Tag: Ayn Rand

Stuart Freeborn Becomes One With “The Force”: How ‘Star Wars’ is the real life ‘Atlas Shrugged’

Stuart Freeborn died at 98 years old recently, but he will forever live in the character of Yoda from the popular Star Wars stories.  Freeborn was already an old man when he designed Yoda as a character puppet in 1979 for the Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back and without question put many of his own features into the face of the great science fiction philosopher.  It doesn’t take much imagination to see Stuart Freeborn in the face of Yoda as the character has evolved from a puppet to a digital character in the prequel trilogies to the current fantastic cartoon series Clone Wars on the Cartoon Network.  Yoda is the embodiment of Stuart Freeborn and will reflect for all the years going forth the best that the movie business has to contribute to the magic of mythmaking.  For the latest incantation of Stuart Freeborn’s creation you can see Yoda this Saturday February 9th, 2013 in the latest Clone Wars episode filled the with the usual perilous drama mixed with political betrayals that aren’t so science fiction if placed in parallel to our current society.

I place a high level of credit for the success of Star Wars on the back of Stuart Freeborn.  If the puppet he designed didn’t work in The Empire Strikes Back, the movie would have fallen on its face stopping the saga in its tracks after the second movie.  The gamble that George Lucas took with his own money to make that classic science fiction film would have went up in flames if the audience did not accept Yoda as a believable character and all the magic that is currently falling like snow flakes upon our culture today.  Star Wars would have gone out like a candle flame on a brisk day almost before it ever got started.

I have covered in great detail, especially lately Star Wars importance not just mythologically—which equates out to cultural improvements–but in economics.  I am sure George Lucas and his collaboration with other filmmakers would cringe in trying to explain to their Marin County neighbors how what they’ve done at Skywalker Ranch in California has a lot more to do with Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged than the traditional Hollywood moochers who attempt to duplicate the quality of the Star Wars Franchise.  As the political left hates Ayn Rand, it is obvious that quietly in the rolling hills of Central California, the values of Ayn Rand are celebrated in great abundance at Skywalker Ranch under hushed voices and public denials.   The falsification is that Ayn Rand was a selfish witch and that Star Wars is about self-sacrifice and altruism.  That is why everyone gets it wrong.   The growing assembly of excellent creative talent gathering at Skywalker Ranch from Industrial Light and Magic to some of the most original music composition in our modern times is leaps and bounds beyond anything else being done in entertainment.  As far as make-up designers Stuart Freeborn was the best of the best and his impact on human culture will forever be measured by his original designs in Star Wars characters like Yoda and Chewbacca.  Freeborn like the wonderful characters in Ayn Rand’s great novel is one of the exceptional in his field of endeavor and it was ultimately George Lucas’s creation that allowed Freeborn the freedom to step beyond the restrictions of social dogma and unleash creations that propel the power of myth into mass culture with magnificently positive results.

The same people who complain that the Disney merger with Lucasfilm is one of a deplorable exploitation of capitalism also complain about the moral justification of Ayn Rand’s novels—particularly Atlas Shrugged.  These personalities have been so embedded with socialism and the values of collectivism that they are unable to see the real power and message behind myth and the businesses it takes to deliver them.  I have spoken about a vacation that my wife and I took playing the MMO video game Star Wars: The Old Republic (CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW).  We spent move than six weeks continuously enjoying that game for hours upon hours every day together doing the work of the Jedi Council by solving problems in that galaxy far, far away.  One of the problems with the massive BioWare game is that they have an XP (experience points) level cap of 50, which takes most players who spend a large amount of time on the game about two months to reach.  Obsessive players can reach that cap within a month.  At level 50, XP points no longer awarded, and for many they lose interest in the game because they no longer get the reward of earning XP for their game playing investments.  So these players have been dropping their subscriptions forcing BioWare to find creative ways to convince players over level 50 to continue their memberships.  This is what is called “game economy” and reflects accurately real life behavior.  If citizens are taxed too much, or do not get to keep what they earn while working, they stop working, they stop being productive, and every kind creative input comes to a halt.  Without incentives, gamers in The Old Republic lose interest if they can’t earn XP or large amounts of game credits and things to buy with them.  Gamers who drop their subscriptions when they lose interest in playing the game without earning XP are proving Ayn Rand correct when the heroes of the classic novel Atlas Shrugged quit participating in America because taxes became too great.  They abandoned socialism in the book and embraced the freedom of Galt’s Gulch (Atlantis).

Star Wars is all about generating wealth, not just in the economic numbers that the films, books, television shows, and retail merchandise generate for Lucasfilm and Disney as major corporations.  But wealth is also generated as so many people desire the material, because they NEED mythologies that properly reflect the world they live in.  CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT THE POWER OF MYTH.  The move that Lucas made in selling his company to Disney was one that would allow him to expand the Star Wars mythology to fulfill the market demands of his product, which in many ways resided on the shoulders of Stuart Freeborn over thirty years ago.  If George Lucas is the John Galt of the Star Wars saga—READ ATLAS SHRUGGED TO UNDERSTAND, then Stuart Freeborn was the Hank Reardon who made a product so good that nobody could equal his efforts—and the power of that creation is about to explode upon our modern culture in a way that is unfathomable.  Trust me.

This is why I am spending so much time discussing Star Wars.  There is nothing in our culture that captures all the elements of modern life the way that Star Wars mythology does not just spiritually, but economically, politically, and ethically.  On both the business side of Star Wars and the creative side it represents the very best of the absolute best of all those individuals who make the Disney company, Lucasfilm, Industrial Light and Magic and the dozens and dozens of support companies that trickle down off them the best in their businesses.  It should come as no surprise that the values of Yoda as expressed in the Star Wars stories are so popular that stand alone films of Stuart Freeborn’s characters are going to get their own films in addition to the completion of Episodes 7, 8, and 9.  Yoda is getting his own film apparently, and Han Solo and Chewbacca are getting their own films in addition to the Joe Johnston creation of Boba Fett.

It is because of creative geniuses like Stuart Freeborn that Yoda has become over a thirty year period such a powerful character who might well surpass Mickey Mouse as the most recognizable iconic character in human history.  Yoda was created by a wise old man who went on to live till the age of 98 and brought joy to many millions during his lifetime.   But in his passing, Stuart Freeborn will live on and become stronger than anybody can possibly imagine, as his character of Yoda will carry Star Wars into a new dimension of entertainment experience in producing the myths that society lives by giving a rebirth to a new and prosperous century that nobody saw coming.

How do I know?  Well, read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and understand that “A is A.”  Once the value of “A” is known, then the addition of values can be added up and determined as an end result.  Star Wars is about values in every way that they can be defined.  And the grandfather of those values were people like Stuart Freeborn.  He will be missed, but his memory will live on forever—like all Jedi who find themselves one with the Force.

To my readers here, people like Stuart Freeborn and Paul Harvey mean a lot to me, so it is only right to pay tribute to them when the times come.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The Financial Health of America: How to adapt to the coming crises

This is the day of the Superbowl and as I watched the festivities of the day and thought about the countless parties going on all over America I had some thoughts about economics in The United States that I wanted to share.  I have covered so many radio broadcasts here at the OW over the years that I have moved on to new ways of communicating just to avoid redundancy.  For instance, when Darryl Parks covered two years ago the coming financial crises in America, he was talking about the time we are currently in.  CLICK HERE to revisit that broadcast and compare that broadcast to this new one done on 700 WLW during the first day of February 2013.  A lot of ground has been covered between the Darryl Parks broadcast of a couple of years ago and this recent one, but the scope of the problem is very accurately displayed for even economically naive listeners to understand.  Have a listen:

This financial crisis is the paramount topic of our day.  The state of our economy is changing rapidly and soon many of those who thought that finance in America was an impregnable fortress will soon learn what epic failure and a commitment to socialism has done to us all.  With student debt collapsing our economy as we speak, the old idea of retiring at 65 years old off a nice pension and other government driven revenue is gone forever.  Instead Americans in their mid-40’s on down will have to face a new reality for financing their lives and the luxury of one income to handle all their affairs just won’t do.

In my own life I have begun writing books to help fuel my own later years with additional sources of personal income, because the old traditional model will become obsolete in the coming years.  With the collapse of the American economy so to will the idea of working one job for eight hours every day go away.  In the future it may take 3 or 4 jobs requiring 10 to 30 hours each week to commit to, and that is the result of the massive plundering that has went on in our nation’s government.

College will not help fix this problem; it has only made it worse, because our education system has saturated the marketplace with too many employees trained in skills that do not have revenue generating potential.  The best jobs for college graduates are government jobs, because the private sector has not been able to sustain government intrusion and preserve profitability while maintaining the financial promises of a university degree.  Unions also won’t help, because like colleges, they have improperly skewed the profitability of their enterprises with redistributive wealth reforms that have had the opposite effect of their intentions.  Just a quick glance at the economic viability of Detroit, and the state of California provides all the proof one needs to predict the future of economies driven by these forces.

What this means is that a massive exodus of tax contributions is about to hit The United States government and they are not prepared to deal with that grim reality peacefully.  I recently spoke about the cost of high taxes pushing people out of their homes.  An empty home does not contribute taxes to a school district, or a police department, or those beloved firefighters embedded into our minds as heroes from the Fisher Price toys we played with as children.  When citizens can no longer make money off their jobs or own property, there is nothing for government to tax—there is no way to steal the money away from the citizens—and the government will go bankrupt once people lose the will to participate.  That will is quickly disappearing.

A failure to address these issues back when Darryl Parks first did his broadcast with Porter Standsberry has caused this current crisis to impact the lives of millions of families, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.  I put this recent broadcast up today so that a trend can be seen by the intelligent reader/viewer.  These broadcasts are more than doomsday entertainment, they are more than skeptical speculation; they are quite real in their announcements of economic disaster.  I believe that the downward economic trend is unavoidable and those who will survive are those who adjust their lives to these changing conditions.  The keys to this new survival are to keep student debt down.  Keep credit card debt low to non-existent.  And do many things for a living—not just one specialized thing.  Avoid high looting taxes because with every tax dollar you throw away to government, you will have to work a part-time job or two here and there to cover the cost of those taxes.  Keep it simple and stay out-of-the-way, because things will get ugly before they get better.  And most importantly, think like a “producer” not a “consumer.”  Conditions will get ugly because too many people are in denial of the present state of affairs, and refuse to acknowledge the true economic status of The United States.  Take broadcasts like the one done on 700 WLW and cherish the information, because failure to act will lead your family down a dark path that will most likely end very poorly for all involved.

Enjoy the Superbowl.  Hope your team won.  Depending on how you answer that will determine your ability to avoid trouble in the coming days.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Smart Meter Arrests: Naperville patriots thumb their noses at the United Nations–as they should!

One of the most evil tyrannies that government uses to mask its true intentions is when they show up at your home to do something against your will and proclaim they have a right to do it because the “law” gave them the right to do it.  Such is the case of Jennifer Stahl who has been a strong advocate against the installation of smart meters on Naperville, Ill., homes.  Jennifer, her husband and a handful of other patriots in Naperville have organized against smart meter electrical monitoring devices as they know that the push of these digital meters is phase one of a United Nations plan called Agenda 21 where the data collected from the meters will be studied to help support a charge in extra fees for excessive, or “unsupported” electrical activity that would require additional taxes in “carbon credits.” (CLICK HERE FOR MORE ON AGENDA 21)  The future “taxes” on reckless electrical use—such as doing too many loads of laundry in one day to having a home’s heat turned up “too high” are ways that government intends to “nudge” society into buying into the socialism of the green movement—which in essence is the United Nations way of grabbing power and sovereignty from the United States to reduce it’s technological growth so that other countries like Zimbabwe, New Guinea, and India can catch up during the 21st Century.  It’s the electrical version of “wealth redistribution” played out in across the world stage—and smart meters are one of the tools the United Nations intends to use to implement it.  Read more at the article link below:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/01/24/woman-arrested-while-refusing-smart-meter-installation-on-her-property-tells-us-her-story/

It is highly unlikely that the electrical workers installing the meters knew anything about the intention of the meters.  Their employers told them to install the meters and like all mindless drones just waiting to get off work so they can grab a beer, they did exactly what they were told.   To them the digital meters were simply replacing the analogue meters of old—so there was no harm—no foul.  It is also unlikely that the police who have been arresting protestors like Jennifer Stahl know anything about the real intention of Agenda 21.  All they know is that the electrical workers and power company as part of the contract to deliver power to individual homes has a legal right to their property—that supersedes the rights of the homeowner who maintains the property—and they will enforce the law with force if necessary—without further thought.  Nobody knows the origin of these laws, where they came from, or questions the reason that such intrusions on Jennifer Stahl’s sovereignty are wrong at the most fundamental of American rights.  Society has grown so used to such intrusions over a long period of time that the original meanings have been lost to time.

The Stahl case is an excellent example of why the NDAA Act President Obama signed into law on New Years Eve of 2011 is so dangerous in the future, because like the power companies right to impose its will on its electrical subscribers, the government can arrest anybody at any time and to hell with the Constitution if the president deems such action necessary for the “security of the state.”  Security is ill defined and may actually only represent the political “security” of one party over another which is very similar to the origin of the laws that protect the power companies into sustaining their monopolies over the private rights of homeowners like Jennifer Stahl.  Power companies yield to the United Nations smart meter program without protest while at the same time using law enforcement to maintain their will.  The power company who supplies electrical power to Jennifer Stahl’s home has the legal right to destroy her property in order to maintain access to their property which intrudes her home.  Their rights supersede hers in the eyes of the court, which has been shaped by lobby power from the electrical company.  The deal was probably made in a Chicago strip club between Jennifer’s elected representatives, the power company lobbyist, representatives of the electrical line workers union, and attorneys to write legislation that would protect power companies having access to their equipment at all times for the “safety” of society, and enable them to deliver power to Naperville—“collectively, without unnecessary restrictions.”  United Nations members sitting around a similar strip club in Geneva puffing on big cigars and patting themselves on the back at how “worldly” they are while stuffing dollar bills in the G-string of an 18-year-old girl stolen from her family in Sumatra, came up with a similar plan.  The United Nations members were aware of the laws in the United States protecting power companies and their monopolies, so they conjured up a scheme called “smart meters” to regulate carbon emissions as they smacked the young Sumatran girl on the ass and laughed about it.  In their view, they are heroes for saving the planet.  Deep down inside they hope that saving a planet can erase away the sins they commit on a daily basis as they cheat on their wives and betray their family legacies with such dishonor by indulging in modern sexual slavery with great bravado.

All this happens against the will of Jennifer Stahl who can do nothing to protect her home but allow herself to be arrested and hope that people wake up and take notice.  She doesn’t even know what to say in her own defense as the police arrested her.  She doesn’t want to sound like a kook telling the media that the smart meters are part of an elaborate scheme hatched by the United Nations and that somehow they have managed to touch the lives of all the people in Naperville, Ill., even though it’s the truth.   The situation is just too big for her to make a rational argument in protest.  She doesn’t know how to communicate that the original crime was committed in the cozy political relationship between her power company, labor unions, and her elected representatives who are all intent to provide her power company with a monopoly, which protects the union jobs of the line workers and everyone else in the process from any type of competition.  The same laws that protect the power company’s rights to access Jennifer’s property and do whatever they have to do to protect their equipment while there also protects the power company against the innovation of Jennifer and her husband should they discover that they could build their own thorium reactor and supply power to their own home completely off the grid bypassing their electricity provider all together.  The power company is protected from such a measure through zoning regulations—also shaped by those same Geneva law makers.  They have deemed such self-electrical generation to be unsafe, and they impose steep fines for attempting to do such a thing, making the endeavor nearly impossible.  CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO ON THORIUM POWER.  In this way zoning regulators, trustees, county commissioners, congressional representatives, senators, and attorneys in courts all across America find themselves wagged by a tail that originates in Geneva.  Nobody knows how they got where they are and they have no idea where they are going.  All they have room for in the grand scheme of thinking is to contemplate whether or not the Baltimore Ravens will beat the San Francisco 49ers in the upcoming Super Bowl.  The situational politics is too complicated for them to fathom individually.

But a few people have their arms around the situation at least partially, and that is Jennifer Stahl and her supportive husband—along with a few neighborhood friends.  The root of the evil is in the political will to protect electrical union workers and their monopolies by holding down alternative power providers like thorium where every home could have their own fission reactor.  If Jennifer and her husband had no collective need for power because they generated their own as every home in their neighborhood did, then the power company, the sleazy politicians, and the slobs in the Geneva strip joint would lose their legal right to intrude on Jennifer’s property—and that is really what everyone in a position of power fears.  By arresting Jennifer for defending her property, authorities hope to send a message that compliance will be enforced by rule of law.  Jennifer on the other hand hopes that she will inspire others to resist as she did and so goes a game of tug-of-war in space without any real point of reference because the battle takes place outside the actual boundaries of accepted reality.

The answer to all this is in allowing the technology that would allow Jennifer to be free of her power company, United Nation politicians, and even the local police to emerge.  Jennifer should not be forced into an unholy alliance with a power company intent to maintain its market monopoly over her life.  The information collected by the smart meters is too intrusive into the daily function of Jennifer’s life.  It is not the United Nations business to know how many loads of laundry is done in the Stahl household on any given day.  Their so-called dedication to preserving “mother earth” does not give them right or dominion over the Stahl family’s business as much as they wish it did, and try to make it so through twisted laws concocted by ladder climbing attorney interns.  The fight over smart meters is just beginning.  It can only be hoped that enough people wake up to the scam before things get too far out-of-hand.  In the face of such tyranny, it is important to know what the options are, and in this situation the solution is in thorium.  Thorium breaks the monopoly grip of power companies and the unholy alliance they have with politics and are the best hope of bringing freedom to every household in America without the prying eyes of perverts and thieves from Geneva peeking into our homes through a smart meter.

Thorium, symbol Th, radioactive metallic element with an atomic number of 90 and an atomic weight of 232.038. Its isotopes range in atomic mass number from 212 to 236. Thorium is a member of the actinide series of the periodic table (see Periodic Law). Small quantities of thorium are found in thorite, which is thorium silicate, as well as in other compounds. Larger deposits occur mainly as thorium oxide in the monazite sands of India and Brazil. Thorium is a potential nuclear fuel source, because it can be made to yield the isotope uranium-233, which is used in nuclear fission (see Nuclear Energy). Thorium metal is used in magnesium alloys and as a stabilizing component of electronic tubes. Thorium oxide is used in light filaments and electrodes and also as a catalyst.[1]

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

All rights reserved.

Update from Jennifer Stahl in case those reading this are interested in supporting their cause:

Hello Rich,
 
Thank you so much for your continued support. It has been quite busy around here. Thank you!!
 
Please consider making a donation to NSMA.
 
 
Amber
NSMA Volunteer
 
Naperville Smart Meter Awareness * WEB http://www.napervillesmartmeterawarness.org/ * FACEBOOK Naperville-Smart-Meter-Awareness * PHONE 630-579-0659 (9am-9pm)

 

 
Naperville Smart Meter Awareness * WEB http://www.napervillesmartmeterawarness.org/ * FACEBOOK Naperville-Smart-Meter-Awareness * PHONE 630-579-0659 (9am-9pm)

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em’!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Workplace Freedom Amendment in Ohio: Who could possibly be against freedom? “UNIONS”

If you are tired of school levies and ridiculous tax increases placed on a ballot every 3 years from your community school, then there is only one hope of removing that threat from your week-to-week budget; the Workplace Freedom Amendment that is currently circulating around Ohio.  If you want to do anything about the skyrocketing cost of education in Ohio, then you need to do your part in bringing freedom to the workers of those industries so that union bosses cannot continue to drive up labor costs unreasonably with smoke and mirror campaigns against choice.  The number one reason that unionized labor costs so much in public education is because the unions have eliminated competition, and they have done this through massive extortion tactics forcing collectively the 100% participation of all their employees, even those who may not otherwise agree with the progressive politics of which labor unions are a direct result.

http://ohio.mediatrackers.org/2013/01/22/deadly-truth-about-workplace-freedom/

Workplace Freedom in Ohio should be a slam dunk issue.  After all, who is pro-extortion and limited choice?  Nobody would consciously admit to such a thing.  Yet anyone who stands against Workplace Freedom is against freedom of choice, and they make their livings by taking advantage of that artificial leverage.   The people who are most terrified of Workplace Freedom are groups like the Ohio Education Association—who represents most of the teachers in Ohio.  Right now, the OEA is one of the largest progressive groups in America and they provide a lot of money to politicians like Barack Obama.  Employees who do not support people like Obama have no choice but to see their union dues support progressive politics even if they don’t support those causes.  The union has managed to shut up the complaints of their members by extorting excessively high wages to help make that lack of choice go down better, which is why teachers are paid so extraordinarily well.  Unions working with lap dog school boards support this pyramid scheme by continuously going to voters for school levies every few years to pay for the outrageous labor costs they have negotiated to purchase the silence of “lack of choice.”  Most teachers don’t support progressive politicians.  They complain about them in the teacher’s lounge, or may send me an email quietly asking for help, but in the end they are paid extremely well to keep quiet.

Labor unions since they are rooted in communism also get to fulfill one of the planks established in 1958 by obtaining their funding through eroding away the value of personal property taxes. (CLICK HERE FOR MORE)  In the long-term, school funding on the backs of personal property incentivizes more and more people to give up that property and to take up residence in apartments, which has long been the hidden strategy of the concealed social communist.  This is consistent with the 2012 presidential election results where it can be easily ascertained that most Barack Obama supporters were not suburbanite property owners who believed in the Second Amendment.  Obama supporters instead rely on government assistance and centralized housing more often than not. Such a thing is a progressive platform and the same numbers are seen in those who support school levies over those who don’t.  The trend with school levies due to the monopoly public education has on the process is to beat into the minds of the voters the idea of hopelessness.  For instance, Little Miami Schools in Ohio went through nine school levies before voters finally approved a 13.5 mill levy which has been crushing on the homeowners.  In the short run most homeowners dig deep to find the extra money to pay the taxes, but over time, they will sell their homes to escape the high taxes and the lack of buyers will force many of those properties to become Section 8 housing.  That is the long-term plan by communists hiding behind the labor movement who support progressive politics.  Such a sad story is exactly what happened in the Fairfield School District in Southern Ohio, who in the mid 1980s was ranked by Playboy Magazine to have in it the most beautiful women in the country.  Fairfield was a vibrant community full of promise.  But high taxes, Section 8 housing, and endless promises of future school levies have destroyed it.  Just 20 years later, it is a community on the decline.  The same plan is outlined for Mason, Lakota, Little Miami, Sycamore and many other “wealthy” areas in Ohio.  Progressives seek “social justice” and income “fairness” over maintaining property values, even though they sell their service of maintaining property values as a short-term fix for buying into their racket.  Like the teachers, progressives in labor unions sell their organized crime type of syndicate by playing up the greed factor of their service.

The only reason any of this works is because unions have a monopoly on worker rights.  The way to take that power away from the unions and give the freedom of choice back to the employees and the tax payers is to remove the extortive leverage that the unions currently have.   This is why Workplace Freedom is the only answer to the long-term problem of school funding.  Until unions are no longer able to hold destructive monopolies in the public sector workplace can competition be introduced to education to help drive down the costs of teaching children.

Do not expect any help from politicians on Workplace Freedom.  This will have to be a citizen initiative.  The unions and their extortive measures have broken the back of virtually all politicians in Ohio after Senate Bill 5.  The tactics behind the scenes are quite vicious and many people don’t have the stomach for the aggression.  But thankfully, there are a few who are not afraid, and they are circulating petitions.  So it you’d like to sign, look one up, or send me a message and I’ll point you in the right direction.   It’s only a matter of time before Ohio has a Workplace Freedom Amendment, because the economics of the situation dictate the necessity.  But with your help Ohio can have it sooner than later, before states like Indiana and Michigan begin pulling dramatically out in front of Ohio economically.  But there won’t be any solution to the school levy crises that every community currently faces until the unions are no longer able to hold communities and their children hostage of phony fear tactics and fuzzy math.   Competition will take care of the reality of labor unions, once teachers are given the freedom to chose, and parents the freedom to accept.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

Obama Learns a New Word: The meaning of “absolutism”

Obama and his gang of despots during the week of his showy inauguration learned a new word which they began uttering during the Sunday news shows and was later refined by Obama speech writers for his very divisive speech on Capital Hill January of 2013.  Their new word is “Absolutism” and their determined use of it is their new campaign to pull the very stupid into their cause of progressivism with the magic trick of word deferment—common in politics particularly with Democrats.  So what does “absolutism” mean?

1 a : a political theory that absolute power should be vested in one or more rulers, b : government by an absolute ruler or authority : despotism

2: advocacy of a rule by absolute standards or principles, 3: an absolute standard or principle

Obama is attempting to paint House Republicans, and anyone who stands against his progressive agenda as tyrants hell-bent on one party rule.  He is attempting to stoke the fires of discontent among the politically naive, which is a vast majority of the idiots who support him.  The reality is that the only “absolutism” being exhibited is from Obama himself.  His timely use of the word absolutism is a direct attempt to steer away eyes from his actual tyrannical intentions under the flag of “social justice.”  If one did not know better being participants in this direct time and age, Obama’s inauguration speech would fit nicely next to a majority of Joseph Stalin’s public speeches, and Adolf Hitler.   In the distant future when all the emotion of the times have passed, Obama, Stalin, and Hitler’s speeches played together could easily be interchanged as they all put “social justice” ahead of logic and fiscal responsibility.  The dictators’ comments of past and present are not aimed at the sophisticated thinkers, but at the stupid fool who belch proudly at the conclusion of their meals.  Click here for more.

The target of the word Absolutism is to put Obama’s critics on the ropes of defense and buy him time to take his shots at social justice and delay any discussion about the economy or the peril America currently faces.  Gay rights, Medicare, and the mythical female wage issue that obviously has skewed numbers due to statistical maternity leave are his top priorities over $17 trillion dollars in debt and record sustained unemployment.  His targeted use of the word Absolutism is designed to attack his critics with an emotional defense to prove fruitlessly that they are not unemotional rulers who hate social justice, instead of fiscal hawks’ intent to reign in spending.  Obama’s attack is out of the Bill Ayers School of Terror–the path of the intellectual who switches good with bad and calls the bad good.  People without much wit buy the ideas at wholesale value because they are simply too lazy to investigate the matter with any critical thinking which is how Obama won the election.

But Obama is the product of Bill Ayers terrorist organization The Weather Underground that has always been intent to destroy what they believe to be American Imperialism—and they are doing it in the same way that they use the word Absolutism.  Obama’s goal is to direct the nation’s attention to social justice while he actually attacks the fiscal stability of America.  To understand the rest of his intentions, the film 2016: Obama’s America needs to be viewed, especially after the inauguration speech.  The strategy is clear.

One thing did come to mind that was particularly ironic when watching Obama’s dictator-like speech.  It is his support of more gun control legislation and more specifically background checks for buyers.  Obama believes that citizens should have to undergo extensive background checks before buying a firearm.  Yet as he gave his speech nobody in the mainstream media even investigated Obama’s own background and his roots that trace back to Indonesian when he attended school as a citizen of that foreign land during his boyhood days.  Nobody looked deeply into his attending college in America as a foreign student.  Yet two times now background checks have not kept a terrorist protégé of Bill Ayers from gaining control of the largest military in the world—so what makes Obama think that background checks of any kind will ever work if they aren’t effective for the highest political office in the land?  To detour such questions Obama simply calls his opponents advocates of absolutism—to disguise that reality points to the “smeller is the feller,” the guilty party is the one using the word.  Not the people it is directed at.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

If You Love Your Kids, Don’t Send Them To College: The Real ‘Fountainhead’ Frank Lloyd Wright

When I think of college the very first thing I think of is intoxication, experimental sex, and liberalism.  I would never in a hundred years tell someone I care about that they should go to such a mental meat grinder as American modern colleges—because those institutions are not about learning—but are rather about following the advice of Princeton President Woodrow Wilson who said colleges were tasked to make children as less like their parents as possible.  Colleges as they are today are about reprogramming 19 years of love and emotional investment out of a child with the destruction of their individuality and through progressive scholarship—to be reborn as a collective oriented species.  Colleges are run by a class of human being called “the academic of intelligentsia” and they are a sinister group that holds much responsibility for the current destruction of The United States.

That is not to say that all young people who attend college become mindless drones who vote for Presidents like Barack Obama, campaign against gun rights, strive for social evasion through intoxication, and have difficulty maintaining relationships because all their sexual standards have been ripped away leaving nothing to cherish in their bedrooms.  I know of a few.  In fact most of my closest relationships all have advanced degrees and have survived the experience—but not without scars.  Unfortunately for a vast majority of college bound young people, they will not survive intact, and will be crushed under the mantra of progressivism taught in those schools into something unrecognizable from the miracle their youths were destined otherwise to produce.

When it is said that Americans are behind other countries in academic achievement—in producing engineers, scientists and other advanced degree oriented professions I would say to fret not.  Let India, China, Japan and other countries with collectivist cultures produce nice little pets who do what they are told under the terms of employment.  America can always hire that talent away from those other countries—it does not need to produce them in American colleges.  America needs to produce solid individuals who create jobs so that those jobs can hire the pin headed collectivist to work nicely in their cubicles under the guidance of their boss.  America needs to concentrate its energy into making more entrepreneurs and it won’t do that by copying the academic model of Europe and Asia.

To get feel for what I’m talking about, the context is explained wonderfully in one of my all-time favorite novels, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.  In that great American novel the main character Howard Roark was openly molded after the great real life architect Frank Lloyd Wright.  Frank Lloyd Wright, (1867-1959), was an American architect, a pioneer in the modern style who is considered one of the greatest figures in 20th-century architecture. He was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin. In 1887 Wright went to Chicago, where he became a designer for the firm of Adler and Sullivan. In 1893 he established his own office in Chicago.

Wright created the philosophy of “organic architecture,” which maintains that a building should develop out of its natural surroundings. His designs for both private and public structures were boldly original, and he rebelled against ornate neoclassic and Victorian styles. Wright believed that architectural form must be determined by the particular function of a building, its environment, and the type of materials used. His interiors emphasize spaciousness, which derives from open planning with one room flowing into another.

Wright initiated many new techniques, such as the use of precast concrete blocks reinforced by steel rods. He also introduced numerous innovations, including air conditioning, indirect lighting, and panel heating. His works include the Millard House (1923) in Pasadena, California; the Johnson Wax Company Administration Building (1939) in Racine, Wisconsin; the First Unitarian Church (1947) in Madison, Wisconsin; and the Price Tower (1953) in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. In 1959 he completed the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

Wright also spent much of his time writing, lecturing, and teaching. By 1908 he had originated most of the principles that serve as fundamental concepts of modern architecture. His work profoundly influenced the development of contemporary architecture in the United States and Europe.[1]

Ironically, contrary to what academics care to admit, there is no evidence that Frank Lloyd Wright ever graduated from high school.  He was admitted to college under a special arrangement, but left the school without taking a degree after only a few classes.  No college in the world could have taught Wright to think so far outside the box as he did, and in fact nobody has been able to think as originally as he has to date.  In colleges all over the world architecture students study Frank Lloyd Wright, and they copy some of his elements in modern building techniques, but they cannot think like he did.  Those other students would be what the novel The Fountainhead calls the Peter Keatings of the world, the fools destined to live in the shadows of everyone else their entire lives, who go to school, get good grades, do what they’re told, and die unspectacularly as decrypted caricatures of a mind that had degraded each year of their lives from age 4 to 75.  For that matter I have told almost the same type of story about Walt Disney.  (CLICK HERE to see a list of some of the most successful names who have not received college degrees.)  College is not necessary for success, only for keeping the coffers of progressive politics alive—to fulfill the dream of people like Woodrow Wilson who wanted to engineer young people away from their parents and destroy the American family by rule over them as members of the college educated intellectual.  (Look at that list at the link carefully and you will see a pattern.  If you want your children to be successful you should follow the evidence of that list)

Frank Lloyd Wright detested intellectuals as they were classically portrayed, and wonderfully articulated in The Fountainhead.  Wright is an excellent example of why America was great, because it created a nation that could give wonderfully original minds like Disney and Wright a place to develop their thoughts without the rigid guidelines created by college academics always in the hip pocket of politics.  America did best when it conducted itself with old-fashioned horse sense.  Colleges have prided themselves on destroying that horse sense in a quest to crush individualism in favor of collectivism.  It is because of this trend that colleges study Frank Lloyd Wright, but cannot produce modern versions of him no matter how much money a student spends on their education.  A parent who wants to produce the next Frank Lloyd Wright in their child cannot do it with their life savings.  Colleges are happy to sell the snake oil that they can, but they can’t.  Only an original mind can perform such a task, and original minds are produced while children play and such thought processes are preserved into adulthood.  Currently originality is destroyed in public education leaving once great minds caricatures of themselves by the time they hit puberty.  Once a deranged mind hits college age, they have almost nothing else left in the tank to resist the reprogramming that modern intellectuals cast upon their unsuspecting minds.  In a couple short years of college, most minds are destroyed forever and those young people are destined to look back on their youths as the best days of their lives, as they begin a slow journey toward death in the 60 or more years that follow.

Public education sells itself on producing young minds for college, but this is an error.  Parents should not spend a lifetime of savings on college only to have their children programmed away from the values taught by the family for 14 to 18 years.  If a parent really loves their children, they will discourage their children from being destroyed in these palaces of corruption called American colleges, and encourage them to become the next Frank Lloyd Wrights, or Walt Disneys.  The blueprint on the how and why can be found in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.  The novel like the people it portrays is a window into when America was producing the best minds in the entire world and is a direct link into how we can restore to our nation a trend of supremacy that has always defined The United States.  But such a path will not be through college doors so let the rest of the world travel that path to their own destruction.  It is to America’s competitive advantage to turn away from the stuffy academic and put its faith in the mind of the innocent and encourage them to reach for the stars without limitations, without the rigid lines of social political rules—to become the next great thinkers who will usher in a new age of prosperity and innovation.

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

All rights reserved.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The Difference between Us and Them: Morning Joe Team shocked by NRA advertisement

‘One of the grossest things they have ever seen?’ This is what the Morning Joe Team on the Progressive channel MSNBC said in regard to a recent NRA advertisement. Obviously these people don’t remember how poorly George Bush’s children were treated when he was president. But they have conveniently forgotten all about that now. Watch and listen how shallow the minds and memory of these progressives are.

There is no dealing with people like this from the “lean forward” channel. Wasn’t that the campaign slogan for the last Lakota school levy, and Barry Obama’s latest run for President? Progressivism is for these mush minded types, not real Americans. They haven’t a clue as to what the Constitution is about, nor do they care to learn. They wish us all to “lean forward” straight into the same brick wall that all of Europe is hitting. They are the primary example of why America must never give up their guns, because it will be these types of people who will run everything.

They can’t even remember the Bush Presidency which was only 5 years ago.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The American Dream Labs: A new book by David Barton ‘The Jefferson Lies’

I received from a good friend and loyal reader here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom a great gift—one of the only things that I truly love in the world—a new book.  And this particular book is from one of my favorite authors and is about one of my favorite Founding Fathers.  The book is called The Jefferson Lies by David Barton and seeks to set the record straight about Thomas Jefferson as progressive secularists have attempted to destroy his good name in order to advance their diabolical causes.  The book was ironic because it represented a kind of book end to a string of announcements that had their source in one man—Glenn Beck who is proving to be one of America’s new Founding Fathers by creating the means to rediscover what made us so great in the first place.  If not for Glenn Beck the new book I received about Thomas Jefferson would not have been possible—because it is Beck who has given voice to scholars like David Barton who would have otherwise been whisked away into a corner of intelligentsia and subdued.  If not for the efforts of Glenn Beck’s media empires, fueled by the book publishing industry and a society starving for intelligent material, people like David Barton wouldn’t have a voice.

Much of the trouble in America today can be blamed on progressives.  The world of debt, of broken marriages, of childhood misery, of aborted babies, of a stupid grown-up electorate more interested in sports scores than who they will vote for in the next election, of kids walking around aimlessly with their pants down around their knees in public wondering why nobody wants to hire them for a job. Most every problem in our modern society is the fault of secular, tampering, small-minded, progressives like Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnston and a whole slew of other like-minded fools who have attempted to socially engineer mankind with their infantile foolishness driven by insecure minds not completely sane.  One of the reasons secular progressives have attempted to diminish the work of people like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington, and one of my all time favorites—Ben Franklin is because the modern man of progressive thought is but a boot heel philosophically to those classic Founding Fathers.  Presidents like Thomas Jefferson must be defamed so that presidents like Woodrow Wilson can look equal.  The progressive, who is in charge of every public school in America knows that the way to make themselves look good is bring everyone else down—which is why the world around us is filled with so many stupid people.  (I mean I was at the movies the other day and I think the collective intelligence of the people around me might have been able to power a pocket calculator.  They all looked like they voted for Obama.  One kid was walking with his girlfriend and literally couldn’t carry their popcorn into the movie theater because his pants were pulled down so far that he had to hold them with one hand because his other was holding his girlfriend’s.  The girlfriend had to carry the popcorn and pop.  The boy probably had a brain, and he might otherwise have been a promising young man of some merit, but I could take one look at him and tell that he was probably raised off government assistance, that he came from a fatherless household, that he probably ran with a group of wanna’ be thugs practicing gang behavior as kittens practice fighting with a ball of yarn—to prove their prowess.  The boy was a victim of secular progressivism and their social experiments that have gone worse than a Frankenstein mad scientist experiment.) 

As I held the new Barton book in my hand I thought of the spot that I had sat in over a decade ago when I took my family to Monticello—Jefferson’s very innovative home.   I sat where Jefferson did as he wrote his letters and looked out the same windows that he did the day that he died on July 4th, the same exact day as his one time political rival John Adams.  The two men wrote each other furiously during the closing days of their lives, and July 4th meant something special that nearly defied death.  Both men separated by miles of carriage driven roads through an endless wilderness pushed their minds to see one more July 4th in 1826.  In fact, they died within 5 hours of one another, no phone lines, no television, just remote wilderness and a mutual love and respect for knowledge and the founding of America.  Jefferson was a smart man overflowing with self-driven ambition.  He was the result of his many thousands of books.  What he put into his mind came out as a direct result to the quality he had invested.  He read books ranging from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations to Alexander O. Exqemelin’s The Buccaneers of America (One of my all time favorites first published in 1678—Oh what I would give to have an original copy of that book in my personal library!)  Like Jefferson my life would be meaningless without books.  They are the blood that pumps through my veins and that will always be the case.  I simply love to read them, and I love to be in their company whether it be a private library or a public one.  I love the presence of knowledge, thought, and enterprise.  I have often spoke of my disgust that the Library in Alexandria, Egypt was destroyed by the mob.  CLICK HERE TO REVIEW.  Progressives like all the parasites of the past know that the way to control the masses is to make them too ignorant to think for themselves—so that those same masses will always clamor for a leader—provided by the modern progressive politician.  The mentality is the same whether the period of time is the sacking of Rome, or the modern push for same-sex marriage as a priority over the national debt.  The secular progressive seeks destruction of thought to advance their sinister plots.

But the same man who made indirectly the new David Barton book about Jefferson possible had just spent a week explaining his new massive project—The American Dream Labs which is a fantasy right out of the pages of anything Thomas Jefferson or Ben Franklin could have ever hoped for in America.  Glenn Beck is restoring to our modern times a love of knowledge and innovation that founded the nation, and he is doing it beyond the reach of secular progressives.  Beck is achieving a kind of critical mass that George Soros and all his billions couldn’t stop, because in the “rock, paper, scissors” game of politics, intelligence always crushes stupidity and progressives like Soros have been crushed by a reawakening of the human spirit.  Glenn Beck simply refused to back down, and he is about to erupt with a creative energy driven by the same kind of restless force that drove Thomas Jefferson.  The results of this awakening unfortunately won’t be measured for a decade or two, but it will occur now that Beck has started the process.  The results of today are a direct result of progressive policies started in the 1990’s.  The conservative revival of Beck, Barton and those like them won’t be truly felt until around 2025 or 2030.  It takes a long time to emerge, but it starts in arts and entertainment–the rest of the culture will follow later.

Beck shares with me it appears a love of the theoretical city/amusement park Epcot Center.  Walt Disney, like Beck was committed in his day to the same kinds of thoughts and feelings that drove the Founding Fathers, which is why there are such strong themes referencing them in Disney World.  CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW.  Every city in America should take notes from Disney’s Epcot Center and form their infrastructure around those concepts.  But none do, instead they allow themselves to be shaped by corrupt politicians who try to scrape enough off the top to buy a new condo for themselves.  Modern cities are shaped by incomplete people.  So Glenn Beck is planning to build his own city called Independence, U.S.A. at a cost of about $2 billion dollars.  Click the link below to see all the video of Beck explaining the concept complete with drawings and further commentary.  Most important to me is that Beck is going to feature a library in the center of his city that will be available to teach politicians all over the country how they are supposed to govern based on wisdom, not diabolical greed.  I am extremely excited about Glenn Beck’s American Dream Labs.  He is attempting to do what Walt Disney never could, and Ayn Rand only thought about in the book Atlas Shrugged—he is building a Galt’s Gulch in plain sight—in the midst’s of secular progressive political control.

The American Dream Labs (CLICK TO SEE MUCH MORE)

Progressives who believe that everything is interconnected around the halls of intelligentsia obviously missed the boat.  They are right about the interconnected nature of things, and the need for wisdom, but they allowed their academic vision to be corrupted by the wrong philosophy—that of European collectivism, and they will fail 100% of the time as a result.  They outwardly proclaim to represent wisdom, and knowledge—but instead they represent foolishness, and apathy—so it is they who are behind the push to destroy the name of Thomas Jefferson.  And it is because of them that people like Glenn Beck must build a new city so that it can outshine all others as a gleaming example of how things should be done—not how they currently are.   Because of books like the one I received from my friend, The Jefferson Lies, Glenn Beck is moving his business operations into movies, television shows, more books, and more radio—in short, as I mentioned to Doc Thompson the other day—“Glenn Beck will be the new Ted Turner of modern media.”  Ted Turner represented the views of secular progressivism and the world has been shaped by his many billions of dollars.  Ted is indirectly responsible for that young man I mentioned at the movie theater who had to hold his pants up with his free hand walking like a penguin into a movie theater with his girlfriend.  The young man is the result of secular progressive thought advanced through Ted Turner’s cable television empires.  CLICK HERE FOR MORE.  Glenn Beck is now doing the opposite of all those past media tycoons.  Beck before he’s done will far out-grow his media model of Orson Wells, and I believe that he will out-produce Walt Disney—and that means an end to secular progressivism eventually in America—and I can’t wait.

The book I received as a gift on January 12, 2013 from one of my dear Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom readers represents this slight shift in embracing knowledge over political ideology that has helped feed the modern empire of secular progressivism.  The  book is a an early product of Glenn Beck’s American Dream Labs and I cherish the very pages contained within it like a lost treasure found after thousands of years of being buried in the sand.  All books have value, but some have more value than others, and anything by David Barton is a treasure trove of wealth and knowledge.  I am so thankful to have such a book in my hands.  Upon reading through it I am reminded of the rooms of Monticello which was an early version of Jefferson’s kind of American Dream Lab, and found it easy to understand why Jefferson answered his own White House door in his slippers and bed robe, and didn’t think enough of the presidency to even put the title on his tomb stone.  That is the kind of man who founded America, and that is the kind of man who I admire.  That is the kind of human being that Glenn Beck’s American Dream Labs will be committed to producing in The United States and that excites me greatly.  It is my hope that my grandson can go to the movies with his future wife and take note that all the young men there can carry the popcorn for their girl friends while holding her hand with the other.  The young men will be able to perform the task because they’ll have their pants pulled up around their waist and properly fastened where they belong, and not down around their knees like the messed up kids from the early 2010’s who had been virtually destroyed mentally by secular progressivism and left to root in the abyss of cataclysm.

Rich Hoffman

“If they attack first………..blast em!”

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

‘Les Misérables’ and ‘Star Wars’: A trip to the book store to buy ‘Scoundrels’

Before I get into a lengthy diatribe of translating the good experience of taking my grandson to his first book store as a 4 month old lad, I must comment on the video below featuring a middle-aged couple being hounded by their grown children after seeing the new movie release of Les Misérables featuring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crow and Anne Hathaway in a fantastic rendition of the popular play and book.  The couple is noticeably emotional as they left the theater and were in the car on the way home.  The sons of the couple thought the sight of their parents emotional state worth capturing for the YouTube archives.  Les Misérables (usually pron.: /leɪ ˌmɪzəˈrɑːb/; French pronunciation: ​[le mizeʁabl(ə)]) is a French historical novel by Victor Hugo, first published in 1862, that is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century. In the English-speaking world the novel is usually referred to by its original French title, which can be translated from the French as The Miserable, The Wretched, The Miserable Ones, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims. Beginning in 1815 and culminating in the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris, the novel follows the lives and interactions of several characters, focusing on the struggles of ex-convict Jean Valjean and his experience of redemption.[1]

 

I don’t have the same experience with Les Misérables as the couple above.  For me, the French Revolution was a failure, and the aftermath led them to become a country continuously conquered by the Germans thereafter.  But, in American society, much of the love of Paris, Mardi Gras festivals, and even the roots for socialism among the so-called educated and cultured East Coast residents can be traced back to the popular play and their love of it.  For me, the characters in Les Misérables do not have enough Übermensch in them, which is all that I find worthy in works of art these days.  But I was thinking of that poor couple as my wife and I took our grandson to our weekly outing to the bookstore to stock up on more books for the week.  Before our shopping spree however we went to Chili’s as I watched the preview show for the BCS Title game between Notre Dame and Alabama on ESPN.  As I looked around the bar, everyone’s eyes were fixated on the same information being broadcast from the flat screen televisions all around the restaurant.  As we ate, I discussed all these elements with my wife and grandson, we spoke about the BCS game, Brian Kelly in leaving the University of Cincinnati to bring Notre Dame to dominance in just two years, the consistency of the Alabama program,  and why the poor couple coming home from the Les Misérables movie were so sad.  I explained to my grandson that many adults have turned off their minds.  Football, even though I enjoy the drama of the game is an accepted entertainment that occupies the neural development of the brain’s core processes and serves as a great distraction from the helpless, out-of-control nature many people feel in their lives.  Many adults have turned their minds off to many forms of mythology unless the orthodox society has determined that something has great sophisticated merit over other forms.  In other words, most adults wish to believe that they have arrived in their advanced age at a place of mental superiority over children like my grandson.

My grandson looked at me gurgling milk bubbles from his mouth as I spoke for nearly a half hour without pause.  I’m not sure how much he understood, but he looked at me and didn’t interrupt as my wife fed him his bottle.   I was feeling relaxed as we are on the third week of our unconventional vacation in the Star Wars galaxy of The Old Republic video game, and my wife and I have been having a blast.  Unlike Les Misérables or sports of any kind, the philosophy of Star Wars deals often with topics of the  Übermensch so more and more I turn to it for the level of thinking I enjoy indulging in, and two solid weeks of gaming on the new MMO The Old Republic with my wife and kids solving various political problems as Jedi Knights on the worlds of Nar Shaddaa, Coruscant and the shattered world of the once thriving Taris, I am at the closest place to complete bliss that I think is possible, and I suddenly felt very sorry for my adult contemporaries who only had the BCS Title game to look forward to, or a screening of Les Misérables.  To me, those are passive—or dead mythologies.  But Star Wars has always been a vast and creative mythology.  The concepts set in the mind a motion that unifies complex ideas under the powerful process of mythology and in human history, there is nothing like Star Wars, and sadly parents like the couple crying over Les Misérables deny themselves the same experience with Star Wars because they mistakenly believe that Star Wars is for kids alone.  It’s not.  For the adults who can share those mythologies with their children—and in our case—grandchildren, Star Wars is the building blocks to the next great philosophic movement.

The start of this new philosophic/religious awaking is just beginning.  Star Wars the Clone Wars just had their 100th episode aired on the Cartoon Network during the second Saturday of January 2013 and Kathy Kennedy is moving the production of the new movie trilogy into the casting stage.  The servers are thumping for the MMO game that my wife and I were eager to get back to after our dinner and trip to the book store—so BioWare has been successful in bringing new interest to the game which I think is very valuable.  But the reason for our outing was not to buy a new video game, see a movie, or even to eat out with our grandson.  The purpose of our journey to the book store was to buy the new Star Wars book called Scoundrels which just came out on January 1st and is a book that my wife has salivated over for nearly 6 months.  So after dinner we headed over to our favorite bookstore and suffered through the numerous people who wished to stop our progress and gaze at our grandson who was wide awake and smiling.  I was happy to show him such a place of freedom—a book store.  For me personally, there is no place better on Earth.  I love the smell of them.  I like the people in them.   And I treasure the vast vaults of knowledge contained in them.  So long as there is a free press, tyranny of any kind can never take full hold in any culture.  Bookstores are the backbone to freedom and this was my grandson’s first experience in one–his first of millions—I will make sure of it.

For me, when I was only 9 or 10 years older than my grandson is now, I would spend all of my time away from home in two places, the arcade and the book store.  When I ran out of money in the video arcade, I would then go to the book store and read through the titles for hours and hours never getting bored.  In fact, I read the Egyptian Book of the Dead complete with hieroglyphic translations during these visits before I was able to purchase my own copy many years later once I started working at age 13.  Back then, Star Wars as a mythology only centered on the original trilogies and had three novels out, the novelization of A New Hope (the first Star Wars film) a novel called A Splinter in the Mind’s Eye, and a book called Han Solo At Star’s End.  Now, there are hundreds of novels, and they take up an entire section of the book store.  In fact, there is no other section in any book store that is larger than most of the sections dedicated to Star Wars books.  And I am proud to say that my wife and I possess every single Star Wars novel or junior book ever written and have them in our personal library.  She has read them all, I have read about 2/3rds of them.

The book we came to get, Scoundrels was sold out in just two days.  The book features Han Solo in a Timothy Zhan story taking place immediately after A New Hope.   My wife really wanted to read this one, because it takes Solo back to the time of his late 30’s.  In the books that will lead up to the new films being produced by Lucasfilm and Disney where Harrison Ford will reprise his role and introduce Han Solo’s glorious daughter Jaina to the silver screen, Solo is well into his 70’s—so he’s been around a long time. (No Lucasfilm has not confirmed that Jaina will be in the new film.  I just know it to be the case—my own deductive reasoning.)  Well, apparently we weren’t the only ones wanting to buy Scoundrels.  The book store employee who was very excited to talk about the Star Wars books he’s been reading with us, called around town to find a store that had the new book.  While we waited, a young man was in the Star Wars section buying up four paperbacks while his girlfriend waited patiently.  I was impressed to see his ambition as he declared to me that he “loved Star Wars.”  I saw on his face a more mature and controlled emotion than the one shown by the distraught  Les Misérables viewers.  With that being said, I noticed that the book store had more Star Wars books than usual and it was explained to me that a combination of the BioWare game The Old Republic, The Cartoon Network television show The Clone Wars, and the announcement of a new Star Wars trilogy coming to theaters in 2015 along with a very aggressive publishing effort pumping out books like Scoundrels every couple of months–nothing is selling hotter than Star Wars these days.

I enjoyed the passion of the young man in the Star Wars section and the book store worker.  I saw on their faces an enthusiasm that was much different from the patrons at the Chili’s bar watching the BCS pregame statistics.  That football game will come and go and be forgotten within months.  Star Wars will be remembered and built upon by the fans who read the books in a mythology that takes place over 37,000 years of interconnected story that spans thousands of characters arcs.  Nothing against   Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables but as a literary endeavor alone, Star Wars is the greatest single work of literature ever created—and it’s not just for kids.  Adults could learn a lot.

We traveled across town and picked up the book that was being held at the counter for us.  Barnes and Noble at The Streets of West Chester had a copy left and my wife erupted into delight when she put her hands on the meaty hard cover book.  “It will be so nice to read a story where Han and Chewie are together again”  There was a love on her face that was much more sophisticated and honest than the poor people who were broken up over the ending of Les Misérables.  There is a truth in Star Wars that is eluding the rest of our 21st century society and only Lucasfilm has really managed to put their finger on it fully.   I have been visiting book stores for  nearly 35 years and this was the first time it really hit me that a wave of new philosophy is about to impact the human race with a freshness that modern mankind has never experienced.  And it happened during my grandson’s first visit to a book store to get a Star Wars novel.

If there is one thing that I have learned on my 3 week vacation in the Star Wars galaxy it is that there is a New Hope manifesting in reality.  It is percolating subtly through art, politics, and philosophy through the work of children’s stories that contain within them the answers we are all seeking.  If Les Misérables is about the harsh conditions and sympathies toward revolution and oppression, Star Wars is about the hope of crushing that oppression with a balanced life of kindness defended with passion and aggression—a very different message than the one provided by the great Victor Hugo novel which Ayn Rand loved so much.

http://exaltedmoments.blogspot.com/2009/06/ayn-rand-on-victor-hugo.html

But Star Wars is the next artistic step in mankind’s long quest for truth, justice, religious purpose, and the endless desire to discover what’s over the next horizon.  At least, that’s what I told my grandson, and judging by is facial expressions—he was listening intently, even if he has not yet constructed the ability to express himself with anything more than a smile.

If  you’d like, visit me while I take a personal vacation, not in some faraway place, but on Star Wars: The Old Republic.  CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE.

Rich Hoffman

www.tailofthedragonbook.com

The Hidden History of Social Security: A job for only the Tea Party to fix

 

When critics of the Tea Party point and say that they (the Tea Party) “resist everything, and are stuck in the past,” the context for what Tea Party members are weary of is never explored.  The issue of why they are against most new laws, every act of the political do-gooder, and insist on a return to American founding principles gets lost in the debate because more often than not the critics have no sense of history and are limited in knowledge to the shallow depths of knowledge in their own lifetimes. The more issues of governance is explored, the more evident it becomes that without a group of patriots who function not out of a love for political power, a thinly disguised grab for power, networking connections, or just a desire to be socially destructive, that politics in a democratic republic deteriorate quickly without such a presence.  There needs to a group in America that can use wisdom and a firm adherence to The American Constitution to keep politics as honest as possible.   Without such wisdom, without the prying eyes of a neutral party, all the well intended programs that government invents today become tomorrow’s tyranny, and now that there is a clear history in America, it is now clear that all laws created by government end up becoming monsters of self fulfilled destruction shortly after passage.

 

For proof of how slowly, and how destructive an idea created by government can become a social monstrosity, look no further than the Social Security system and witness the gradual erosion of that socialist oriented program which should have never of happened.  These things do not become terrors in one lifetime, but over two or three lifetimes, so many of the laws created within the last 20 years in government cannot yet be measured.  In that context, read the below history of Social Security, and take note of why the Tea Party is a needed–why political skepticism should be valued so that American politics can avoid a peril similar to the fall of the Roman Empire, the decline of English Imperialism, or the decline of Greek society.  The decline of American society will occur without addressing the erosion of moral order currently embracing The United States or a return to Constitutional principles.  And to date, it is the Tea Party that is committed to returning America to the formula that made the greatest nation on the face of the Earth over all of human history. Such a formula is valuable, and needs careful adherence.  So study carefully the below history of Social Security to see how quickly it became one of the most corrosive socialist programs the world has yet seen. 

Social Security Cards up until the 1980s expressly stated the number and card were not to be used for identification purposes. Since nearly everyone in the United States now has a number, it became convenient to use it anyway and the message, NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION, was removed.

Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program. He promised: 1.) That participation in the Program would be Completely voluntary, No longer Voluntary.

2.) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual Incomes into the Program, Now 7.65% on the first $90,000.

3.) That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year,  No longer tax deductible.

4.) That the money the participants put into the independent ‘Trust Fund’ rather than into the general operating fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other Government program, and, Under Johnson the money was moved to The General Fund and Spent.

5.) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income. Under Clinton & Gore Up to 85% of your Social Security can be Taxed Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month — and then finding that we are getting taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the Federal government to ‘put away’ — you may be interested in the following:

Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the independent ‘Trust Fund’ and put it into the general fund so that Congress could spend it?

A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the democratically controlled House and Senate.  

Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for Social Security (FICA) withholding?

A: The Democratic Party.   

Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities?

A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the ‘tie-breaking’ deciding vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the  US  

Q: Which Political Party decided to start giving annuity payments to immigrants?

A: Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party.    Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive Social Security payments! The Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they never paid a dime into it.

The same kind of distortion will happen with Obama Care, it has already happened with Medicare, and is present in every program that has the government’s name tag on it.  Now that the government created Social Security—which was an obvious—and costly mistake, they have tried to correct the error with more rules, which has only dug the hole deeper.  The only way to fix the problem of Social Security would be to reset the political system before the failure occurred, and this is what the Tea Party is starting to advocate in response to the many errors that are beginning to show up as these socialist programs are beginning to fail.  The position may be unpopular, but it is the desire to come up with a populist solution that created Social Security in the first place and has made it a mandatory program that is used for personal identification tracking and an extraordinary pay check contributions at 7.65%.  At the rate of decline that Social Security has deteriorated in just 70 years, it is obvious that 70 more years will lead to a total collapse of that particular program.  After all, the American demographic is changing.  People are living longer, the young people are not getting married at age 19 and staying married for 50 years like they did when Social Security was created—so socially the adult population of tomorrow will be much more unstable, and not able to sustain Social Security without it encompassing even more than the current contribution rate.  So there are copious amounts of evidence that Social Security will change much more radically in the coming years than it has in the past—which is quite a bit—because of the decline in social quality of the participants. 

 

Social Security is just one example of a program that started with good intentions, as it was a direct response to the Red Decade of the 1930’s push for communism, but quickly degenerated into a corrosive social element that most of American society is addicted to.  Stating that such a program should be abolished or radically reformed at a minimum is the task of scholarly groups like the Tea Party who are committed to education above radical protest and social unrest to move society in the proper direction.  But it will make factions of society very upset because many of them have signed their name behind the support of more programs like Social Security and if such a thing were ever abolished, it would mean that their lives have little meaning—because that is at the heart behind most new laws, small-minded men and women looking for a way to leave behind a legacy—a way for future generations to think fondly of their time on planet Earth.  That is not a good reason to protect a program that is functionally against everything that being an American is supposed to represent—self reliance.  Going against that current will be unpopular, but often the truth usually is.  But that doesn’t make the action invalid.  Instead—it’s quite the opposite. 

Rich Hoffman

www.tailofthedragonbook.com