Tag: corruption

‘Batman Versus Superman: The Dawn of Justice’ from the lens of Ayn Rand

Essentially the argument in question revolving around the new Batman Versus Superman: The Dawn of Justice movie is a philosophic argument between Plato/Aristotle and Nietzsche/Ayn Rand. Batman represents the old human concept of law and order whereas Superman represents the overman.   It is a compelling argument and one that I didn’t entirely expect to be conveyed so openly in a comic book movie—but here it is.

Of course it should be expected where my sentiments fall. And I’m sure Ayn Rand would be aghast that I compared her to Frederick Nietzsche. She would break things down by stating that she is more like Aristotle whereas Nietzsche is aligned more properly with the sentimental mysticism of Plato—but for this line of thought I’m breaking down philosophic development into the boundaries of western civilization itself. The minds of man have brought us into the modern age on the philosophy established in Greece. Ayn Rand and the concept of the overman is the future—it is the graduation of mankind from the boundaries of intellectual confinement driven by thousands of years of madness.

I have stated my love for both film franchises, of course the Batman films of Christopher Nolan and the Man of Steel film by the same producer. Both Christopher Nolan renditions of the comic legends have heavy doses of Ayn Rand in them—collectivism versus the individual. Yet Hollywood is directly opposed to Ayn Rand currently favoring heavily the Kantian philosophy of collectivism, altruism, and human depravity. The director of the Man of Steel films and the upcoming Dawn of Justice is Zach Snyder who obviously like Christopher Nolan, prefers Ayn Rand and even though Hollywood may not like it—the hot handed director is at the helm and is poised to deliver a powerful money-making franchise to Warner Bros that will compete directly with the wonderful Marvel Avengers films from Disney.

I’m actually going deeper into this line of thought with my Cliffhanger project, but for the masses right now at the start of the 21st century this Batman versus Superman battle needs to happen, and the trailer captured the essence of it very well. All through human history mankind has fallen in love with power and it has corrupted their minds. An overman on the other hand has no such love for power, because they understand the nature of it. Power is not given to other people through democratic measures. Just because one person can command hundreds, perhaps thousands from the lofty perches of a social title of some kind—there is no real power there—just an acknowledgment of collective will. Real power comes from an individual and will remain no matter what circumstances emerge.

In many ways in a modern since the director Ridley Scott surprisingly grasped this concept in his 2000 release of Gladiator, which won best picture that year along with a best actor award for Russel Crowe. Scott isn’t typically an Ayn Rand fan, but he did grasp the power of the individual in that film where Maximus—the protagonist had been the favored general of Marcus Aurelius due to his skill on the battlefield, but once the Emperor died, his son Commodus, deeply jealous of Maximus sought to put the general to death and kill his family. Maximus escaped, but not in time to save his family. The great man lost everything and is captured and toured around as a gladiator—one step always from death. Yet Maximus is so skilled at fighting that he quickly rose back to the top and eventually challenged again the Emperor of Rome as a masterful tactician. It is clearly one of the best films of its kind and is oozing with Ayn Rand strength centering on the individual over the collective. There is a truth in that particular film that Ridley Scott unintentionally released. I have put that truth to test many times and have discovered that it’s immensely accurate. You can take a great man and cast him onto a remote island in the middle of nowhere and he or she—will succeed in spite of the collective efforts to hold them down. Great people are not driven by collective salvation or sacrifice—they are creators of their own fates and can make success out of any situation—because success is an act of creation—not something granted by luck or the “gods.” A great person will always rise back to the top by default and there is a science to it that is predictable.

Zach Snyder seems compelled by this same resiliency and all the characters in his films embody some aspect of this. So it’s no accident that Christopher Nolan put Snyder in charge of the Superman franchise. There really is no better director today who knows how to handle the Man of Steel mythology. Superman is a superior being from another planet who simply wanted to help mankind become greater. He has absolute power, and came from a planet that collapsed under that power—not by his hand, but those of his people. Superman’s job is to ensure that the same thing doesn’t happen to earth. Batman on the other hand is a broken man who lost his parents at a young age and has spent his life righting wrongs essentially out of a vigilante need to rectify justice. But that justice is very terrestrial as it has been formulated around human perception. Batman is a second generation man of wealth meaning he inherited much of what his father made for him, but he is competent enough to sustain that wealth and apply it to fighting crime. Batman is always one step away from falling off the cliff whereas there is never any real danger that Superman would or could fall. Because no matter what happens Superman will always rise back to the top just like Maximus did from the Gladiator. So Snyder in the second film of his Man of Steel series is pitting these two heroes of entirely different philosophies against each other which is essentially the debate of our day.

The essential suspicion is that no man can resist the temptation toward corruption if given the opportunity. So Superman is a threat to the world even though all his efforts have been in trying to save it. But Superman is not a man of this world; he is essentially an alien functioning from an inner self-assurance that is a graduation of mankind’s limits. Yes, he has absolute power, but he also is immune to the desire to abuse it for the sake of social adornment. An overman knows where their power comes from so the appeasement of the masses does nothing for them. The only measure they have is themselves for success. Whereas the traditional western perspective is that if the masses support the power and authority of an individual that power is thus provided to control those people. This ultimately leads to a collapse of the individual ego upon itself because power is not generated from within, but from without.

It was the Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw who termed the name “overman” or otherwise “superman” in his 1902 play Man and the Superman which would later inspire the comic. In the play established in Act 1 is the concept that the more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is. This of course leads to a disastrous life making men miserable for most of their existence. As Shaw states in his play, “A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.” This is the world of Batman—he’s never really happy and feels he is a Dark Night that stands in the shade between right and wrong. However Shaw was a socialist who did not believe in the abilities of mankind to overcome such faults so he regulated his sentiments toward collectivism being lead by the elite in charge—which of course took Nietzsche’s work and perverted it into the Nazi regime. A couple of high school kids from Cleveland, Ohio inspired by many science fiction writers from the early 20s—inspired by Shaw’s play—invented the comic Superman to fight for the rights of left-leaning causes during the Red Decade coming out in 1933. The big difference between Nietzsche’s overman and Siegel and Shuster’s “superman” was that one transcended the limitations of society, religion, and conventional morality while still being fundamentally human. The other was alien and gifted with incredible powers choosing honorable human moral codes, holding himself to a higher standard of adherence to them, purposely. Over time Superman has evolved ending up in the middle of those two viewpoints under Zach Snyder’s care. And that is a good and healthy thing.

So Batman versus Superman is more than another popcorn movie about superheroes. It’s a philosophy for our age that needs articulation. A lot of history has passed since Shaw wrote his play but what has come out in the end is a fully fleshed out philosophy that works. That philosophy is what the theme of this upcoming movie is between two of the most well-known and loved superheroes of our modern mythology. Under Zach Snyder’s care I think he’s going to produce something revolutionary and I’m very excited about it. But in that battle I know already who will win. The overman always comes out on top—because it’s in their nature to always do so.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Mason High School’s Covered Girl Challenge: Public education purposely turning children against you

As public education advocates were marching on Columbus to protest Governor Kasich’s budget cuts to affluent school districts, the Mason school system showed what the government schools are really about. For those who think that my criticisms of public schools are exaggerated check out the activity that was being organized at Mason. Keep in mind that Christianity is heavily ridiculed in government schools yet in Mason, Ohio—one of the wealthiest regions in the country students are being encouraged to wear a Muslim hijab to school as a gateway to Islam. What is interesting in this is that radical ISIS beheadings are the news topic of our day and thousands of years of archaeology is being destroyed in the Middle East by radical Muslim terrorists—yet here is a publicly funded institution encouraging the spread of Islam. Here is the memo that went out to students and their parents announcing the upcoming event.

Mason High School is blessed to have a unique and diverse student body. In order celebrate this diversity and promote open-mindedness, the Muslim Student Association is inviting all female students to participate in “A Covered Girl Challenge” which will allow students to wear a headscarf for the whole school day. Afterwards, there will be a discussion (open for all students, male & female) held in Z223 to share experiences and reflections.

In order to participate, students and/or parents should attend the informational meeting offered and turn in the attached permission slip to Student Activities or Mrs. Jenkin’s room in Z223.

On the morning of April 23rd, there will be booths set up in A2, C1, and Z1 to help participators adjust their scarves and answer any questions.

To learn more about what the Covered Girl Challenge is all about and what a headscarf is watch this video: https://youtu.be/_WosD_GTz_E

Please note the important dates below: Informational meeting: April 20th after school in Z223 Covered Girl Challenge Thursday April 23rd during school day

Covered Girl Challenge Discussion after school on Thursday April 23rd in Z223 Flyer and permission slip are at the link below:

http://www.edline.net/pages/Mason_High_School/2684432697290919314/Student_Activities/FORMS/EMA

If anyone has any questions please email masonhsmsa@gmail.com

 

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/04/ohio-public-high-school-hosting-a-covered-girl-challenge-asking-students-to-wear-hijab-for-a-day

Now, what conclusion would any rational person make by that event? It’s not like Mason is some backwater school in the middle of nowhere—its right in the heart of America.

Here’s the deal, public schools are all about using confiscated wealth and breeding into the minds of youth nice little socialist followers who will support an aggressive agenda once they are of voting age. They are unhealthy places that no parent who truly loves their child should send an innocent mind. Public schools are bad places that intend bad things for newly formed minds. What other conclusion is there about the Covered Girl Challenge at Mason High School? Think about that and let me know…………………………………………………………

Why are we paying for these palaces of doom to destroy our children?

Send this to a friend and ask them the same question………………….why?

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Black-clad Lakota Teachers Against Merit: A system only designed by Lucifer himself

 

It would be a comedy if it wasn’t reality, but sadly it is. The Lakota teacher union is at it again—thinking incorrectly that everyone in opposition to their radical community expectations have gone back to sleep. Foolishly they exposed their true agenda with the same old tired tactics that belong in a lampoon film. They are a satire of themselves. At a recent school board meeting they protested the school board over the issue of merit pay, which I immensely support. The mere mention of merit pay gives me hope that the Lakota school board may actually do something correctly in relation to management of their employees. Merit pay means that good employees get paid better than bad ones—it’s pretty much that simple. For example, a teacher my kids had at Lakota East, Mr. Duff I would have considered an exceptionally great teacher. I wouldn’t care if the school paid him $200,000 per year, because he was worth it. However, the many teachers from Lakota reported by this site that were caught in various scandals and poor choice behavior recently clearly aren’t worth so much money. They may have value in some education capacity, but certainly are not equal to Mr. Duff. The Lakota teachers are a progressive organization under their LEA union leadership and they believe in strict collective bargaining or nothing—meaning all boats rise to the top regardless of the quality of their employees. Because of their insistence on this collectivize bargaining/no merit pay formula the budget tax payers are forced to fund is outrageously high. Lakota like every organization should be functioning under the 10-80-10 rule, which generally cites that roughly 10% of a work force are exceptionally good—like Mr. Duff and should be compensated accordingly. 80% are average and should make wages in accordance with their meagerness. Then the bottom 10% are the child molesters, the sexting addicts, and general bottom feeders who should be on the chopping block of termination upon their first mistake. The union helps those bottom feeders while penalizing the top by minimizing their worth as equal to the lowest 10%. Here is how my old buddy Michael Clark reported the issue in the Cincinnati Enquirer. The complete article is at the end of the segment. Read it while you can—because the Enquirer starving for revenue takes these articles down not long after they are published. Typically articles like this one are forgotten in a few weeks, and during the next levy attempt, we’ll want to remember it.

LIBERTY TWP. – In the middle of key Lakota Schools’ contract talks, dozens of teachers made a symbolic but silent appearance Monday night in the union’s first public demonstration since negotiations began.

About four dozen teachers – many of them clad in black – joined a full audience at Lakota’s school board meeting as labor talks continue this week for Southwest Ohio’s second largest school system.

Some of the teachers say they are concerned about the possibility of merit pay being contractually installed for the first time in Lakota’s 59-year history.

“I’d like to see more positive changes for teachers here in the future, but I don’t think merit pay is the way to go,” said Brandon Bright, a science teacher at Lakota East High School.

Sharon Mays, president of the 923-member Lakota Education Association (LEA), declined to comment about union members’ appearance at the board meeting or on the status of the contract talks, which began last month.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2015/04/13/talks-continue-lakota-teachers-demonstrate/25743561/

I read the comments at that link from some of the teachers and they were even funnier than those idiots standing outside of the administration building dressed in black for emphasis fighting merit pay. They have an opinion of themselves that is much higher than their real value. They are spoiled brat public employees who work, think, and have expectations on par with the most grotesquely out-of-touch IRS employee. They have no sense of service, but somehow believe that the community works for them instead of the other way around. No wonder so many children raised in public education environments over the last two or three decades enter life feeling entitled to everything—because they learned the behavior from these idiots!

Public teachers like those at Lakota own the problems of our modern age–the sex driven antics of youth, the low morality, the poor ethics, and the terrible work habits. Union employed teachers have successfully offered free baby sitting to lazy self-absorbed parents making the public school the primary driver of youthful upbringing and it has been a disaster. Public schools do not get a free pass when everything goes wrong—they don’t get to point at the parents and call them names to justify the poor home lives of children. The public schools offered themselves as a substitute and they failed—at best.

But why did they fail–the public schools like Lakota? Well it’s because the teachers have collective bargaining agreements and step increase schedules that give them money no matter how good of a teacher they are. So bad teachers are kept around and considered equal to the top ten percent, and the really good have no incentive to continue being great, because they get paid the same as the slugs working next to them. The public school system is the epitome of Karl Marx communism. It’s just not called that by name, but the assumption that all employees are equal is taken straight out of the text of The Communist Manefestro. Public education is a joke. Exceptional employees are looted of their value in favor of the weakest and most demonstrative. Values in such a system are re-distributed to those without it, just like wealth in the community which funds the whole mess. The public education system might as well have been designed by Lucifer.

Lakota to their credit as an administrative measure have thankfully listened to the complaints over the years—and are considering merit pay—which would go a long way to solving a great many of the problems at that district. But it’s a drop in the bucket and the unions instantly jumped all over the issue with protest. All they really managed to do was to show just how grossly out-of-touch they really are by protesting in this day and age—after all that’s happened at Lakota—in such a dramatic fashion. Really? They know I’m not going to let it die and will bring it up from now until infinity—yet they did it anyway.

I suppose they figure they have the votes for a new levy, and they think nobody reads Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom just because they don’t and don’t hear me on WLW radio any more. But they’d be wrong. The stat numbers on my site for the topic of politics is quite high, and daily provides information to those not quite up to date on things. Most people miss Enquirer articles like the one above the first time around and only care during elections. Since the Enquirer charges for their information people turn to sites like this one. Because of Overmanwarror’s Wisdom, during the next election when people Google “Lakota teacher salary” or “Lakota election” articles like this one will come up. Then they may know about the Enquirer article, they’ll have access to the quote I provided, but they’ll click on the link and discover that the link no longer works. So they’ll read my site instead of the Enquirer and form their opinion based on the data given.

It used to be that teachers union scum bags and merit pay protestors only had to bend the ear of reporters like Michael Clark from the Enquirer or the Pulse. But media has changed over the last five years. If it’s not on Twitter, nobody will see it. People don’t read traditional news any more, and they care even less about some story about black clad Lakota teachers written by a reporter eating out of the hand of Sharon Mays. But come election time, they’ll find me, and will ignore the flowery newspaper articles that always come out prior to an election—just so that papers can sell advertising back to the school through direct and indirect sales. When they do read this article in the upcoming years voters will remember what a bunch of idiots the Lakota teachers were over merit pay. Once they do, they’ll become an informed voter and will cast their ballots as such.

Meanwhile, the Lakota teachers participating in that protest are satirical limericks of personal destruction—they are caricatures of sanity pasted against the theater of time apparently solely for our amusement. Because no truly sane person would argue against merit, unless they are a thief wanting to steal while nobody is looking. But guess what? Everyone is looking—and they are wide awake.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Why Individualism is not Selfish: Refuting critics of Ayn Rand with the work of Joseph Campbell

Watching the below segment of The Daily Show featuring a question intended to be sarcastic regarding Ayn Rand it came to my mind that its time to make a legitimate argument against the general sentiment of today’s average political centralist, and Democrat. The segment attacked Ayn Rand’s philosophy in favor of self-interest over altruism by placing candidates running for president currently in alignment with the work of the controversial writer as a way to indirectly associate them as representatives of meanness. Politics in 2015 have been moved so far to the political left after over 100 years in argument in favor of altruism and collectivism, that today’s centralist would have been considered a radical left-winger in yesterday’s world—the world where America produced the Greatest Generation. So it is clearly time to re-evaluate the situation as Ayn Rand’s work was created on the heels of the greatest generation as the radical communists and extreme leftists were making themselves known—which today is the new standard. People are so confused as to what the proper behavior is for their society, that they no longer know what is up, down, left or right. They only react to the feelings and temperament of contemporary society shaped by years of chaos and wrecked philosophy.

The biggest attack against Ayn Rand is her philosophy which features a priority on self-interest. For generations of people raised within strict religious leanings featuring altruism as a sign of goodness, and a political system built on wealth-redistribution backing their inner mentality shaped by those same religious motivations the question has failed to be asked or answered as to whether or not we should help the poor and destitute. The comment was simply made that we should because it’s good—but good was never properly defined—so a valueless assumption was required to accept the proclamation which then constitutes the typical Democratic voting behavior. There should have been a sought after proven answer framing the cause of what makes people poor to begin with. But there wasn’t, only a kind of primitive belief similar to the tribes of yesteryear who believed that a rain dance would bring rain to their dried up crops. What factors make an individual poor? That is a question that deserves an answer such as why won’t my car start? Well, for the car, it might be a low battery, a bad starter, the car may be out of gas—those types of things. But in essence it makes logical sense—there is a cause and an effect. However, for the poor person, there is no attempt to designate a cause because the assumption is based on faith that some mythical gods have granted advantages to some while denying opportunity to others. While this was true in Medieval Europe, America was an invention to out-grow those limitations driven by philosophy which challenged the previous vantage point of victim hood.

The rest of the world largely driven by philosophies of collectivism, as they had been for millennia the last several thousand years worshipping kings and gods putting the sanctity of their nationality before their individual rights have set the stage for our current dilemmas in politics. America formed with an emphasis on individuality and rights as opposed to sacrifice. The economical means of this nation was capitalism—driven by individual need and desire. In America money was created not dispatched to the population through a top down hierarchy from kings and a ruling class. The rest of planet earth functioned from classic collectivism whereas America was experimenting with a practice specific to individual value using money as a measurement of productive enterprise. In Europe, Russia, Africa and the rest of Asia the general philosophy of those regions is that things happen to you due to an ancient belief that some god was in charge and that people were just along for the ride through life. In America, even though it was formed by religious men, they sought to run their nation by rational decisions conducted by men for the higher moral purpose of goodness—and that goodness eventually benefited God. The economical means to measure that goodness was money—because it was the only way to guarantee that good products purchased by individual self-interest would bring to the surface the best and brightest of our society. Capitalism couldn’t prevent people from wanting to cheat and take short cuts to wealth, but generally, a free society is able to reject the services of an organization they deem unworthy—and could vote with their dollars.

Trickle down economics such as what works best in America takes into account that not all people work hard, or are creative, but those who do and are—create opportunities for everyone. Those who take the most risk and have the most skin in the game generally make the most money as opposed to those most highly connected to the political structure of a ruling class. Over time, Washington D.C. has elected themselves the type of power that the ruling classes of Europe still enjoy—and have always benefited from. But those politicians do not represent the essence of America—or the philosophy which emerged from the rapid benefits which exploded from capitalism’s American experiment. That is the reason for the current issues of political corruption and the cries of the people for European style socialism, and communism. Under this corruption, communism has been as attractive to young people as it has been in Europe where peasants have no other means of stepping out of poverty and living equally to the richest of their nation. America has been and continues to be a place where anybody who works hard can brush shoulders with the very rich and powerful. In America classes are not divided as they are in Europe as upper, middle, and lower—they are divided by those who work hard and those who don’t—at least traditionally. Slowly over time as the nation has moved so far to the radical left, more European influence has won the day as opposed to the righteousness of the American experiment.

After witnessing all these elements several writers emerged to chronicle the pros and cons of what had occurred during the first two hundred years of American experience. One of course was Ayn Rand who has run up against the classic opposition such as what was seen in the Daily Show episode—where her announcement that self-interest is what actually leads to morality was considered preposterous viewed through the lens of the classic European progressive model. But another writer whom I think is much more important than Ayn Rand did at the same time much broader work which arrived at essentially the same conclusions by comparing all the mythologies and religions of the world and came up with the now popular term, “Follow your bliss.”

As Ayn Rand was writing The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, Joseph Campbell was writing The Hero with a Thousand Faces. These books were uniquely American and have turned the literary world upside down challenging thousands and thousands of years of human thought. Campbell unlike Rand is much more inclusive in his comparative studies. He has a reverence for many progressive leaders uttering insight from the early 20th century, like Nietzsche, Jung, Joyce, Mann, Steinbeck and many others whom he read incessantly then compared them to his vast encyclopedia of knowledge of the world’s religions. His conclusions were that every individual on the face of planet earth needed to “follow their bliss” meaning their own internal call to living. They had to listen with an individual’s ear to the calls of their own life’s adventures. This was really revolutionary work done by Campbell as he was conducting it during the Red Decade in the presence of extreme left-winged radicals and open communists. Yet he took a path to scholarship that was unique to him and let the facts come in as he analyzed them—and his report was what is likely the most important book of the previous century and so far of the 21st. The Hero with a Thousand Faces explains why Atlas Shrugged is so powerful to so many people.

The Hero of a Thousand Faces would not have been written by a lettered academic at Oxford or any other major institution. Joseph Campbell led a life of unique individuality and his scholarship is a direct product of a very unusual life remarkably free of social strings conducting his thoughts and conclusions. His life’s work essentially became the Star Wars saga which is currently unleashing upon the world brand new updated religions and philosophies. George Lucas himself will declare that he could not have made Star Wars without the influence of Joseph Campbell. In Campbell’s work the individual has much more value over the collective—as described in the Navaho legend of the Twin War Gods who were on a quest to meet their father the Sun. They had to leave their village on a grand adventure as their people were being attacked by monsters. Everyone had tried just about everything and nobody had a solution, so the Twin War Gods had to travel in a direction nobody else had yet tried and endured a number of trial and tribulations to bring the boon of their discovery to their people.

There is no politics in Campbell’s work. His admires include radical leftists like Jerry Garcia from the Grateful Dead to Bill Moyers from the very left leaning PBS network. Campbell just let the facts speak about the nature of reality, and he was uniquely qualified to surmise the details through stories of this own. It is the clear distinction that Campbell makes through a lifetime of scholarship that it is the individual that moves the world and not the sacrifice of individuals to the collective good. Although sacrifice has been the mode of behavior that has driven most of society, it is the individual following their own unique bliss that brings the boons to society. Society does not bring boons to the individual. It is a fantasy that a collectivist hierarchy can bring joy and wonder to people of differing needs. The best way for people to serve each other is to allow their own lives to live to their own potential for the aims of their individual achievements. By doing that they create things that the rest of the world needs. Joseph Campbell’s outlook is uniquely American, just as Ayn Rand was. Both were authors of works that shook the foundations of thought, and their conclusions are here to stay leaving in their wake the destruction of the old modes of operation. Collectivism and religions of sacrifice are a way of the past that is in quick decline. The Daily Show in their presentation against Rand knows it. That much is evident by the type of people running for president in 2016. On one hand you have the collectivist Hillary Clinton representing the socialists and Democrats, then on the other, at least two candidates directly formed by the freedom loving Tea Party—the type of people who openly love the work of Ayn Rand.

As much as many from the old European world would like to see a continuation of their brand of collectivism, it is writers like Ayn Rand and Joseph Campbell who are shaping the world of tomorrow—and that is why their popularity is increasing while the desire for extremists like Karl Marx is declining. The weak and lazy still look to Marx, but there is no “Following your Bliss” in communism. You do what you are told, and that is not the way to lifetime fulfillment—just stifled misery and suffering due to unlived lives encumbered by sacrifice to speculative assumptions. Capitalism allows individuals to “Follow their Bliss” which is a long storied concept that started for Campbell in the radical troubadours of the High Middle Ages, (1100-1350AD ) from France. They were some of the first to challenge the collectivism of arranged marriages and sacrifice of the self to the many. America inherited from them the concept of courtly love and chivalry which eventually found their way into our western mythology. Before the troubadours marriages were all arranged for the benefits of a collective need and the individual was looked upon as something to be despised, and vanquished out of preservation for the many. But it never worked and never will work because whenever the collective is served values are what is sacrificed, because value is an individual assessment—not a collective one. Once values are sacrificed, a society crumbles into nothing to create the four-part cycle of Giambattista Vico–the age of gods, the age of heroes, the age of man and the age of chaos—more expressively described as theocracy, aristocracy, democracy and anarchy. Joseph Campbell and Ayn Rand proposed to Americans the notion that civilization should get off the circular highway going nowhere in between the aristocracy and democracy portions of that cycle and to emerge independent of collective influence toward an unknown horizon. By action out of each and every person’s “bliss” individuals would then do the job they were created for in the first place—and this is what gives the old world the anger toward Rand that they have—that management of those individual lives does not come from the church, or the political order—but the very essence of the soul encapsulated within every living thing. To grapple with such a thing means that society at large need to understand what a soul is, and how it functions within them. And to find that out, one cannot be told by a parent, a grandparent, a teacher or a lover what it is—you have to find it out for yourself. For the timid and weak, this is a scary prospect. For the brave and valiant—it is the essence of adventure. For society—it is through adventurers that new things come to sustain all life. It is in the timid that all things decay. The timid should not be cast aside, but should follow in the path of the brave toward a destiny their lack of courage would have never allowed them to behold otherwise. And the brave should allow those in their wake to follow their example without robbing them of the treasures of discovery—taken on an individual basis. Not everyone can slay a dragon, or race a car through danger, but everyone can find discoveries under a common rock and a path paved by their own intentions in their own way.

The answer to what makes wealth is found in the adventurer and the cure to the poor is to spark in them the essence of life—and for them to follow their own bliss instead of becoming dependent off a collective society. Once they find themselves dependent on others, they find themselves either poor, or like the classic European peasant—begging for bread and water by the political elites. And among them, there will always be other weaklings like Hillary Clinton who desires the old way of Europe so that meaning to their meaningless lives can have some measure of fulfillment. The way to make the poor into the rich is to get them to follow their bliss—and that is what Ayn Rand’s novels were all about. It is always why collectivists of all sizes and shapes hate her—because they can see within her work the end of their line of thought. But as to the science of why Ayn Rand works, all one need to do is look toward Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Heroes are not collectivists, and they don’t sacrifice themselves aimlessly for the needs of the many unless they discover that it is part of their bliss to do so—a bliss arrived at through their own individuality.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Vote No on the Midpointe Library System: Philosophy and the changing way of expanding knowledge

I am against the MidPointe Library System in Butler County, Ohio for all the same reasons I am against school levies. Even though I tend to love people who strive for knowledge and desire to feed minds with information, the quality of those efforts can cast people adrift all of their lives ruining them, and a library in many subtle ways contribute to that personal destruction. Before detailing why and how, here is the case that the MidPointe Library System makes for itself looking for more money from voters during the upcoming May 5th 2015 election.   Essentially to make a long story short, they make the same arguments that public schools make, helping the children, offerings to the community, and all that kind of nonsense.

The MidPointe Library System will have a renewal levy on the ballot on Tuesday, May 5.  Please find information regarding this levy, as well as why the Library is asking for continued community support below:

Something for Everyone in the Community

With current funding levels, the MidPointe Library System is able to provide many resources, materials, services, and programming to the residents of eastern Butler County. 

MidPointe offers a collection of over a half million items, and partnership in the SearchOhio lending consortium gives patrons access to over 16 million items from across the state. In 2014 over 2 million items were checked out. Additionally, MidPointe provides internet access and public computers to assist people in finding jobs, accessing data and doing school work.

In 2014, MidPointe offered over 2000 programs.  These are as diverse as yoga class and technology instruction for adults, to storytime and early literacy book clubs for children.  The Library’s Summer Reading Program, which promotes literacy for all ages, reached record involvement last year, with nearly 10,000 patrons participating. 

MidPointe’s influence expands well beyond the buildings. Librarians visit schools and community centers to engage young people in the joy of reading. Educators are able to stock their classrooms with books as a result of MidPointe’s “Teacher Collections.” The MidPointe Outreach Services Department delivers materials to over 200 patrons who are unable to physically visit the Library.

Library Budgeting

For the past two decades, Libraries in the state of Ohio have faced reduced funding.  In 2008, the most drastic of these cuts occurred and as a result, the Library had to dramatically reduce hours, services and staffing.   For the first time, the Library approached the public with the possibility of a .75 mill levy to supplement operations.  The voters of our Library district passed the levy, which represents almost 40% of the MidPointe budget. Overdue fines and fees only represent 3.25% of the Library’s overall budget.

The overwhelming majority of the Library’s expenses are devoted to collection development and public service and programs. Administrative costs represent only 12.5% of overall expenses and the MidPointe Library System has continually been recognized as one of the most cost-effective in the state. 

Levy Details

  • The levy on the May 5 ballot is a renewal. This is not a new tax.
  • Levy funds make up 40% of MidPointe’s budget.
  • Levy Millage:  .75 mill
  • Length of Levy:  5 years
  • Cost: The cost of this levy to the owner of a $100,000 home is approximately $22.97 a year(less than the cost of one hardback book).

Levy funds will:

  • Maintain services and materials at all MidPointe locations.
  • Continue to provide current technological resources to the public.
  • Allow for sensible expansion in our growing community.
  • Sustain programs for children, teens and adults.

 

 

http://www.midpointelibrary.org/news/renewal-levy-information/

Essentially they simply want more money to continue a practice that is rooted in socialism. I have never liked libraries because I have never liked sharing my books. I like buying them, and owning them—collecting them like treasures to be guarded by me as part of a life’s journey. It has always seemed wrong to “borrow” a library book from the library where they maintain “collective” ownership. The concept of a shared resource is disgusting. Library books are routinely abused because nobody owns them and are reflective of the type of society that is not centered on personal responsibility and individual ownership.image

I have not been to a library for years. In my community within my little network of a neighborhood I have one of the best libraries in the entire country, the West Chester Library, yet I never, ever use it. I would not borrow a book or movie from them, because I don’t want to use someone else’s stuff. However, I go to one of two Barnes and Nobles book stores about two times a week. The children sections in both of those book stores are tremendous services to children and show how much better private investment is in constructing the mind of young people. The book store in Newport, Kentucky is just fabulous and is still one of my favorites anywhere—which is pictured within this article. It is a temple of knowledge and I love it—yet it is struggling to stay afloat in the changing climate of online offerings. Unlike the MidPointe Library System, Barnes and Noble cannot ask for a tax increase to stay afloat in a changing economy. So they have to adapt—where libraries are doing the same things they always have—and they lose a lot of money because of it. They are essentially money pits and their offerings to the community are not beneficial as they pretend.

The job of teaching children to read falls on the parents or less directly, the extended family members of a child—aunts, uncles, grandparents and so on. Not a socialist librarian or volunteer who has a subtle agenda of encouraging sharing as opposed to ownership. The world of a capitalist society like the United States is rooted in ownership—not sharing. When something of value maintains its worth because someone owned it and cared for it, it is then valuable to someone who might want to purchase it for their own. Libraries encourage sharing and while that might sound good on the surface—the mentality created from this exchange of ideas often leads to various acceptances of degrees of socialism—like public education, public housing, public assistance and so on.image

From the book shelves at Barnes and Noble in Newport, Kentucky in my favorite section—the philosophy section—the two primary competing ideas regarding philosophy are on full display—because that is what people are buying. Amazon.com can provide obscure books within a few days and at a great price. Barnes and Noble put on their shelves titles that sell. All the other sections in the book store, politics, fiction, and cooking, current events—etc, all stem from the philosophy section. People think the way they do and are attracted to some things rather than other things based on their personal philosophy, so I see it as the most important section. In the various schools of thought in Western philosophy everything is basically built off two individuals, Plato and Aristotle. In the east it is Confucius, which leans toward Western Platonic thought. What that translates to through a long line of philosophic thought is essentially Karl Marx and Ayn Rand. imageI certainly lean toward Ayn Rand—yet I think her Objectivism is limited to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and that there will be new schools of thought stemming from her Objectivism that will have to encapsulate the bizarre behavior of quantum mechanics now being discovered. But Karl Marx has been a failure and is a dying philosophy that will either be extinct within the next two hundred years, or it will destroy our civilization. I have no use for Karl Marx in any fashion. Libraries are part of a Karl Marx mentality.image

I love libraries for their historical significance—especially the library in Alexandria. At the time the cost of printing books was prohibitive and everyone couldn’t own a book. So the borrowing of books at a library was the best way to achieve an exchange of knowledge. But that time has passed. Now there are so many books printed that the market is saturated with knowledge. It is easier, and more efficient for people to upload books onto their devices, or just buy them at Amazon.com. Stores like Barnes and Nobel fill the traditional role of a library being a center of learning—especially for kids. But as for motivation into intellectual endeavors, libraries are not a substitute for a good parent or mentor. The reason I don’t go to the West Chester library is because it feels like a socialist utopia to me. But Barnes and Nobel feels like the intellectual center of a capitalist country and I could essentially move into every one of them and be very happy. It is for that reason that I will vote no for the MidPointe levy on May 5th. I feel sorry for them, but they are a dying enterprise that will evaporate under the changing times—and it would be better for them to see that happen now than prolonging the agony. Community isn’t very valuable unless the members of that community believe in an Aristotelian logic as opposed to a Platonic sentiment. A community of socialists is a destructive force, and that will be the unintended consequence of a continuation of the library system in America. It is time for a replacement and it begins with a withdrawal of funds from the black hole of tax increases for which libraries currently represent.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Art of Playing: Celebrating life and happiness

imageIt was my 47th birthday today and I spent it in an unusual fashion compared to some, but quite the standard within my family. During it I was reminded of a conversation I had recently with some pretty important and powerful people about the nature of living and how I manage to do so many things at several layers of severity and risk,  but still manage to lay my head down on my pillow each night for sleep without wanting to jump off a roof. It’s a secret that I feel compelled to teach the world, just so that I might remove just a bit of their suffering and change the direction of their life’s focus. It’s a method that everyone would benefit from if they embraced it more and would drop the broken stereotypes of the past—because they don’t work. As a brief intro to the concept please understand that my wife could have given me just about anything for my birthday—a new Apple Watch, an expensive vacation, a dinner at Cincinnati’s exclusive restaurants, even a new car—but what she did give me was infinitely more interesting and fun. She gave me a Zoomer Dinosaur. She has been watching my grandson and he knew what she had bought me, and at just over 2 years old, he couldn’t wait to tell me. So he guided me to where she was hiding it and we opened it up. She didn’t care because he was so excited to see it move. After opening it, we put the little dinosaur on the ground and began playing with it—which set the tone for the entire birthday celebration.

My mother taught her kids how to play, even late in life. Growing up we played a lot and had very diverse interests. My grandmother also played at life a lot and made growing up very fun. Every trip to the grocery store was fun because they made it that way, and as a result I carry that into my own life-even in tragic situations. I try to have fun every day of my life—no matter what is going on. That is a pattern started in my childhood by my mom. My brother and sister have a similar love of playing and as a result as grown adults, they don’t have any mental problems or issues with social interaction. They are not drug abusers of even a slight nature and have no real insecurities of any mention. Now with kids of their own, they are bringing that element of play to their own offspring with very positive results. But out of all the members of my family, I learned to play more than the others and I am more obvious in my dedication to it.

One of my best memories as a kid was when I had to go to soccer practice one evening when I really didn’t want to. I always loved sports, but only the games themselves. I didn’t like all the team work crap—ever, or the social infusion with the community. When my team would win the parents were always excited for some mysterious reason and used the word “we” a lot. Yet they never did anything to help win the game except yell like a bunch of idiots on the sideline. It never made sense to me, and as the years moved on, I stepped away from sports because of the heavy emphasis on team building and derision on individual achievement. If I had different teachers and social influences as a young kid I might have moved into professional sports of my choosing, but because the wrong influences were around me focused on the wrong things, I abandon sports at my first opportunity—as a freshman in high school. But of that wonderful memory, I was at soccer practice, miserable because honestly I had a huge set-up in the basement of my home dedicated to Star Wars and I wanted to be there playing with all my toys rather than running around at soccer practice. It was spring time, my dad was out-of-town on business, and I was hoping to be home so I could have some play time before bed. It was the middle of the week and I had school the next day, so my time to play at the things was short. My mom picked me up from practice and we headed home. Only this was different, my brother and sister were in the car dressed like we were going somewhere, and there was the smell of popcorn from the trunk. I didn’t think much about it until we took a different route home and ended up on roads I wasn’t familiar with. Those roads eventually took us to a drive-in theater in Hamilton that was playing the very first Star Wars movie as a re-release. My mom took us all to see it for what I think was the 7th time at that point. It was wonderful and I cherished deeply every frame of film. During the scene where Han Solo and Luke were rescuing the princess, which is the high point of the film for me, I was sitting in a lawn chair with my soccer cloths still on listening to the echo of all the portable speakers around the drive-in playing the sound of the movie with a slight delay during that specific scene—the clouds were high in the sky and slightly blotting out a big bright moon on a spring night—and I thought about how wonderful life was. It really didn’t get any better than that.

But every day I try to make the day better than that day at the drive-in, and most days I come close. I am always looking for a way to have fun with a situation, and most of the time I do. I avoid people who don’t know how to have fun. If they are depressed people trapped in emotions constructed around neurosis, I usually paint them out of my life for my own preservation. If they can’t keep up, I leave them behind without looking back. I like to have fun, I love to play, and I hate people who don’t know how. I’m happy to teach “happiness” to them, but if they don’t show much of an effort, I drop them quickly. I understand and sympathize that they didn’t have a mom like mine who showed them how to play, even as adults, so I take the time to teach them. But I won’t sacrifice myself to their misery. If they want to be miserable, I leave them to it. I might write an article like this to help show them the way, but I won’t take their burden on myself if they wish to be stubborn about it.

I have known many adults who give Rolexes to their spouses and new cars for birthdays—but most of the time those gifts are laced with a desire for social approval more than developing happiness in the recipient. Behind such gifts is the desire to brag to someone else about the value of the gift, and thus, the amount of social pull that person has in the world of mixed economies. So it means quite a lot that my wife out of all the things she could have given me picked the cute little dinosaur which I think is quite a leap in scientific development. The little sensors in it for a kids play toy are very advanced, and the gyroscope system which balances it on two wheels is quite extraordinary. I could play with it all day and night if left to my own devices. It is intriguing, and intellectually stimulating. I love it!

imageBut of course there was a gathering with my family like we usually do later in the day during my birthday. This year we went to Dave and Busters so that we could……………play…………….as a family. Specifically there is a new video game called Star Wars Battle Pod which is a kind of flight simulator for Star Wars. It is the newest, and greatest of what technology has to offer, complete with a breeze simulator to replicate actual environmental conditions. It has a wrap around screen that totally engulfs your vision allowing you to invest your intellect into the experience without distraction. The food was great, as it usually is at Dave and Busters, but playing Battle Pod was for me the best thing I’ve done for a birthday in years. In my family, most of us are intense Star Wars fans so we loved taking time to play it together. It was a stunning game to play, and fly. I had to reflect back to that drive-in surprise where my mom played like she was just picking me up from soccer practice on a school night, but instead took us all to see Star Wars one more time on a big screen, before it was gone forever—or so we thought at the time. Now, because of Battle Pod, people can play in the Star Wars universe in a way that was only a remote fantasy for someone like me years ago.

At Hollywood Studios my favorite restaurant is the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater. It tries to simulate the drive-in movie experience I had in my youth, with my best memory being that Star Wars outing. There are still drive-ins, but they don’t carry the same impact as they did when I was a kid. Now they are viewed as a cheap alternative to the cinema experience as opposed to a first-rate experience. But when I go to Hollywood Studios, I have to stop by the Dine-In Theater and have a hamburger. It reminds me of that Star Wars presentation after the soccer game, and reminds me of the importance of playing at life instead of taking things too serious.

In reference to the important people I was talking about the best of us realize hopefully before they arrive at 60 years of age that career climbing and ass-kissing doesn’t get anybody anywhere. People are most effective and ultimately better when they retrain, or relearn the art of playing—as they did when they were kids. Typically, I don’t get along very well with people in my own age group, because most of them suffer from socially created illnesses. The people I most get along with are kids and old people because generally they aren’t worried about the ridiculous social rules which construct our network of associations. They would do far better for themselves to spend their time playing with other members of their families than in chasing the tail of someone higher in the peaking order hoping to schmooze their way to the top instead of letting their actions speak for themselves. One of the people I was talking to is a guy I enjoy quite a lot. He has a PHD in an advanced field of endeavor, but has not lost his love of playing. He’s is the grandpa of some lucky grandkids and the father to some fortunate children. Yet he solves problems like they don’t even exist, the kind of problems that might hang up regular people in the related field of endeavor. The difference is that this smart guy never forgot how to play at life, and therefore solves problems the way a child does, with resiliency and creativity. We teach our children to stop doing these things, and that is our first mistake. Instead, we should be teaching them to develop it further and to do so through their infantile 20s and 30s. But until everyone else gets on that page and recognizes that this is the way to conduct their lives—with playing at life for their entire lives—then I will continue to recharge myself the way I have. And for that, the little dinosaur my wife gave me along with Star Wars at Dave and Busters was a wonderful experience that gives me more than anything money can buy–a chance to play.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Duke Wins NCAA Championship: College athletes rising to greatness in spite of institutional failure

United States Senator Claire McCaskill, of Missouri, illustrated without really thinking too much about it a great crisis for many when she tweeted after the 2015 NCAA Championship between Duke and Wisconsin:

“Congrats to Duke, but I was rooting for team who had stars that are actually going to college & not just doing semester tryout for NBA.”

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/ncaabk/missouri-sen-claire-mccaskill-takes-shot-at-duke-after-title-win/ar-AAawu1y?ocid=LENDHP

Saturday Night Live just prior to the big game made similar jokes in the same spirit, assuming that college athletes had an unspoken duty to their institutional education as opposed to the financial opportunity of leaving college after one or two years to join the NBA as young millionaires. These points of view are lost to ideology rooted in a hatred for capitalism where the old-fashioned belief was that citizens were supposed to learn a vocation which served society and that was the purpose of the college experience. Instead the perception and accusation is that student athletes were selfishly serving the all mighty dollar and colleges were letting them do it for the big money generated by the popular basketball tournament. The common villain in the whole exchange was money.

This is where the old progressives have failed to understand where they are, and what young people are supposed to learn in college. The NCAA Tournament is all about production, sixty-eight college teams fighting it out for the number one spot. The heroes get drafted into the NBA, thousands of sports bars cash in on a spike in business—beer is sold, chicken wings etc. Advertisers get exposure for their products and schools get an increase in their profile with national exposure—meaning likely increased enrollment in their colleges which then pay the salaries of their staff. There is very little wrong with the NCAA basketball tournament known as March Madness. I’m not even a big basketball fan, yet I find myself enchanted by the festivities every spring.

College as it was conceived is a failure. The thought of shaping young minds into soft-minded government employees is currently failing. Going to college is not the path to a vibrant economy. Fresh, unimpeded ideas are. Too much government restricts the economy so the college experiment failed right out of the gate. Instead of giving their children a better life than they had, lifestyles regressed just two generations after the implementation of a global acceptance of widespread college education. Kids today have been spoiled rotten by parents guilty over their own life decisions and those students are entering the workforce with house payments thrown at colleges’ indebting them for their entire working years. They are arriving at jobs that pay half of what they expected and not having expendable income to help float the economy leaving epic stagnation. Since most of what the colleges taught was progressive values, nobody learned how to do anything but show social sensitivity, because nobody knows anything anymore about anything. That is the fault of modern colleges instituting misplaced values.

One of the only things kids can look forward to is that their college sports team might do well and give them some sense of pride in their alma mater—for all the money they’ve spent on their educations. Lucky kids can use their college years to get a job interview, but it doesn’t do much to prepare those former students for the marketplace of ideas. College was sold as a way to buy success for children—but all it really bought were kids flat lined economically and socially neurotic. They have been molded into dismal human beings.

That is the system that Senator Claire McCaskill and Saturday Night Live defended through their various parodies. It reminded me of my fourth grade teacher who took my class on a field trip to the Cincinnati Music Hall to listen to the symphony play a concert dedicated to Star Wars which had just come out and was grotesquely popular. During the concert slides from the movie were shown on a big screen and kids cheered with the display of their favorite characters. It was a very energetic and positive experience—until we arrived back to our class. Our fourth grade teacher who was just shy of 30 years old at the time chastised our entire class for enjoying the concert. I sat there completely dumbfounded as her reaction was completely opposite to what I was feeling. I had a great time, and so did the rest of my class. I didn’t understand. My teacher went on to say that cheering for the characters on the slides would hurt the feelings of the members in the symphony and that Star Wars was all about making money and success—so it should be shoved aside in favor of “high art.” The same arguments are constantly thrown at the Disney Company, and even Nickelodeon for exploiting children for the all mighty dollar, as if making money was somehow evil. Yet if not for Star Wars would any of those kids have sat through a musical concert featuring a symphony? No.

Colleges would be more successful in capitalist America if they stopped copy-catting off the socialist Europeans and started teaching kids that making money is the most important thing they could learn from college. And under that criteria what is wrong with a freshman basketball player from Duke University leaving school for the NBA the very next year because they are so good that team owners want to make 20-year-old kids millionaires? Even better, college sports often highlight minority children…….there is nothing wrong with the situation. Notice how none of the sports bars around America had angry white men protesting black basketball players covered in tattoos. Nobody cared, everyone picked a team and rooted for somebody giving kids the opportunity to be a star no matter what their background or appearance—and receiving a chance to make more money before they are thirty than the lifetime incomes of everyone watching the games in a BW3s. Colleges, as institutions and the products coming from them have missed the point of the NCAA Tournament completely because they refuse to acknowledge the real truth of what the offering of higher education was supposed to be. People want upward mobility—not just a chance to receive a government check and a pension after age 55, but real, substantive wealth—the kind of wealth that could purchase their own island in the Caribbean.   Until colleges face that music, they will continue to lose in the marketplace of ideas, and will struggle to keep their public image as high as it currently is. If not for college sports, how many Americans would still support college as an option? That is an answer that United States Senator Claire McCaskill doesn’t want to know.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Ayn Rand and Social Security: Confiscated money that is owed eventually

As far as Ayn Rand and her modern footprint into politics and philosophy many on the left have attempted to discredit her based on the notion that she drew from Social Security late in her life. As a small government advocate deeply suspicious of America’s steps toward socialism—which she had fled from, and lost her family to, many progressives have identified her as a danger to their Kant driven philosophy doing whatever they could to discredit her writings using the Social Security issue to lead the charge against the logic she presented. Recently my friend Mark Etterling ran across just such a person on his email musings with the far left and radical nut cases hoping to shut off the world to wisdom, so to disguise their treacherous attempts against righteousness—specifically a strong economy driven by capitalism. Mark presented a strong case in favor of Ayn Rand which I thought was effective enough to repeat below. Many assume that Social Security is a government entitlement when in fact as Mark presents; it’s supposed to be an investment. The distinction is important as Etterling explains in greater detail:

From: Mark Etterling Date: April 5, 2015 at 1:31:22 PM EDT Subject: Moron, expose theyself Reply-To: Mark Etterling

 

Recently I read a Facebook post from a liberal that was meant to be a “gotcha” moment against conservatives and in this case the now deceased author Ayn Rand in particular. Upon reading the post I actually found myself laughing out loud. Not only was this a hilariously bad attempt at painting the right as hypocrites, but was so moronic that the poster had no idea who he was actually insulting.

The post was a story about how the vaunted die-hard capitalist Ayn Rand had actually dared to collect on Social Security in her old age in defiance of her own writings demonizing big government. This is the same tired assault that liberals have tried for years by claiming conservatives are hypocrites for railing against intrusive government up until such time as it’s their own turn to stand in line for some government goodies.

So for the umpteenth time allow me to explain what the half-wits on left just simply can’t seem to grasp. SOCIAL SECURITY ISN’T A GOVERNMENT HANDOUT! Let me put this in simple terms. If you loan someone $100 today and then later return to collect on your loan that doesn’t make you greedy, a thief, a handout recipient, a hypocrite, or any other such non-sense. It simply means that you are collecting a return of what was rightfully yours all along. The fact that the government forcibly confiscates that money from you (and the matching funds from your employer) throughout your working life on the promise of returning it to you later (if you’re fortunate enough to live that long) doesn’t constitute even the remotest concept to anyone above the IQ of a horsefly that it somehow magically becomes a handout.

To prove my point all you need to do is look at your pay stub. You have separate line item deductions for Social Security and Medicare because those moneys are SUPPOSED to be placed in a separate government trust fund so that people won’t foolishly waste all their money before they reach retirement age. The reason I capitalized the word supposedly above is because under this scenario the ugly truth is that it’s been the government all along who has foolishly wasted your money instead as they have basically borrowed and spent against all that money until the actual trust fund is pretty much an empty vault of IOU’s. Personally, as an intelligent adult I would have preferred it if big brother government would have simply butted out of my life so that I could have invested that total of 15% annual matching funds on my own instead of through a glorified government sanctioned Ponzi scheme. However, now that they have it, you can bet your @ss I want it back!

It blows my mind every time I hear some idiot from the left proclaiming that the elderly are better off because of Social Security. In saying that they are not only stating by proxy that all Americans are too stupid to be trusted with something like their own retirement (same thing for healthcare), but completely forget that had the government not interfered the money that was confiscated would have been the people’s money all along (plus interest) anyway. It’s like a thief robbing you and then expecting a big old “thank you” for returning the things they should have never stolen at government gun point in the first place. Here’s another way to think of it for when they ignorantly try to insult conservatives for trying to collect what is rightfully theirs. Is it right that someone should be forced to pay for a meal in advance and then demonized simply because they would now like a chance to eat it before it’s all gone? Honestly, I wish I could think of a stronger word than “moron” in situations like this.

Morons are morons and nothing will ever change that. However, in posting what he posted this particular moron doesn’t even realize that who he has basically insulted isn’t just conservatives, but every American who has worked all their life and is now old enough that they are simply trying to retrieve what was rightfully theirs all along. The checks they are now receiving aren’t government handouts. They’re long overdue reimbursements. Personally, I hope he reposts his article over and over. In doing so he’ll be accomplishing far more to expose his own true self-insulting ignorance than any rebuttal I could ever hope to write.

P.S. As a side note please remember that it was DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Shultz who recently proposed the idiotic idea of having the government confiscate everyone’s IRA’s and 401K’s and using that money to shore up the missing funds from Social Security. As you can see, these people aren’t just simple morons. They’re morons that are hell-bent on ruining all our lives.

Social Security was a stupid idea, and it never should have been enacted. It is an insult to stick the government in between Americans and their so-called retirements. I resent every deduction taken from my paycheck as a theft stolen from me, because the government will never be in a position to pay me back all the money I have “invested” under coercion. I have personal friends who hate Social Security so badly they have essentially given up their citizenship over the issue. One of those friends had began plotting his deferral from the Social Security system in the 5th grade—no kidding. He was a very smart kid and while the other kids were talking about the rock band KISS and the new show on television called The Dukes of Hazzard, he was planning on how to legally refuse his obligations toward Social Security. As an adult, he gave up his citizenship after years of legal entanglement—but—he doesn’t pay into the system, because as he was always right, Social Security is stolen money not granted by an infant when they are issued a card after being registered by their parents. His argument was that his parents didn’t have a right to commit him to a life obligation into such a contract with the government.

The rest of the world isn’t willing to take such extremes, so we just pay into it knowing that its wrong—because we don’t want the hassle of fighting the government—and they know that. My friend had a lifelong crusade against Social Security which continues to this very day—but I have always found it easier to just outwork the money grabbing hands of the government. I have infinite energy which they don’t posses. With me it’s a delicate balance; government knows they need me to be productive to pay their salaries, so they generally leave me alone. But, I have to accept that they will steal a portion of my money every week because they made laws enabling them to do so. I have the same deal with insects in my house. I know they are there in the cracks, but if they come out in the open, they are disposed of. I don’t want to see them even though they are likely hidden in every crevice available. The government takes my money before I even get to see it each week. They get first dibs on my earnings—which is why more Americans aren’t angered by the stolen money because they figure they never had it in the first place. But when it comes time to get that money back—everyone expects it—just like we expect tax returns at the end of each year for the overpayments interest free we make to the government through the same withdrawal system. The idiots who came before us who voted in favor of this kind of thing made a major mistake, and it should be rectified. But until then, like Mark Etterling said in his article—I want my money back at the first opportunity I can get it. And I won’t apologize for wanting it either. It was stolen from me without my permission, and I want every dime back before it’s all said and done. When Ayn Rand needed the money she put into the system, I don’t fault her for getting it. She paid into it, so she deserved to get it back. But, she would have been the first to argue, if the government had stayed out of the exchange in the first place that same money may have made her rich, instead of needing Social Security in the first place. She was more qualified to handle her own money than the government was, and that is the tragedy we all face—at some point in time.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Iranian Obamanation: A socialist apocalypse in the Middle East

So the deadline came and went between Obama’s administration and Iran yet the result essentially was nothing but to talk more. The Obama people lost their momentum well before Bibi came to speak before congress. They lost it when the administration set the deadline in the first place and let those hostile to America—and capitalism in general—know that there was a light at the end of the tunnel on sanctions if they played their cards close to their vest. Meanwhile, many in the streets of Iran chanted, “death to America” as John Kerry tried to spin the situation into something positive. Yet again, the actions of the Obamanation showed just how stupid the President is, and the people around him—how tactfully ignorant they truly are. It is the second time in the course of a week that I have been too embarrassed by President Obama and his team to even utter a criticism, the first was the Bowe Bergdahl situation. It is simply unbelievable that an American president could be so stupid.

Iran has a long history with communism and socialism, in the 1920s it was the Hizb-e Socialysist Party. Into the 50s, 60s and 70s a variety of Marxist groups penetrated Iran and the rest of the Muslim world ranging in the spectrum between Trotskyist to Moaist recruited largely through universities and inciting the working poor against the capitalism of the West. Several generations of Iranians now have been nurtured into a hatred of capitalism because of the long history that Iran has with socialism. They have destroyed their economy nearly completely because of their commitment to socialism. The people of Iran are so under developed that they cannot ever hope to embrace the gifts of the West in their lifetimes—so hatred has seethed there for decades made worse as time has went on. When the United States launched sanctions against Iran it cut off the only hope that common people in the nation could have had for a good life—since internally the socialism of their country destroyed all potential prosperity. Most Iranians would have loved to have the arrangement that communist China has with the United States—because at least there are jobs given to them, but since Iranians are now two generations of sanctions into years of a dismal economic activity they really have nothing left to lose but to lash out at others like parentless children desperate for attention.

Cut off from capitalism, and some resemblance of an honorable living, the Iranian people are stuck fighting among themselves like dogs over scraps of meat—since their economy is so dismal, due to their choices. As a strategy against the world they have nothing to offer the world but a reprieve from violence—because that is what their adherence to socialism has done for them masked behind Islamic faith. To get the attention of the developed countries they have sponsored terrorism, and created anxiety over nuclear weapons to maintain some relevancy on the world stage.

The Obama administration, leaning toward socialism in their own way, is sympathetic to the collectivism efforts of Iran over the capitalist leanings of Israel—and they despise any trace of the West in the Middle East—not so much due to religious differences, but in the differences between a capitalist economy and a socialist one.   They want to lift the sanctions in a similar way as Obama did for communist Cuba—and Iran knows it. So the power in negotiations goes to Iran. America also wants everyone in the Middle East to have equality without the qualifier of a capitalist country or a socialist one using collectivism to destroy commerce. This again gives power to Iran over America. Yet the worst of all is that America has a deadline whereas Iran has all the time in the world. They have absolutely nothing to lose in negotiations with America—whereas Obama wants to make Iran a part of his legacy as President. Of course Iran has the upper hand in such an exchange giving nothing to Obama’s team in the form of leverage. Like insane fools they have rushed to enter negotiations against an adversary that wants to kill all Americans as a collective society.

Choking on ideology and really poor strategy, Obama lost before he ever went to the table against Iran—and they were at least smart enough to realize it. They should have seen what was clear to everyone from the beginning, but they ignored the evidence and chose to view the world with rose-colored glasses and the pipe dreams of typical liberals taught through academia to trust logic to the gods of speculation and wishful thinking. And in Iran, there is nothing to wish for leaving only desperate foes and scandalous bandits seeking with great desperation to get their hands on a nuclear weapon so that they might bomb their way to a loaf of bread, or a used 1970s American car—because in the beginning—they chose socialism over capitalism, and their world is suffering an apocalypse as a result.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Rich Hoffman Hosting WAAM Radio: Matt Clark’s Honeymoon and Hillary’s destruction of evidence

The news is fresh; my friend Matt Clark at WAAM in Ann Arbor, Michigan is getting married in June 2015, and has asked me to cover for his show while he’s on his honeymoon. Of course I said yes, because I like the station and what they are doing in a part of the country that is typically a blue state. Matt’s show is a shout in the darkness toward entrenched liberalism with their hand firmly on the light switch. Yet Matt does his show each week even though he doesn’t need to financially, just as I do with my blog. The show is an extension of himself in the perpetual fight for freedom. We always have a good time on Matt’s show, which was obvious from the clip shown below where we discussed Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails.

Several years ago I was offered a similar deal at 700 WLW with Doc Thompson just prior to his own honeymoon, which eventually cost him his job. Not because he asked me to fill in for him, but because the station was preparing behind the scenes to get rid of him. After Doc’s termination I more or less cut my ties to WLW and Clear Channel in Cincinnati including 55 KRC. Some of that led to the controversy the following month—they were as eager to part ways with Doc’s memory as I was of them. The other person I was loyal to at WLW was Darryl Parks, and he was not far behind Doc as far as a termination—the station obviously wanted to go into a different, more moderate direction, which did not fit the scope of my concerns. So I drug my feet with Doc because instinct told me something was wrong. I wasn’t sure what, but it was obvious that something was brewing, so I knew to stay away. I turned out to be more than right—as usual.

I have no such concerns at WAAM and have no problem making a commitment to the station even this far out. It will be fun to fill in for Matt, and I’m sure it will make his honeymoon just a bit sweeter knowing that someone of like mind is taking care of his show while he’s traveling. Like me, Matt does quite well for himself so his radio show is mostly a labor of love for the republic that is America. It means more to him to have the show do what he wants it to do while he embarks on one of life’s great adventures—marriage.

As far as the content of the show we did together about the Hillary emails, his take on it comparing her to The Office was spot on. Obviously she is obstructing justice by destroying evidence and covering up her involvement in the death of people who lost their lives because of her actions—or inaction. Her management of the situation in Benghazi led to the death of people and empowered the terrorists in the region on her watch to grow into the threat it is today. We had some fun with it on talk radio because the only other option is to grow depressed about how far we’ve fallen as a nation where the expectations of people in positions like Secretary of State have become simply a stepping stone to the presidency. The message behind the Hillary emails is that no evidence of incompetence would be allowed to be seen to derail that objective of obtaining the Oval Office. Hillary is the ultimate case of why institutionalism is nearly always a failure when individual responsibility is not nurtured.

Hillary Clinton is such a bad person that she will literally stop at nothing to obtain her personal quest for power and prestige—which is gained from collective enterprise and social acceptance. She’s a disgusting person, and is the reason that people like Matt Clark does a radio show every week. There are bad people in the world, and somebody has to call them out on their treachery and on Matt’s show, it’s a way to do that even if the task might seem like a drop in an ocean of corruption. Calling out the actions of one bad act, or even five during the airtime on WAAM is better than allowing them to go unanswered.

So yes, I’ll enjoy hosting Matt’s show. I’m sure we’ll light some fireworks and fire them off in a way that might be a little different. But I know that Matt wants what I do—and that is to save the Republic one broadcast at a time, one blog post at a time, one speech, or sometimes a whip crack all in the name of justice. The books I write and activities of enterprise I embark on are not necessarily for the immediate gratification of financial security—as I am a productive person, and already have those bases covered. They are for a functioning philosophy for the 22nd century. It will take that long to turn back the wheels of progressivism and get people thinking of a new and better way of maintaining and preserving a free republic with an intellectual aptitude that is required to sustain it for subsequent centuries. America has not yet come to those terms—and neither has mankind for that matter. But it never will so long as people like Hillary hide evidence of their incompetence to fulfill personal ambitions rooted in collectivism. The inept and treacherous find it too easy to hide under the covers of collectivism—which is why they support such things, and are often the loudest voices in favor of progressivism, socialism, and communism.

I will promise one thing, and those who read here every day know full well, I will make it count on the airwaves. It may be for a short time, but I will promise to give people something they haven’t received before—just because that’s my tendency when doing things like this. Otherwise, anybody could fill in for such a spot. Since Matt asked me, I will give him what he’s looking for. And for the listeners of WAAM, they will enjoy it immensely.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.