1999 which they then decided to adopt their culture around which has helped create the renaissance they are currently experiencing. But ultimately collectivism, especially progressivism, is an idea killer that hinders society in terrible ways for the trade-off of social security.

Two bodies of literature jump out at me exhibiting these collectivism warnings. One is A Brave New World, the other is Atlas Shrugged.

I wrote my own book, The Symposium of Justice in 2004, many years before I eventually read Atlas Shrugged myself. I was surprised that Ayn Rand had created similar characters and themes as I did, and she did it over 50 years ago. It might have something to do with the fact that we both studied Nietzsche at some length. I’m thinking particularly of the diner scene, which seemed awfully close to something I did without knowledge of Ayn’s work. The reason? Because truth is truth. There aren’t these degrees of negotiation along some political lines where there are extreme right-winged views or extreme left-winged views and somehow in government these views must be compromised into some stew of thought representing everyone as best as possible. People who seek the truth and find it, come to similar conclusions that cannot be escaped.

Because of my kids, I get to meet a lot of young people, and I must say they are a very disappointing group, bent and distorted around years of progressive thought. I blame progressivism for their foolish behavior, the desire to get “trashed” as they put it, where their right of passage to adulthood is the ability to drink and lose consciousness. That is a pathetic goal. These young people are a soft species robbed of honor because they have been taught to be entirely too sensitive for their own good, indecisive, insecure, raised in broken homes where step parents are a major factor, the whole situation is a mess, and progressive thought is to blame. The most recent catastrophe cast upon the fragile psyche of today’s youth is a thing called Facebook Depression. Listen to Doc Thompson of 700 WLW talk about this mysterious new progressive illness here.

One young boy that my youngest daughter knows lost his job for sleeping and playing on Facebook during his work hours. The kid is a video game wiz so I know there is intelligence there. But he can’t handle basics of reality. For him, it is acceptable to fall off the horse and let the horse keep on running down the path leaving him behind. I feel sorry for the kid because his fundamental belief system will prevent him from seeing the truth of the reasons he continues to fail. You could sit the kid down and scream at him and it would be no different from yelling at a dog that wants to please you, but can only wag its tail or drop its ears, completely unable to understand what you’re trying to tell it.

This kid is just a product of progressivism. I don’t blame him as much as I feel pity, much like I feel pity of an insect that falls into a swimming pool and struggles to free itself, hoping a kind hand lifts it from the water before it drowns. There are millions upon millions of these kids functioning in the world today, most of them completely lost by adults that are just as lost. This is the result of progressivism. Progressives seek a level of fairness that is not earned, but is perceived as a right, which it’s not.

The world is built by people who produce. It is very simple. There is no room for interpretation or negotiation on that simple fact. There are those who create. Then there are those that feed off that creation. The trouble always occurs when those that feed off creation take too much, or stand in the way of that creation. And the problem with modern society is that we don’t create enough, and those that do create keep it to themselves so they can avoid the problems with progressive thought.

Ayn Rand’s book has been out there for everyone to read for a great number of years. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel here. When a congressman or senator says to the Speaker of the House, “you need to abandon the tea party,” they just don’t get it. They are as foolish as the young person I told you about that think something is going to fall out of the sky and somehow fix his life if only he drinks one more drink, or goes to school and gets a degree for a job that doesn’t exist. It is only by getting down in the mud and fighting, and creating a new job that anything happens. The tea party knows what Ayn Rand knew 50 years ago, that progressive thought will kill your country.

She wrote Atlas Shrugged at a time that socialism hadn’t failed yet. In fact, there was a real threat that the Soviet Union might overtake the United States and its capitalist ways. When Ronald Reagan took the gloves off for a bit in the 80’s, we saw how rapidly capitalism could work, and how quickly socialism failed. Reagan’s strategy worked and proved Ayn Rand correct. Now, in hind-sight we have the benefit to go back to her work and admire how she arrived at truthful conclusions that are truly American in their context. The critics talk about the 80’s as a selfish age, which ironically is explored in great detail in Atlas Shrugged from all angles. Selfish or terms like it are cast from those in the progressive camp, from their distorted perspective corrupted by a sense of entitled fairness which does not exist anywhere in the universe because the laws of physics prohibit such a preposterous notion.

One element in that book that haunts me is the discovery of a new type of engine built by a genius that turns his back on the world in a way because he knows that the world as it is designed through progressive thought will reject new ideas because all new ideas threaten the security of people. This engine runs off strictly static electricity. It would never need fuel, oil or any other element. It would run along the same premise that lightning is generated in the atmosphere. The sickening thing about that bit of science fiction is that it is rooted in fact.

I’ve told you on these pages about regenerative medicine. I’ve told you about the Skycar. There are many, many inventions sitting on the shelf right now, that are being held back from society for all the reasons that progressivism fails, and that failure is outlined beautifully in the book Atlas Shrugged.

If you haven’t read it and you want to know the truth of what is going on in the world. If you want to understand why the welfare system fails, why government regulation is bad, and how the feeders in life, called “the looters” in the book are destructive read that book. Forget the mindless politicians. They are looters, every one of them. We must have some level of government in this country, but we don’t need it to be nearly as large as it is now.

It is true that there will be suffering. Those that are feeders off society will have a difficult time adapting, but this process must happen. It is not a matter of right or left. It is literally right or wrong.

Nature does not lie. The reason progressives believe that the earth is so vulnerable is because at their true nature, their mentality, they believe that they can change the world. They can engineer thought. They can engineer control of the whole world. But with nature, it is survival of the fittest. Progressives seek to change that. The reason, well not everyone can be the fittest, so in the pursuit of fairness the strong are attacked, and the strong are what everyone feeds off of. If you bring down the strong, there is nothing for anybody to feed off of. And government, especially a large, progressive government that is extremely expensive is that there are too many people feeding off the strong and society will crumble.

The key is that if you want to be a feeder, or a “looter,” then find yourself a creator that is a fair-minded person that appreciates your labor, because through competition, the creator in order to get a competitive edge over other creators will adapt to necessity, just as a stream will always run downhill and find the path of least resistance. If you want the benefit of that flow, put yourself in that path of least resistance and you’ll always be employed and of a benefit to a creator. And if you are a creator, create. Don’t attempt to be a feeder if you are a creator. You will only frustrate the hell out of yourself.

Every single politician in existence is a feeder. They are almost completely worthless. Yet they believe that they have some kind of dominion over everything that is created. And that is what needs to change. This is a belief given to us from Europe, which is a corrupt notion. It hasn’t worked for them, and it won’t work for us.

If you want to know how to do that, understand what needs to be done or how to fix what’s wrong with America and you want the truth go to your local book store and read Atlas Shrugged. The movie will be out soon also. But if you really want to soak up something that won’t lie to you, go get that book! Today! Then watch the news armed with the truth and see what you think about comments over the federal budget and what we can cut or should cut.

The cost if you don’t take a step to understand the truth, as a taxpayer, is that we will find ourselves in the situation that London found itself over the weekend, which is ridiculous and pathetic, headed up by people like the kid I described above, someone who thinks they are entitled to a good life and everything will magically fall in their lap without them doing anything to create that reality. Because they believe the great lie of progressive thought, which is an audacious naïveté of human influence seeking to alter the behavior of nature itself.

Literature, especially literature that has stood the test of time, will cast light where the darkness of progressivism resides like termites deep in the foundations of our existence. Figure out who you are and be it. That’s the first step because we’re not all equal in the world of Mother Nature and never will be.

If there is a book that can give America a blueprint on how to rebuild the country, it’s Atlas Shrugged. Read it word for word and understand it sentence by sentence.

Rich Hoffman

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