I didn’t know that Ben Swann had left Channel 19 officially until I emailed him the other day regarding some info on the IRS scandal in Cincinnati. The email had bounced back and I was reminded that Swann was now on the next stage of his journalistic adventure, an endeavor that he fully expects to change the world with. For those who do not yet know, Swan is starting his own investigative journalism endeavor that is quite ambitious, and incredibly bold. But who would expect less from the co-anchor of Fox News 19 in Cincinnati who became internationally famous with his Reality Check expositions which featured hard reporting of very controversial material. Swann is raising money for his new endeavor which looks to prove a nightmare for government statists all over the world and is something to get excited about. To date, Swann has raised $140,000 of his intended goal of $1,250,000. I would encourage you dear reader to contribute something if you have it to Swann’s endeavor. A preview of what he has in mind can be seen below. Under the flag of this pioneering effort, Ben Swann has an opportunity to bring much-needed offense to the liberty movement that will save a lot of money down the road for everyone, so the investment is well worth the cost. Have a look.
When I first started doing this Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom site, very few people were doing any looking into why statist policies were corroding virtually every aspect of our modern government. But just a few years later, there are several individuals and groups that have formed which are changing the way the news is reported, and giving people who have been forced to live behind the veil of foggy recollection, to expose what is hidden behind that fog. My friend Matt Clark comes to mind from Michigan, a young budding radio personality who I think will be the next Glenn Beck in a few years time. The Blaze has jumped on the scene under Glenn Beck where my friend Doc Thompson is now changing radio broadcasting forever with an all internet radio show that bypasses FCC regulation allowing the truth to be truly seen without government censorship applied through strong arming tactics and audits. And now Ben Swann has given up a career as a very good journalist and news anchor that would no doubt lead him to many millions of dollars as a television personality to start his own thing to be run his own way—no editor to mold his stories to FCC sensibilities, and no advertisers to boycott his entire station if he doesn’t play by collective rules of political behavior. Instead, Ben Swann has elected to pursue truth, justice, and the American way the way every American should, through private enterprise and personal initiative. Swan is going to be his own boss, and do things his way, and his way is the libertarianism of a new generation that is deeply inspired by former congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul.
Ben Swann is not going for money, fame, or power; he is trying to fix the country with a sincerity that is unique, and deeply needed. I sincerely support, and hope that Ben Swann is successful with his enterprising endeavor. If he is, it would help bring about the kind of world that I am fighting for, one that centers on individual responsibility, focuses on freedom, runs a republic government through fiscal responsibility, and stays out of the individual lives of all Americans. His success is my success in that if he gains the ability to do what he wants to do with his Liberty is Rising Truth in Media Project, then the fight my readers here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom have been fighting for over three years gets a whole lot easier, and expands in ways that have not yet been possible.
Where Ben Swann has an advantage is that he has been a media insider who has not been corrupted, or compromised at a very youthful stage in his career. Many freedom fighters discover through trial and error that the poor methods of their past do not add up to a good future. When the moment of crises arrives, they repent, change their ways, and grab on to some political leader like Ron Paul and follow his message toward their personal salvation. Swann however never appears to have fallen from any kind of grace in his life, and instead has started with a position of strength that he never lost. This gives him a powerful advantage in the world of the media as an independent reporter who is functioning from the raw ambition of an unconquered spirit. With his Truth in Media endeavor, political movers and shakers won’t be able to call up his boss to complain that Swann’s hard-hitting reporting is upsetting the “applecart” or that his coverage of public school funding is “harming the children” meaning advertisers focusing their marketing to children on a given network cannot be manipulated into reeling in a journalist in pursuit of the truth. Swann will be free to hit hard in his reporting, and with his already successful background in journalism, will position himself to be a major force in revolutionizing the news industry.
In my ideal world, I would like to see all progressive news outlets fail under conservative competition and the Overton Window of American politics move to a new spot where the Alex Jones types on InfoWars represent the far-right in politics, Ben Swann represents the “middle” and Glen Beck represents the left. Everything to the left of Beck would not have a market in America because nobody would be paying any attention to them. Progressive news outlets would be forced to return to European politics where their diatribes originated from. Those progressive networks have only succeeded in the absence of competition in the same way that public education has only called themselves successful by holding a monopoly on the process. But it all starts with a dream, and then the dream must be followed with action. Thus far, Ben Swann has taken that action and he is well on his way to meeting his $1,250,000 target amount that will launch him into the journey that will bring the world a scenario close to the one I’ve outlined above. And that is a reality that is worth dreaming about.
If you’d like to help Ben Swann with his new endeavor, you can see more about it at the link below along with a demo show of his proposed Truth in Media enterprise.
Man In The Moon is the exciting new stage spectacle by America’s premiere storyteller—Glenn Beck! On July 6th, prepare yourself for a truly once in a lifetime experience. Under the stars in Salt Lake City, Utah’s USANA Amphitheatre, Glenn will present his “moon’s eye view” of the building of America. It’s Glenn Beck’s imagination come to life. It’s Man In The Moon, a story like no other from the creative mind of a storyteller like no other—Glenn Beck.
Man In The Moon will excite and engage all your senses. At times, it will seem to defy logic. The visual spectacle will be beside you…in front of you…behind you. You’re not just watching a show—you’re inside the show. You’ll be swept into a world of mesmerizing creations. Everything will be larger than life, and the moon itself will be there, shining bigger and brighter than you have ever seen it. The moon reminds us of how small we are, and how infinite the universe. The moon has been there from the beginning, reminding us that there is something bigger, something greater than us.
If you’re ready for the ultimate Glenn Beck experience, you’ll definitely want to take advantage of a Gold, Silver or Bronze VIP ticket package. Not only will they treat you to “can’t get ‘em anywhere else” collectibles, but you’ll also slip behind the velvet rope and get to enjoy a weekend full of activities, including a special breakfast speech, a Q&A session, a delicious BBQ, an exciting and informative FreedomWorks event, and an up-close-and-personal meet and greet with Glenn himself! Of course, if you just want to see this incredible show, the Preferred or General Admission Lawn seating are fantastic options as well. As long as you’re there, you’re in for a night you’ll never forget.
This show that will help you see our history from a completely different point of view, one that will give you hope. Glenn has created an experience that will lift up your family, bring you closer together, and forever change the way we all look at ourselves and the Man In the Moon. We were always the people who believed a brighter future was just about to dawn. On July 6th, Glenn Beck will make you believe that again.
This whole show is about magic and hope…light and dark…family and God…history and the future. It’s a story of struggle and triumph, good and evil, and simple people finding a better way. It’s about what millions of Americans want: Hope, and to believe in goodness and our country again. Make a new American Memory with your family that none of you will ever forget. Believe In America…believe in us again! Remember, as long as you buy your ticket, you’ll get to say that you were there to see Glenn Beck’sMan In The Moon!
It is fair to say that most politicians get involved in politics so that they can be important. They want to be deal makers and heart takers, yet they often lack the skill to be those things on their own merit in professional business. Politics offers a way for the mediocre to be exceptional off the confiscated wealth of government for the benefit of the truly weak. It’s not against any moral law to be weak, or not to be the best. But it is to steal value from others so that everyone can have the illusion of equality. Digging into the history of politics, it appears that this trend was even worse in years past. Today there are politicians that I know personally who think the way I do, and get into politics to implement those values and wrestle power away from the mediocre so that society can advance under the leadership of the truly gifted. In politics it’s all about the deal, deals made with other people’s money which makes mediocre malcontents feel like gods among man, and why they get into, and stay in politics. In Ohio many Tea Party types saw what happened when supposed conservative Governor Kasich went from being a fighter against state imposition of Obamacare, only to cave under the pressure of lobbyists and attempt to expand Medicaid as a thinly veiled attempt to win votes by giving away services so he can stay in power during the 2014 election. In New Jersey, the popular conservative Governor in Chris Christie went from a Obama basher and future presidential candidate to a Obama kissing patriarch of liberal loving cheerleading. What Kasich and Christie both have in common besides personal friendship is that both governors had environmental tragedies which required them to take federal money to solve their financial problems. In Ohio it was an extremely large tornado which struck towns in southern Ohio. For Christie it was Hurricane Sandy. After those storms both men found themselves willing to bend and accept big government to alleviate the pain and suffering of environmental tragedy under their leadership which President Obama clearly understands. For him to implement his Obamacare takeover of a fifth of America’s economy he would have to get Republican governors to support him, and the way he’s doing it is through the kind of political deals that have given politics the dirty name it deserves. Obama’s minions have attached Obamacare to federal money, which states need to balance their budget from either environmental disasters, or economic chaos. This is certainly the case in Michigan where the governor there has just implemented right to work passage against the labor unions but has found himself pulled into the political black hole of financial limitations to avert economic disasters, particularly due to the failing city of Detroit which is technically in bankruptcy. The Michigan Governor wants to expand Medicaid for reasons that are mysterious and defy conservative logic but without question extend into a deal made on the front of Obamacare’s money allocation that any financially strapped governor would find tempting. But it is a trap surrendering state sovereignty for the short-term gain of economic viability, a problem that Matt Clark was uncovering dramatically from his radio rebellion in south central Michigan. Listen below to a former staunch opponent to Medicaid expansion attempt to explain why he is now a supporter of Obamacare strategies while still pretending that he stands for Tea Party ideas of fiscal responsibility.
Michigan State Representative Mike Shirkey (R) argued that the Medicaid expansion in Michigan was more about reform than increasing the size of the program, yet he’s not kidding anyone, including himself which came out in the heated debate in the video. Matt believes Medicaid and Obamacare are meant as a driving force to bring America toward a single payer system and Shirkey revealed that he has now helped to facilitate that gigantic government takeover of American medicine.
A key element of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as “Obamacare,” is the expansion of Medicaid in every state, so for it to work, conservative opposition must be removed and this is often done behind closed doors and on golf courses. Before the Supreme Court ruling in 2012, Medicaid expansion was required; however, it’s now an option for the states. It would appear that conservatives were prepared to take the money all along for the financial support that comes with Obamacare while publically denying it until the Supreme Court put the ball in their court with their ruling. After that, they found they could not turn away from the money, or the votes gained by giving things away that was not theirs to give.
The greatest danger of Obamacare is that the government is removing incentive from the medical field. Government bureaucrats believe that doctors on the front of medical innovation will continue to work in the field of medicine under their control, which won’t happen. It’s as ridiculous to believe that if the government nationalized the fast food industry, which they hope to regulate through Obamacare, That McDonald’s would continue to expand its reach of food supply to virtually every corner of the globe. Under such a government takeover of food supply, McDonald’s would simply cut their losses and shield their money from government looters. The medical industry is about to do the same thing. Through Medicaid expansion many more uninsured participants will be thrown into the system who have largely made poor decisions in their life ranging from a terrible diet, smoking, to other debilitating illnesses caused by their poor decisions. Meanwhile, there will be less supply of those services as partnering with government will prove unprofitable, so there will be fewer doctors to tend to the growing demand. In this way, the decent medical innovations that are experienced in 2013 America will decrease into the waiting lists that are seen in Europe where it is not uncommon to wait for years for hip replacement surgery or other ailments that Americans have come to take for granted. In America when a patient needs open heart surgery, or some other form of surgery, they schedule the treatment and within days it gets done. Under Obamacare, there will be lists, and the treatment will take months to years and will be done only by doctors who have accepted government partnership equally creating far less competency than what is experienced today.
In the interview with Matt Clark Michigan State Representative Mike Shirkey knows all this, and like Kasich in Ohio, and Christie in New Jersey, they are accepting the Obamacare march toward a single payer system with the naive notion that they can pray and somehow, someway, everything will work out in the end. Conservatives are finding themselves the victim of a long played strategy, the same one that is unfolding over immigration amnesty, where the communist oriented political left has bought votes with other people’s money and in order to stay relevant in such a scheme, Republicans are discovering they must do the same, or become irrelevant. This is the game of the progressive, to play both sides against the middle where they have influenced the behavior of their enemies in the chess game of politics by forcing the hand of conservatives into doing exactly what they don’t want to do knowing full well that they lack the courage and fortitude to resist.
It is good to see Matt Clark giving Shirkey some honest debate which clearly the state representative was uncomfortable with. Shirkey wishes to believe that he is a bastion of conservatism and free market ideas, but now he is on the record as accepting a strategy of Barack Obama and the party of progressives who want a single payer system. They are using “conservatives” like Shirkey to get it with money dangled to Michigan through Obamacare by accepting Medicaid expansion. This is where the faulty minds of the typical politician find themselves played and the expansion of government occurs even when the participants, like Representative Shirkey think of themselves as fiscal sharks. Politics is all about “the deal” and those deals are never made with skin off their own backs, but the looted money of others. In this way, politicians are simply like children playing house in the business world pretending to be “big shots” when in fact they are just small-minded imbeciles playing a game that is too big, and complex for them to even grasp. But it makes them feel powerful, so they can maintain the illusion so long as they stay in office which is how Obamacare gets them. To stay in office they must give things away to voters and appeal to their short attention spans and lack of personal knowledge. This is why Republicans are playing into Obama’s progressive hands, and why politics over many years of similar manipulations are a detriment to society that is supposed to be a republic, but has simply regulated itself to a thuggish democracy.
It is an absolutely appalling joke that Bill Clinton has been named Father of the Year by the National Father’s Day Committee. I would consider the former president who was impeached by congress during his term, to be the anti-father compared to many of the fathers who were celebrated during the 2013 annual Father’s Day recognition ceremonies. Clinton like the typical notion of a progressive “anti-concept” represents the undoing of fatherhood much more than a pillar of strength that most children wish for in the male portion of their parenting role-models. Clinton is virtually everything a good person is not—so naming him “Father of the Year” is equivalent to calling the stupid family on the old Fox television Married with Children the family of the year. Read more here:
The National Father’s Day Committee, an entity of the Father’s Day/Mother’s Day Council, each year confers Father of the Year Honors on contemporary lifestyle leaders of our culture whose lives are dedicated to family, citizenship, charity, civility, responsibility and reverence. The funds raised by our Annual Father of the Year Awards Presentation are directed to the support of worthwhile concerns affecting men, fathers, and families. The objective of our program is to enhance the meaning of Father’s Day and encourage universal observance.
Apparently the National Father’s Day Committee has no idea what a good father is, otherwise they would have never put Clinton on the list, let alone giving him such a perceived honor. I know something about fatherhood, and I am a fantastic father. Saying that Clinton is an exceptional father is simply an insult. Fathers are not habitual liars, womanizing punks, or call out hits on political opponents. They also don’t eliminate whistle blowers, or have women who are the same age as their daughters perform oral sex on them in the Oval Office. Good fathers are the opposite of all those traits, yet the NFDC named Clinton anyway.
Back in the 90s when Married with Children was on the air, and Slick Willie was in the White House, my wife and I refused to watch that show, even though it was very popular. We watched a few scenes of it here and there just to see if we were missing the great wave of popularity that the show garnered, but I never completed a full episode. The show was incredibly demeaning to traditional families and helped pave the way to a lot of the terrible attitudes people have toward their families in this more contemporary age.
Of course the cat is out of the bag now as to why shows like Married with Children were made in the first place getting money while programs like Little House on the Prairie went off the air, and weren’t being invited back on traditional networks. The progressive age was in full swing and presidents like Bill Clinton were committed to finishing the task that Woodrow Wilson started making sons as unlike their fathers as possible. The progressive statists entered politics, founded and ran the Department of Education and immediately created curriculums that degraded traditional parenting which paved the way for audiences to desire programming like Married with Children and electing the Al Bundy of politics, Bill Clinton. Most of America during the 90’s could not relate with the old-fashioned ideas of John Wayne westerns but rather Oliver Stone through his cocaine trips of left leaning films. America had lost its moral compass through its public education system, and shows like Married with Children reinforced the insecurities taught to them by government schools. Politicians like Clinton simply brought to the real world the kind of characters millions of Americans had grown familiar with in Married with Children.
It would seem that the criteria for judging Father of the Year by the NFDC is in comparing all candidates to Al Bundy from that old Fox comedy. With that as the criteria, I am proud to not be a part of the judging process because fathers like Bill Clinton and I are on opposite ends of the earth, as apparently the morally lost souls of the NFDC committee are too. Their award to Bill Clinton is just further evidence of how treacherously lost our society has become in identifying good from bad, and right from wrong. Anyone who can see what is wrong with the world will quickly see what a terrible father Bill Clinton is no matter what poor little Chelsea Clinton thinks. She’s stuck with being born to such a low-life, so she’s not the best judge of character—no fault of hers.
Next year when the NFDC decides that they want to award another Father of the Year I would suggest that they not look in the local strip joints, lobbyist back rooms, and married women’s bedrooms for the sacred honor of a father. The first step would be to look outside the political scene of New York and Washington D.C. There is a big world outside of those very small places, and in it are a lot of fathers who are truly great, and their families love them for it. They are Father’s of the Year not for the fanfare, the political spot light, or the social status gained from some trivial social recognition. They are great fathers because they truly love their children, and their families know it with the greatest honor that can be bestowed upon a man, the recognition from his family that they appreciate all that he does without a single outside soul knowing anything about it.
As for my own father’s day, my wife and kids treated me to a nice day at our local amusement park of Kings Island to visit the Dinosaurs Alive exhibit with my new grandson. They gave me as gifts a picture collage of some of our past adventures together and personal notes of fond recollection. They also gave me the soundtrack to the new Superman movie which meant a lot to me. As I loaded the soundtrack onto my iPod I thought of what the music was saying to me………………….and it doesn’t bring to mind images of Bill Clinton, unless of course the musical theme is that of the villain. I doubt Chelsea thinks of Superman when she thinks of her father, the supposed Father of the Year!
The other morning over breakfast my wife and I had a raging debate of mankind’s need and desire to behold simple “concepts,” as philosophy defines them. It is because of concepts that I occasionally detour away from the normally serious matter at this site and dwell in great detail about the nature of Hollywood movies and published books. In my private life I have two basic loves which drive me, a love of philosophy and the mythologies of thought which attempt to frame them to the human world through “concepts.” Most everything else I care about in life drips off the leaves of knowledge from those basic forms of art esthetically. The reason for the raging debate over breakfast with my wife was over the value of concepts in people’s lives versus a given morality. My wife values morality among mankind as the highest honor, even over the air she breaths. If she had to choose between morality and taking another breath, she would choose morality. However, my side of the debate declared that the ability to behold a “concept” of morality is far more important, because without having the ability to grapple with conceptual ideas, morality falters in both human beings and animals 100% of the time. I explained to her that the ability to understand concepts was like getting popcorn into a bowl that has been popped in a kitchen. If a person’s mind is small, they have a small bowl from which they can place popcorn in from which to consume. If a person’s mind is large they can hold a lot more popcorn. In my metaphor I was of course transposing popcorn with ideas, or in this case “concepts” in order to explain why mankind is so sick these days. We spend the first five years of our lives being given gigantic “concepts” from our parents, grandparents, friends, and extended family through the toys we play with and ideas they give us. We are given from birth extremely large bowls which hold a lot of metaphorical popcorn so that concepts can be formed in our minds allowing us to walk, speak, and develop ranges of physical movement. But from every year after our first kindergarten class in public school, we find that our bowls get smaller and by age 10 to age 15 our ability to hold thinking concepts diminishes greatly so that by the time we are grown adults, instead of holding a bowl of popcorn with most of what could possibly be popped in the kitchen, we are lucky to get a few small kernels into our 35-year-old brains. I view human mythology as a way of expanding our metaphorical bowls so that our minds can hold more philosophy about the way life should be lived, and today in all of human history it is the movies produced from Hollywood which are the strongest creators of modern mythology, which makes them of great interest to me. This basic preamble is needed before I say that I understand why so many critics stated that they did not enjoy the new movie which I have been raving about—Man of Steel. They did not like the movie because they are suffering from conceptual handicaps given to them by their crumbling society, of which the most recent rendition of Superman clearly was conceptually articulating. So I will provide you dear reader with a conceptual handicap free review so that you can understand why a slight tear was running down your face at the end of the movie, and why you thought about standing up and clapping at the end while others actually did with a ruckus ovation.
I have spoken before about how important the concept of Superman is to my family in a previous article. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. Before seeing the film, we went to Newport on the Levee to view the new Man of Steel film by Zach Snyder and one of my favorite modern film producers, Christopher Nolan and have dinner at Claddah’s Irish Pub. My daughter, son-in-law, and wife wanted to make a big event out of this film with me so we went to that particular theater and dining location to place the experience in proper perspective. The AMC theaters at Newport are built three stories above the mall below, and are unique in their design. Going up the escalator to arrive in the lobby is literally like arriving in some heavenly plateau which is appropriate for a modern viewing of Superman, especially for my family. The reasons I love Ayn Rand’s characters in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are because her characters created during the same era as Superman are about the same elevated sense of mankind’s potential. For Ayn Rand, Superman is in all men who have a thinking mind. Yet for the character of Superman created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, high school students living in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1933 their large concept ultimate man had extraordinary powers given to him from the sun’s energy on earth. But all these creations of the mind were a direct answer to the communism being imported into the United States by progressives during the roaring twenties and early thirties. It was a time when President Calvin Coolidge was going door to door running for office with a miniature chalk board trying to educate voters on the perils of socialism. Superheroes were born in literature as a way to protect the concept of Americanism against the anti-concept of European communism. Young Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman to define what living life in America was all about creating a symbol that allowed the concept of Americanism to be defined in a single character named Kal-El from the planet Krypton.
To understand what this 2013 version of Superman is all about, let me explain how the film ends without giving away any particular spoilers. Superman smashes out of the sky a drone aircraft which is attempting to spy on him and proceeds to lecture the U.S. military of his need for privacy even though he understands the military is afraid of all his vast powers. Superman continues to make clear that nothing the military can do will hurt him anyway, so the effort is useless. The military then asks Kal-El, how they can know Superman won’t use his superior powers against the American people. Superman explains with a smile, “I grew up in Kansas and am as American as there is; you’re just going to have to trust me.” This is almost the last scene of the film. Superman was metaphorically speaking on behalf of all Americans to their modern government which is currently plagued by scandals such as the IRS, Benghazi, and spygates against the American people. Superman represented in mythic form the power of every individual American who may not be able to leap about like Superman, or shoot lasers from their eyes, but hold the potential to be super in their own way which Ayn Rand would get more specific about in her own overmen exploits of literary endeavor. The message at the end of Man of Steel is that Superman wanted to be left alone to live as an American and that if he wanted to he’d crush anybody who stood in his way of achieving that goal. He chose to value the people of earth for the hope he had for them which was something that was lost to his dying planet of Krypton.
Russell Crow who played Kal-El’s father in Man of Steel was very good in his role of explaining how Krypton became doomed in the first place. The highly technological society of the Kryptonians had enjoyed a period of great expansion in their culture where they planted seed societies throughout known space. But as time moved on, their society had become more politically corrupt leaving them to pursue short-sighted goals like stripping out their own planet’s core for power, instead of harnessing the power from neighboring star systems, as they had in the past. The Krypton metaphor was clearly in reference to our own times where space travel has been cut away to virtually nothing in America as left-leaning politicians squabble in endless debate with political apathy serving as the centerpiece of their action. On Krypton, as many are attempting to suggest here on earth, they devolved from a flourishing society that embraced personal freedom and enterprise to one that micro managed the smallest detail of their lives including the birth of children which had been taken over by a technology called the Codex. Jor-El and his wife gave birth to the first free-born child in centuries on Krypton. That child was Kal-El–Superman, a free-born creation of two loving parents. Knowing that Krypton was imploding on itself, even as the political class squabbled in denial of the impending doom Jor-El sent his child to earth to allow the best of what Krypton was to live on elsewhere. All this while General Zod was staging a rebellion to turn Krypton back into a society under his managed care. In Man of Steel, Zod is a collectivist born under the dystopian care of the Codex, not having natural parents, but instead being raised to and for the collective Krypton society. (I knew Christopher Nolan would not let me down.) I was very concerned about how Krypton’s demise would be handled in the film, and it is very appropriate to the direction our current society is devolving. Man of Steel just in this regard is conceptually brilliant……….but that’s not all.
Even Kal-El’s adoptive parents were heroic as Jonathan Kent died in the Man of Steel defying a tornado’s wrath. He ran into the blistering storm as it consumed cars and entire homes to save a few more people only to get caught because he broke his ankle and couldn’t run away fast enough……..but he saved Kal El’s dog! That is a great dad! The good guys in the film were all heroic in their own way. Ultimately the pinnacle decision of the film was Kal-El having to decide whether the society of Krypton deserved to be resurrected on earth through the Codex killing all of humanity, or should the people who live on the planet be given the opportunity to have hope for their own future. Superman ultimately decided that Krypton had its chance, and it screwed it up. The people of earth had a real chance to get it right, and Superman had made a decision to lead them to the light under his guidance. Superman made a value judgment between the two societies, Krypton had taken a noticeably collectivist route and destroyed itself, and earth was headed in the same direction, but could still change course.
On the way home from the movie my family was philosophizing about the very idea of Superman, a man who was invincible and could be harmed by nothing on earth. For many this is a boring idea because the wish is to see conflict in their heroes brought about by fear and weakness. But that is not what Superman is all about. Superman could decide to rule the earth if he wanted as there would be nobody to stop him, but he doesn’t, because he is a good man who chooses to spend his time helping humanity instead of acting as a parasite off of it to feed his own ego. What Kal-El gained from his adoptive parents was a sense of knowing the difference between right and wrong which would be the key to allowing the grown-up Superman to use his powers for good, instead of evil. General Zod, with all his good intentions openly declared at the end of the film that his sole purpose in life was to serve the greater good of Krypton by any means necessary. He was speaking as a product of the collective and might as well have been a Russian revolutionary from 1917 marching around Petrograd destroying any life that stood in the way of communism, as the greater good of mother Russia was more important than the whims of any individual who might think they were serving good as it is defined by anybody. As I was explaining all this to my family a drunk driver nearly ran into the side of our minivan. I reacted as I have hundreds and hundreds of times over the years, with quick aversion out of harm’s way. It happened so quick that I barely paused in my sentence structure and after the danger was averted, I proceeded with the explanation of my metaphor without pause. Such situations are only dangerous if the mind surrenders itself to panic, and I don’t. After years of training myself, there is little that worries me. And it is this kind of attitude that Kal-El maintained throughout the Man of Steel once he had become comfortable in his role as Superman, savior of the planet earth from falling to a similar fate as his home planet Krypton. All men and women come to such a place in their own minds once the concept of goodness is understood by them. But first they must have a bowl big enough to hold the concept of such goodness and behold the definitions of evil in the same container. Once there, the mind can eliminate danger from its life-like avoiding a drunk driver by simply taking evasive action without any fanfare. Panicky social commentary asking politicians for more public safety never works. The truth is politicians are actually quite powerless to provide any safety without stealing from some to give to others in legalized theft. All they can really do is react as a second-hander and write new laws which bring our present society that much closer to the fictional fate of Krypton.
At the conclusion of Man of Steel my family sat till the end of the credits as viewers gradually left the theater. We were the last to leave. Several young men who might look like gang-like thugs in any other circumstance from the streets of Cincinnati were wearing the Superman emblem on their shirts and had obviously given up for the evening any youthful decadence they might otherwise engage in to see a story of “hope” unfold upon the silver screen. A young man covered in tattoos and body piercings saw me smiling at his big “S” imprinted across his shirt as he left the theater to descend the escalator back down into the shopping complex of Newport on the Levee. His first reaction was a bit of anxiety as he thought I was laughing at his immature love of Superman. But I gave him a reassuring wink as he walked by to let the young man know that I understood. He was attempting to behold a higher concept of what “man” should be, and I didn’t want him for a moment to think I didn’t approve. He smiled boyishly as he walked by, realizing that my gaze at him was not condescending, but quite the opposite.
Small-minded reviewers after they saw the movie found that without large concepts in their own imaginations to allow them to behold the messages of the film they were regulated to commenting on the physical appearance of Henry Cavell, the young man who played Kal-El or criticizing the 40 minute climax which took place in an epic battle all over the globe ending in a fist fight between Superman and Zod which migrated into space at times where even satellites fell from the sky in destruction. Critics spoke about the metaphors of 9/11 as half of the city of Metropolis was destroyed in the gigantic battle leaving a crater of cleared buildings in the center where the two earthly gods did battle in the climatic ending with Superman snapping the neck of Zod. When Kal-El broke the neck of the villain there was emotion in the audience. It was 1 AM in the morning, and the audience was filled back to the projection booth. One man yelled out from the crowd………….”damn!” Others clapped. Some whistled. It was not a critical appraisal, but one of approval from the audience, of seeing a battle between right and wrong, good and evil displayed clearly in front of them, resolving itself with the clear decision of a nearly decapitated villain.
Man of Steel is about “big concepts” and it assists the viewer in grasping those ideas which require large conceptual bowls to hold. It is why in spite of the attempts by established Ellsworth Toohey type film critics taught in their institutions of learning to have small concepts in their lives, not large ones; Man of Steel will become the next $1 billion dollar film franchise. Shortly after the drunk driver nearly hit us on the way home, and I dropped my kids off at their house, I thought of the export potential of this film. Man of Steel is about undeniably American ideas and it didn’t waiver from that responsibility for even a moment. Superman didn’t say he stood for “truth, justice, and the American way,” at the end of the movie, he simply said…………..”I’m an American.” What a wonderful thing for kids throughout the world to see whether they are in London, or Delhi. The best vehicle for projecting American ideas to the world is the film industry of Hollywood, which has traditionally been consumed by left leaning communist ideologues, like what’s represented in the upcoming Matt Damon film Elsyium. Most movies that Hollywood produces like Elsyium or the 2012 fall attempt with Tom Hanks called Cloud Atlas are not so subtle attempts to sell socialism to America and the world. But the box office take usually tells the story as fans reject the message. They will go see the movies for entertainment, but quickly drop them, as word of mouth does not spread like wild-fire, the way it does during the very capitalist movie messages like Iron Man, and now Man of Steel, which is going to break records during its opening weekend. The film made $21 million just off Thursday midnight shows, and $50 million on Friday alone.
Man of Steel is a fantastic film. It is worth watching many more times than once. It is a pleasure to live in a culture that can produce films like Man of Steel where the story telling is first class, the visual effects epic, the music astonishing, but most importantly, the concept is huge. The value of Man of Steel is in its ability to generate a concept that is epic in scope and definitive in its message. There is no question where the message of Man of Steel intends to go, and it is in no way complimentary to evil, weakness, or even blind dedication to a race of people just because they represent one’s ancestors. It is more valuable as an American export than all the money that is currently spent on defense because the message is clear, and void of politics from any party. Man of Steel is film making at its best and the message to everyone in the world with a mind to think is one of goodness! It is a big bowl of philosophy that will take multiple viewings for those functioning with small bowls of conceptual thinking and will require expanding enough to behold the real message of Superman, which is certainly one of hope. A hope that earth will find its way and not fail the way Krypton did, leaving that society to live on in the rebellion of an innovative young couple who decided to go against their entire society and have a natural child who would have to flee their planet and live again as the shining beacon of truth, justice, and the American way for not just on a continent in North America, but the entire world which desperately needs the message of Man of Steel.
One particular scene in Man of Steel defines the entire film. It’s a scene when young Kal-El is being picked on by a group of bullies who are around 10 years old. The little Superman is reading a book, called Plato’s Republic. It wasn’t Tom Sawyer, or the Diary of Anne Frank. It was a work of philosophy that the budding superhero was reading, and a message to all viewers was that Man of Steel is not just an action movie, it’s a work of conceptual philosophy designed to give mankind the tools it needs to save itself. All society needs to do is listen to the message and allow their minds to conceptually hold the memorandum of goodness which is represented immaculately by Superman: Man of Steel.
As I was working in the garage trying to fix a broken pool pump, I was listening to some sports radio commentary. I have been listening to The Blaze Radio continuously of late, but decided to turn on the old AM radio to see what was going on in the world of local sports when I heard the commentator state about a former star player’s fall from grace that, “he thought he was bigger than the team.” Upon hearing this I tossed my wrench aside and turned up the radio and the commentator said it again, “the player fell from grace because he thought he was bigger than ‘the team.’” I turned off the radio and turned The Blaze back on as I heard the words of Buck Sexton come over the airwaves talking about things that actually matter.
One of the largest misunderstandings that modern society has is this ridiculous notion that a “team” is greater than any individual, and that individuals should “sacrifice” themselves for the good of it. This is the menace that is being taught by high school sports all across the county, and the belief is re-enforced by idiots, beer drinkers, and drunk scallywags everywhere who contemplate why some sports teams are better than others between belches and greasy chicken wings. Knowing a thing or two about the management of people, I can report that the best way to get a team to do what a couch or manager wishes to accomplish is to get a group of individuals to aim their focus in the direction the leader establishes. But to do this, a leader must not crush the individuality of the “team members.” The leader must know that the individual attributes are much more important to the “team” than the collective sacrifice of a player to a cause “bigger than themselves.” Such an idea of sacrifice is hogwash.
In sports, all individuals are bigger than the team concept, for if any individual fails, the team will be weaker. All individuals must do their jobs to their highest ability, and as independently from one another as possible. For a team to be good, it needs a group of strong individuals who all do their jobs uniquely well to succeed, and the self-assurance to understand that they are the best at what they do, and not worried about being replaced by another because they are so good at their job.
In the case of the radio commentator, the star player in question had become a show-boater and was eventually ejected out of professional sports. But he was not ejected for being a show-boater, but because it was realized too late, that he was playing above his actual skill level. The player used his show-boating ability to cover his incompetence, which was eventually exposed. The way this lack of skill went undetected is that the management of the “team” this player played for was unable to evaluate individual attributes as their focus was on “the team.” This show-boating player uplifted the entire team with his antics, which made the coaching staff believe falsely that their team was better than it really was, because they assimilated the value of the show-boating in the same way that the player used to hide his incompetency. This failure was the fault of the “team concept.”
When some idiot says that there is no “I” in team, they are speaking of their vast ignorance on the matter. When a radio commentator says foolishly that “no player is bigger than the team,” they are speaking with a mind that is greatly deficient. All players are more important than a “team.” A team is only great if the individuals on it are superior to other individual players. A team is just a collection of individual wills and nothing more. A leader’s job is to direct those wills toward a tactical goal they set without crushing the individualism of the participants.
The lazy leader attempts to crush the individual will of each player to consider the self-sacrifice of the collective unit. The fool will allow the personal identities of individuals to be destroyed through hazing rituals, and other group assimilation hoping that by putting the “team concept” above individual ego, that success will follow…………….but it never does. Many sports players when they give interviews repeat blindly the whole team first concept, but if they are great players, they have never accepted it. They have learned to simply utter the lie to the press so to create good public relations for their teams, but they know that it is the extra hours they practice beyond the “team practice,” the extra work they do as individuals to become better than their competition that makes the difference between success and failure.
Team sports are never about the “team” but the individuals who make up the team. The leader’s job on teams is to align individual behavior with the team needs, but never to crush individual contribution as a kind of sacrifice for the collective whole. Such an idea is completely foolish which is why it shocked me to hear a sports commentator speak such an idea so openly. A lot of people say such things mindlessly because they have been taught incorrectly to think in such ways, but they are wrong. And for a sports commentator who spends their entire life thinking about sports, it would be assumed that they’d understand such an elementary concept. But this particular commentator was quite serious when he stated the error of a star player believing that they were “greater than the team.” Individuals are ALWAYS greater than a team. ALWAYS!
As I heard the statement I thought of all the dads all across the country who were also in their garages working on something similar who heard the same thing I did and thought……….yeah………he’s right. They tell their kids who play for some high school sports team the same thing, and the coaches of those teams also utter the same nonsense—then they are all confused why their teams are always mediocre. It is because their philosophy on the matter is wrong. Their understanding of the values needed to be a winner is incorrect, and they are teaching the young student athlete to grow up not to be successful contributors to all the future teams they will play on from sports to business, but only mediocre sacrificial lambs ready to throw themselves upon whatever alter the foolish coach tells them to. That same student athlete will then grow up to be mediocre, to raise mediocre children, live a mediocre life with vacations that are mediocre at best. They’ll cheat on their spouses with mediocre replacements and have mediocre friendships that are as deep as a dry river bed in a scorching desert and they’ll wonder why they are failures at life. It will be because they allowed in their mind the ridiculous, preposterous, nonsensical notion that no individual is greater than the “team” when the truth of the matter is the exact opposite.
In the fictional world of vigilantes like the Dark Knight from the Batman films and the upcoming Lone Ranger, the heroes wear masks to protect those they love from the revenge imposed by statist regimes who control the law as the protagonist imposes justice where needed. One of my favorite fictional vigilante characters of all time is Zorro, who wore a mask to protect his identity from the tyranny of government oppressors while he worked as the politician Don Diego pretending to be “one of them” all the while seeking justice from behind a mask. The need for these types of stories by the masses is innate, meaning the mind requires them to bring relation to the world it witnesses as justice is often abused by anti-conceptual reality. This internal psychological struggle plays out in acts of fiction, but reflects our internal despair in reality. The crisis is in the realization that those who control the law—the political class of the modern age—can make life very difficult for those who disagree with their desired social impositions. This kind of tyrannical behavior has recently been seen on a large-scale during the IRS scandal, the Benghazi debacle, and the NSA data collecting violations that have been splattered across the news of late. But most statist abuses by corrupt governments are done on a very small-scale creating the need for heroes to literally grab a mask not just in the story telling experience, but when opposing government in reality. This is why young Deric Lostutter of Winchester, Kentucky put on a mask and worked to instill justice when a crime in the small town of Steubenville, Ohio took place robbing the innocence of a young girl with a police cover-up to protect the very popular high school football team. I covered the controversy here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom back when it happened, CLICK TO REVIEW.
If Deric did not put on the mask and take up the torch of justice by going against the law, as the character KYAnonymous, the town of Stuebenville would have been able to successfully cover up the tragic rape that happened to an intoxicated young girl. Because of Deric two of those guilty star football players are doing time in a juvenile detention center and justice has been brought to the town. If Deric did not put on the mask and become KYAnonymous in a heroic effort to pursue justice as law enforcement attempted to use the law to hide the crime, the girl who was raped would have witnessed no justice and the boys who did the crime would have went free and believed that such behavior was socially correct, and the entire town would have continued to be complicit in a crime against the individual sanctity of a young girl.
The need for the mask comes after the justice is done of course as the statist government has the weapon of laws—they create—in their tool box of options to inflict suffering on those who stand against them. Deric Lostutter learned this first-hand when in mid April 2012 the F.B.I. had investigated his computer I.P. address extensively and learned where the masked justice seeker KYAnonymous lived. According to Lostutter a truck disguised as a delivery vehicle was parked in his driveway when there was a knock at the door. Deric expected a delivery so when he went to open the door 12 special forces operatives screaming profane names at him, cuffed him with M-16 assault rifles pointed at his head and detained him while the troops cleared out his home of the evidence they came to steal. Lostutter witnessed the S.W.A.T – like troops along with a couple of F.B.I. agents from Columbus, Ohio and the local sheriff securing his property. Once he was under cuffed control the troops lightened up and were less threatening actually joking with Deric telling him they had been watching him for a long time, and that he was a good guy. They even joked around a bit about the good things he had done, like exposing the rape in Stuebenville. All this was going on while they confiscated evidence for a case against him related to his work as KYAnonymous. The troopers left Deric’s belongings on the floor, his dogs shocked with teasers, his family handcuffed and nervous, his garage door battered open with a ram even though Deric told them he had a key, and the RV camper window outside broken open for entry even though Deric told them all they had to do was pull hard on the door.
Later it became known to Deric when he was unable to get his belongings back from the F.B.I. that they intended to indict him for a federal offense, most likely a felony and two misdemeanors. He was being charged with hacking into computers to steal the concealed pictures displaying the rape and putting the case into national headlines. After a year of a terrible ordeal Deric told his story on his website seen below written on June 6, 2013.
I have a lot of problems with the way the anarchic Anonymous freedom fighters conduct their business, as Deric is just one of them. I do not approve of their references to “WE” or the “HIVE” but I am willing to overlook those collectivist references knowing that all these kids are right out of public schools where they have been indoctrinated into hive-like mentality their entire lives. That aside, the work they are doing often is good, and their threat is real to the power brokers of control such as law enforcement agencies, corrupt politicians, and all statist regimes who wish to inflict force upon others to gain victory over their minds. What Deric Lostutter did may or may not have broken the law, but one thing is clear, if Deric didn’t do what he did, Stuebenville would have been able to cover up a crime against innocence sacrificing a naive girl to save the town the insult of harming its sacred football program.
The exact same reluctance by the authority in charge occurred at Penn State under Jerry Sandusky. Everyone knew Jerry was abusing young boys sexually, but nobody stuck up for the kids, because it was the sacred football team that was in trouble. Football, especially college programs like Penn State bring to academia funding opportunities a school can get no other way. Nobody wanted to jeopardize that funding, so the entire school covered up the decadent exploits of the famed coach of the Penn State defense. For those poor molested kids, there was no Deric Lostutter. There was no Anonymous freedom fighter to expose the crimes and come to their rescue. There were only cowards on a mass scale which ran all the way into the television networks who all knew that Jerry Sandusky was a pervert who loved to sexually abuse boys. This is the case most of the time when atrocities are seen by all. Very rare are there heroes who will stand without a mask and call a crime a crime. People like that are EXTREMELY rare, because such an act takes courage, and that trait is being breed out of the human race. Almost as rare are those who will put on a mask, as Deric Lostutter did to find justice where the law is used to hide crimes. Unfortunately, many millions of victims will find that there is no hero who has the courage to act on their behalf. The world is filled with oceans of individual souls who look from their right and to their left awaiting for somebody to have the courage to speak out for the innocent. But nobody ever steps forward. However, in Stuebenville, Ohio one young man did, and his name is Dric Lostutter. Once the authorities discovered who he was, they went after him to punish him to the furthest extent of their made up authority. For all those who think of fighting for freedom, take note of the lesson………now you know why such people wear a mask. Sometimes the pursuit of justice requires it—because the absence of such heroic people means oppression and sorrow will reign over planet earth so long as tribal human beings inhabit the globe and run their political system by the nonsensical diatribes of anti-conceptual rule.
Many of the failures experienced in modern society are the improper understanding of how to create a proper epistemology for the philosophy of their lives. By epistemology it is meant to know what sort of things we can know and how we know it. Most people these days are so uncertain of themselves, lacking self-confidence that they are unable to properly think and this is due to the notion that they have been taught by their public education institutions that nobody can know anything unless a professional tells them first what to think and how to think it. This is why government schools are so terrible for our present society. It is because they are providing generations of people an epistemology that is wrong, deliberately not teaching people how to think, but instead regulating their thought to “professionals” who can provide those epistemologies for the masses as centralized leaders of collective sacrifice.
This is a big problem. Human beings in the year of 2013 seek with mind numbing tenacity to continue a destructive practice of mental evasion. For instance, when it is asked what a particular person is going to do over the weekend, and the person responds, “I’m going to get ‘shit-faced’ drunk,” the person is really saying that not thinking is more preferred over a “thinking” exercise. They wish to get drunk so that they can escape the process of thought. This mentality was given to them by public education laying a foundation of philosophic epistemology that dictates surrendering thought to government employees who know better. The conflict in the individual who wishes to get drunk comes from the persistent thoughts which come to their mind telling them that the world is different from the one they are living. So for them, to get “drunk” so that they can be eased of the burden of thinking it is a vacation from their conflict which is highly desired.
Identifying this failure in epistemology can than explain why so many teenagers drink so heavily as part of their assimilation to the adult population. It is expected that young people will between the ages of 15 to 22 drink themselves into mindless bliss, and this is a direct result of the public education system providing a philosophic epistemology that states thinking should be done by “the experts” and not individual citizens. The result is that culturally, society must develop a method to turn off their minds to escape thought—because their minds tell them that what they are learning is wrong. So drunkenness is their only escape.
Public schools do not preach drunkenness, but it is the result of their failed epistemology which creates the problem in the same way that public schools do not preach sexual deviance, but it is the direct result of their teaching as the epistemology is created by a curriculum designed to place no responsibility on individual behavior. Such a system was designed by statist governments to advance programs for the working poor, welfare recipients, and down-trodden who are secretly desired to remain in such a state forever, for the benefit of the state. In a state-run school, a public education curriculum cannot make the people it wishes to target for state supplied services feel bad for their bad decisions in life, so the goal of school curriculums is to make all right thinking people think like the bad ones and preach that sex has no consequences, and is not the responsibility of the participants. The epistemology that is taught is a kind of Kantian remoteness, which sex just happens biologically without the thinking participants having any say. The epistemology that is given to the students in public school then has the unintended consequences of sexual promiscuity that lasts their entire lives. The teachers did not teach children to have reckless sex in their teenage years, but were socially unable to condemn the behavior that is conducted routinely in poor communities so that food stamp qualifications can be enhanced. So the teachers instruct an epistemology that destroys the lives of all students in every community because their instruction does not teach that personal responsibility is the key to life success, planned families, and a healthy existence.
A proper epistemology is the key to living a successful life and if the education system creates an improper philosophy, then failure is imminent. Government workers, political theorist–particularly those who wish to believe that communism is viable to the human mind, believe that any kind of politics can work so long as a society believes something. This is simply not true. That “something” must be good, and goodness is determined by a proper epistemology. If the epistemology is bad, then the philosophy of a person and thus the society will also be bad. There is no way to avoid the catastrophe of a bad epistemology. In this way, public education institutions are bad for the human race not because their intentions are not good—they often are, but the epistemology of what they teach is terribly insufficient which makes them detriments to the human condition. Methods of philosophy cannot be changed in and out of a person’s life like socks on the feet of a human being each morning before they are placed in one’s shoes. A personal philosophy is the most important part of anyone’s life, for if one does not believe in anything, they will fall for everything. But due to the catastrophe of a thinking mind being in drastic contrast to the types of epistemology that have been taught to it by institutions of modern learning, drunkenness is pursued to escape from the duality of the thinking mind being required to not think in order to survive the political stresses of the day which inform the world of an epistemology that is faulty.
When one considers what makes a person become an alcoholic, or a drug abuser this duality is always at the core. A weak mind is the first step to not surviving the duality of an improper epistemology that is in conflict with one the thinking mind wishes to live by. The weaker the mind, the easier it is to surrender mental evasion to alcoholism and other forms of intoxication. This is the product of our modern institutions and why many consider drunkenness to be a vacation worthy of pursuit in their leisure time, because they wish to be free of the epistemological conflict given to them by a society which seeks to impose on the mind a system of thought that is not productive to individual welfare.
Solving the problem of individual epistemology is the key to solving many of the social ills our society currently suffers from. Identifying a proper epistemology is the first step to solving all social problems. Problems do not happen to people’s lives like some mystical voodoo card of chance happening. Everything starts from a source and like simple addition and subtraction, one thought leads to another, then another. If a person has a bad life, if they are poor, if they are jobless, if they are alcoholics, drug abusers, bad parents, bad people, the failure comes from their poor epistemology. The fault is theirs for not living their lives with values that their minds agree with. Surrendering their thoughts to others who create their epistemology for them will not improve their life. “Getting drunk” will only exasperate the situation further and cause failures in life instead of giving the relief a mind in conflict with itself has from an epistemology that is imposed upon it from sources that are not from one’s own mind. Until individual people realize that the source of their failures are their trend to not take responsibility for their own thoughts, then misery will continue to riddle their life with duality. No individual can make the society happy with their collective desire, and yet make themselves happy. When the decision to make society happy supersedes the individual then a crushed, suppressed and miserable life ensues. And to date, it is public schools that most create the epistemology of the greatest number of people, and for that, they are in drastic fault.
“There are 11 million reasons to pass common-sense immigration reform that mends our broken system — 11 million stories of heartbreak and suffering that should motivate Congress to act,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said
In reference to the millions of immigrants currently in the country illegally, President Obama said, “Yes, they broke the rules; they didn’t wait their turn. They shouldn’t be let off easy. They shouldn’t be allowed to game the system.” Doc Thompson covered this complicated issue at the video below, with more detail at the following link:
Here are the other videos related to the film to satisfy the intense appetite that is emerging for this latest, and possibly most dramatic rendition of Superman.
