Category: Policial Science

Donna Campbell’s Fight in Lebanon: “The Power of Pull” attacks capitalism with a “Sign Czar”

Why is the Tea Party always fighting for smaller government, fiscal responsibility, and free markets?  Why is the Tea Party categorized by thugs, goons, government looters, despots, scum bags, rent-a-cops, union leaders, progressives, Fabian socialists, communists, school teachers, scandalous judges, kangaroo courts, money grabbing attorneys, left-leaning reporters, Obama supporters, and greenie weenies as being a terrorist organization?   Because the Tea Party wants to do the right thing in government, they want to stop the corruption and otherwise scandalous behavior that normally is associated with government and return America to a time of mythical honesty conceived by The United States Constitution.  Thus begins the story of Donna Campbell, one of the founding members of the Lebanon Tea Party, entrepreneur of the Liberty Tax Service for 7 straight years and area developer who has been so successful that her aggressive marketing strategies have allowed her business to out produce her local rival H&R Block which has been in business for more than 50 years and is a much larger company.  Donna has found herself in court on and off for over the last year not because she robbed a bank, or urinated on a police car—but because she has been successful, and there are powers in the City of Lebanon who wish to see her put out of business and crushed because she’s a threat to them.

Not that a rival company in Lebanon would put money into the pockets of the political machine to set in motion the story of Donna Campbell, but it wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened under similar circumstances.  Such happenings are difficult to prove and most of the parties lie under oath in a court of law anyway, so there is no way to bring such information to the light of day.  But the evidence speaks for itself, and is incriminating enough to paint a picture of how government colludes to pick winners and losers using their power and influence to put people like Donna out of business if they discover that she is not part of the power structure they wish to support.  The unspoken rule among many business owners is that they feel they must contribute to politicians in some fashion or another through charity events or direct campaign funding so to keep the parasites off their backs in some future time.  In the case of Liberty Tax Service the success of her business has caught the eyes of power in a negative way, and they have come after her in a very aggressive manner.  The story you are about to read happens all the time.  It has happened with Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski who invented a cure for cancer and has had to fight for 15 years against the FDA, it has happened to car companies who go up against the Big Three auto manufacturers, it has happened to Microsoft.  What has happened to Donna Campbell has happened to just about anyone who comes up with a better way of doing something where more established organizations who contribute more money into the political machines of local, state, and national politics use their power and influence to crush their rivals because they can’t compete directly.SAM_0423

I have written about Liberty Tax Services before as the West Chester location was recently pulled across the coals for violating the sign ordinance in that community, a case that ended up being the topic of much debate on the Scott Sloan show with trustee George Lang defending Liberty Tax Service.  The issue was that Donna’s businesses have been using human billboards to dress up and engage motorists at the roads urging them to file their tax returns at her establishments.  The method worked as Liberty Tax Service has enjoyed thriving results.  In West Chester the zoning commission determined that Liberty Tax Service was violating their signing regulations by using human billboards.  Click the link below to review that case and listen to the WLW broadcast.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/west-chester-trustees-hurt-a-business-george-lang-speaks-out-in-defense-of-capitalism/

Well the same thing has occurred in Lebanon, which is roughly 15 miles to the east of West Chester, Ohio, only to a much more aggressive extent.  Lebanon as a small city still enjoys the political pull of small town America as most everyone in political office knows each other, so collaborations are common in such places.  It didn’t take long after Donna’s Liberty Tax Service Lebanon location caught the ridicule of the city’s “Sign Czar” after posting more tax returns than H&R Block according to IRS data, to begin to feel the heat of city government.  Lebanon actually employs a retired police officer with the full-time position to regulate signage within the city complete with a car, computer and lots of time to take pictures and send out certified letters regarding violations of sign ordinances.SAM_0420

The Sign Czar began engaging in harassment of Liberty Tax Service by exchanging dialogue with Donna’s marketing employee who did not show the retired officer much respect, according to court documents.  The Sign Czar took it upon himself to deliberately target Liberty Tax Services marketing strategies for reasons only the Czar can understand leading to the exchanges with the Liberty Tax Service employee who boasted at times how successful their efforts were.  This made the Czar even more vigilant.  The Sign Czar under the authority of the City of Lebanon began to confiscate Donna’s signs all over town and dispose of them.

The final straw occurred when Donna had a sign maker print up 100 signs which went out over night before the Sign Czar began his shift at 7 AM.  This angered the Czar and he used the offices of politics to execute his desires convincing the City to proceeded attacking Donna with a summons to municipal court for sign violations and a fine of $500 per day.  This left Donna to hire the legal services of Eric Deters to defend herself along with the support of city council member Matt Rodriquez who informed her that Lebanon City Hall was awaiting the outcome of the West Chester/Liberty Tax case concerning the sign wavers.  If West Chester Township was successful in removing the sign wavers from Liberty Tax Services, then Lebanon intended to follow.  But the harassment of Donna did not stop as the Sign Czar intensified his efforts without a care for the 10-15 employees who directly worked for Donna.  The intention by the Sign Czar was to put her out of business, his actions made that clear.  The Sign Czar over the last year determined to confiscate any sign put out by Liberty Tax Services any time anywhere.  Even when Donna had permission from other business owners to put a single sign in front of their buildings, the Sign Czar determined that it went against the city code.  This same Sign Czar allowed H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt and other non-competing businesses in Lebanon to have signs out that were not directly in front of their businesses as can be seen by the photos.  The city has kept the case alive to monitor what Donna did for the 2013 tax season.  Donna attempted to legally comply with the unusual restrictions by saying “Aaron’s Rent recommends Liberty Tax” and place the signs in front of Aaron’s place of business.  The City called Donna’s attorney and stated they wanted those removed also.  The city also notified Donna’s landlord in a direct attempt to manipulate the landlord’s relationship against Liberty Tax Service.  The City of Lebanon appeared to stop at nothing to put Donna out of business in their city, and West Chester has shown nearly the same animosity………but why.SAM_0429

This is why there is a Tea Party and why they stand for the kind of things that they do.  Donna should not have to butter the bread of city officials in either Lebanon or West Chester to do business in those communities.  If her signage is a turn-off to her customers, then she will go out of business, it’s as easy as that.  Yet her sign wavers standing in costume out in front of her businesses have worked, making Liberty Tax Service exceed the filings of her rivals which is what productive businesses should always endeavor to do.  But Donna didn’t grease the gears of the political machines, and for that she has paid dearly.  To her credit, rather than cave under the pressure and offer the Sign Czar some extra money on the side, free tax services, or any other type of activity that might be considered bribery, she instead helped start the Lebanon Tea Party to help combat these kinds of evils which stand in the way of free markets where better ideas like hers can thrive under a capitalist system serving as the cornerstone of the American economy.  This activity has made her an enemy of government instead of an asset.  The government using the Sign Czar as the public mask of civility targeted Donna for elimination for the simple fact that she did not share in the beliefs of their brand of kangaroo court justice, where winners and losers are picked by the gods of government and the puny brains of retired police officers who do the job not for money, but the thrill to impose their will of enforcement upon the lives of innocence to fill the personal void of character for which they seem to lack.SAM_0433

In America, people like Donna should be celebrated, not drug through court with fearful arm twisting and threats of $500 a day fines because she didn’t try to go out of her way to make the Sign Czar happy.  The public servants in the case of Lebanon and West Chester against Liberty Tax Services forget that it is they who serve Donna, not the other way around.  Donna creates real jobs with real worth by offering a service that her customers truly desire.  The young people who dress up in costume to advertise with dances and other vigorous ambition to direct business into Donna’s establishments are paid by their performance.  On the other hand the City of Lebanon can only offer a job paid for by the tax payers to create jobs that are not needed, such as in the Sign Czar who has nothing to do but collect a pension from his years as a cop, and make more money from the government by harassing independent business people whom he decides he does not like for whatever reason.  It is because of stories like this one that the Tea Party exists, still—and stands strong against the kind of anti-capitalist behavior exhibited above.  People do not exist for government to live, thrive and enjoy lives of liberty under the toils of entrepreneurs like Donna Campbell.    Rather, it’s supposed to be the other way around.  The Sign Czar if he wanted to make himself useful should help Donna put out her signs and if the marketplace decided that she did not use discretion and restrain herself, then her business would fail as a result.  It’s not up to some pin head bureaucrat to decide if Donna fails at business or not, which is the case in the City of Lebanon.  It is for this reason that the Tea Party is still strong, and actually growing because people like Donna are sick of being pushed around, and they just aren’t going to take it anymore.  And they shouldn’t have to.  Government does not dictate to the people who elect them, they are not divine leaders with infinite wisdom.  They are public servants and nothing more.   If they do not help people like Donna they are an immoral impediment to the health and well-being of any economy, therefore marking themselves as threats to human civilization.    For that reason, the Tea Party strives to crush such opposition to capitalism and return America back to an era where freedom is enjoyed, and the best and brightest can succeed in a marketplace not controlled by government sloths, but by the will and limitations of the individual and their private ambitions to drive the engines of society ever more toward horizons only imagined in the entrepreneurial activity of Americans always looking for a competitive edge.  Building a better mousetrap that can succeed where before there was nothing but an empty building and a landlord who needs to lease the space to a brilliant mind willing to forge a path through the labyrinth of red tape known as the modern age of doing business, is what makes unemployment figures decrease.  It is in this that America is successful or individuals like Donna are flourishing.  The City of Lebanon instead evoked The Power of Pull to determine success or failure, and that is a violation to logic that cannot be tolerated.  (CLICK HERE FOR MORE ON “THE POWER OF PULL”) Thank goodness Donna Campbell has decided to fight back, because it is due to people like her that the America Flag still is red, white and blue with fifty stars and stripes instead of a red hammer and sickle evoked from a long vanished enemy that never went away after the Berlin Wall fell in Eastern Europe during 1989.  Rather, they moved to Lebanon, Ohio in an attempt at a new regime against capitalism—but instead ran into an immovable force in the spirit of Donna Campbell and her Liberty Tax Service.

Rich Hoffman

166701_584023358276159_1119605693_n“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Agenda 21 Attacks Butler County, Ohio: Freedoms lost by ignorance, greed, and arrogance

Agenda 21 has been injected into the daily business of virtually every American for many years and can be seen most directly in conservative communities like Liberty Township and West Chester Township in Butler Country, Ohio. Within one week apart the Board of the Trustees from each township met to discuss applying for a new federal grant intended for bike paths and sidewalks.  Out of those two small government organizations only two of the trustees seemed to understand what Agenda 21 was even though many speakers showed up to voice their concerns and opinions.  George Lang from West Chester and David Kern from Liberty Township voted against the proposed federal grants.  Both men were witty enough to have done their homework on Agenda 21 which is a set of mandates created by The United Nations way back in the early 90s, at that start of the Clinton Presidency, to impose itself on United States sovereignty.  When any local government takes federal money of any kind whether it is for a school or even a sidewalk what is not understood by typical politicians is that they surrender management control to the federal government which in turn answers to The United Nations.  The federal grants are simply camouflaged power grabs by the U.N. to bring the entire world under their legislative influence which is the essence of Agenda 21.  It starts with a sidewalk and ends in totalitarianism.  For politicians hungry to do something meaningful with their political lives, the temptation of money dangled before their eyes is too lucrative.  In spite of the parade of public speakers which can be seen below from the West Chester Township meeting, the vote was 2 to 1 in favor of applying for federal grants in both townships leaving David Kern and George Lang to cast the sole votes against the measure.  Watch this meeting carefully.  This is how freedoms have died in America for nearly a hundred years, one small grant at a time, and federal aid for public schools.

Both Liberty and West Chester Township share the same school district of Lakota and have three trustees each, all of whom would consider themselves conservative.  West Chester is so conservative that it is the home district of House Speaker John Boehner so the residents unless they are radicalized school teachers or federal employees in some way or another tend to vote conservative.  The trustees who voted against Lang and Kern are not bleeding heart hippies and wrung out liberals as they wouldn’t do well in the political structure of Butler Country, Ohio.  Yet as could be heard in the video above, Agenda 21 is a plan from a far away land that does not directly affect the trustee’s hometown communities—or that’s what they believe.  They are unable to conceive how Agenda 21 is embedded to the federal money that they wish to take, and that’s how the disease of international control is let in the back door of their community and allowed to erode away the management of their financial resources.

The typical argument given in favor of politicians wishing for such federal grants were the same as those given by Cathy Stoker and Lee Wong shown in the video.  They understand that there is money on the table which the federal government took from tax payers and placed into a federal grant.  If they as a governing body would like the money all they must do is comply with a few federal regulations.  What Cathy and Lee do not understand is that those federal regulations were shaped by sympathizers to the United Nations, and that the members of the U.N. who created the parameters for establishing those regulations are sympathizers to a global group called Socialist International.  The intent of Socialist International, the United Nations, and all governments in general is to bend to submission of collective aims by default.  Since politics in any country tends to be a popularity contest, socialism is the means for politicians to retain their seats.  This is why governments always migrate toward socialism—and the more government there is, the more socialism shapes the policies of that government.  Local politicians like those seen in the video from West Chester are simply unable to see the big picture of how their actions help feed the monster of socialism.  Typically they are short-sighted personalities who simply want to rub elbows with business interests in their communities, and generally want to do good for the people who elected them.

Lee Wong said during the West Chester meeting that he has spoken to other people in the community and they do not agree with the speakers who showed up in protest of the federal funding.  Wong has a collective ideology that does not enable him to understand what the speakers were talking about, so he spoke to a few of his neighbors who thought the way he did and concluded that taking the federal money for a sidewalk was morally righteous and that the people who actually showed up to speak against the issue were wrong.  He arrived at the meeting with the predisposition of evading the facts in favor of easy money.  His bubble of reality is the few people on his street that he associates with, who lack a worldly understanding of what Agenda 21 is.  To them the mention of Agenda 21 is regulated to conspiracy since they are too lazy to think too deeply about the inconvenient reality.

There are elections coming up in both Liberty Twp and West Chester for the trustee positions in 2013.  David Kern and George Lang could use some help in protecting their communities from the United Nation power grabs and shortsightedness of their peers who serve as trustees.  The situation is difficult for many to understand, because the reality is inopportune.  But that was the plan from The United Nations when they put Agenda 21 in place.  They knew the weaknesses of world democracies and they sought to exploit those weaknesses indirectly by infiltrating the national governments of many countries, then using the natural greed of local politicians to break down the barriers of resistance to their world-wide power grab—destroying the sovereignty of entire countries in the pursuit of a one world government where the United States would simply be one state in a family of global influence.  Most can’t wrap their minds behind such a devious plan to understand that the root of evil driving this erosion of sovereignty is behind such fiscal devices as a simple side-walk in a rural community seemingly detached from Geneva, Switzerland or any other palace of United Nation conglomeration.  To learn more about Agenda 21, CLICK HERE to begin that journey and watch the video of a man who is very knowledgeable on the topic.  Prepare to be surprised by how much Agenda 21 is already in all our lives, and learn what can be done to stop it.  

Read more about David Kern’s statements in Liberty Twp along with Kathy Dirr’s crusade to protect the township from Agenda 21 by CLICKING HERE.  

Rich Hoffman

166701_584023358276159_1119605693_n“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The History Behind “Romantic Love”: How the Troubadours became the foundations of capitalism

For those who have been raised in public education with confused messages of individual achievement suppressed against desires of collective ambition, they are living in very confusing times.  When socialism is discussed as it is so often today, many people do not understand that all forms of collectivism are the remnants of civilization’s primitive past and that the world is undergoing a revolution that will forever advance the human mind toward individualism.  In America the concept of individualism has been attacked by European influence so to bring the entire world back in line with the same type of collectivist philosophy—which is presently attempting to return the mind of man back to those of the Dark Ages, where sacrifice, altruism, and social peaking order were the primary determinations of success.

As even the staunchest Marxist, communist, greenie weenie, unionized school teacher and left leaning old hippie might cite the aims of collective causes as the highest human endeavor, the basis for all basic human relationships points away toward the kind of freedom that was invented primarily in America through capitalism as an economic philosophy.  But the aforementioned freedom actually started in the south of France and northern Italy many years ago starting as a flash of ideas that would change the world.  Few today can even fathom the type of collectivism celebrated in most of the world from Asia to Europe prior to the 13th century in the slow march all human beings have endeavored to escape.  Yet the fact that few can remember such a time or even imagine the ridiculousness of the times is accepted in modern America even in regard to same-sex marriage.  The freedom, the first among any human being on planet Earth which occurred well before the famed pirate age in the Caribbean, (CLICK FOR REVIEW) is one that we all take for granted in the present day.  Someday even the claims of modern communists will fall in similar fashion as the tradition which had occurred before it, and still does in primitive places in the world, the concept of the “arranged marriage.”

All societies which practiced, or currently practice “arranged marriages” are collectivist oriented societies.  The idea all through human history prior to the 13th century was that families would pick spouses from one family or another to join together in matrimony.  In so doing the family would then become united as a collective unit.  In collective cultures it is not uncommon for a father to give away their daughter to the youth of another family as a way to strengthen their family’s influence politically though the “power of pull.” (CLICK TO LEARN MORE) To some extent this still goes on even in the United States every time a parent tells their daughter, “You should marry that guy, because he has a nice family and he’s going to be a doctor, so you’ll always have money.”  This is a collectivist stance on marriage and societies who practice such things are naturally drawn to various forms of socialism as their governing influence.  This is how things were done in the world until the troubadours rocked the world of romance with the crazy, maniacal idea that couples should join together because of their “shared values.”  This idea of “romantic love” and marriages built upon it is an idea that most in the Occident would consider barbaric when openly advocated in 2013, but was highly rebellious when first conceived by the troubadours.

 

Troubadours and Trouvères, were lyric poets and poet-musicians who flourished in France from the end of the 11th century to the end of the 13th century. The troubadours were active in Provence in southern France. Written in the Provençal language, the lyrics of the troubadours were among the first to use native language rather than Latin, the literary language of the Middle Ages. The earliest troubadour whose works have been preserved was Guillaume IX of Aquitaine (1071-1127). The majority of known troubadours were nobles and in some cases kings. Troubadour music gradually disappeared during the 13th century but their impact would resonate through European culture for centuries thereafter.

trou·ba·dour (tr¡¹be-dôr´, -dor´, -d¢r´) noun

1.    One of a class of 12th-century and 13th-century lyric poets in Provence, northern Italy, and northern Spain, who composed songs in langue d’oc often about courtly love.

2.    A strolling minstrel.
[French, from Provençal trobador, from Old Provençal, from trobar, to compose, perhaps from Vulgar Latin *tropâre, from Late Latin tropus, trope, song, from Latin, trope. See trope.][1]

The verse forms included the canso (stanza song), tenso (dialogue or debate), sirvente (political or satirical canso), planh (complaint or dirge), alba (morning song), and serena (evening song). The musical accompaniments were generally played on stringed instruments such as viele (medieval fiddle) or the lute.

The trouvères were court poet-musicians of northern France. Their songs were strongly influenced by those of the troubadours. The northern poet-musicians eventually developed their own genre, which placed more emphasis on heroic epics. The trouvères wrote in the northern French language. The most famous trouvère was Adam de la Halle.[2]

The Middle Ages, a period of European history spanning roughly a thousand years, has not been well represented in most high school history curriculums, and indeed is frequently neglected in undergraduate history programs as well. It is because the Middle Ages are so poorly studied, even in European education, that many of the influences that shape the world today are lost as to their original meanings.  Many modern students of history assume that romantic love was always the primary motive of marriage, but it wasn’t. Marriage unions prior to the troubadours had collective social concerns as the primary motive.

The way the troubadours envisioned romantic love threatened the entire family structure of organized society and the collective aims of surrendering individual happiness to the needs of a family, a region, or even a nation dominated social concerns.  Yet after seven centuries in Occidental cultures, romantic love is now expected – even mandated.  It is because of the troubadours that Hollywood’s most successful products are romantic comedies as the yearning in America and Europe for authentic love relationships – relationships built from the shared values of two people in “love” otherwise known as the chemical reaction produced in the brain desiring to bring the sexual organs of two people together with the added spice of common likes and dislikes in a mating partner drive the motivations of relationship forming.  Sex or the promise of it is the basis behind such “romantic love” and is wholly inspired by the need for pleasurable gratification.  In such relationships if the self-interest of one party is not fulfilled by the other, the relationship tends to disintegrate if more aspects of the relationship are not introduced into the more complicated union, such as children, real estate, or mature friendships which bloom from the satisfaction of shared values.  Most of these relationships begin as the primary desire for sexual gratification which is not sacrificial, but pleasurable.

In arranged marriages, or marriages where attractive females marry men many years their senior for what such arrangements may do for their career or financial well-being the woman will allow her body to be used for sex in a similar way that a prostitute sells her body, but is unlikely to enjoy the experience herself since she is not attracted physically to her mate.  In Europe this led to the Victorian Era promiscuity that has become so well-known to the period where affairs were rampant, but suppressed for fear that the Church might look poorly upon the behavior.  It was these same Victorians who settled New England from the period of the War of 1812 to the Red Decade Period and brought with them the work of Karl Marx and progressive politics.  The ghosts of these Victorians are in every mother who says to her daughter, “Marry him because he makes a lot of money,” meaning the marriage partner will have the kind of “political pull” to bring success to her family.  It is unlikely that the women in such “arranged marriages” will enjoy or sympathize with individual endeavors since they have sacrificed their will to the collective desires of other influences.  These types of families tend to look toward political socialism to bring attempts at happiness to their lives.  If they can’t be happy, or didn’t fight for their right to be happy in the most basic aspects of their lives which is their sexual relationships, then they will seek government that will eliminate other options of free will so that the limited choices in they have made won’t be so obvious.

Yet such advancement in individuality cannot be undone.  Romantic love is here to stay and with it over many years the traces of collective oriented government will eventually fail totally as human beings come to realize that they wish in their governments the same options that they have in their sexual relationships.  Currently, many people who grew up on romantic comedies are the same people desiring socialism or at least aspects of it because they don’t understand how the two things are connected.  People today expect to pick their spouse of their own free will, and if the lover does not fulfill their needs, then the relationship ends and a new lover is typically found until the right fit occurs.  The premise behind the “romantic love” is the alignment of values with another individual which acknowledges that the happiness of individuals is more important than the happiness of collective groups.  The same debate is currently happening economically and politically; the socialist and communists are at war with the capitalists and Constitutional purists.  The idea of capitalism is the “romantic love” of finance and it was invented in The United States by the mythical Americans who like the troubadours have made a move against at least 10,000 years of human history and the economical means of exchange that have occurred during that time.  The result has been explosive, which is why America has so much current wealth.  Just like the arranged marriages from the 13th century, there was a lot of resistance to the “romantic love” proposed by the troubadours.  Capitalism like “romantic love” is opposed by collectivists and the established order of yesterday who desire communism and socialism as the way to quell threats of free will in means of government and national management.  But such governments are moving out of fashion, and will eventually be as rare 200 to 300 years from now as arranged marriages are rare in the modern age.  America as an experiment rocked the world with its radical new ideas regarding capitalism, and the world closed up around it hopping to squeeze it dead with progressive politics, but they are too late.  Human beings have tasted such freedom as “romantic love” and now “capitalism” which are one and the same.  Mankind will not be happy until the two systems are in harmony in the light of daily life where “romantic love” rules the bedroom and “capitalism” rules the means that such couples make their livings.

[1]Excerpted from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition  © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from INSO Corporation; further reproduction and distribution in accordance with the Copyright Law of the United States. All rights reserved.

[2]Encarta® 98 Desk Encyclopedia © &  1996-97 Microsoft Corporation.

All rights reserved.

Rich Hoffman

166701_584023358276159_1119605693_n“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Making of ‘Tail of the Dragon’ Part II: The Roads Less Traveled

This article is Part II of the Making of Tail of the Dragon, the novel.  CLICK HERE to review Part I.  Many have asked me regarding my most recent novel how much of it is real, and how much is fiction.  In regard to the fiction, the story is what I intended to be the greatest car chase ever told in any format, so much of it is fiction.  Yet the foundations of the story are rooted in reality–in actual places in and around one of the most dramatic examples of capitalism and adventure anywhere, joined in a ménage à troist with nature – The Great Smoky Mountains.  The Tail of the Dragon is one of the most dangerous and spectacular roads in the entire world featuring 318 curves over an 11 mile span, and in Part One I showed how the approach to The Dragon looked from the East with the point of origin beginning in Gatlinburg, Tennessee as it was when Rick and Renee Stevens began their first journey in a similar fashion.  However, later when Rick returned to The Dragon after his stint in the Blount County jail with his $20 million dollar restored Firebird to exact revenge on the Tennessee Highway Patrol he arrived from the West.  This would of course take Rick and his wife across the famed Cherohala Skyway known as The Mile High road, since portions of it reside above 5000 feet above sea level.  From atop the Mile High Road motorcycle riders find themselves above the clouds and well above the airplanes that can be seen flying around Knoxville to the North and Chattanooga to the South.  It was from a small hotel room just north of Chattanooga on I-75 that my kids joined my wife and me on a research gathering expedition by motorcycle while I was writing Tail of the Dragon.

The path taken in the video by our small research team was virtually the same used by Rick and Renee Stevens in their souped up 700 HP armored Firebird fulfilling their destiny to become the modern version of Bonnie and Clyde.  The descriptions that ended up in the novel were derived from the journey seen above as we sought to see, feel and taste the environment that feeds the Tail of the Dragon by the only access from the West there is, the snaking, twisting, oxygen depriving monster called The Cherohala Skyway.  I love the road so much that I made sure that the famed car chase from my novel began on this road from a rest area similar to those shown in the documentary footage.  Many bikers die on this road routinely.  It is uncompromisingly beautiful and dangerous at the same time.  The views make it impossible not to look around, but any mistake can send you straight off the edge to meet death in an instant.

On the way up, our crew took frequent breaks to photograph the various levels of topography for the benefit of my written words.  I took many notes along the way and focused on capturing the roguishly independent nature of the typical visitor to the region.  The politics of the area is to the right of a proclaimed libertarian from suburbia.  The independent steak evident in the motorcyclists is rebelliously self-determined and weary of any organization or institutional control.  Meeting some of these people up close and personal at our various stops, most of them live normal lives wherever they came from, but once they climbed on their motorcycle and hit the Cherohala or The Dragon, they become the staunchest freedom fighters in America.  This mentality tends to be the byproduct of embracing such dangers with the gift of leisure time.  It’s not difficult to understand this trend once the motorcycles are parked at the highest points of the Cherohala well above the cloud line.  It is something to behold sitting quietly with ones thoughts and eating a packed sandwich from civilization which feels millions of miles away as clouds blow around you.  Being one with the clouds in this fashion is even more empowering than flying in an airplane, because stopping in a cloud layer is not possible any other way.  Only mountain climbing, or high altitude motorcycling can give that sensation.

This time around our visit to The Crossroads of Time was not encumbered by heavy downpours of rain, so I was able to spend more time capturing the area the way it typically was on any given weekend throughout the year – particularly the summer months.  The culture at The Dragon is one that is fiercely independent and openly embraces danger, even death the way tribal warriors used such threats to their personal safety to prove their manhood.  This is why there is a Tree of Shame where wrecked motorcycles are exhibited not so much as a disgrace but as tokens of pride.  Inside the Crossroads Bar and Grill area there are also pictures showing the grotesque accidents that have occurred on the Tail of the Dragon where victims proudly display their injuries and deformities caused by near fatal wrecks on the area’s infamous roads.  It’s all part of the mystic and the participants openly welcome fate and whatever it brings.  In my novel Rick Stevens would evolve into an Übermensch (overman) type of character becoming a legend to the people who frequent the Tail of the Dragon.  That meant Stevens would have to have more guts, recklessness, outrageous courage, skill, wit, and sheer determination than the average Dragon rider – which is to say a lot.

Our team intended to take the Foothills Parkway over to Townsend, Tennessee as discussed at the hotel, but discovered The Dragon was closed near Tabcat Bridge due to a rock slide.  So there was no way to travel further into Tennessee from the Tail of the Dragon, (RT 129) with the road closed.  With our hotel in Gatlinburg, Tennessee this meant that we had to go back through The Dragon the way we came in Part I approaching Gatlinburg from the South instead of the West.   Because of the good weather conditions I was able to capture more of the wonderful views through the Smoky Mountains from the perspective of a motorcycle, which many people do not give themselves the pleasure to experience.  There really is nothing like it.

That night at the hotel I recorded my notes for the day, pages and pages of notes thoughts and feelings that eventually ended up in the novel.  The total sum of that 200 mile journey only makes up roughly 5 pages of material in the novel so there was much more information that needed to be gathered which will show up in future articles.  But the hard-core essence of what makes Tail of the Dragon and The Cherohala Skyway such uniquely American places was captured on the back of a motorcycle with death looming by closely waiting for a mistake to be made.  It is because of the character in such places that Rick and Renee Stevens go to such extremes in a car chase that ends up being resolved in The Oval Office of The White House.  The spirits of the people who visit these places is unfathomably independent, and share a love of rugged individualism that is simply lost to modern life’s luxury vehicles and climate control systems.  This is how the Tail of the Dragon novel came to be such a libertarian oriented story.  It was not politically intentional at the time, but an observation of reality that could not be ignored.  That reality deserved a voice, one that I was able to give it in Tail of the Dragon the novel.

 

The book is doing what I hoped it would.  I originally thought of it as a populist endeavor, but the more I got into it, I realized that the audience would not likely be the masses driving their kids to soccer practice, or thriving to pass school levies – but would be those who have long suppressed in themselves a love of liberty, life, and danger swelling to escape.  I enjoy the messages from my publisher when they complain to me that Amazon.com is having a difficult time keeping the book stocked.  My response is to print more books so they are always available.  I have my doubts that this work will ever end up on a New York Times Bestseller list due to the nature of the story.  It is an uncompromising analysis of American philosophy shaped from the perspective of a motorcycle and achieves its aims by the roads less traveled.  But for every copy sold I feel pride in knowing that roughly every five pages of text in that book was created with roughly 200 miles of travel upon such roads in an epic journey that put a dot at the end of my personal philosophies and set me on a new personal journey which readers here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom are enjoying on a daily basis.  I am extraordinarily proud of my work in Tail of the Dragon, especially now that the book has been out for a few months and people are buying it, enjoying it, and sending me emails asking questions.  These articles and videos are my attempts to answer those questions and explain that the pride I feel is not from the monetary or sales figures provided by Tail of the Dragon as a novel, but in the roads less traveled which went into its construction.  Those roads are an experience I can share through literature what 20,000 miles of motorcycle travel while writing the novel afforded me through sweat, sunburn, hunger, cold rain, punishing wind, excruciating heat and a thousand possible deaths provided as my mind worked through problems of philosophy that can only be solved living by the seat of one’s pants.

Stay tuned for more MAKING OF videos and articles to satisfy the quandaries of curiosity coming in from the novel’s readers.  And thank you to those who have given Tail of the Dragon the benefit of your attention in the first two business quarters of its release.  CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE BOOK’S WEBSITE. 

CLICK HERE to see what my publisher had to say about my novel Tail of the Dragon and look for Part II on April 3rd.

 

“Like” Tail of the Dragon on Facebook by CLICKING HERE 

If the novel is SOLD OUT at Amazon.com try Barnes and Noble by CLICKING HERE.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Making of ‘Tail of the Dragon’: The philosophy of an Übermensch from the back of a motorcycle

When I was writing Tail of the Dragon I envisioned that I was working on a populist oriented novel that would be a throw-back to the kind of films I enjoyed as a youth like Smokey and the Bandit and Hooper complete with wild antics, car chases galore, and nonstop action.  I can proudly report that those elements were successful.  Yet while I was writing Tail of the Dragon the thought did cross my mind I was doing something unique that wasn’t quite so populist resulting in early reviews comparing my work to that of Ayn Rand which prompted me to go and read her novels to understand why.  It was my publisher that made those first comparisons and informed me that my title wouldn’t be listed under general fiction, but philosophy due to the nature of the story.  In hindsight I understand what they were getting at.  Tail of the Dragon essentially does with car chases what a book I greatly admire did as a work of philosophy called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance did as a travel story—it explores concepts of philosophy in the context of events occurring on the back of a motorcycle.  In Zen, the author Robert Pirsig traveled with his son on a cross-country motorcycle trip to discover aspects of himself that were otherwise obscured by day-to-day reality.  In my Tail of the Dragon Rick and Renee Stevens do something similar except they find themselves locked in a liberianesque type battle for their very lives at speeds of over 200 miles an hour in the greatest car chase ever told.  I suppose that if I had just wrote a story in a populist fashion that my results might have been as intended—a modern homage to The Dukes of Hazzard or virtually any Burt Reynolds film.  But I did extensive research in writing the novel putting my wife and I on several long distance road trips to scout out the locations I would write about in telling the story of Rick and Renee Stevens and their super human struggle to live their lives authentically against a rules based society locked in sacrifice to the many systems of existence.  For the many readers who have read Tail of the Dragon and wondered how many of the locations mentioned in the novel were real, I invite at this time for you to ride on the back of a motorcycle as we did the research for the book and see for yourself how Rick and Renee Stevens came to life by watching the short documentary style video below.  Part I is a series of videos retracing the steps that put life into the Tail of the Dragon novel and made it a story more akin to Ayn Rand’s Übermensch novels than Burt Reynolds classic action/comedy, which turned out to be a natural byproduct of motorcycle riding in harsh weather conditions.

Rick and Renee began their journey as a middle-aged couple with a grown child and an intense desire to do some of the things they had suppressed for many years.  The novel essentially starts at the hotel Park Vista in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.  In the sequences leading up to their arrival at the hotel, the descriptions of them arriving at the hotel in the pouring rain can be seen for their origin.  When my wife and I visited this site looking for a plausible way to get the main characters into the action of the story with proper motive, it rained on us the entire time.  In the video the unique features of the Park Vista can be seen clearly—and the views out every window are extremely dramatic, each complete with their own balcony.

Leaving the Park Vista for the actual Tail of the Dragon which is over 70 miles away by road, but less than 30 miles as a crow flies, it is impossible to arrive at the mouth of The Dragon in North Carolina without climbing the mountains nearly a mile above sea level putting us easily in the clouds.  This is essentially the same route that Rick and his wife took in the novel their first time to the Tail of the Dragon which is a mystical road located on the western frontier of the Great Smoky Mountains.  The road and terrain changes from Gatlinburg, Tennessee where the Park Vista resides to the Cherokee reservation town in North Carolina are some of the most extreme on planet Earth.  In a very short distance particularly on the back of a motorcycle in the pouring rain like we experienced it, the plant life and atmospheric changes were extreme.  As seen in the video once we crossed through the mountains and arrived in Cherokee we were able to pull off at a rest area and cross a unique suspension bridge that extended across a small river that runs through town.  We sought shelter from the rain for a bit in a gift shop before resuming our journey just a bit more to the south then directly west for our destination.

The Crossroads of Time is a motorcycle resort residing at the corner of what has become known as the Moonshine 28 and the Tail of the Dragon respectably RT 129 and RT 28.  This is where Rick Stevens has the race with the Lamborghini and makes the bet with Killboy to make a speedy run up the dangerous and winding road known world-wide.  By the time my wife and I arrived at The Cross Roads of Time we had been on our motorcycle for many hours in the pouring spring rain and were freezing from the chilly air of late April.  In the video my wife could be seen drying out and eating chicken strips at the bar and grill located at the Crossroads.  It was from that seat where the first elements of the novel began to come together in my mind as I scribbled notes on my hands since all the paper I brought with me was soaking wet.  Later back at the hotel I would more formalize my observations after the hard day of riding around the entire national park of The Great Smokey Mountains ending our long journey much later from the Crossroads at a wax museum at the very start of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.  Since the rain was so intense I kept my camera packed away and didn’t get much footage while riding the motorcycle, a situation that I was able to correct in my Part II video coming up in the next article.

Motorcycle riding in the Smoky Mountains is a uniquely American thing to do especially under adverse conditions.  In my novel Tail of the Dragon, it was the perfect backdrop for my story of two people who decide that they are going to rebel against a system of living that has threatened to crush them mentally their entire lives—and dare to break away from the invisible chains that bind us all day by day slowly from cradle to grave.  I did not intend to move away from the populist plot I had worked out in my head, but when on a motorcycle pushing your own limits and stepping out of all personal safety zones, stories begin to tell themselves and as an author the task becomes in plucking such events from the air and capturing them in a bottle for others to enjoy—or learn from.  Thankfully, many have which is all I ever wanted.  Every time I get the reports from my publisher of the book sales I enjoy knowing that readers are sharing in that captured magic residing in that bottle discovered on trips like the one seen above.  I am happy to share a little bit about how the book came to life in reality with footage collected during the research phase of the novel, and provide nourishment to the inquisitive minds of the book’s growing fan base.  In Part II, I will get into a bit more footage as my daughter and son-in-law were able to join me which provided the opportunity to capture some rather spectacular footage on the back of a motorcycle and show how the words that ended up in my novel Tail of the Dragon came to be the work of the Übermensch (overman). 

CLICK HERE to see what my publisher had to say about my novel Tail of the Dragon and look for Part II on April 3rd.

Visit the website for the novel at:  www.tailofthedragonbook.com

“Like” Tail of the Dragon on Facebook by CLICKING HERE 

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

 

The ‘Cold Dead Hand’ Video From Lost Thoughtless Brains: Hypocritical ideas from those “comfortably numb”

The Jim Carrey satire against Charlton Heston, southern culture, and the Second Amendment titled Cold Dead Hands is a blessing in disguise for those of us on the more conservative side of politics.  It is good to see the mind of opponents for what they truly are without the public relations facades that often conceal the true activist nature of the subject in question.  The radical goof balls on the left expect conservatives to take it when they dish out character assassinations, but they don’t expect it in return.  In Carrey’s case he took a shot at a majority of America and their love of freedom guaranteed by The Second Amendment.  The public knows Carrey has made a living off violence in his films, namely his use of guns in the film The Mask and a film career that really got off the ground when he appeared as a drug addict in the fifth Dirty Harry film with Clint Eastwood titled The Dead Pool.  Guns have been good to Carrey, and watching him turn against them speaks openly about the hypocrisy of the left and the current culture of progressive Hollywood and the types of things they believe.  The left will never attack Carrey’s radicalism shown in his video or the disgraceful rendition of asserting that Charlton Heston is trapped in some eternal purgatory because he is still holding onto his guns.  Even when progressive leftists attack members of the conservative right, the right is attacked even further when they express outrage.

Over the last couple of days I received two emails from people who frequently read my work here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom and took note of some of my recent articles where I expressed outrage of my own.  In both cases, they feel that indignation on my part is misplaced—and uncivilized, and that I should just suppress my thoughts for the ridiculous common good.  Here are those emails along with my response.

C’mon Rich,

Looked at a recent blog of yours and found this
———
As a reader here, and casual participant, you can trust that I will not disappear into a void of oblivion because I set out in this war to win it, not to come to a drawl, or shake hands and make a deal.  I set out to destroy my enemy—those who openly exploit children for their own selfish progressive desires.
———-
Why so violent?

And quit crying over the “Kroger survey” and stick with arguments that have some logic.

Maybe Kelly Kohls gets so much flack from friends of educators because she aligns herself with you.  She loses me in her presentations as soon as she looks to you, manning the video camera, for backup facts.

I do think you need  to change the tenor of your rhetoric.  You seem to begging for physical confrontation and the search for educational solutions needs to avoid that.

William Schmidt

————————————————————————————————————–

I told you I am done with public education.  I see them as a threat to our next generations because of the left leaning tendency of what they teach.  If there were more balanced world views, I’d feel differently.  But that’s not the case.  Profit based strategies need to be the future of education as it tends to root out the good from the bad.

Since people have the memory span of paper clips, I have to remind them of the Kroger Survey for context.  You are likely to see and read it at least 100 to 200 more times in the months to come.  That was my bench mark of the type of people who support public education where I realized who supported the education system as it is and why.

You seem to ignore the comments of Becki in the Kelly Kohls incident.  You pick what you want and paint things up the way you wish them to be.  I don’t like to see people pushed around, and I see that happening a lot in public education from employees who forget that the tax payers are their boss.

Kelly or anybody else has their choice whether to align themselves with me.  Obviously you are used to dealing with other types of people, because I don’t have a shortage who wish to do so.

You can speculate on my aims, but you can bet that there is a reason for everything.

Thanks for writing and showing me your mind.  There is a lot there; I can understand your frustration.

Have a nice Easter,

Rich

————————————————————————————————————–

Dear Rich Hoffman, (as written spelling errors and all)

I do empathize strongly with Gen X.

1.But you people claim to have manners whilst minimalising racism?

2.You claim to have class while bashing on LITERALLY ENTIRE GENERATIONS?

3. You claim that Gen Z is the end of humanity, based on what? Your interpretations of the potential of a bunch of >10 years-olds?

4. You mock science for modern warnings about global disaster, but you long for the days of the cold war when nuclear annihilation was imminent?

You’re a bunch of jackasses.  For a guy who mocks younger generations for being weak, you seem to have some pretty strong “mommy” issues. Newsflash, your generation was neither the first, nor the last generation to have broken families in it. Pussy.

  • Jason Ibanez

———————————————————————————————————————-

Who me? I am what I eat.  And you are a snot nosed punk.

Rich

There are a lot more of those types of emails, but they happen to have come through within a short time of each other the other day while I was thinking about the Jim Carrey video.  They are derived from the same kind of culture where the progressive left steps up and punches the conservative right in the face then runs off not expecting to be hit back.  In the case of those emails when I am called derogatory names, or a union representative uses the word “war” to describe their plight against the tax payer it makes me angry, and I direct the anger where appropriate.

The Carrey video and the video above where progressive analysis is given praising the anti gun message, the commentator is happy and dancing on the grave of Charlton Heston because Carrey represents the progressive beliefs of that particular pundit.  So it is only fair that those of us with conservative beliefs do the same when necessary and beat on the war drums ourselves when provoked.  In that regard it is healthy to give progressives back what they dish out and then some, to teach them that it is not appropriate to use force, or coercion of any kind to advance a political agenda, which is what progressives are adamantly committed to.  However it is not my fault that the generations before me who happened to be conservative were as Jason Ibanez declared above, allowing progressive to punch them without getting it back.  Those days are over.

Jim Carrey probably does believe what he says about The Second Amendment.  He does not connect the dots of his career with the rights of the First Amendment to play characters that speak out of his butt (literally) and to use guns like he did in The Mask to boost his career.    The Hollywood culture which has been consumed by progressive Democrats, just as Ayn Rand warned about with Walt Disney and many others (CLICK HERE TO SEE FOR YOURSELF) is awash in hypocrisy in much the same way that public education believes they are on the moral side of goodness by teaching forced collectivism and anti-private property instruction against community tax payers.  Most of the time the activists like the two email writers above, or Jim Carrey in his attack against the image of Charlton Heston fail to see how their actions in the microcosm are shaped by events in the macrocosm.  They only look at their small piece of the pie and expect all of society to adhere to their viewpoint even if the cost is a loss of personal freedom, Constitutional revision, or the destruction of a movie legend’s memory.

When Hollywood attacks itself, as Carrey is doing against the recollection of Heston, the battle lines are clear.  The difference is that now conservatives have learned that taking the abuse and mockery from the progressive left will not be tolerated.  Carrey may not see the immediate impact of his actions against his next couple of films, but he has changed the way people see him.  Before this incident I was a fan of his.  I doubt I’ll ever watch another one of his films just as I haven’t seen a George Clooney film in about 10 years.  I cannot watch those types of actors anymore knowing that they stand against the personal beliefs that I have, and when they remind me of it in such a glorious fashion, they dig their own grave—because I’m not alone.  Many people think the way I do; they just don’t speak their thoughts.  And if I didn’t know that, I wouldn’t even bother with this site.

The flyover states that Jim Carrey insulted in his video made him the star that he is today and those people will reject Carrey in the future.  It will have an impact on his box office totals.  Jim Carrey has successfully taken himself as an A List actor and put himself in the mind of America as an activist equivalent to Sean Penn, an actor that is impossible to watch without thinking of his communist oriented politics.  For the same reason, Jane Fonda will always and forever be known as Hanoi Jane because of her support of communists in North Vietnam—no matter what she may have done in the rest of her life from playing in On Golden Pond with her father, to her workout tapes.   In the history of her legacy, she will always be known as a communist, which most Americans reject when the word is not hidden behind the mask of progressivism.  70 percent of Americans have a genuine mistrust of government.  About 20% of those people are willing to overlook that mistrust because government pays their paycheck—and pays them quite well to remain “comfortably numb.”  Because the government cannot be trusted, The Second Amendment will always be needed in case the tragic worst case scenario should ever reoccur, which is another American Revolution.  The Second Amendment is not for hunting, or target shooting, it is for warding off the government if government imposes itself too arrogantly upon the personal liberty and freedoms of the American people.  It’s a unique concept in the world, and progressives in love with Europe find it appalling.  In Hollywood where European culture is so revered and noticeably out of step with the rest of the country, Jim Carrey is just another activist showing off for his liberal friends so he can stay relevant.  But in so doing he created his own legacy that he will come to regret.  He won’t be known as the actor for the Truman Show, or even Ace Ventura.  Rather, he’ll be known as the progressive stooge who danced on the grave of a Hollywood legend and took aim at the heart of America with a blind attempt to appease the extreme minority in Hollywood who holds the purse strings of the Hollywood money machine.   In the end, Carrey will wish that he had said something as bold as Charlton Heston did, and that some future loser would attempt mock him in death with a song titled Cold Dead Hand, because when Carrey is no longer on earth, it will go as un-noticed as a fart lost in the wind of a career built of childish jokes and frail beliefs.


That is the legacy of Jim Carrey, throw him a fish–he’ll perform.
Rich Hoffman

166701_584023358276159_1119605693_n“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Secret Service Alien Program Cut Due to Sequestration: The outrageously overpaid federal employee

When The White House addressed last week the conspiracy theory accusations that a member of the President’s Secret Service detail was a shape shifting being of some alien race, which should easily have been explained away be saying the agent was a burn victim, or some other reasonable explanation, the radicals at The White House used the same methods of drama as we see in typical public education strategies where higher taxes are the aim.    For those curious to see the video for yourself, it can be seen by CLICKING HERE.  It says a lot about the Obama White House when people are looking so far into conspiracy in order to discover the truth behind this modern American president.  Even so, the response by The White House regarding the footage of the strange Secret Service agent prompted this response:

The White House dismissed the alien bodyguards as too costly in this era of budgetary austerity. “I can’t confirm the claims made in this video, but any alleged program to guard the president with aliens or robots would likely have to be scaled back or eliminated in the sequester,” Caitlin Hayden, the chief spokeswoman for the National Security Council, e-mails Danger Room. “I’d refer you to the Secret Service or Area 51 for more details.”

Obviously a smart assed answer in response to a hoard of speculative theories thrown in Obama’s direction, but the attempt to connect it to the sequester cuts is particularly telling.  For those who have been mystified in the past when public schools have illogically cut busing from children and made sports programs pay for play along with other extortive measures it is even more interesting to see the exact same types of strategies utilized in regard to the sequester cuts.  The sequester at the federal level amounts to nothing in regard to the debt or deficit in America. CLICK HERE FOR PERSPECTIVE.  The cuts coming from it are hardly a blip on the radar, yet it has soaked up nearly all the talk by big government supporters who are kicking and screaming about the very minor cuts in nearly an identical fashion that public schools use to wrestle more tax money off the backs of property owners.  CLICK HERE to review my personal situation at Lakota where the public school in my district cut busing after their second levy defeat.

The White House in response to the sequester cuts has been toying with other highly visible social inconvenience measures so to convince the public that they need tax increases to keep the government growing, just like public schools do.  Isn’t that amazing?  It never occurred to anybody that the federal worker may be making too much money, which currently stands at a $130,000 average in compensation.  Instead The White House chose to cut self-guided tours in The White House itself taking a page out of the book of Saul Alinsky to manipulate the public with nuisance, stating:

“Due to staffing reductions resulting from sequestration, we regret to inform you that White House Tours will be canceled effective Saturday, March 9, 2013 until further notice. Unfortunately, we will not be able to reschedule affected tours,” the White House said in an email.

These strategies are endemic with anything involving government.  The employees of government cannot be trusted to manage their affairs properly and if left alone, they chose to give themselves outrageous raises off the public dime.  There are very few jobs in the federal government worth six figures, yet it’s the average.  It is no wonder that the Washington D.C. area is one of the richest in the world as far as real estate values.  Its entire economy is built off the looted money of the American tax payer for jobs that have little, if any value.  When it comes time to engage in management of their financial resources as is customary in anything involving payroll, the federal government chooses to cut White House tours, blame Marine accidents on lack of funding, and even jokes that the Alien Secret Service program has been cut because tax payers don’t want to fork over any more money.

The compensation level with all government positions is never analyzed, just as they aren’t in public schools.  It is just assumed that wage levels will never be an issue.  No wonder so many people are willing to work for big government, and support big government politicians—because the pay is so outrageously high.  There are no management mechanisms in place to keep the wage levels reasonable in government because virtually everyone is ripping off the system.   And when they get caught, they chose radicalism over logic as seen in the belly aching over sequestration cuts.  The behavioral characteristics are common from the local school all the way to The White House and at every level in between.

Why should any American have to pay for sports fees at their school because teachers refuse to have a “normal” salary?  Why should Americans have to be denied access to their house because Secret Service agents had to be cut due to sequester?  With the tax rates that Americans currently pay for virtually everything why should it be acceptable to ask for more money so that an average compensation package of $130,000 can be maintained for federal employees?  Yet, it is expected by all members of government from the school teacher to the President himself, that taxes should be raised so that federal workers can continue to live in a fantasy land of employment compensation where they almost always tend to vote in a representative republic for the elected candidate who supports more government expansion, higher wages for meaningless jobs, and will cancel the alien Secret Service details before asking overpaid federal workers to take a hair cut of 30% to 50% of their compensation packages to bring the value of their jobs back to reality.

The very fact that the government doesn’t expect to be managed says everything.  They expect run away budgets and tax increases to constantly flow in their direction as though the American people should live in slavery to the level of comfort the federal employee enjoys.  And when taxes are not increased and cuts are demanded, like children the first thing the government does is attempt to close National Parks, White House tours and training supplies to soldiers in the same fashion that public schools cut sports, busing, and band electives.  All government workers are using the same radical handbook to make their case for outrageous salaries, and ever-growing government with no accountability at all to reality.  And they expect it audaciously by making jokes as though everyone outside the Beltway should understand.  Instead of offering a reasonable explanation for the alien looking agent discussed The White House chose to make fun of those who were left to speculation, and blamed their explanation on the sequestration not wasting even that opportunity to promote their radical behavior.  The situation we are left with is a dire one, where the eventual management that must come will be painful as Americans appear to have finally hit their limit leaving the greedy federal employees who have never been told “NO” to wonder what to do next, as their lives have been constructed upon an eroding beach and their jobs are in a sand castle that is being whipped about by an encroaching tide.  By the time the tide recedes, there won’t be much left standing so the pain for the federal worker is just getting under way.  The scam is no longer working……………thankfully.  But the time for painless management of tax payer resources has already passed when the first thing that goes are things the public truly values teaching them to despise the entire system, like what has been happening in public education all across the country as those thresholds have been reached.

Rich Hoffman

166701_584023358276159_1119605693_n“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Messages of Doom and Communism from Protect Ohio Middle Class: The pot calling the kettle black

They are either completely stupid or openly deceitful but the new group most vocally standing against Workplace Freedom in Ohio is attempting to convince voters that the right-to-work movement is driven by communist interest.  Now, if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black!   The group called Protect Ohio Middle Class is putting up billboards along Ohio highways with the title Workplace Freedom accompanied by the hammer and sickle from communist Soviet propaganda to place in the minds of the mushy middle class and ill-informed that Workplace Freedom is a communist sentiment.  THAT IS HILARIOUS.

http://protectohiosmiddleclass.org/

That just goes to show how manically deceitful these radicals of progressive policy are willing to embark to preserve their corrosive achievements.  With that said, there is no special interest behind my desire to pursue Workplace Freedom in Ohio.  I have never taken nor will I ever take money to write an article favoring Workplace Freedom.  I support it because it’s the right thing to do in Ohio and unlike the collective endeavors of the typical union worker who believe in the ridiculous concept of “all for one and one for all” nonsense, I think for myself.  I don’t wait for a memo from some union leader to tell me how to think, how to vote, or what union revised history states.  So I know the real story behind the unions in America, and they are not organizations dedicated to capitalism or freedom.  They were created by communism for the aims of soft socialist introduction of governing to mass populations through union membership.   Unions are not products of the free market, and their existence is a threat to freedom in America.

The union apologists will utter that they have a right to “collectively bargain,” that they are entitled to sit across the table from management as a collective unit of force and demand higher wages, and if they don’t get them then “striking” is the next option—which means work stoppage until the unions get what they want.  However, striking is unproductive, and if work is not being done, then productivity is not creating wealth—therefore nobody makes any money.  This union type mentality in America has crushed the car companies, steel mills, and a multitude of other businesses as frequent strikes have destroyed productivity forcing manufactures to produce in countries or states where such threats are not legal.  In forced work states like Ohio, a company has no protection against a strike but to yield and increase wages whether or not it can afford to or not.

The union argument framed in the mind of Karl Marx is that the bourgeois always has enough money to “share” with the “worker” and that money will be taken by force if needed.  Unions therefore developed the strike as the way to extract that money.  In the private sector this has bankrupted many companies.  In the public sector such as teachers, firefighters and police officers it has caused budget breaking deficits and tax increases.  All this is the plan of global communists who stand against private property, and ownership of any kind.  In this communist mindset which came to America through labor unions they changed the name of the bourgeois class to simply naming them “the rich,” and the proletariat class have now become called the “middle class.”

“Middle Class” is a derogatory term intended to suppress a heard of mindless human beings under the collective rule of communism.  The creation of the middle class in America by labor unions is to advance the concept of the proletariat as defined by Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.  Union groups like the one mentioned above in Protect Ohio Middle Class knows that if Ohio becomes a right-to-work state as Indiana and Michigan now are, that they will lose the communist push to spread the efforts of the proletariat toward the progressive aims of global socialism/communism.  Ironically, in the video above this group mentioned communist China as one of the countries where there are no unions—yet they ignore that the proletariat there had long been defeated by the communist push coming out of the biggest union in the world at the time, the Soviet Union.  The future of Ohio and of The United States is in what happened to the Soviet Union under union membership, and it can be seen in any community that once had strong union presences in companies that are no longer there.  Their arguments in favor of unions are typically as follows with my rebuttal in blue.  (If you are a union member reading this, the word “rebuttal” does not have anything to do with butts, asses, anal orifices, or any semblance of passing gas.  It is a term used to offer the other side of a debate.)

On Union Membership…(as found on the Protect Ohio Middle Class website)

  • Since 1935, Congress has guaranteed the rights of workers to collectively bargain, and since 1947 has protected the rights of workers to refrain from union membership if they choose.  What the unions don’t say is that Congress passed this law under what was known as the “Red Decade” where influence from the Soviet Union was heavily affecting policy in America during the Great Depression.  The pressure to cave under communist influence was intense, and this is how collective bargaining began in America.  When it comes to forced membership, it means that teachers, auto workers, steel workers, etcetera must be in a union or not take the job.  It’s their choice if they want to work in a union job or not—which really isn’t a choice.  It’s deceptive marketing of the union product.
  • Unionized employees are 19% more likely to have employer-provided health coverage than non-union employees.  True, and because of the crushing costs of health coverage many employers under union rule have elected to go out of business.  In Southern Ohio drive through towns like Middletown, Hamilton, Norwood, Dayton — anywhere where large union manufactures have dominated and empty buildings will be seen everywhere.  Those empty buildings are no longer providing health insurance—at all. 
  • Unionized employees are 25% more likely to have an employer-sponsored pension than non-union employees.  Again, this is why companies go out of business.  Not all employees are “good” and employers are forced due to the unions to compensate all employees “equally.”  This is a stupid idea that only communists would construct.  The value of one worker over another is completely ignored in union shops and this strategy kills competitive enterprise one way or the other bankrupting businesses, or forcing tax increases in public sector endeavors.   

On “Workplace Freedom” states vs. free-bargaining states…

    • The average annual pay for workers is 14.1% higher in free-bargaining states than “Workplace Freedom” states.  This is because the value of worker pay is artificially too high, as market forces cannot be driven down through union coercion.
    • The average employee in a “Workplace Freedom” state takes home over $5,000 less per year than their counterparts in free-bargaining states.  This is the same as the topic above; the extra $5,000 on average comes out of the true value of the business in question.  Over time the extra amount is like a slow bleed of blood out of a body.  The body will die when the blood runs out if the body cannot manufacture new blood to replace the lost blood as quick as it runs out the body will die.  This is why businesses die.  Their profits cannot overcome their legacy costs and other aspects of running a business. 
  • Workers in free-bargaining states are 4.5% more likely to have health coverage and a pension than workers in “Workplace Freedom” states.  Unions are so good at saying the same thing over and over again to make something sound better through repetition.  Health coverage is the decision of a company.  If they can afford it, they will provide such coverage which is an incentive to get the best workers.  The problem with communism is that ALL workers are treated equally, so there is no attempt to figure out if one worker is better than another, so everybody gets great benefits.  This is like a football team trying to put the best team on a field of play without ever trying to figure out who the best players are.  Good companies who are profitable and desire the best employees will offer health coverage.  Those who can’t afford the coverage will simply cash in and abandon a business because the operating costs are too great. 
  • Due to the inability to negotiate for workplace standards, construction industry fatalities are 40% higher in “Workplace Freedom” states than free-bargaining states.  Yet another faulty claim.  States with Workplace Freedom have more economic activity meaning that their rates of occurrences are higher because people are actually working.  So of course they have more accidents.  A full building with employees working in them will have more accidents than buildings that are sitting empty because the unions sucked the life out of the business.    
  • Most of the states with the highest unemployment rates in the country are “Workplace Freedom” states.  Many states that have accepted Workplace Freedom have to recover their faltering economies due to union activity in the past – such as Michigan and Indiana.  Michigan has the tragic situation of absorbing the cost of Detroit which has been decimated by unions.  Their decision to move their state toward a right-to-work status is due to their need to recover from their cancerous labor unions.  Their high unemployment was caused by the unions and poor economic activity from companies not wanting to deal with the threat of union workforces. 
  • Workers in “Workplace Freedom” states make less money, have fewer benefits, and suffer more on-the-job fatalities than workers in free-bargaining states.  This again is the way unions repeat over and over and over and over and over and over again the same thing over and over and over and over and over saying the same thing again and again and again and again like mindless drones hoping that voters are too stupid to see through their charade.  The value of a worker is determined by the employer.  The employee sells their services and the employer decides if they wish to purchase.  Unions take away the idea of value from one employee to another which is why they always fail.  Unions are a communist idea rooted in collectivism and does not work anywhere in the world. 

I could go on and on forever arguing against unions but needless to say, the organization called Protect Ohio Middle Class is a wolf pretending to be dressed in sheep’s clothing.  Unions are communist ideas and every union worker who rides a Harley Davidson with an American flag on their riding vests are hypocrites because they do not know the history of their unions.  Their unions are working against the American capitalist system, which is the blood of the economy that made The United States the most powerful country in the world.  Unions came from Europe and have destroyed everything they have touched.  It is because of unions that states like Ohio are seeking to free themselves from them with Workplace Freedom.

The Protect Ohio Middle Class group has been deceitful in attempting to label Workplace Freedom as a communist idea.  They count on voters to be just as “educated” as they are, which is equivalent to most 2-year-olds.  Just as ridiculous is the idea that the push for Workplace Freedom is driven by “special interest.”  It’s as stupid of a statement as the idea that the Tea Party would support anything resembling a communist idea.  Workplace Freedom is being driven by logic and understanding of what market forces are needed for Ohio to have a thriving economy, not one supported by federal Medicaid dollars, Teacher unions demanding more federal money to fulfill inflated labor contracts to teach progressive education to innocent children, or money from FEMA every time a shingle blows off the roof of a homeowner by a springtime tornado.  Government has not shown a will to do the right thing, so Workplace Freedom is a citizen initiative driven by logical, well-informed people.  The perceived villains of the proletariat – the infamous bourgeois are not behind Workplace Freedom in Ohio.  Workplace Freedom is the creation of people who really want jobs in Ohio, and not lip service from a governor who has been consumed by a pussyopolis.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The Fate of Cyprus Has Always Been Known: Socialist International list of member countries

After the socially hostile reaction the film Atlas Shrugged II received from mainstream critics and media personalities I decided that when it came to the next film I would write 10 positive articles for every negative one to offset in the world of Google and online forums the intended negative impact of the bleeding heart progressives pointing all civilizations the world over toward the fate of the tiny country of Cyprus.  With that in mind, it is likely that my readers here will see many more references to utter my belief that the novel and films of Atlas Shrugged are equivalent to a modern skeleton key of civilization, and that the lessons learned can save mankind from the socialism that has seduced it.  The modern forces that are bankrupting Cyprus and the European Union in general are the same who criticized so openly the film adaptations of Atlas Shrugged so to keep that skeleton key out of the minds of man—and therefore perpetuate the aims of destruction intended by the vile workings of an international group called Socialist International.  CLICK HERE TO VISIT.  I often discuss here many literary endeavors which I admire, but when it comes to predicting the outcomes of world events, declaring the current emergencies for what they are accurately, and providing a light out of the darkness for those unequipped with direction, I can think of no better source than the stories in Atlas Shrugged.

Few people know to what extent Socialist International has penetrated their lives, especially in small town America where they believe the reach of those maniacal tyrants cannot touch them.  A quick investigation into the website of Socialist International shows their areas of concern and it will be quickly discovered that the platform points for the American Democratic Party are nearly identical to those of Socialist International which is deeply embedded in all European politics, particularly in The United Nations.  Socialist International declares through their motto that they are all about “Progressive Politics for a fairer world.”  At first glance especially among the feeble-minded, socialism leading to its big brother “communism” sounds good to those who know they are too lazy, not skilled enough, or simply lacking the intellect to achieve at a high level throughout their lives, so they are attracted to the symbol of Socialist International which is a fist holding a flower—which is to say that the flower is offered to opponents of socialism, but the fist will follow if the flower is not taken.  Socialist International intends through global collectivism all the intentions that crushed the Soviet Union many years ago.  They will have their “fairer” world by forcing those who have, to give up their goods to those who have not.  And in all the literature that I have ever read, I have only seen one source that unapologetically castigates the supporters of socialism as in Atlas Shrugged.  All other works of art cower at the feet of socialism out of the long used method of socialists and communists—the power of guilt.  The attempt by socialists to make out all who work hard and create wealth, enterprise, and new inventions for mankind to be demons who must contribute their efforts to those who were not so “lucky” is long chronicled.

http://www.socialistinternational.org/

It is because of socialism that Cyprus is failing and the exact method of collapse is the plot of Atlas Shrugged written in 1957.  Why should anybody be surprised that the government there is seeking to loot money from the bank accounts of its citizens to pay their bills when socialism is the commitment?  When individual rights are sacrificed at the feet of collective rights the product is what is happening in Cyprus, Greece, Italy, France and everywhere Socialist International has had success in their work.  Socialism is the cause of the economic failures and Socialist International cannot list by any of their subscribers ONE country that has success with socialism.  Even Sweden has been forced to swing their efforts more toward free market ideas in order to avoid the perils seen in modern Cyprus, but at a cost to individual liberty.  No country has seen fiscal success for their economy following Socialist International—NOT ONE.  I challenge anybody reading this in America or the various other countries who routinely tune in to provide ONE example of where a country is thriving financially under socialism.  IT CAN’T BE DONE so there won’t be any.  Yet Socialist International as can be seen on the list below has its foot in virtually every country on the face of the Earth.  Below is a list of Socialist International members and the names they exist under in those countries.  In America, socialism and communism is a rejected term, so the name Democratic is used instead, as it has in other countries as well.

MEMBER PARTIES of the SOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL

Full Member Parties

Albania Socialist Party of Albania, SPA
Algeria Socialist Forces Front, FFS
Andorra Social Democratic Party of Andorra, PS
Angola MPLA
Argentina Socialist Party, PS
Argentina Radical Civic Union, UCR
Armenia ARF Armenian Socialist Party
Aruba People’s Electoral Movement, MEP
Australia Australian Labor Party, ALP
Austria Social Democratic Party of Austria, SPÖ
Belgium Socialist Party, PS
Belgium Socialist Party, SPA
Benin Social Democratic Party, PSD
Bosnia and Herzegovina Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina, SDP BiH
Brazil Democratic Labour Party, PDT
Bulgaria Bulgarian Social Democrats, PBSD
Bulgaria Bulgarian Socialist Party, BSP
Cameroon Social Democratic Front, SDF
Canada New Democratic Party, NDP/NPD
Cape Verde African Party of Cape Verde’s Independence,  PAICV
Chile Party for Democracy, PPD
Chile Radical Social Democratic Party, PRSD
Chile Socialist Party of Chile, PS
Colombia Liberal Party of Colombia, PLC
Costa Rica National Liberation Party, PLN
Croatia Social Democratic Party, SDP
Curaçao MAN
Cyprus Movement of Social Democrats EDEK
Czech Republic Czech Social Democratic Party, CSSD
Denmark Social Democratic Party
Dominican Republic Dominican Revolutionary Party, PRD
Ecuador Democratic Left Party, PID
Equatorial Guinea Convergence for Social Democracy, CPDS
Finland Finnish Social Democratic Party, SDP
France Socialist Party, PS
Germany Social Democratic Party of Germany, SPD
Ghana National Democratic Congress
Greece Panhellenic Socialist Movement, PASOK
Guatemala National Union for Hope, UNE
Guinea Guinean People’s Assembly, RPG
Haiti Union of Haitian Social Democrats
Hungary Hungarian Social Democratic Party, MSzDP
Hungary Hungarian Socialist Party, MSzP
Iceland Social Democratic Alliance of Iceland
Iraq Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, PUK
Ireland The Labour Party
Israel Meretz Party
Italy Italian Socialist Party, PSI
Japan Social Democratic Party, SDP
Lebanon Progressive Socialist Party, PSP
Lithuania Lithuanian Social Democratic Party, LSDP
Luxembourg Luxembourg Socialist Workers’ Party, LSAP/POSL
Malaysia Democratic Action Party, DAP
Mali African Party for Solidarity and Justice, ADEMA-PASJ
Mali Assembly for Mali, RPM
Mauritania Assembly of Democratic Forces, RFD
Mauritius Mauritius Labour Party
Mauritius Mauritius Militant Movement, MMM
Mexico Party of Democratic Revolution, PRD
Mexico Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI
Republic of Moldova Democratic Party, PDM
Mongolia Mongolian People’s Party, MPP
Montenegro Social Democratic Party of Montenegro, SDP
Montenegro Democratic Party of Socialists of Montenegro, DPS
Morocco Socialist Union of Popular Forces, USFP
Mozambique Frelimo Party
Namibia SWAPO
Nepal Nepali Congress Party
Nicaragua Sandinista National Liberation Front, FSLN
Niger Party for Democracy and Socialism of Niger, PNDS
Northern Ireland Social Democratic and Labour Party, SDLP
Pakistan Pakistan People’s Party, PPP
Palestine Fatah
Panama Democratic Revolutionary Party, PRD
Paraguay ‘País Solidario’ Party
Peru Peruvian Aprista Party, PAP
Poland Democratic Left Alliance, SLD
Portugal Socialist Party, PS
Puerto Rico Puerto Rican Independence Party, PIP
Romania Social Democratic Party, PSD
Russian Federation A Just Russia Party
San Marino Party of Socialists and Democrats
Senegal Socialist Party, PS
Serbia Democratic Party, DS
Slovakia SMER-Social Democracy
South Africa African National Congress, ANC
Spain Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, PSOE
Sweden Swedish Social Democratic Party, SAP
Switzerland Social Democratic Party of Switzerland
Tanzania Chama Cha Mapinduzi, CCM
Tunisia Democratic Forum for Labour and Freedoms, FDTL
Turkey Republican People’s Party, CHP
Uruguay New Space, PNE
Uruguay Socialist Party of Uruguay, PSU
USA Democratic Socialists of America, DSA
Venezuela Democratic Action, AD
Venezuela Movement for Socialism, MAS
Yemen Yemeni Socialist Party
Zimbabwe Movement for Democratic Change, MDC

Consultative parties

Algeria National Liberation Front, FLN
Antigua and Barbuda Antigua Labor Party
Belarus Belarusian Social Democratic Party (Narodnaya Hramada), BSDP
Cyprus Republican Turkish Party, CTP
Egypt Egyptian Social Democratic Party
Gabon Gabonese Party for Progress, PGP
The Gambia United Democratic Party, UDP
Georgia Social Democrats for Development, SDD
Guinea-Bissau African Party of Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, PAIGC
Iran Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, PDKI
Kazakhstan All-National Social Democratic Party ‘AZAT’
Palestine Palestinian National Initiative, PNI
Paraguay Progressive Democratic Party, PDP
Philippines Akbayan, Citizens’ Action Party
São Tomé and Príncipe Movement for the Liberation of São Tomé and Príncipe/Social Democratic Party, MLSTP-PSD
Swaziland People’s United Democratic Movement, PUDEMO
Timor-Leste Fretilin
Togo Democratic Convention of African Peoples, CDPA
Turkey Peace and Democracy Party, BDP
Ukraine Social Democratic Party of Ukraine, SDPU
Venezuela A New Era, UNT
Zambia Patriotic Front, PF

Observer parties

Albania Social Democratic Party, PSD 4
Barbados Barbados Labour Party, BLP 4
Belarus Belarusian Party of Labour
Botswana Botswana National Front, BNF
Burkina Faso Party for Democracy and Progress/Socialist Party, PDP/PS 4
Burundi Frodebu 4
Central African Republic Movement for the Liberation of the Central African People, MLPC
Colombia Alternative Democratic Force, PDA
Democratic Republic of Congo Union for Democracy and Social Progress, UDPS
Dominica Dominica Labour Party 4
Estonia Estonian Social Democratic Party
Great-Britain The Labour Party
Greenland Siumut 4
Haiti Organisation of the People in Struggle, OPL
Israel Israel Labour Party 4
Jamaica People’s National Party, PNP 4
Kenya Labour Party of Kenya
Kyrgyzstan Ata Meken
Latvia Latvian Social Democratic Workers’ Party, LSDSP 4
FYR Macedonia Social Democratic Union of Macedonia, SDSM 4 
Malta Malta Labour Party 4
Namibia Congress of Democrats, CoD 4
Netherlands Labour Party, PvdA
New Zealand New Zealand Labour Party, NZLP 4
Norway Norwegian Labour Party, DNA
Philippines Philippines Democratic Socialist Party, PDSP4
Poland Union of Labour, UP 4
St. Kitts & Nevis St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party, SKNLP 4
St. Lucia St. Lucia Labour Party, SLP 4
St. Vincent & the Grenadines Unity Labour Party 4
Serbia Social Democratic Party 4
Slovenia Social Democrats, SD 4
Western Sahara Polisario Front

Fraternal organizations

International Falcon Movement/Socialist Educational International, IFM/SEI
International Union of Socialist Youth, IUSY
Socialist International Women, SIW

Associated organizations

International Federation of the Socialist and Democratic Press, IFSDP
International Labour Sports Confederation, CSIT
International League of Religious Socialists, ILRS
International Social Democratic Union for Education, ISDUE
Jewish Labour Bund, JLB
National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, NDI
Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament (S&D)
Party of European Socialists PES
Social Democratic Group of the Latin American Parliament
World Labour Zionist Movement, WLZM

Ayn Rand knew socialism wouldn’t work because she was in Russia when they made an aggressive move to embrace full communism.  The effort crushed the economy of the Soviet Union, and Ayn Rand fled to The United States to become a great novelist and write books like We The Living chronicling the events of communism in her native country then writing Atlas Shrugged which was a warning to the world about the desires of progressive minded socialists inspired by the faulty mind of Karl Marx.   To date, no creative artist has been as bold as Ayn Rand in speaking against socialism which is why she is such a target among modern progressives.  Even in The United States socialism is aggressively spreading.  California, because of its progressive policies is next in line to be Cyprus.  The finances of California will collapse under the heavy taxation and tendency to sap the strength of the strong and innovative in order to feed the weak and complacent.

Fairness has a cost and in the end all suffer when they disincentivize the strong in order to prop up the weak.  Those who work to be strong, do so not by some mystical luck, but by their own ambition.  Socialist governments disincentivize such behavior with the faulty belief the strong will continue to produce, innovate, and build society in a positive way.  Only Ayn Rand has had the guts to spell out such doom clearly without mincing words.  The critics of her work are primarily those who are directly or indirectly involved in the efforts of Socialist International throughout the world but hide their radicalism behind legitimate publications and media companies.  The best way to flush them out of hiding is by studying who speaks out against Atlas Shrugged.  Ayn Rand’s work undoes the effort of Socialist International, which is the greatest threat to their existence.

For this reason I will continue to write about Atlas Shrugged aggressively for the next year and a half.  Once the third and final film comes out in the summer of 2014, and people not familiar with the work inquire over the internet where the John Galt speech came from and want to know more about Atlas Shrugged, they will run across my articles written about the events that most affect them and understand how the messages of Atlas Shrugged can be applied to a situation like that found in Cyprus.  It does not take an army to defeat the workings of Socialist International.  It only requires the effort of those who are productive to rob from the socialists the hidden meaning behind their “fairness” and to define the agenda correctly.  In that regard, Atlas Shrugged is the most powerful tool to utilize against such foes, which deserves to be exploited utterly—and without apology.  To do so is to attempt to avoid the fate of places like Cyprus.  For that small island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Socialist International has already destroyed the economy never to return again under the flag of socialism.  Ayn Rand predicted the exact methods places like Cyprus would fall prey to and those predictions should be studied, and honored so that the same fate can be avoided elsewhere.  For my part, I will continue to sound the bugle of Ayn Rand so that perhaps similar fates can be avoided in other places where it’s not yet too late.

Rich Hoffman

166701_584023358276159_1119605693_n“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The “Power of Pull”: How John Galt is the fictional modern Christ and why

In the middle of a Mexican town heavily dominated by Catholic inspired residents–largely very poor, I saw one of the most ambitious renderings of The Passion week in my life.  The entire town showed up to follow an outdoor drama of The Christ’s crucifixion.  In their play, Jesus was tried and convicted in the town for all to see and forced to carry his cross all through streets shut down by local law enforcement.  My wife, who is the type of person who will do exactly the opposite of what three thousand other people are doing stood off to the side bewildered why so many people would think to gather in one place to be a part of something they clearly couldn’t see from their vantage point.  The mass collectivism exhibited by the town was stunning and she could only look at me in shock.  But to me, who had grown up around religion, the exhibition was not surprising.  The people of the small Mexican town shared much with the ancient Hebrew people in Jerusalem so their re-enactment of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion was probably very close to how it would have actually looked in the streets of the old Holy city built during a long struggle by the Jewish people. For me, such displays are never about the wonder of sacrifice as is usually the focus of those who pledge themselves to Jesus for eternal redemption.  I never fault people who do not know any better but to follow behind a parade of their peers blindly.  My wife and I stood off to the side in casual observation knowing that the real tragedy of Christ’s crucifixion was not that Jesus would be hung on a cross to be sacrificed so that all the people of the world would be saved in the eyes of God; it was why Jesus was killed in the first place.  The poor people in Mexico like the Jewish people in Israel during the time of Jesus had a lot in common.  Drug lords and corrupt politicians run the towns in Mexico where the drama I witnessed took place, and the Jewish people during the time of Jesus were controlled by high priests and Roman authorities with virtually the same motivations—control of the population so that they could sap the wealth off their labor.  The message Jesus had for the people of Jerusalem at Herod’s Temple was essentially the same that John Galt had in the fictional novel Atlas Shrugged written without the pretext of religion, that the “power of pull” is the highest concern of the corrupt and the powers who desire such “pull” will do anything to maintain it.  It is for this reason that The Holy Bible and Atlas Shrugged are the two most popular books read in the modern Library of Congress.

The poor people in Mexico like the poor people in ancient or even present day Jerusalem tend to lose the message that Jesus uttered at the temple when he stepped in and overturned all the vendors’ tables attempting to put a stop to all the corrupt dealings conducted there during the week of Passover.  The focus of The Passion events always resides on the crucifixion, but for me the cause of the execution is far more important.  People struggling just to find their next meal discover they have little control of their lives and as a result put their sentiments behind the tragic end of Jesus, instead of truly grappling with the message that placed him into so much trouble in the first place.  Ayn Rand in her epic novel Atlas Shrugged understood this, and told nearly the same story with her character John Galt without being hidden behind religious metaphors, so that the impact of her message would not be lost, as it often is when studying The Bible in churches.

Before people become upset with me about comparing the Passion of Christ to Atlas Shrugged understand that I have studied and acted in renditions of The Passion many times.  I have played in stage plays virtually every role in The Passion from Nicodemus to Jesus himself so I have a very good understanding of the events that led up to Jesus and his execution and I see the parallels to the story of Atlas Shrugged to be purposeful on behalf of Ayn Rand.  Rand without question hoped that her warnings would not be lost behind the tendency of civilization to find the value of such stories in sacrifice, instead of attacking the real villain, the “power of pull.”  Matthew 26:57 states that Jesus was taken to the house of Caiaphas the high priest, where the scribes and the elders were gathered together.  Matthew 27:1 adds that the next morning the priests held another meeting. Mark 14:53 states that Jesus was taken that night “to the high priest” (without naming the priest) where all the chief priests and the elders gathered and in Mark 15:1 it adds that another consultation was held among the priests the next morning. Luke 22:54 states that Jesus was taken to “the high priest’s house” (without naming the priest) where he was mocked and beaten that night and in 22:66 it adds that “as soon as it was day”, the chief priests and scribes gathered together and led Jesus away into their council.[9][10][11] Jesus was taken to the high priest because the message that he brought with him to Jerusalem was a dangerous one that countered what the Pharisees were attempting to preach to the Jewish people.  In the same way John Galt was tortured in Atlas Shrugged to force him to yield to collective rule, to renounce his beliefs for the benefit of all world governments.

The Pharisees had worked out a deal with the Roman power structure within their empire which profited them greatly.  They wished to believe in a similar way that James Taggert did in Atlas Shrugged that they were the good and benevolent acting for the “greater good” of the Jewish people.  Of course they were truly acting on their own self-interest behind the cowardice of political pull.  Jesus exposed this to the people of Jerusalem not maliciously, but simply through his authenticity—and individuality.  Alone Jesus stood against the powers behind Jerusalem politics, and he was targeted for assassination because of his resistance to collective obedience to the existing powers. He was offered a chance on several occasions to take peaceful allegiance behind the Pharisees in Jerusalem but Jesus turned them all down insisting each time that he was the Messiah and that he was the “Chosen One.” The message behind Jesus taken without religious context is essentially the same as John Galt insisting that he is the power that drives the world.  John Galt did not mean that he alone drove the world, but that it was through people like him that the engines of existence were motivated.  Jesus intended the same message and the Pharisees couldn’t accept such a reality—because it would essentially put them out of the religion business and destroy the safety they had arranged with the Romans for their own preservation.

For the same reasons, James Taggert worked with Hank Reardon’s wife to bring the steel tycoon to trial.  They conspired to protect what they believed was the good of mankind by making Hank a sacrificial lamb to the urges of collectivism.  Later in the book John Galt is captured because of his love for Dagny Taggert, and he is tortured in a similar fashion.  He is then offered to the mob to withdrawal his messages of individual sovereignty by the point of a gun, which he refuses.  He is then stripped naked and tortured through electric shock seemingly to his death because he refused to yield to the forces of collectivism constructed by the “power of pull.”  Jesus was betrayed by Judas for the price of 30 pieces of silver.  Judas wanted to believe that he was doing right and uniting the Jewish message behind the Pharisees.  But in reality he simply wanted the money and was no different from anyone else who cowers behind the “power of pull” to align themselves with any power for their own profit.

Peter declared that he would stand with Jesus to the bitter end but discovered as Christ predicted that he would betray the Messiah three times before the cock crowed on the following morning.  Peter was very bold in his proclamations until he was faced with his own demise because he was not aligned with the “power of pull” which the Pharisees had negotiated through collectivism to suppress the minds of man.  This denial by Peter of Jesus is similar to how Hank Reardon allowed himself to be convicted by The Government.  He had “sinned” in cheating on his legal wife and sought to protect his true love Dagny Taggert.  His need to preserve this love forced him to comply with the “power of pull.”  In the novel Atlas Shrugged, John Galt never yields to such a temptation even at the point of death, which makes him the most pure form of individuality and therefore worthy of Dagny’s love.  Jesus in real life did what Ayn Rand created in a fictional context.  The heroes never yielded to the powers of man—to the “power of pull,” in either the Passion of Christ or Atlas Shrugged.  Rand seemed to be attempting to strip away the religious context of The Passion to tell the story of John Galt so that the essence of the message would not be lost behind the human tendency toward sacrifice in religion.

The people of Jerusalem like the poor people in the Mexican town were suppressed by forces their intellects would not permit them to be freed from.  The Pharisees had proved to even the most staunch supporters of Jesus that even they would cower in fear behind the “power of pull,” the power of collectivism.  Human beings in private understand the message of Jesus at a level beyond consciousness, but they find they cannot act on it, just as Peter failed three times before sunrise.  Many religious groups just as motivated as the Pharisees take the story of The Passion and focused on Jesus’ sacrifice on behalf of all mankind.  The reason for this is that they wish to see donations coming into their churches and governments have openly advocated such behavior for the soul purpose of tax collection—which is at the center of the entire Jesus crucifixion—a little known fact that will be explored vividly in Bill O’Reilly’s upcoming book Killing Jesus.  Institutions of all kinds have taken the message of Jesus and discarded the implication of immoral criticism and instead focused on individual sacrifice to a collective whole.

Ayn Rand wrote her story of John Galt from the point of view where religion and institutions were the villains, and she attacked their premise—which is essentially the message behind Jesus’ actions during Passover.  As sure as I write such things here, there are religious zealots who will proclaim that my comparison of The Bible to Atlas Shrugged is blasphemous—and those same souls will not see that they act just as the Pharisees did against Jesus when he declared himself The Messiah and road into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, fulfilling a long-held Jewish prophesy.  Jesus was preaching against institutionalism when he gave his Sermon on the Mount, it was not in a church with collections, or organized hierarchies of human behavior where some were above others based on social titles.  When Jesus’ followers declared him to be The Messiah with chants of conquest he was deeply distraught, because the people didn’t understand what he was trying to teach.  The message of John Galt is very similar to Jesus Christ except it’s written against two thousand years of evil that has since transpired since the time of Jesus.  The great John Galt speech is something Jesus Christ would feel right at home in understanding.  Jesus came from a culture that believed sacrifice was needed to appease the gods, or in Jesus’ case—GOD.  His views were radically different from those of the ruling Pharisees.  In the modern age Ayn Rand’s character of John Galt expands on such teachings with a uniquely American frame of reference.  With all the concern over religious perspective removed, the teachings of Jesus and John Galt—relative to their impact on world literature are virtually the same.  It is no wonder that the world gobbles up the words of The Bible and Atlas Shrugged with such vigor, which terrifies all institutional control organizations.

The people my wife and I observed in Mexico celebrating The Passion with a mass display of raw collectivism are a long way from understanding what Jesus or John Galt intended in their literary communications.  With the Mexican people afraid that if they step out of line, they might be killed, raped, or otherwise socially disgraced—there is no room in their minds to comprehend the real messages of Jesus aside from memorizing the sacrificial portions of his sermons.  It is far easier to sit in a church pew and allow a “man of God” to interpret the value of spirituality for them, than to think on their own and stand against an entire empire as Jesus did in The Bible, or as John Galt did against the entire world in Atlas Shrugged.  As I watched the Mexican people follow the actor of Jesus through the town streets dusty with rainless days and an unforgivable sun, I felt pity that I could not help the thousands of people following blindly the idea of sacrifice when the messages that caused the crucifixion were truly what was important yet being missed. My wife and I could only shrug at each other and pay respect to their rituals without insult, for it is more valuable to have rituals that instigate worth than to cast aside morality because fear contorts reason.  Many people use religion to hold their fears at bay.  The idea that one should struggle, sacrifice and live their lives for an after world to finally meet Jesus on the other side of life is what the Pharisees and their Roman controllers intended in order to preserve the power structures that they profited from, which is why they killed Jesus.  Watching history interpret the story of Jesus the way they did, Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged so the message could not be distorted in any way by any institution.  Rand removed the religious context so that the words of John Galt could not be intercepted by any institution and re-interpreted over the wine glasses of sacrifice.  Jesus was one of the most pure souls who ever graced the world of mankind and it appears that only a fraction of his total essence made its way into history through written form.  But what did survive was a lesson that is still present for those who have eyes to see the message and have the courage to do as he did—and that is to stand against the institutions which seek to preserve the “power of pull” which has held mankind in chains since the first village elected a tribal chief to force submission of all others under their command.  Such arrangements are almost always claimed by the powerful to be the work of God.  Yet Jesus attempted to free the human mind from such shackles and due to his crucifixion and short life, institutions were able to contain the message behind tragedy.  But 2000 years later through a work of fiction, clarity was brought to the literature of mankind through the unique country of America and the raw passion of Ayn Rand who wrote the greatest novel perhaps ever created…………..Atlas Shrugged, which had solved a riddle against institutionalism that had been a plague to man’s mind for all of known history and shattered the long accepted notion that human beings would always be ruled by the “power of pull.”

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com