Category: The Symposium of Justice

The Origional Argument from Joshua Charles: A changing landscape built from the heart

When I first received a very good book by Joshua Charles and Glenn Beck it was after I was speaking to a group of education reformers.  A friend of mine had left it for me while I was shaking hands and speaking with people after the speech and my friend had left like a phantom amiss the chaos.  But in her seat she left me a gift; it was a copy of The Original Argument by the mentioned authors. 

Right after this speech I had to leave for Florida on a family vacation, so I had time to read a bit.  The book in this respect was a very timely gift that I appreciated greatly.  Books to me are the greatest gifts I can receive.  I love every single one of them I’ve ever received and I never get tired of running my fingers through their pages, even years after my initial reading.  Every book to me is a treasure.  To this very day my favorite places, virtually the only place I enjoy shopping, is a book store.  My wife and I share this love and we often spend our date nights in such places picking up the next weeks reading material. 

It was during our most recent “dinner and a book store date night” that I noticed in the social sciences section that even after 9 months in print, The Original Argument was still selling well.  In fact, it occupied a whole shelf stacked five books deep all the way across.  I counted 26 books on that shelf which means that the demand for The Original Argument has not died off after its publication, but has increased.  The story of how this book came about is a bit of a miracle story, which you can hear Glenn Beck talk about in the clip below. 

Selling a book is a hard thing to do, and I’ll be doing it myself for the second time in a few short months. There are a lot of books that come out and each one is the hope and dreams of the author. Many of them fail to take root into the public for various reasons. These days books with great names attached sell well for a few weeks after their release because they have access to the publicity machine of the popular media. But those same books lose steam quickly if the public fails to embrace them. Because of Glenn Beck’s name being attached to The Original Argument this book by the very young Joshua Charles had a big release with a great marketing platform, so big numbers in its first week were not a surprise. But big numbers almost a year later are more impressive, and The Original Argument is still steaming along.

As I ran my fingers over the books in the book store I thought about my copy at home which I now look at every day at least once. The book has the feeling of a work that has the power to change the static patterns of our culture, which is good—powerful, and you can feel it when you hold the book in your hands. It has an essence of substance that is unique for books. This probably has everything to do with the contents of the material. The Original Argument is essentially a modern re-write of The Federalist Papers, which is the foundation of The United States Constitution, and is fundamentally a work of modern philosophy.

I spent the summers of 2009 and 2010 reading The Federalist Papers and The Anti Federalism Papers and I will admit that I struggled though them. They are written in an older language that assumes that society is much more intelligent than it is today. Reading these books as they were published in the late 1700’s it becomes quickly evident that the public who read those original documents in their newspapers were of a higher reading level than our modern counterparts so even I struggled with the language. But they had such an impact on me that I started this blog site, Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom to act as a modern version of those original Federalist Papers. I wanted to put into context the modern arguments for our day and time with the language used to make a new argument on behalf of the original arguments for freedom. I focus on education issues because it’s obvious to me that public education isn’t working since our population can’t read something like The Federalist Papers and comprehend it. Many of our own congressman and senators have not even read the Constitution let alone The Federalist Papers. So the quality of the political philosophy started with The Federalist Papers has been diminished as society has been made to be of a lower intellect.

This lower intellect is by design. It has been imposed upon us by the enemies of America through a very complex spy network that has penetrated our political machinery, our media, and our government at all levels. To understand how this happens just study the modern movements of George Soros. Without question politicians looking for money from Soros are willing to adapt his policies in exchange, especially in vacancy of their own philosophy, leaving our government easily manipulated by special interest money. This has went on for many years, and Soros is just one of thousands over the years that have sought to dismantle The United States through greed and ignorance where the people of America have lost their way and allowed themselves to be intellectually diminished.

As I sat on the balcony of our condo in Florida and read The Original Argument I was shocked how easy it was to read. What Joshua Charles had done was take the complex wording of The Federalist Papers and simplify them into modern language so it was easy to grasp. Reading that book in the early morning sunrise in Florida and listening to the waves hit the beach with fury as a storm off to the south over the Bahamas was roaring far out at sea I realized that this book had a real power to it and I hoped for it’s longevity and cultural acceptance.

I became a Glenn Beck fan not because of his television show, not because of his radio show, but because of his reissuing of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. I read that book in an afternoon and immediately thought it was more powerful than the classic of communist thought Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto. With Beck bringing out again the classic from Thomas Paine he was able to answer the kind of literature that was suppressed by the modern media who had used the 45 points from the 1958 book The Naked Communist to push such American philosophy out of the public’s reach. In that strategy of erasing American history, Common Sense and The Federalist Papers were the primary targets. Beck through his own media empire had developed the ability to push back and reintroduce America to its original philosophy with his new updated version of Common Sense. It’s short, easy to read, and contains the original Paine text in the back of the book.

More powerful than Common Sense, The Original Argument puts the very powerful Federalist Papers into the reach of the modern public and that is a supreme ray of hope in our modern age. Changes do not come quickly. They didn’t at the time of the original revolution and they won’t now. It will take a lot of thought, discussion and reading to reeducate the American population to their roots. I hope to add to that with my own work Tail of the Dragon soon. The goal is to entertain a modern audience into considering what the roots of American society is supposed to be, not what has been manipulated and twisted from the original meaning into the modern progressive theory inspired by political philosophers like Marx.

The power of The Original Argument can be seen on the bookshelf. Bookstores cannot afford to keep books on their shelves that do not sell. And to understand the true temperature of our nation all one has to do is go to a bookstore and see what is selling, and that will show you what the people of our country are looking for. What’s selling is Glenn Beck, Bill O’Rielly, Mark Levin, and many other conservative writers. In philosophy it’s Ayn Rand and Robert Persig. In fact the great book of philosophy by Leonard Peikoff called Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand is now selling that the first Atlas Shrugged film has introduced through DVD sales a whole new market to the work of that philosopher. Rand actually has breakthrough thinking which exceeds the works of Plato, Aristotle and Kant that is uniquely American. It’s good to study the German philosophers, the Greek, the Chinese, but America is now producing its own, and Rand is certainly one of the finest examples. In fact she shreds Immanuel Kant as a founder of a philosophy that has so thoroughly destroyed the thinking of many on the political left, and she does it with very detailed facts.

That work by Peikoff is more on the heavy side philosophically, but still, people are buying it up now, which is a wonderful sign. 4 to 5 years from now American culture will change for the better because of all this reading that is going on. To my thinking the best example of easy philosophy for the majority of American society to grasp right now is The Original Argument. If you have not read it yet, I highly suggest it. Reading that book will give you power, it will give you a better knowledge of The United States Constitution than most of the public officials have and will allow you to demand of them an adherence to it. Communist infiltrators in our public education system know that an uneducated public is easy to mislead, which has been their agenda all along. By reading The Original Argument you can take the next step into fixing your nation by understanding what it is that you are expected to know in order to make requests of your elected representatives. I don’t take my hat off to many people, but to Joshua Charles I do. He did a great thing that history will remember. And thank goodness Glenn Beck had the ability to get this book into the hands of a hungry public. It’s an important work and as long as I live I’ll never forget the speech I gave where I looked for my friend at the end and found a book left behind for me to read instead. The book sat in her seat and invited me to read it, which I did several times now. Those kinds of gifts continue to give for many years. The gift of a book is immediate, but the information gained upon reading it once gives back to you again. If the book is good then the story will stay with you everywhere you go from then on. And if it’s really good it might just expand your thinking to accept new ideas, or ideas that were good but long forgotten. And such is the case with The Original Argument.

Click here to see the TAIL OF THE DRAGON press release for an update on my most recent project:

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com
 

Check out Rich Hoffman’s favorite website, (besides this one):

http://thepeoplescube.com/

A Woolly Mammoth in Siberia: Attacks, Mystery and Obama sings

Early in the morning as the Archie Wilson story was breaking my imagination was temporarily sparked by the urgent news that a Woolly mammoth was spotted in Siberia. Being personally interested in cryptozoology such a discovery ignited my imagination in the cold morning hours of February 8, 2012.

However, the source of the news drew my skepticism, it was from The Sun, a tabloid newspaper and as I watched the video featured on the article below, I became more and more disappointed. Have a look for yourself.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4116326/Woolly-mammoth-spotted-in-Siberia.html

The trouble I have with the video, and this comes from a great deal of experience, is that it is too blurry, and the cameraman doesn’t attempt to cut the animal off as it leaves the river. If I had been shooting this video I would have at least moved in for a closer look. There is no way I would have let that animal out of my sight with a short shot of it crossing a waterway.

I believe that such creatures still roam the earth. A Woolly mammoth in the extremely large land mass of Siberia is entirely believable. But footage gathered up from a paranormal investigator should be expected to be heavily scrutinized. So the cameraman owes it to his investigation to get the best shot possible. These days video cameras are more than capable of getting a better, much less fuzzy shot than the one seen in this Woolly mammoth video. So it must be concluded that the poor film quality is on purpose, to mislead the viewer into believing they are seeing something they aren’t.

Visual effects are both fortunately and unfortunately much easier for even low tech equipment to produce these days so a video confirming a Woolly mammoth requires much higher quality video. In fact, I wouldn’t believe it unless I saw the cameraman actually touch the animal. Standing at a safe difference with a fixed location just won’t cut it these days.

This Woolly mammoth video reminds me of another hoax video of a killer whale attacking a kid on a Mexican beach. This video is actually quite good as it replicates accurately how killer whales attack and eat seals. They do slide on shore and grab unsuspecting mammals in this fashion. Have a look for yourself.

Special effects are a part of our lives and we can no longer trust what we see at face value. In this whale video everything about it is accurate as it would happen in nature. The waves actually break against the victim’s feet and the whale’s body as it eats the human with arms flailing about. We are inclined to believe it. Yet we don’t. The problem with the video is that it violates the rules of cognitive recognition.

Cognitive recognition is the ability to learn the meaning of words and develop the ability to combine those words so that images can be formed in the mind as the words are read. In order for this to happen a mind has to accept the meaning of the words. We do this in life also, we accept the meaning of certain events, the way rain falls from the sky, or how the sun feels on a summer day. Our collections of these cognitive recognition patterns help us determine reality. They might tell us that a politician is lying to us even if what they say sounds and looks good to our eyes. Our experience might tell us that something is amiss if the cognitive recognition of a given experience does not add up to our understanding of reality. In the case of the whale video the biggest problem is that the cameraman would have naturally ran to help the victim in some way. The victim waves to the camera then within seconds is eaten. All the while, the camera remains steady. This behavior violates what we know through cognitive recognition to represent reality.

Here’s another video that is even stranger than the Woolly mammoth or the whale, it’s the President of the United States trying to convince the crowd that he is a good, and legitimate president. When watching this video the cognitive recognition patterns bring about pleasant memories of experiences we might have had as the president smiles, and even sings to a crowd. Everything about this video says that this president is a good man—yet there is something wrong.

Vacant from this video are the facts that the behavior avoids. Like the Woolly mammoth that was filmed from a distance and not captured leaving the water, or the whale being betrayed by the calmness of the cameraman, the Obama video says more about what is missing than what it shows. In this case there is no resemblance of the 6 trillion dollars in debt that has been added during his three years as president, or the multiple infractions he has committed against the United States Constitution. These things are known in our cognitive understanding of the world, yet they are noticeably missing in the Obama video leaving us with the feeling that something isn’t quite right when we watch the President sing to a screaming crowd. We enjoy what we see, but understand that something I wrong.

With all three videos we can prove that they are fakes based on our cognitive recognition patterns. Even when our eyes want to believe what we see through special effects, sound, or even camera lightning, blurriness, or distance, the fraud is revealed when the behavior seen betrays our understanding of how things truly behave.

It looks like the search for a Woolly mammoth will continue on. The video from Siberia does not prove that any have survived to our modern age. I will still have fun looking for these creatures from the campsites of remote locations. And when I find one, I will not let the camera betray the reality of the situation. I will film plenty of footage that is perfectly clear. And I will get so close that I could crawl on its back if need be. Because seeing is not always believing when there are tricks available to manipulate our senses into what we are seeing. At times like that, we must rely on our cognitive recognition to help us discover the elusive truths based on our experience and not what we desire. I might want to see a Woolly mammoth, but just having the wish is not enough. Reality must be measured by our cognitive recognition.

Click here to see the TAIL OF THE DRAGON press release for an update on my most recent project:

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com
 

Watch Rich Hoffman’s favorite T.V. show:

http://www.foxnews.com/freedomwatch/

Home Schooled Kids are Superior: Education is not about teachers, it’s about good parents

One of my favorite reporters at Cox Publishing is Steven Mathews who did a wonderful article recently on how public schools are saving money in the face of declining revenue allocation from the State. The public schools are starting to combine services to help balance their budgets. You can read that article for yourself here:

http://www.pulsejournal.com/news/local-news/public-schools-share-services-to-cut-costs-1324201.html

Of course the public school establishment will complain about these changes. They will proclaim that the quality of education will suffer with all these cuts and combination of services that is starting to emerge. My answer to them is–well, no–it won’t. Anyone who says this is attempting to mislead society.

Public education, (government schools) is essentially a form of welfare. A free education is not a good one. Like food stamps, public housing, or even FMLA benefits, any time the government gets involved and gives the “public” something, there is no shortage of people willing to take advantage of it. And public schools are nothing special; they perform way under their abilities and have been reduced to marketing machines for liberal politics. They are so inept that even a parent who is not a “professional” teacher can do a better job educating their children than a public school teacher can. This is why home schooled children are so much better educated than the public school kids. The testing results aren’t even close. Home schooled kids simply out-perform public schooled kids in every category.

So what can we learn from this? Why is this so? It would be logical for public schools to look at why parents without formal training are out-performing their highly paid teachers with master’s degrees. Public schools if they really cared about the quality of education would get better and learn from the home-school parents—that is—if they really cared.

But government schools don’t care about kids. They only care about their jobs in the government institutions. Public schools only care about maintaining the status quo.

Well I’ll give you the answer dear reader….I’ll tell you why home schooled kids learn so much better than government schooled kids, the essential ingredient is the fundamental difference between communism and capitalism. All human beings are genetically built to learn from their parents, and extended family structures. By default, a young mind will reject the style of education given to them by government education. Public school is a design of communism and can be seen in the 10 Planks of communism. You can see my article on these here.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/if-you-vote-for-a-levy-of-any-kind-youre-stupid-the-ten-planks-of-communism/

The idea of free public education is a communist idea. And it’s an experiment that has failed in the American system. Public education might work OK in communist countries where free will has be crushed in the social population into a mush of collectivism that resembles more like a plate of mashed potatoes as opposed to French Fries. The reason communism fails, and public education fails, is that people who get things for free tend to abuse them. When something is given away for free, nobody appreciates the activity. The teachers take the pay for granted because it comes easily. And the kids don’t appreciate what they learn because everybody has free education. Kids want to be considered special and public school does not do the trick.

But a mother and a father do. The parent is invested in their child and care about the outcome of their child’s knowledge. And the children like to have the approval of their parents. So the learning process of our children has virtually nothing to do with the quality of the public schools. It has everything to do with the quality of the parents. Basically, if the parents suck, the kids will most likely suffer. Learning is not something that can be purchased like one buys a shirt or a pair of pants. It requires an inquisitive child and an adult who wants to provide answers.

For further proof that it is not the institution, but the quality of the parents, study the situation of Princeton City Schools today as opposed to how it was twenty years ago. Today, Princeton spends over $15K per student, yet they are not producing academically profound students as they did two decades ago when colleges showered Princeton students with scholarship offers. That is because the demographically proficient families moved north of the I-275 loop. More public housing moved in as the affluent families moved out leaving the kind of demographic difficulties that Cincinnati Public Schools is having to deal with, parents who don’t care about their children and drop off their kids to public schools expecting the government schools to raise their children for them. No amount of money can make the kids learn because the kids have broken homes. If a child has a broken foundation in life, chances are, there is nothing a teacher can do to fix them. The child is doomed to become as deficient as their parents because the static pattern at home is broken.

Lakota and Mason schools presently are great not because of the schools, but because of the parents who live in the community. When those parents leave for the newest community with the biggest houses, Lakota will find itself the next Princeton. Passing tax increases have nothing to do with the quality of education. It’s the parents who send the children to school who make all the difference.

So fear not government schools. You could blend everyone together and share services in any possible combination, your education quality will not be compromised in the least. Because if a simple Christian woman who stays home with her kids and reads to them daily can make her kids learn more and at a faster rate than the genius children of the attorneys and doctors who are too busy with their lives to care for their kids and expect public school to take care of parenting for them, then imagine what such smart parents could do if they did the job of educating their children themselves.

Public school is welfare for the parents too lazy to do the job of parenting. America led the world in the space race and all the technology that came with it in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s with an average education level of 8.3 years. Today it’s nearly 16.5 and our children don’t even know where the country Argentina is on a map. The quality of education has NOTHING to do with money spent or the quality of teachers employed. Education is all about the quality of the family unit itself. It’s a dirty little secret that government doesn’t want anyone to know about, but one that presents inescapable proof that anything that is run by government fails—especially their schools. So wherever they can cut expenses to help lower the cost per pupil for the tax payers need to be done immediately. Families with money in their pockets are happier families than those who rely on food stamps, government housing, and government schools for their sustainability. It gives government workers less to do, and less reason to have a nice, comfortable, high paying government job. But we don’t care about that. America isn’t going to sacrifice its future just to protect the pensions of some employees who aren’t performing an essential task anyway. The value is truly in the children and their success or failure at life is almost exclusively determined by the quality of their parents.

Click here to see the TAIL OF THE DRAGON press release for an update on my most recent project:

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com
 

Watch Rich Hoffman’s favorite T.V. show:

http://www.foxnews.com/freedomwatch/

Archie Wilson and his Prostitue Amanda Lay: The mask of evil

The story of Archie Wilson is a sad one. A Tea Party Conservative, and a bible thumper, Archie is now the subject of a manhunt after his resignation on February 2nd from the Clermont County Commissioner position.

Archie is proof that nothing any public official says can be trusted. Public employees must be measured by their actions not on what they say. Archie who lobbied to shut down the strip club of Déjà Vu in Mt. Carmel recently took a position of integrity in upholding his office. However while he was declaring that he’d uphold the integrity of his grandchildren through his righteous actions, he was supplying cocaine to the prostitute Amanda Lay–age 26–to have sex with him, pictured to the right. You can see more details about this case at 700 WLW where Scott Sloan broke the story in the early morning.  The story link is:

http://www.700wlw.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=119585?feed=119585&article=9729426

Archie Wilson was the type of person who everyone would assume could be trusted. He’s 61 years old and a Christian conservative and was endorsed by the Tea Party. As I’ve discussed here, no member of public office can be trusted. The lure of power the moment politicians get behind a desk with their name plate on it corrupts their minds to such twisted measures as Wilson displayed in these acts of terrible judgment.

This story explains beyond doubt why the foundations of our country must be the Constitution and nothing else, because the minds of men are too weak to be trusted with alterations. Even those who publicly declared themselves champions of the Constitution as Wilson did are prone to fall from grace.

Remember Archie Wilson during every speech you see from now on where a politician declares their beliefs to be pure and in the public’s best interest. Make sure to listen to that voice in the back of your mind that says that you are listening to a liar, because you probably are.

And a note to all those who are to the left of the Tea Party and will look at the Archie Wilson case as proof that such characters have infected positions in the political right. You have your own problems. You can read an example from just last week at this link.

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/mark-berndt-teacher-arrested-feeding-his-semon-to-the-students-with-a-spoon/

The corruption of these minds is not political. It’s cultural quality, which is deficient.

To learn what a Overmanwarrior is CLICK HERE:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/the-overmanwarriors-eating-fighting-and-philosophizing-the-keys-to-a-good-life/

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com
 

Watch Rich Hoffman’s favorite T.V. show:

http://www.foxnews.com/freedomwatch/

The Life of Old Hickory: So you want to stop paying taxes?

So, you don’t want to pay taxes! Are you selfish! Poor! Do you not care about your fellow-man! Do you wish anarchy! Or are you a patriot? Are you an advocate of self-reliance? Do you believe that in not paying excessive taxes that you are in fact making your nation and its people stronger? Which is it? Truly, these are confusing times for many who are facing these questions for the first time.

If you haven’t read it yet, you might want to check out my son-in-law’s article on taxes and the 16th Amendment. He has discovered a dangerous truth, that the Federal Government does not technically have a right to collect taxes on our labor in the fashion that they do, but it is a Supreme Court ruling that has created enough legal gray area to allow for the practice by the IRS. Read his article below, but beware, this is dangerous information.

http://abundanttruth.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/the-irs-is-illegal/

When we are given a Social Security number and apply for a job, we are essentially signing a contract with the Federal Government through our W-4 forms that allows the Federal Government to legally tax us through the method of a federal income tax. While the video shown on my son-in-law’s site is correct for the most part, the cost of forcing the government to adhere to the law is one that will bring violence to your life as the true nature of the government will be revealed to you. How do I know—well, I’ve seen it first hand. The government as it is fashioned currently is essentially an organized crime syndicate. This is why I have spent so much time dealing with the local school issues, because the school systems are built upon the model of the Federal Government syndicate machine. Schools use guilt, fear–and in literal cases–intimidation to extort taxes from the citizens and prevent the mass of society from looking too closely at the actual laws they are bound by.

If you wish to fix what you are about to read, start with your local school and from there the system will migrate into the greater evils of taxes imposed upon us. It’s not that education is bad, but the means of funding it is, and needs to be changed. Just as the means of funding our government needs to be changed, as the current system invites open looting of our labor for a subtle goal of enslavement.

It may be a shock to some, but the story in my book The Symposium of Justice called “Fran Calls” is a true account. The character named Hickory in that narrative about a group of tree-trimmers in North Carolina cleaning up after Hurricane Fran hit Chapel Hill with a fury that shut the town down for weeks, was a uniquely colorful character whom I have known since grade school. It was not because of our adventures in Chapel Hill that our friendship ceased as we haven’t spoken in nearly 8 years; it was a drastic difference in our social positions that finally caused a rift that friendship could not cross after nearly three decades of adventure.

Hickory in his youth was declared a certified genius. He makes Sheldon Cooper on the popular TV show Big Bang Theory look unintelligent. I am being facetious of course; I cannot watch Big Bang Theory to this very day without thinking of “Old Hickory,” named for his love of the wise old trees. The school system had big plans for Hickory. They thought this kid would grow up to be a great inventor like Leonardo da Vinci, or a doctor at age fourteen like Doggie Hoosier, or maybe even a lawyer by age 16. That was the type of discussion that went on in those days. Hickory read an entire set of encyclopedias in the 5th grade and had read every classic by the time he was in the 7th grade. When he graduated high school he had a special honor designation that he still obtained even though he had basically quit school halfway through high school, because his grades had been that good. I was with him at our graduation when he sold his honors robe to a kid for a hundred bucks because the kid had told his family he was an honors student, and needed the special robe so his parents wouldn’t be disappointed. Hickory simply traded robes with the kid in exchange for the money. After the graduation he took me and a few other friends to dinner at Perkins where he spent all the money. The check for the meal was $45 and he left a $55 tip. It was as if he wanted to rid himself of the taint of the honor, and everything it represented from grade school till his graduation.

Without question, every adult teacher, parent, guidance councilor, college recruiter and even local politicians blamed the murderous, violent, thieving Rich Hoffman for inciting rebellion into the life of young Hickory and they were right from their point of view. My lifestyle offered Hickory freedom that he wouldn’t have had any other way. All I did was give Hickory a platform to realize on his own that the teachers, school and other adults in and around his life were looking to loot from him the genius that came natural to his mind. They wanted to say, “We helped make his genius! We played a part in his construction!” Once Hickory realized this, he turned off the facet to them, and they were angry.

In the years that followed Hickory became disenchanted with college, jobs, virtually every aspect of human civilization. He began to question the very foundations of things and would utter similar comments as my son-in-law is doing now shown in that article. Hickory had read all the legal arguments pertaining to the 16th Amendment and decided that he would not pay taxes to the government in the traditional fashion since the government was not unlike the looters who sought to take credit for his intelligence during his youth. He was right, there wasn’t any difference. The government was not able to produce anything. They simply collected from those with talent and then exploited the information as if it were their own. Their behavior wasn’t any different from the cheater in high school who refused to do their homework then copied off the paper or test of a person like Hickory. Without Hickory, the government was just a bit less intelligent and it was Hickory’s freedom of choice to decide to give his intelligence away to the government through his labor or not. But he concluded that so long as he did not fill out a W-4 form or any other traceable document that he would be exempt from paying taxes.

He was right for the most part. But the government system had a way of clamping down on him. I personally witnessed him in court many, many times, and had to bail him out of jail on many occasions. By the time he hit his late twenties Hickory acted as his own lawyer every time. In court there wasn’t a collection of minds in an entire county that could out-wit him in a court of law. Even attorneys who prided themselves with excessive fees for their legal prowess could not win a debate against Hickory. He could simply crush any opponent with his vast intellect at will. So while the entire IRS, FBI, and every police network within 100 miles of his home knew his name they couldn’t do anything about him, because Hickory knew his rights.

Hickory was universally hated by everyone he met. I have never known anyone who was just hated without any words being spoken as people behaved toward Hickory. The cashier at a fast food restaurant hated him for reasons she could not articulate—maybe it was just the way he chewed his food, the land lord who secretly despised that Hickory made him feel like a fool just in being near him, the local cop who demanded that Hickory acknowledge the power of his badge, which of course Hickory cared nothing for. I had the opposite problem from Hickory. I was always personable, and people had always found themselves drawn to me. Hickory always had lots of free time but desired the good company of intelligent people, whom he could never seem to find to his satisfaction. I could never seem to find enough free time because there was always somebody wanting to be around me. Hickory was the best man at my wedding even though the cultural significance of the event eluded him. He was loyal to my family but my wife often felt that he was so in love with me that it clouded his judgment. This love was not a sexual thing of course, but a need for good company, for intelligent discussions. Hickory never could get enough of it. It was not unusual for him to come to our house and speak about the most complex scientific notions imaginable until the small hours of the morning.

These conversations would often come back around to the invisible chains that bound us. Hickory could see them everywhere. Being a genius eccentric did not provide cover for the fact that it was lonely at the top, and Hickory wished there were more intelligent people to associate with. He felt the government took too much and left people brain-dead and stupid leaving all their energy focused on materialism. My statement to Hickory was that if I felt that government took too much from me, then I’d take it back in some other way. If they wanted to loot me, they are fair game to have it done in return. But Hickory didn’t think that was ethical. He thought my approach was dishonest. I explained that I had a family to look after, that I couldn’t afford to live life on the run all the time renting homes, not owning property, and having to make all my money under the table so the government couldn’t grab hold of it through a W-4 form.

Hickory was an excellent arborist and landscaper because of his love of botany. So he ran his own business and kept all the money in cash form. If a customer paid him with a check he’d take the check to the bank it was issued from to cash immediately. He always did square business, was always legitimate in his dealings. He never engaged in illegal narcotics sales or any form of impropriety. He just didn’t want his money stolen from him by the government so he took measures to keep his money from them. He always did things ethically as by his own code of conduct. But working with him always felt like running with an outlaw, which I enjoyed. I did extra work with him climbing trees and doing some of the heavy landscaping work for nearly a decade. We had many adventures that were at times very dangerous. I always worked legitimate jobs during the day and my wife always claimed the income I made from Hickory on our taxes as part of our overall yearly income so we wouldn’t end up in trouble with the IRS. This would anger Hickory because it defeated the purpose of his rebellion and he wanted for us that freedom he experienced. But she did it anyway because she didn’t want for our life the kind of life that Hickory had.

Hickory had so many enemies, threat letters from all government agencies, and overall attempts to contact him by some legal means that the documents completely covered the floor of one room in Hickory’s house knee-deep. In fact, my kids used to play in that room swimming in those unopened letters pretending that they were swimming in a vast ocean. The letters were so deep my kids could pretend they were underwater and could disappear from sight without much effort. When the mail came Hickory would simply throw any mail that didn’t interest him into the room. These were the warnings from the IRS, the summons for court appearances, bill collectors, new husbands of former girl friends; Hickory denied all those entities with a right to exist by just tossing them into his giant pile of bills, unopened. By opening the letters he accepted the letter. By tossing it into his room, the letter officially stayed in some limbo world. The post office showed the letter delivered, but the material never officially reached Hickory’s eyes, so nobody knew how to compel Hickory to open the letters so that the material in the letters could go to the reader’s brain. This went on for at least 10 years.

I had never seen anything like it and I warned Hickory that he wouldn’t get by with this kind of thing forever. He had too many enemies and they would eventually overwhelm him. But he’d smile and reply that there was nothing anybody could do about it. The IRS did not have power over him if he did not give it to them. And this was true. He’d get arrested for every little thing the police could arrest him on, every complaint, every mistake even if it was just walking across a road incorrectly. The IRS had many chances to hold him, to try him and prosecute him to the furthest extent of the law since Hickory was already caught and in jail so many times. But Hickory always managed to get out of it because he had better knowledge of the law than anyone who attempted to prosecute him.

But the sacrifice was that Hickory could not just enjoy life. He was off the grid effectively. He was non-existent as far as the static pattern of American life was concerned. To society everywhere he went he was like a ghost and this is what made people so angry with him. They feared him just as they would some supernatural being they didn’t comprehend. I enjoyed my time around Hickory because for me it was like spending time with a dead man while also walking in the land of the living. I gained incredible insight by being around Hickory for over 20 years of this behavior.

I don’t think our relationship ever really ended. Our static patterns just became too great. He was too far over the edge for me to maintain that co-existence. The big moment happened between us where he owed me money for some work I had done with him. He owed me $600 which I needed to pay the house payment and he didn’t have the money. While my wife and I were gone with my kids Hickory came to our house and planted a tree in my wife’s flowerbed, a tree that was worth in excess of $600. When my wife and I returned and saw a very nice note from Hickory explaining that he was very sorry he didn’t have the money we needed, but he wanted to make good by giving us this very nice tree–anger abounded!

My wife was so angry she ripped the tree out of the ground and cut it to pieces. The lack of money from Hickory meant I had to scamper off to work a second job and quit my associations with Hickory because we needed stable income, not the hit or miss type of thing that made the tree work so unpredictable. And when I explained my position to Hickory of course he didn’t understand. He had made the decision to be free of such concerns so he couldn’t sympathize.

We parted ways and haven’t spoken again since. It’s not that his way of life or mine are any better or worse than one another. My strategy and his are but two ways to deal with the same problem, yes the Federal Government is filled with looters. It’s made up of evil in that it is based on theft and encourages people to become thieves themselves to reap the benefits of such a society. But the smart among those thieves, who are too honest to become thieves themselves, will find they are outlaws just by following the law to the letter. They are outlaws because the government is designed to take by force if necessary the work of our labor, and they have concocted every illegal means possible to extort our wealth from us in open larceny. And just like in the public schools, they have made such a theft seem appropriate by attaching emotion, loyalty, and guilt to the paying of taxes to most efficiently extract our money from us.

So yes, my son-in-law is right. Most of what the government does is in fact illegal. As they are functioning now, they are simply thieves. This is not an inflammatory statement, it is a fact. Government chooses winners and losers based on their leisure and the benefit of their existence. Their motive is the casual acquisition of wealth. They want to acquire it from you at any cost. They favor socialism because they have placed themselves at the top of the looting ladder and benefit the most from that political practice. They are the lazy non thinkers among us who are attracted to this government work. They are the lowest of our species because government lacks the courage to act on their own accord. So they seek to take it from those who do act.

If a majority of the American people refused to participate in this illegal activity, they could change it. But so long as they chose to act in accordance with the thieves hoping to get a piece of the pie, our society will remain bankrupt and grossly dishonest. There are not enough jails, police officers, and the IRS is not big enough to punish everyone if society decided to do as Hickory did. And the wise American would do themselves a favor and defund their police staffing levels, and cut more funding to the IRS so that there might not be enough manpower to prosecute Americans in the future. My advice to you taxpayers is not to build more jails because you might find yourself the target of one of the cells in the future. So stop it.

Trust the Constitution and follow it as a guide. The Second Amendment is just as important as the 1st or the 5th, or the 14th. And it’s certainly as important as the 16th. I use the Second Amendment all the time and it works. It keeps the bad guys away and it limits court appearances. It also saves on police staffing. It allows me to take back what was stolen from me if I so desire. If the looters take so much from me that I cannot keep up then I’ll take it back so I don’t go without. That is where Hickory and I are fundamentally different. He doesn’t have it in him to steal, lie, or manipulate to get what he wants. So he relied on honesty and faith in the law much to his personal demise since he was choosing to be that way in a world run amuck with bandits, especially the smiling teacher who proclaims everything she does is for the kids while she plans her vacation over the summer making more money in 9 months than a private sector worker makes in a whole year. Or the superintendent who retires at 55 then gets rehired the next day so they can double-dip from the tax payer. Or a president like Obama who has racked up almost 6 trillion dollars in debt in just three years then professes to steal more money from the rich to pay for the money that same president gave away to his bloc voters to get re-elected so he can rack up 6 trillion more!

I’ll say to you dear reader what I’ve said to Hickory, I’ll play the game the same as the looters to survive and if it turns into a gun fight, then so be it. Hickory however said that violence was unnecessary because the Constitution guaranteed the freedoms he demanded, and he was right. But not without the threat of violence from the looters who attempted to harass that knowledge from his mind so he’d fear to act on it.

Personally, I like my way better. Whichever way you chose to fight, the conclusion cannot be escaped. Government is functioning illegally and needs to be ended in its current form. I personally think Ron Paul or a president like him is the best way to bring about a real fix to the American system. Unemployment will jump up to a temporary 30 to 50% while we eliminate all the looting programs, but at some point if America is to survive the pain will have to be endured eventually. The only question is when, how and where will the American people finally come to terms with these facts.

I write here, and in my books hoping to ease the mind of Americans into the reality of understanding that they have decisions to make, and they will be best equipped to make those decisions if they put some value into their intelligence and start listening to their own souls as opposed to the government looters who are seeking company in a society of thieves. The smartest of our species are not lawyers, doctors, teachers or even scientists. Many times they are those who chose not to be those things. Hickory is the smartest man I have ever personally known. I have no doubt that he could argue law with the best of our Supreme Court Judges while at the same time performing open heart surgery. But in a society of looters, it is the just, the good, and the honest who are the criminals. And until we change this aspect of our culture, America is doomed.

Click here to see the TAIL OF THE DRAGON press release for an update on my most recent project:

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com
 

Watch Rich Hoffman’s favorite T.V. show:

http://www.foxnews.com/freedomwatch/

Jon McNaughton versus William Etty: Tradition challenges progressive nudity in art and culture

The Victorian era in England existed between 1837 and 1901 which was the life and death of Queen Victoria. It should be noted that it was Teddy Roosevelt’s first year in office that the Queen died sending through New York society a shock wave of sentimentality that persisted into the beginning of a new movement, called progressivism. The Victorians of New England prided themselves upon the life and culture of Europe during this time of peace between England and France and pointed to the culture that emitted from the motherland as the beam of light that the entire world should emulate. The Victorians sought to achieve this through their progressive presidents of society, men like Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and members of the press who would carry on the appeal of the Great Queen Victoria.

It was no stretch that painters like William Etty gained prominence in artistic circles because he exported to the world many of the values of progressive politics. But this did not go over well among the Christian dominated cultures of North America where Etty’s work was considered far too risqué to be accepted part of American culture. Controversy abounded as Etty’s work was shown to the world through progressive art circles advocated by the New England Victorians beholding the memory of their European idol.

It should be noted that Etty’s work still shapes our current culture especially in art. It is basically Etty who established the parameters of what constitutes an R rating for motion pictures, an X rating, or a PG rating. The motion picture industry used Etty’s presentation of the nude to film their actresses for R ratings. So art plays a very powerful role in shaping a culture. One man, like William Etty can shape an entire political movement as the Victorians used Etty to advance progressive politics and the spread of academic monopoly over racism, sexual liberation, and cultural focus.

But that world of the Victorians is collapsing and American society is left hungry and feeling vacant. These feelings of course are beginning to find their way into the art of our culture. They are in the books of Glenn Beck, the comedy of Tim Hawkins and the paintings of Jon McNaughton whom I absolutely adore and are reflecting this new age, the age of the patriot that will sweep away and reject what the Victorians started by way of art replacing them with the type of images seen in McNaughton’s paintings.

I see in the criticism of McNaughton’s The Forgotten Man many of the same criticism launched at Etty, only it’s the reversal groups. It is now the thinkers, the men and women of the mind who have been starving for content and value who were pushed aside when the Victorians ushered in Etty who are now finding voice through McNaughton. I personally find The Forgotten Man painting brilliant in that it tells a proper story. Unlike the Etty feature where the husband of the beautiful woman wanted to show off his wife’s nude body to another man seen tip toeing around the corner, The Forgotten Man shows the thinking man sitting on a park bench surrounded by the types of groups who currently make up our society. It is the Victorian progressives who stand clapping at President Obama as he steps on the Constitution in the right hand side of the picture, and the traditionalists standing on the left pointing at the man on the bench pleading for Obama to look at the man, to remember what everything was supposed to be about. The picture is so brilliant it even places George W. Bush where he belongs right behind Obama looking to his right at the traditionalists as though he felt bad to be where he is.

Have a look at that painting for yourself and listen to Jon McNaughton explain it.

The painting is a didactic work of art. Some art purists might call it pornography in that it is designed to move the viewer into a particular emotion. But in this sense it is equal to the work of Etty which was intended to literally convey sexual energy. McNaughton is trying to paint a picture of our times as he sees it, which is the task of the artist. As a work of art, the picture either achieves this or it doesn’t. For me, The Forgotten Man is very good, and very successful. It will stand proudly in a gallery in Venice, or London someday and will represent this time and age more accurately than many of the films produced in this era. It is a painting that says a lot in a simple scene.

But this isn’t the first time this was done by McNaughton. In the painting One Nation Under God it was shown that America was greatly influenced by Jesus Christ, which it was, and various elements on the left such as the media and other progressives are actually being pushed along by the devil. When I look at this painting by McNaughton I think of the Michelangelo painting called The Last Judgment painted on the alter wall of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. The primary difference between the two works is one of scale but the essence of the message is essentially the same. The same basic metaphors are used for the same didactic effect.

It is easier to look at the work of Michelangelo and profess him a master because the painting of The Last Judgment was done over a 4 year period and completed in 1541, and is in a far away land separated from current political influences. When Michelangelo is discussed the focus of the modern academic is on the massive scope of those Michelangelo paintings of the Renaissance, and not so much the content. The content of religious overtones is regarded as out-of-date and therefore out-of-fashion by the Victorian contemporaries.

McNaughton’s work is so powerful, even on the smaller scale; it’s the metaphors that have the progressive art critics scared for their very existences. Entire generations of Victorian art critics have tried very hard to prevent artists of the caliber of talent of a McNaughton to emerge. Most of the great brush painters of our day are easily controlled in our public institutions and McNaughton is a terrifying example to them that someone of great talent has escaped! The didactic art of Jon McNaughton has the power to alter American culture and they know it.

Progressives who know art and history cannot ridicule McNaughton without criticizing Etty, so they are caught in a quandary. They are attempting to portray McNaughton with the same tired euphemism of racism because there aren’t enough dark-skinned figures in McNaughton’s paintings, or other progressive platform points. But the essence of the paintings themselves, the metaphors cannot be challenged because they have meaning. This has left the media using anyone they can to come on record and attempt to deface McNaughton. So they resorted to a twenty something comic book artist from Columbus, Ohio to make the attempt.

Rachel Maddow even tried this recently when she posted on her blog a picture of The Forgotten Man to invite critical comments from her progressive viewers. You can read about that at The Blaze shown at the link below.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/controversial-painting-of-obama-trampling-constitution-resurfaces-artists-new-work-tells-enslaved-americans-to-wake-up/

Art is intended to be controversial. Art proper will take the viewer beyond their known parameters to a place they hadn’t been before. Art used as a weapon as progressives have done by using nudity, religious desecration, and other forms of pornography to advance their political platform of “non thinking” to bend American society to the will of the Victorian era in tribute to their deceased queen are fair game. Art galleries all over the world will provide the testimony of the many ideological conflicts waged over the tapestry of time. The difference between their age, and the one we are in now is that Jon McNaughton represents the art of a new generation that is pretty pissed off and ready to breath fire upon the wretched hive of scum and villainy that is the age of the Victorian progressive. I applaud the work of Jon McNaughton with not only a standing ovation but also by standing atop the tallest rung of the tallest ladder I can find to affirm it. Jon McNaughton’s work will be considered the Norman Rockwell of our day once the last of the Victorian progressive’s wither away into historical context, and the dark days of their reign will finally be at an end.

History will look to the painting of The Forgotten Man and declare that America woke up from a terrible dream about the time that this painting hit canvas from the mind of McNaughton in 2009. History will show that America found its way again once its people could look upon themselves in one of the fantastic paintings of this very talented artist and see how the invisible shackles they had not seen the Victorian progressives place about their feet came to be, but once seen sparked the newly found desire to fight for freedom.

For more about Jon McNaughton you can see his work at his home website.

http://www.mcnaughtonart.com/

Click here to see the TAIL OF THE DRAGON press release for an update on my most recent project:

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com
 

Watch Rich Hoffman’s favorite T.V. show:

http://www.foxnews.com/freedomwatch/

Clint Eastwood: It’s Halftime in America

Ok, it’s official, this is my favorite Superbowl commercial of 2012. Clint Eastwood on behalf of Chrysler, proclaimed that America isn’t done, that it’s only halftime and there is time to come back and win. I loved the metaphor, and thought it was well said–and stylish.

As for the hate and blame that is going on, I agree. When all the stupid people get out-of-the-way, America can start winning again.

I’m ready, how about you?

Click here to see the TAIL OF THE DRAGON press release for an update on my most recent project:

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com
 

Watch Rich Hoffman’s favorite T.V. show:

http://www.foxnews.com/freedomwatch/

The Government Can: Tim Hawkins comedy tells it like it is

In every conceivable fashion President Obama is an unmitigated failure except one, he can lie with a straight face. This week there has been much frustration that Atlanta certified Obama’s candidacy for president declaring him an American citizen born in Hawaii. Obama’s legal team spent $10 million plus dollars defending his right to even be president and has done what they have with every failure in Obama’s first 4 years, and that is spin everything around to make people forget what the real issue originally was. Thus, the real work of the true magicians of our day, the lawyers, have managed to direct the entire American society to look at Obama’s birth certificate as authentication to his citizenship instead of the real issue that Obama was an Indonesian citizen when he was a young boy and had to apply to American colleges as a foreign student. Obama lost that coveted citizenship when his step father was recalled to Indonesia, not the fault of young Barry, but there’s a reason the United States Presidency has rules—to help keep poorly built minds resulting from a childhood filled with a revolutionary socialist father, a sleep around mother, and a foreign step-father from becoming president and ruining our nation. Lawyers made it so anyway much to our demise as shown in this video.

But how does this happen? Why do people let the crimes go on? Well, as I write this, the Superbowl representing the 2011 season is being prepared and all across the nation on this particular Sunday beer sales are shooting through the roof. American people everywhere are making a personal proclamation to drinking much and getting “tanked” as they put it. But why? Why would anyone want to get “shit faced,” “wasted,” “trashed,” or any other term to describe inebriation?

Well, there is actually a science to this which is reflected in our national politics and has allowed looters like Obama to rule like kings over the good provided by the United States Constitution. In every society there are basically two types of people, those who think and those who chose not to. All people have the ability to think but not everyone elects to take the responsibility to do so. Taking responsibility for ones actions takes courage, so those short on courage will naturally elect not to think whenever possible. Many of those types of people are those who are running off to their grocery store before the Superbowl to gain as much alcohol as possible so that they can use the excuse of the Superbowl game to drink heavily under the socially acceptable circumstances where drunkenness is expected, much the way it is on New Year’s Eve or Spring Break ceremonies.

When one becomes drunk, they are now free of the responsibility to think, which is why people desire to become drunk, so they can set off the weight of thinking and not carry that weight. They wish to put down their own little ATLAS. While this is going on, members of our government, people like Obama, and his minions of merry men and women plot against us all in power grabs designed by those same scheming lawyers who protect Obama’s presidential eligibility by focusing societies attention on the birth certificate and not the loss of citizenship which is the real issue. The government is filled with these types of looters, thieves, liars, con artists, and legal hacks because they lack the moral integrity to play life straight with hard work and ethical behavior. This is why they get into government to begin with, because it allows them to legally rob their fellow citizens instead of doing it in the middle of the night through an open window, or at gun point in a back alley. These thieves know that if they give away some of what they steal like candy to those who chose to not think, then they can stay in power to continue their legalized looting, because there are a lot of people who elect not to think and they have the same power of voting as those who do.

Being drunk does not always have to include drinking. I know many people who act as though they are drunk without drinking a drop of alcohol. They speak about politics with the bullet points given to them on the nightly news, because they don’t want to think. They choose not to look at the information I’ve given them about government-run schools because they desire a baby sitter while they work hard at their careers. They chose not to think. This is the choice one makes when they decide to get drunk, they live in a state of full-time drunkenness refusing to make decisions, surrendering their lives to those who do think. When a woman lets a strange man feel her breast on the dance floor and her girl friends take a picture with their cell phones and show it to the woman when she’s sober the next day the woman will say with a laugh, “oh I was so wasted.” She says this to disqualify her logic and allow justification for her poor judgment surrendering her actions to the primal desires of biology. The man who sleeps with the ugly two-time divorcee while on the road or accepts the solicitation of the man in the next stall over after a heavy night of drinking will indulge in the primal act of sex then blame the alcohol, not himself, for the embarrassment the next day. This is what those who refuse to think do to America when they refuse to see what government schools are doing to our children, what the welfare state is doing to the American economy, and what Obama is really about behind the smile and self-defacing comments about his big ears, which are uttered to put the President in touch with the side of America that is insecure in their appearances. (Everything is calculated among thieves because at least they think to some extent)

But not everyone is walking around drunk. Some of us, many who read this site, are striving to be awake. And the good news is that because of the audacious power grabs of President Obama, there are many people noticing for the first time that they have been robbed, and they are trying to remember how it happened. That’s good, because the remembering requires thought, so at least their minds are engaging in a positive activity. As this process continues, a new style of comedy is emerging, one of which Tim Hawkins is excelling at. It’s a reasonable look at how America arrived at a time where such a terrible president like Obama could even be in a position of being reelected. It is through our art, our books, our music, our movies, and our comedy that we “THINK” so when a crowd of people fill a theater to watch the act of Tim Hawkins it is a good sign that more and more people are committing themselves to thinking instead of allowing themselves to be perpetually drunk.

It is the drunks among us who have taken all the candy the government offers. It is those weak-minded fools who lacked enough courage to make a decision on their own which has empowered looters like Obama to rule like a king. But that kingdom of fools does not extend into my life, and as I suspect you either dear reader. You and I share that quality, that we enjoy thinking and have not allowed ourselves to be seduced by the primal urges most surrender to under inebriated states. We are awake and we laugh at the comedy of those like us, people like Tim Hawkins and we find ourselves happy to see the theater packed at his performances. We are happy because we see that more people are joining us in the act of thinking and taking responsibility for our lives.

But as bad as Obama is, there are still many in America who would rather be drunk than sober, and those are the men and women of Obama. They are right now watching the Superbowl and find themselves in a faulty state of consciousness. Some of them have drunk so much that they are looking for a place to throw up the contents of their stomachs. Well dear reader, at least we do have something in common with those drunks, we are ready to throw up too. We are ready to dispel from the body of American government the parasites and toxic chemicals that inhabit the heart of our political system, so maybe there is a lesson to be learned here. Perhaps once the drunks get so sick on their own vomit they might regain their ability to think and perhaps will declare to themselves not to drink again, because even with all the excuses, the cost of their inebriation has been too great. The cost of not being responsible for their own lives is too immense and being drunk just hasn’t been worth it. And once they come to that conclusion perhaps they will join us in the comedy of Tim Hawkins and we will all laugh at what fools those drunks made of themselves and our country, but we will all move forward to remove the crooks and criminals who currently inhabit our political system.

So do not mock the drunk as they throw up all the toxins in their bodies. Just hand them a towel to wipe away the filth from their mouths and offer them a seat at the table of thought, so that they can join in taking responsibility of making legitimate the joke known as the federal government.

Click here to see the TAIL OF THE DRAGON press release for an update on my most recent project:

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com
 

Watch Rich Hoffman’s favorite T.V. show:

http://www.foxnews.com/freedomwatch/

Why John Hughes is a Hero: The evil behind legalized theft

What was 55-year-old John C. Hughes thinking when he paced a patrol car for seven blocks in the town of Butte, Montana then pulled his SUV around to pass the cop at over 70 mph instigating a chase that went up to 100 mph down an interstate toward Rocker, Montana? Well, the police didn’t know what to make of it. They chased Hughes until patrolmen threw stop sticks across the road flattening the tires of the SUV. When they arrested the driver Hughes proclaimed that being in a car chase was on his bucket list, and saw this as his opportunity to make good on that list.

Naturally reporters and law enforcement personnel across the nation were confused as to why anyone would want to do such a thing. Why would anyone openly challenge the law like that? Why would something so reckless be on someone’s bucket list?

Well, I have some very strong feelings about the reason and necessity by John Hughes to instigate a car chase with the police which are challenging to pin-point because often the social parameters that nag us most are those that remain undefined. For many, we drive about on the roads and highways eyeing the police as though they are wolves ready to pounce on our gazelle nature. We carefully worry about whether or not our tags are up to date on our licenses, whether or not we are carrying our insurance cards and keep an eye on our speeds so not to attract the attention of these wolves.

When we pass down the road and see a fellow driver pulled over there is a part of us that feels sorry for them. We know that at a minimum there will be a big fine that comes from a traffic stop. Sometimes it’s worse, it could involve jail time. Most of the time being caught by the police in some fashion means a loss of freedom to some extent and over time our subconscious feelings about these wolves patrolling around has caused Americans to accept a lifestyle wrapped in tyranny.

Most police patrol vehicles have on them someplace a logo that indicates, “To protect and serve.” We accept this logo as a reality in the discussions of everyday speech, but in the back of our minds we know this is a disguise designed to make the wolf appear to be something it’s not. The law enforcement officer is not stopping crime with their traffic stops. They are not protecting and serving the society by setting up DUI checkpoints and hindering the freedoms of drivers from getting to and from their destinations without harassment. They are toll collectors and law enforcements chief goal is to sustain the jobs of attorneys, judges, clerk of courts, jailers, and politicians who make up laws to support these public jobs. The ticket gained on the side of the road by an officer who has pulled you over is a legalized theft of your personal wealth. It is a forced acquisition of your time and money that dictates you will pay your fees, you will appear in court, that you may retain the services of an attorney. You will do all these things because a cop selected you to be pulled over, and you find yourself caught in a political snare that is open looting.

Police will tell society that it is because of the presence of police officers that crime is deterred. If there were fewer police there would be more robberies, there would be more rapes, there would be more DUI’s and reckless speeding. Police and politicians use fear of crime to drive society to accept their tyranny. The measurement of the truth is easy as to what the intentions are of law enforcement. They are the perpetrators of evil disguised as justice.

In my book The Symposium of Justice the police wanting to earn community trust inject a known rapist recently paroled into a neighborhood hoping that the pedophile will resume his activity and put the citizens into a froth looking for police support. Police do these things within the realm of the law, but their secret intentions which they do not reveal in the light of day is to gain public acceptance of their levy requests, and to support the staffing requirements without question. They use fear to gain advantages for their law enforcement entity. In cities locally like West Chester and Mason the nature of these police is easy to see. When driving from townships like Sycamore or Liberty into these cities the cops sit like hungry predators in parking lots and on the side of roads looking for an easy traffic stop so to meet their ticket quotas. Those police aren’t there to protect society from crime. In both of these regions Mason and West Chester their neighboring townships of Liberty and Sycamore do not have higher crime because they do not employ full-time police. Those regions tend to have low crime because the people who live there are good, families on public assistance is down, and value in education is higher. It’s the quality of people who determine the level of crime, not the presence of police. This leaves the nature of those police exposed for those who dare proclaim it.

How do we know a society is evil, or better yet, how do we know that the work of police in protecting and serving that society is evil? The answer is if a society is built upon a system of theft than that society is evil. And currently, or society is built upon theft.

We do not give our taxes freely to benefit our society for the better. Behind our façade of participation, each week our taxes are taken from our pay checks and used to pay for the toys of politicians. I am forced by coercion to pay for Medicare, a program that Lyndon Johnston created to compliment Social Security. It was the ideas of looting presidents trying to impress their mistresses who dictated that all American’s would pay for these grand social programs. For me the tax payer, I will have peace and some resemblance of freedom so long as I pay my taxes. But if I do not pay my taxes, then I will be arrested and thrown into jail by law enforcement.

Having staffed levels of police so high is not to clean up the occasional accidents on roadways, or the domestic violence that sometimes takes place in a large population. The infrastructure of the police car on the side of the road is not to protect and serve you, it is to protect and serve the society’s ability to legally loot by means of open theft. The police are there to remind the American citizen that they must obey the law, they must pay attention to the registration of their vehicles, their insurance cards, and hundreds of little details because we must all drive to get to our jobs so we can pay our taxes which encompass almost 50% of everything we earn by the time you add up the gas tax, the various sales taxes, the payroll taxes, and our property tax. I personally think most of that money is spent unwisely, and should be greatly reduced. But it is the law enforcement officer who stands between a population that would turn its anger on a political class that has built a society of evil in open theft, and strict compliance with the law. The cops absorb and diffuse the anger so it doesn’t migrate to a higher level.

When the officer sits in his patrol car like a wolf hunting food for the day, most of us hope that we will be protected by the sheer numbers as we travel like herds hoping to blend in and not attract the attention of the wolf in his patrol car. So we watch the speed limit and make sure we don’t roll through a stop light when a cop is around, because we don’t want to see those lights on in our rear view mirror. If we do, we know the chances are we’ll be going to court to pay a ticket that will be $50 to $100. We may even have to hire a lawyer at $75 to $200 an hour. Those lights on in our rear view mirrors might mean we will be forced to pay additional taxes on top of everything else of another $1000 to $2000. The fear of these fines keeps society from acting on the open theft because we all know you cannot fight the law, you cannot fight city hall, it is pointless to resist. That is the message.

The law enforcement officer represents tyranny to an evil system. Most people don’t have the capacity to consider their life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness when their attentions are consumed with all this trivia of paying taxes mentioned here. When the worry of our days must be negotiated between our taxes and our obligations to our families and ourselves, there isn’t much time left for philosophy and social context. So we look at the police with disdain, fear, and apprehension and do our best to avoid their wrath with careful adherence to the law, laws that are created faster than even the law makers can read them. The cop is the symbol of a society built on theft. They are the means of force to attain with might if necessary the legalized theft of our property.

So when John C. Hughes sped by a cop car in his SUV at 70 mph to instigate a police chase, he wasn’t trying to get arrested, or even break the law. Mr. Hughes put this car chase on his bucket list before he died because he wanted for once in his life to hunt the wolf instead of being afraid of them. For just a moment, John Hughes was the aggressor, and found a moment of freedom when he took action to step beyond fear to overcome the intimidation of those red and blue lights that flash from a patrol car. Hughes wanted to be free for just a moment to be his own man, and was willing to trade away his freedom once he was caught for the sensation of that true freedom while he was a temporary outlaw.

For that reason I admire Mr. Hughes. I understand that the law enforcement officers involved were perplexed, and the judge I’m sure was aghast. The members of the law enforcement community had their cage rattled. The reality that if everyone behaved as Mr. Hughes did, the law enforcement officers would find themselves on the bad end of a very sharp stick. Law enforcement is accustomed to societies blind conformance to the law, and all the members of the political class that have built the law enforcement community need that conformity to ensure their ability to legally steal from society the wages earned from their labor. In a society that is built upon theft, it is the thin blue line that makes it so. And most of the time a challenge to that authority goes unanswered until a 55-year-old man from Montana decided to put that challenge on his bucket list so that at least one time in his life he could spit in the face of his masters and touch the face of freedom, even if the experience lasted only for a moment.

Click here to see the TAIL OF THE DRAGON press release for an update on my most recent project:

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com
 

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Atlas Shrugged Part 2: Green lit and ready for production!

I make no attempt to hide the fact that I think Atlas Shrugged is one of the greatest novels of all time, and that Ayn Rand is one of the greatest philosophers in the history of mankind. When the recent film, Atlas Shrugged Part 1 came out to scathing reviews, the establishment found themselves attempting to deface the film at every turn. The reason for all the commotion is that Atlas Shrugged is essentially a philosophy that decertifies the altruistic tendencies of our modern society.

I thought the makers of the film version attempted a bold endeavor and everything was uphill for them. With the rights for the film being bounced between film icons like Clint Eastwood and Angelina Jolie who wanted to make a film version, it was obvious that traditional Hollywood could not get their minds around a film version of the massive book that is Atlas Shrugged. After much trial and tribulation, it was decided to proceed to film the movie in a three-part series with Part 1 coming out on April 15th 2011 with John Aglialoro producing assisted by a team of very dedicated Ayn Rand fans. What resulted was an entertaining film that left people traditionally viewing characters of business as villains lost to articulate their feelings, and wanting to lash out at the movie for challenging their stereotypes. Aglialoro had committed to making all three films, but after taking a beating on the first one, he has wisely sought to take his time and pull in even more talent for the very challenging 2nd and 3rd films.

I am pleased to have received in my email box yesterday a notice from the producers that they are proceeding now with Part 2 and have obtained the additional talent of Duncan Scott who worked on Ayn Rand’s We the Living film. Part 2 is set to be released in October 2012 amidst the presidential election which will be appropriate, and the team has released this teaser trailer to entice the legions of hungry fans.

The film versions of Atlas Shrugged are caught between a rock and a hard place. Without the top line talent of the Steven Spielberg’s or George Clooney’s of the world, Hollywood will of course look down its nose at the production values of these films. The greatest film makers in our modern times are unfortunately against everything that Atlas Shrugged is for, so top-level talent is hard to come by for an epic film like this. On the other hand, lovers of the book like me will undoubtedly feel frustration because there is no way to put into a movie the depth that a book like Atlas Shrugged can provide. But that’s ok, because the films serve as completely adequate cliff notes versions of the book and are a wonderful way to introduce the work of Ayn Rand to an audience that may not have heard about her before.

Atlas Shrugged whether we are talking about the book or the movies is not a simple work of just a story intended to entertain. Atlas Shrugged is a work of philosophy. As a work of philosophy it is OK to not have all the usual Hollywood flare, because it’s the meaning of the work that is important. And the film makers have done well to install that philosophy into the movie as seen in the clips below where scenes from the first film are broke down and analyzed for their meaning.

I ran into Ayn Rand for the first time while reading the book Dutch by Edmond Morris. Morris made a mention about the life and times of Ronald Reagan during the 50’s and Ayn Rand’s ubermensch novels were best sellers then. Well the word ubermensch means in German overman which is a concept Nietzsche talked about extensively in Thus Spoke Zarathustra so Morris’s choice of words to describe Ayn Rand sparked my interest. I think he meant it in a derogatory way. But if the progressives didn’t like her, there was a sure bet that I would so I checked out Ayn Rand and discovered that she had arrived at many of the same conclusions about life as I did. Reading her was an affirmation that many of my thoughts were not wrong, and better yet, she had made predictions a half a century earlier that were coming true now. So her work was a validation that I had been on the correct path all along.

The troubling aspect however was that I had always read a lot, and it wasn’t until my upper 30’s that I discovered this very prolific writer, even when that writer was essentially a carbon copy to the type of material that I enjoy reading and writing myself. That is because the work of Ayn Rand had been purposely kept from the public mind for the most part by the kinds of progressive groups who are the villains of Atlas Shrugged in a literal sense.

Over Christmas 2011 my father-in-law who is also a prolific reader, and a school teacher who holds a master’s degree in geology had told me about this great new movie called Atlas Shrugged over dinner. I stared open-mouthed at him as he went on and on about how much he loved the film. I couldn’t believe that he had never heard of the book. After all, he was in high school when the book came out, so I would have thought that at some point he would have run into the material.

He assured me that he had not, and he said the movie made him want to read the book and he planned to get the novel the next time he was at a book store. I told him to wait a moment, that I’d be right back. I excused myself from the dinner table and left my family sitting there while I got into the car and drove down to the local Barnes and Noble Bookstore in Louisville. Not wanting my food to get cold, I told the girl at the help counter, “I have an emergency; my father-in-law has never read Atlas Shrugged. I need a copy of it right now so I can rectify that situation.” She smiled and said that has been happening a lot lately, since the movie had come out. People were pouring into the book store and demanding Ayn Rand’s works! I gave my father-in-law Atlas Shrugged at the dinner table when I returned and his smile was from ear to ear as he held it in his hands as though he possessed magic between his finger tips.

That is why the movies are so important, because our society has had this fantastic work by Ayn Rand covered up to some extent for 50 years. Apparently some literature classes in high schools and colleges have exposed students to Atlas Shrugged, but for the most part the literary classic has been discouraged by progressive groups, and now that the movies are starting to be made, the films are igniting curiosity into actually reading Atlas Shrugged so that more of the philosophy can be absorbed in the written word than could ever be shown on the silver screen.

To me a film is successful if it entertains first, and then leaves the viewer hungry for more information at the conclusion. And for those who do not know the work of Atlas Shrugged these films are introducing millions upon millions of people to a whole new way of thinking that is uniquely American, and I think it’s absolutely wonderful! So the news that the producers have managed to scrape together the money and talent to produce the second film is great news and I will be a tremendous advocate helping wherever I can so that more and more people will be exposed to the wonderful philosophy of Ayn Rand which is virtually inseparable from my own philosophy. For more information on Part 2, there is a new website that let fans follow the progress to its completion and release in October.

http://www.atlasshruggedmovie.com/

Stay tuned!

To learn what a Overmanwarrior is CLICK HERE:

https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/the-overmanwarriors-eating-fighting-and-philosophizing-the-keys-to-a-good-life/

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com
 

Watch Rich Hoffman’s favorite T.V. show:

http://www.foxnews.com/freedomwatch/