Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com
The evening July 11,2011 sun beat hard upon the converted barn at the Niederman Farm where the Liberty Twp Tea Party met to celebrate their 2nd year. There have been a lot of battles over the last couple of years, and as we gathered for the pot luck dinner it was evident that there would be a lot more.
The people around me at this gathering are all there for the same reason, we recognize that the government has let us down and taken the nation on a path it doesn’t want to go. Not everyone has come to that realization yet, because they still hope that somewhere, there is a magical golden egg that will be laid by some golden goose. Increasingly, these elected representatives are being seen not as leaders, but as con artists and thieves who have stolen from each of us and sold us back bath water claiming it to be an elixir of life.
When John Keynes introduced his Keynesian economics model from the ever-increasing socialist tendencies of the rest of the world, politicians saw an opportunity to exploit that model for their own accents to public supported power. Keynes was wrong, and every system using it is failing, including schools. The correct answer is not more of the same theory, but something else completely. In schools, the task is to convert over to that system without destroying the opportunities of the kids and parents who support the school. But in education, just like all things in government, the prices of labor, of the services created by labor, and the revenue which supports the entire foundation are artificially inflated, because competition is not allowed to kill off the waste, because government protects those enterprises. This drives up the costs everywhere for everybody. And presidents like Obama and school boards like what we have at Lakota, only know to close that inflated value with increased taxes. They can’t understand any other option because their brains are not wired to accept anything else.
As I sat among friends and family I thought about the worst issue in the news of them all, and that’s the case of the murdered little girl in Florida, the Casey Anthony trial where the mother appears to have accidentally killed her little girl with an overdose of chloroform and drove around Florida with the body in the trunk for everyone to smell the decomposing body. The girl was a reckless young woman, and the prosecution went for the death penalty for the severity of the crime. Last week, Casey was found not guilty; the jurors didn’t have the inner compass of morality to be able to pass judgment on a peer. Society has lost their ability to judge.
I feel privileged that after two years, the Liberty Twp Tea Party is still here, and it’s growing. And it refreshes the soul to partake in these events, as the aroma of barn yard animals and community prepared food mixes in a unique waltz of perpetuity. Because this is how it was in the beginning, and this is the way of the American, to always be ready for a fight, to roll up the sleeves and eat well before a hard day’s work, or the battle that looms on the horizon. Because only by the path of those in this barn, is the path to liberty and freedom. And the only right answer in the entire nation is present on the tongues of those in attendance, because they are the last of their kind and Americais waiting for them to fix the nation that has been hijacked by tyrants of good intention.
Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com
I’ve said it many times, I read a lot. A whole lot. And over 2010 one of the books that most jumped out at me was Glenn Beck’s The Overton Window. My daughter had bought it for me for Father’s Day and I read it in one day.
I hear people like Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO talk about the “RIGHT WING” and you hear what comes out of his mouth and you have to wonder about his sanity. As far as a union leader, and a person close to the White House, which he says he speaks to daily, I would be ashamed if that guy where my boss or leader. He clearly doesn’t understand basic economics and its people like him that create the message that millions of union workers chant.
Here is Trumka speaking in March of 2009. He has no idea how the bill he’s speaking about will “expand” the middle class, and he doesn’t have any idea how this will drive up the labor costs. He just makes statements that people seem to blindly following without question. Something he accuses Beck and other people primarily on the political right of doing.
You can read here how he believes the best way to expand the middle class is through further taxation. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/afl-cio-boss-raising-taxes-is-best-way-to-create-jobs/
America is supposed to be a group of individuals, not a unified collective sum like Trumka speaks about. The Federalist Papers, which went on to become The Constitution were written to protect American from people like Trumka, and Obama. Those people and people like them taken by themselves are not bad people, but they have a dangerous ideology and they disguise it with a message the masses can understand. So it is not a far stretch to say that when I saw Trumka speak on February 26, 2011 that the best way to create jobs was to raise taxes, which I know from economics is false, yet people chant and cheer in approval, and I witnessed the union protests all across the country, it reminded me of Jim Jones, of the Jonestown massacre from 1978. Jones had several thousand supporters that followed him from Indianapolis Indiana, to San Francisco, then to Guyana South America. Jones was an admirer of Marx, Lenin, and Mao. That’s why they chanted this song at their church rallies in the early 70’s.
Jim Jones is a tough story to swallow. Because it is the extreme example of what collectivism can inflict on people. Jones was a proud socialist. What you are about to hear is the actual death tape from the Jonestown Massacre. Jones turned on a tape recorder and gave a final speech while his thousands of followers drank poisoned drink to their deaths. He calls it “revolutionary suicide” to an inhuman world. You will actually hear people perishing in the background, so if you have a soft stomach, don’t listen to this. This behavior is far from a joke. If you listen you will hear several people step forward and speak about the greatness of Jim Jones, their “Daddy,” and of the merits of socialism and communism.
The following clip is from the film The Guyana Tragedy and is a reenactment of what you will hear below.
Here is the actual death tapes. Now consider as you listen to this, these people speaking are just moments from their death. They know it. Listen to their thoughts and what they intend.
So what is the lesson here? Well, madmen have a way of lying to themselves and distorting the reality of the world around them. And such people are attracted to socialism, communism, progressivism and all those collective “ism’s.” At that point it no longer becomes a simple argument about economics and the best way to handle economic issues. It evolves into a struggle between good and evil.
That’s where I start seeing startling comparisons from people in the modern labor movement. What they are saying are simply the words their leaders speak. Richard Trumka is a powerful union leader and in this recent case involving these labor protests, what he says in public, over a microphone, ends up coming out of the mouths of his followers.
Trumka, like many people attracted to those “collective ideologies” are prone to climb for power. History shows that it happens in every case. I don’t know of a single instance of a collective society that survives outside of a tribal village. The individuality inherit in the human being seems to break down true collectivism, and social experiments to water this tendency down in our youth have failed with terrible results. This is the reason the Tea Party has risen as a permanent movement, because many people are just tired of the “social experiments.” Many want to return to the original blue print that paved the way for the greatest nation on earth.
The Tea Party is a push back against the tendency of “collectivism” that has gotten out of control.
Whether or not he is aware of it or not, Trumka’s actions show that he is power-hungry and idealistic, and is essentially no different from someone like Jim Jones. It is quite possible that if that congressman from California had not went to Jonestown and been killed, Jim Jones and his followers would have lived for years without a mass suicide. But the scary thing about it is that Jones had to retreat to South America to have his utopian society. And the congressman was doing in that society much of what the Tea Party is trying to do in American Society. They are intervening and attempting to break up the dangerous collectivism that is consuming the nation.
Progressives are insistent in the modern age to not leave the country for their utopian society. They instead are intent to change the country itself. Here Trumka reveals what he is all about, which concerns me a great deal. It concerns me because watching his followers on Saturday; they seem to think he truly believes in this whole “middle class” protection. Yet he states otherwise.
Now this doesn’t mean Trumka is just like Jim Jones. Jones when he was in Indiana seemed like a reasonable guy. Thousands and thousands of people wouldn’t have followed him if they thought the path would take them to their sweaty deaths in a South American jungle within a decade. But Trumka’s followers behave almost identically to the congregation of Jim Jones, and that is what is troublesome.
Watch and listen to these clips from the Saturday Protests. And compare the behavior to what you heard from Jim Jones’s Congregation.
This brings me back to the Overton window concept introduced in Beck’s book. People can say what they want about Glenn Beck, but from what I know about the guy, he genuinely wants to get at the truth. His agenda is the truth. And that’s why he wrote his book, The Overton Window.
As I was reading The Overton Window, I realized that here is a guy that Time Magazine called the most dangerous man in American. Here is a guy hated by all these various progressive groups. Here is a guy that has become massively popular in a very short period of time. Here is a guy that has an agent that is very liberal. Here is a guy that knows a few rich people yet has not forgotten his humanity. Here is a guy that has hit the bottom, and realizes that it’s the little things in life that makes things precious. Here is a guy that would never, ever, under any circumstances be a Jim Jones. He might have the power to be, but he would not sub come to it. Glenn Beck is the kind of man who you could put a pile of gold in his lap, ask him to watch it for you till you come back, and when you returned 2 years later, he’d give it back without anything missing. Since he has a unique insight to how the game is played at the level he’s at now, the book, The Overton Window is a particularly rare opportunity for a reader. And I found the book and its concepts uniquely rich. It may not be the most profound literary work in history. But it is very bold in its attempt and it succeeds. What it is successful in doing is capturing the confusing political landscape that we are currently involved with revealing through a cleaver story what drives all the groups involved in creating their own Overton window that will pull society in their desired direction.
Here is the definition and description of what a Overton Window is as described in Wikipedia.
The Overton window, in political theory, describes a “window” in the range of public reactions to ideas in public discourse, in a spectrum of all possible options on a particular issue. It is named after its originator, Joseph P. Overton.
At any given moment, the “window” includes a range of policies considered to be politically acceptable in the current climate of public opinion, which a politician can recommend without being considered too “extreme” or outside the mainstream to gain or keep public office. Overton arranged the spectrum on a vertical axis of “more free” and “less free” in regards to government intervention. When the window moves or expands, ideas can accordingly become more or less politically acceptable. The degrees of acceptance of public ideas can be described roughly as:
• Unthinkable
• Radical
• Acceptable
• Sensible
• Popular
• Policy
The Overton Window is a means of visualizing which ideas define that range of acceptance by where they fall in it. Proponents of policies outside the window seek to persuade or educate the public so that the window either “moves” or expands to encompass them. Opponents of current policies, or similar ones currently within the window, likewise seek to convince people who these should be considered unacceptable.
Other formulations of the process created after Overton’s death add the concept of moving the window, such as deliberately promoting ideas even less acceptable than the previous “outer fringe” ideas, with the intention of making the current fringe ideas acceptable by comparison.
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This site has an interesting twist on The Overton Window by describing it in four planes instead of just left and right, which I like.
http://www.correntewire.com/the_overton_window_has_four_panes
What these extreme left groups have done over time is they pulled the Overton window radically to the left with key phrases like, “workers’ rights” and “tax the rich.” Or “all conservatives are Hitler.” 100 years ago at the start of the progressive movement these ideas were considered radical. But in the election of 1912, Eugene V.Debs had doubled the Socialist vote from 500,000 in 1908 to 1 million in 1912. This wasn’t some guy from Europe; he was born in Terre Haute, Indiana. In fact, the Socialists had their 1912 Convention in Indianapolis; the same place Jim Jones started his socialist church. Ronald Reagan toyed with joining the socialist party when he was a young man in Hollywood. It was after he traveled to England and witnessed what socialism had done to England through the Labor Party that he turned far to the right, out of fear for his country. But those people, those 1 million people who voted socialist in 1912 are out there, and they attached themselves to progressive ideas, they had children, raised families and found themselves drawn to the Labor Movement in America on the backs of the unions. Now many of those people aren’t bad people, but they are attracted to the collectivism of socialist concepts by their family culture and genetic make-up, because let’s face it, some people are more comfortable hiding in the masses and are not inclined to stand on their own.
Those poor, unfortunate souls are the people who end up following someone like Jim Jones in the extreme circumstance. And to a lesser degree, they find themselves repeating word for word what someone like Richard Trumka utters, without any care as to the relevance of his words. Trumka knows he can’t talk to an economist about how he represents the “middle class” or how “increasing taxes on the rich,” “creates jobs.” Those are just buzz words to stir up the followers. What Trumka is really after is moving the Overton window far to the left as was the trend during the entire 20th century. It happened because people weren’t aware of the threat and it just crept into our culture subtly. Trumka said it himself; he’s not in the labor movement for wages and benefits. He’s using the labor movement as a platform to change society, and that isn’t any different from Jim Jones who wanted to change the world through religion.
The Tea Party wants none of that non-sense. The Tea Party wants people like Trumka off our back, and wants to pull the Overton window back to the far right so that the recoil will leave the political spectrum back in the middle where it belongs. The caution is there because half the nation isn’t drinking the cool-aid of Trumka. Half is, roughly. The problem is that other half are made up of people who have evolved to expect an entitlement culture, so those aren’t the kind of people who will carry a nation by themselves. They’ll need a fanatical leader to lead them. The Tea Party has no such leader. Glenn Beck could disappear tomorrow and someone like Doc Thompson in Cincinnati would just take his place, or maybe the young man in the radio broadcast above. The movement is essentially leaderless, because it is built upon the ideas of self-reliance, which was what America was intended to be.
The real threat and real money being poured into politics isn’t coming from Rupert Murdoch, or the Koch Brothers. George Soros, and all the Hollywood left has poured far more money into political manipulation so there isn’t any room to talk. Yet if Trumka says “the conservative right is for the rich, and we are for the working man!” Look at all these contributors to the radical left! Yet all these people point to the right and say it’s “Wall Street, the rich, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, all are blamed for manipulating the American people when in fact it is these people that have committed the act of their accusations.
“The working man” is another false premise captured by the labor movement and placed into the minds of Americans by the Overton window. In Ohio 655,000 people work for a union, both public and private. That’s only 13.7 percent of the 4,787,000 million people who are employed in the state. That leaves over 4 million people not represented by a union, and don’t particularly want to be represented by a union. And most of those people are not in management. Most of those people are the real workers, and is proof that such extreme rhetoric as exhibited by people like Trumka to an army of people built on entitlement. Yet, because of the Overton window, the media, and the regular everyday people accept that “workers’ rights” represents union work, because that’s how the term was marketed.
The times we live in have these two ideologies colliding before us. And unlike in the past, people will have to choose. One side is the side of life, and one side is the side of doom. So we must choose and choose wisely. Because the time has passed where both sides can’t coexist together now that the radicals have made a move and shown their intentions.
Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com
As I’m writing this article, Senate Bill 5 is making its way through the legislature of Ohio. Listen to Doc Thompson speak to Ray Warrick of the Mason Tea Party from Warren County talk about the courageous bill proposed by Senator Shannon Jones.
Senate Bill 5 will start the process of taking the shackles off the State of Ohio that confine it by collective bargaining. The rhetoric provided by the sector of the population that is “addicted” to collective bargaining which has grown in influence since 1983, so long that many of those people don’t know any other form of life, is sickening. So sickening it makes me question completely the validity of public education, because these people didn’t learn the basics of American life. Their basic premise seems to be that if you can get a job, have a union protect that job for your life-time, then they are willing to sacrifice a life-time of freedom for some mundane “average” life. I personally find their view of the world repulsive and un-American. What I see in those crowded halls of protest at the State House is a group of people protecting their right to be “average.”
It’s no question that “average” people are attracted to collective bargaining agreements negotiated by unions. I made decisions in my own life to avoid such confinements. I’ve spoke often about unions being too similar to “tribal councils” and that isn’t something that’s attractive to me at all. I’m the type of person that would never listen to some “old man” who is the “chief” of a community like Native American nomads had, or exists in many countries to this day, particularly in Africa. I’m also the type of person that would never have found peace in Europe, even to this modern day, because they have kings, and queens, nobility and all that nonsense that I have no value for.
America was founded by people that wanted to be free of that kind of thing, and the Constitution reflected their view of what America should be based on the ideas at the end of the 1700’s. The Constitution worked and America quickly became a place of prosperity. So more moderate Europeans came to America to get on the good thing that was happening here, but they brought with them a certain love for Europe, and the new ideas bouncing around involving Marxism. So around the turn of the 20th century progressivism, rooted in a European love for status symbols and ruling classes penetrated the Republican Party through Teddy Roosevelt wanting revenge on President Taft, which split the party, and through Woodrow Wilson of the democrats. It was in this progressivism that many of our ills in American Government started.
Old college professor hippies such as Francis Pivan, who has spent her entire life perpetuating progressivism is upset at the countries sudden desire to turn back to the Constitution, now that we know we’ve been scammed by people like her for decades.
Pivan is an old lady but she was around in the early days of all this change and she’s always been active in politics. And she opened herself to these name calling tirades when she said. “The strange stories that Glenn Beck creates with his chalkboard gain traction with Americans, who are made anxious by the large changes that have overtaken the United States, including the election of a black president and the increasing racial diversity of the population, deindustrialization and the decline of American power abroad, as well as cultural changes in sexual and family norms.”
Well, of course Americans are upset. Americans, because they are self-reliant or at least have a desire to be, don’t work well in groups. Collective behavior is however an innate instinct and public education goes a long way to developing that behavior, and progressivism has used public education and higher education, through professors like Pivan to apply their philosophy using the peer pressure of group acceptance. America has watched the experiments of these mad progressive social scientists and we did it with an open mind. We don’t like the Frankenstein monster they’ve created. We don’t like the breakdown of sexual and family structure, the deindustrialization and decline of American power abroad because it makes us less safe at home. We were used by the hippie movement to accomplish worse than the ravages of war right under our very noses while we watched with open eyes, but minds that refused to register the audacious lack of respect of progressives for what America is. You hear how proud she is of those accomplishments in her quote. This is a woman that associates with Bill and Hillery Clinton. Bill being the same man that had “sexual relations,” lied to a grand jury, and told us to our face that he wasn’t doing that. These are scam artists that have taken advantage of America’s good nature and preservation of freedom.
Now why are so many teachers subscribers to progressivism? Is it a conspiracy? No. It is a strategy that was implemented from the early days. Teachers need college to get their certificates and people attracted to progressivism became professors in college, so recruitment and training is that simple. Not all of them, but in general, that’s how it happens. These elitist of progressive values have a disconnect between the world in academia and the real world the rest of us live in. I’ve worked with and met many people that have gone through public education and college without become a bunch of brainless hippies. But the weak ones, the people who aren’t firm in their beliefs, or come from families that have strong moral foundations, they are seduced by people like Pivan.
Union leaders are made up of the same kind of stuff as Pivan. Many of them learned from her strategies and other left-winged pundits, and people attracted to unions tend to be happy to trade their free-will for financial security. For these people government officials are our “leaders,” because they see themselves as sheep in need of a shepherd.
So when Pivan rationalizes Glenn Beck and people like him, that have for a long time bounced around in society scratching their heads and wondering why everything is so screwed up, and says they are just paranoid, dumb people that are racist, homophobes, it makes a guy like me very, very angry, because I’ve always been one of those guys that questioned the validity of everything told to me, even religious ideology. I have lived my whole life avoiding groups, pack mentality, even jobs that were very high paying because they would limit my freedom. I recognize no person on this planet as my leader. Only myself.
That’s why it disgusts me to see groups like Progress Ohio say the same type of demeaning terms as Pivan is using to demean everyone questioning her philosophy. See, here’s the thing, people attracted to herd mentality are the ones not very intelligent. And America as independent loving people have allowed the radical left to capture the intellectual ground. But in reality, they are a simple minded group. That’s why they like to break things down to little terms that are easy to understand, like “right winged bloggers,” “cutting taxes for the rich,” “taking rights away from workers,” and that kind of elementary rhetoric. The reason is to get people moving in the direction they desire.
Ross Perot was using charts and boards on TV to show people the same kinds of things that Glenn Beck is using now. Beck isn’t the first to do it. But Beck is a guy able to think outside the box, and he’s not alone. There are millions out there that can too, but Beck has been given the opportunity to have a TV show, write books and talk on the radio. And he is on a personal crusade that exempts him from corruption. He’s had his fall, and he’s rebuilding himself. Put those things together and you have Glenn Beck, and what a great gift. He’s using his ability to see, and his good fortune to help make things better.
But when I watch Glenn Beck I’m not watching my leader. Quite the opposite. I usually am thankful that he’s saying things I’ve always wanted to say, but didn’t have a platform to speak from, because people like Pivan, left-winged radicals, sit in positions of power within the entertainment industry and keep voices like mine on the side-line and on the radical fringe because they control the radical fringe. They control the definition of what is radical because they control the media devices. Again, that’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s been a long slowly growing tendency that filtered through our education institutions and has brought us to the place we’re at today. Americans are looking around and we don’t like the poor qualities of our youth. We don’t like our complacent government. We don’t care if the president is black or yellow or blue. We don’t look at the president as our leader! And for the record, I would have voted for Alan Keys for president in less than a second, but nobody supported him when he wanted to run, because he was a conservative, not a progressive.
The things old lady Frances says are tired old commands that a cowboy might yell out at a cow that migrates away from the herd. Progress Ohio, the OEA, NEA, SEIU and thousands of other organizations want to be our shepherds, and I want them off public funding of any kind. This is America, and they have a right to speak their mind. But they don’t have a right to ANY public money funded to continue their growth. Any tax money that gets funneled directly or indirectly to progressive groups is completely unacceptable.
Don’t believe me. Go watch a hundred Hollywood films and study the lead characters. How many of those lead characters were “strong” individualists. Then study how many of those characters promoted “teamwork” in their rolls. You won’t find many. American’s vote at the box office and those results say a lot about what the nature of our country is. And it’s not what Frances and her gang of progressives wants America to be. If they can’t handle that fact, they need to go to a country where herd mentality is still popular.
Progressives wish very much for America to go back to sleep, because while we slept, and trusted, they manipulated our world into the mess we are living in now. The proud changes that Frances mentioned in her quote were implemented, but we won’t be fooled twice, and we’re not going back to sleep. We’re going to fix things back to how we want them, and once completed, we’ll stand guard more skeptically and be mindful of the cancer that is progressivism.
Who are these people that I’m talking about? Is it just people like me, Doc Thompson, Ray Warrick, Glenn Beck or anybody else? No. It’s people like the comment below. This comment came to me from a woman that only knows me from these epic pages. And her comment speaks volumes of who exactly those Americans are that have now been awakened and will not sleep so soundly again. She was commenting on an article I did about John Meyer.
There are people in my life that move me. I mean…REALLY move me. They are few. My father, who gave me the tools to navigate through life..now and then as he was right when he said what I believe would waiver with experience. So right. My husband for letting me move in the direction that drives my heart and soul no matter what. Glenn Beck. Say what you may…he’s my people. He’s been saying what I’ve felt for years. Yes..I cry. All the time. And Rich, who has given strength and voice to those of us out there that share his passion and need for serious change on so many venues. We need you and those that stand by you in the fight for the simple morale and values we were taught to respect. I never thought in a million years I would be here. Last but not least…to John. Kudos to you for just handing it to them. I’m honored that you live in my county and Country. God Bless. You ARE a Warrior! Today..I am blessed.
Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com
Something Doc Thompson said the other day sent me down a dark abyss of contorted anger. He mentioned Roxanne Qualls, who was at a budget meeting he attended.
Roxanne used to be Mayor of Cincinnati, and I have some experience with politicians in that grand city hall. It was in that building that I learned at the early age of 25 the principles of politics. (Pictures referenced from Wikipedia. CLICK HERE to learn more.)
It was refreshing to hear Doc talk about his experiences with a city council member that gave him the cold shoulder at that budget meeting, when in fact that very same day, Doc had that council member on 700 WLW to explain how important his integrity was to him.
Doc’s comments were classic, and refreshing, because it confirmed in me that I am not alone in my experiences with politicians, and that at least one other person in the world had virtually the same opinion of them.
I sat in front of Roxanne Qualls in her large, opulent office while her staff worked outside the door and watched Qualls giggle smugly at my suggestion that she support lower taxes. Her look made me feel as if she were telling me, “you poor naive young man, you don’t understand that we’ve already made all the decisions. We only have the public meetings to facilitate the public into believing they play a part of the process.”
I learned much later that the technique used by virtually every politician is the Delphi Technique, or some variation of it. I received the same look when I explained to Todd Portune in his office how my idea for a non-alcoholic night club would benefit the pleas of desperate moms pleading with Cincinnati City Council to do something about the under aged drinking that was going on at the University of Cincinnati campus, specifically a nightclub called COOTERS. 
A few weeks after my meeting with Mr. Portune the Corryville Business Association put pressure on the owner of the building I was trying to lease, and I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how they found out what I was up to. I knew they would be upset with my non-alcoholic nightclub idea, because back then, bars had to close at 2 AM. If I operated an establishment without a liquor license that would put a lot of pressure on the surrounding bar establishments that would lose some of their under-aged business to me, because kids under 21 don’t like the hassle of possibly being turned away, or getting caught with a fake ID, and I’d be able to stay open all night.
But my business idea died as quick as it rose. I found out that Mr. Portune at the time, a council member was also the attorney for that nightclub. So it had to be him that tipped off the nightclub to what I was doing.
It was a hard lesson of the nature of politics. It struck me hard with disillusionment and anger at the process that crushed fresh ideas before they ever had a chance to move forward. You find in every council meeting across the nation, every trustee meeting, every school board, every state congress and senate, and each federal congress and senate is that same blank elitism that Doc described.
I think it starts with a love of titles, and people who love them tend to crave positions of power, and the perception of politics is that being elected is a reception of power. It’s a puerile idea which appears to be inherited through the collective learning process gained over the centuries of human development.
The United States Constitution was designed to alleviate the need for much of this political trouble. But, unfortunately the weaker human minds, the ones that crave power, that crave material things, that crave the adoration of the public, they are the ones that run for office, and they are the ones that want to sit behind a desk and decide the fate of many. In their hearts, they truly want royalty and the false respect that comes with it.
As I’ve said, I’ve sat across the table from many of these types of people, and they all have the same glass-eyed blankness that seems more appropriate of a jack-o-lantern two weeks after Halloween.
I shouldn’t say all. I’ve met a few here and there that had a light on behind their eyes. Rob Portman is one; I had several long talks with him in the early 90’s back when a thing called the Reform Party was making news in the papers.
I also met a few of Ross Perot’s children and they were all bright-eyed and unspoiled. I could see the light on there as well. But those people are the very rare exceptions. Most of the rest are ready to make a deal, for there is no ethical avenue to guide their movements. After a public meeting the voting public just looks to each other for a moment of disbelief as if to wonder what just happened, because the deals had already been made well before anyone showed up for the meeting.
I once attended a meeting the Cincinnati City Council had with the public to figure out what to put on the river. They wanted ideas, this was sometime around 1993. I watched my friend and several other citizens give very impassioned speeches about how to develop the riverfront. The council members would scribble stuff down and nod their heads, and thank the speakers for their input.
After the meeting, the common people would go up and try to speak to the council members, but the council people were only interested in speaking to the developers, or in other words, the people who may contribute future campaign funds. My friend had made by far the best speech of anyone, and not a single council member wanted to shake his hand or would even look him in the eye. They shunned him because his input wasn’t really wanted. The whole process was just a show for the papers, to report to the public that the council people were listening to the people speak. The real deals were going on elsewhere.
I saw the same thing in zoning issues all over Liberty and West Chester Twp, and I’ve recently seen it within the Lakota School district at school board meetings.
Politicians are dangerous because most of what they crave is false, honor through title, respect by name plates, and wealth through side deals. In too many cases, they are hungry attorneys who use political contacts to bring business to their practice. They aren’t interested in being public servants.
That’s why they cower behind their little desks and office doors and cling to the frail appendages of reality they shape through public opinion. Because if you get too close to them, and gaze upon the soul that drives the body, you’ll find the seat vacant. Instead you’ll find the wires and gears responding to a remote control, and the real pilot no place to be found.
Rich Hoffman
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com
The talk going on today with people like Glenn Beck and others are not new. I remember being in Dallas, Texas the day before the election in 1992. Ross Perot’s oldest daughter and her husband gave me a neck tie that I wish I still had while in the parking lot of the Perot Headquarters. I thought then Ross Perot was doing some good work, and I did everything I could to help him back then. I’m not new to all this small government stuff.
For the fun of it, I decided to go back and dig through some of his old videos. In hind sight, how right he was. People should have listened.
And he is still at it. Too bad most people want to take the blue pill.
Rich Hoffman