For me, the most enjoyable parts of life come from cultures that are “can doers” as opposed to those who use every excuse in existence not to do something. Whether its family, friends, co-workers, political alliances, or just basic economic considerations, I enjoy most what can be done and hate the most when people point barriers as to why something can’t. That is why so many of my articles are about taxes, politics and prohibitive psychology. The people I like most in the world are those who find ways to do something. Those I like the least are those who must be drug through the mud on everything, whether it’s a movie, buying a new car or house, or just going to the shopping center to purchase socks or something iniquitous toward daily life. Therefor, when it comes to my own needs to recharge my batteries, I find places full of energy and creativity the best for me and is my idea of a vacation. And more specifically, I love the type of people that the Disney Company hires as Imagineers, very imaginative and whimsical people who are also very smart on the engineering side of things. I enjoy the products they create and is my idea of a vacation to see their work.
With all that said my two favorite kinds of people are very creative types, and engineers, very smart and logical people. Sadly, for me, those traits often don’t exist in the same people, so I have to speak to a lot of people to get all those elements in my life. But in doing that, it takes time away from other things, which for me there never is enough of it to give. I fly in and out of meetings with people because there is always something going on that I need to do and in my own pursuits of these creative things, it’s a lot like digging for gold, you put a lot of effort into getting just a little bit. However, at places like Disney World, the reason things cost so much money ultimately is because the entertainment company tends to hire just the kind of people I have said I like the most and over the last decade, under the guidance of Bob Iger the Disney Imagineers have been given a lot to do and I enjoy watching them do it.
I think Bob Iger as the CEO of Disney has done a great job and in many ways I am thankful for him and the chances he has taken to advance the input Imagineers have had on the company. I’m not at all crazy that Iger is a Democrat. For this series of articles, I won’t hold that against him because he has made some great decisions to free the type of people I am talking about up so that they could do the best work possible. So for my vacation this year I have been at the Disney World complex in Orlando which I make no mistake in loving as I’ve said many times in the past. But this time the scope of my visit has been to enjoy the work of the Disney Imagineers in the way that one might enjoy the Mona Lisa at the Louvre or any other place where great creativity is on display. I consider the work of Disney Imagineers to be far better and superior to other acts of human endeavor and capitalism is the fuel they have to create such fantastic attributes. So under that definition, I have always loved Disney World and that is an emotion that grows as time advances.
I timed my visit to the parks this time to match the opening of the new Rise of the Resistance ride at Hollywood Studios and to enjoy the new Star Wars land that its in called Galaxy’s Edge. But its more than just geeking out on Star Wars, for me its all about the Imagineers who have been turned loose by the Disney Company to make so many great creations over the last decade that I have been so excited to see on a whirlwind trip that I had been looking forward to for a long time. Disney+ the new streaming service showcasing the many products of Disney over the years has a great show they produce dedicated to their Imagineers which I would highly recommend watching, even for a casual observer. If the world had more people like those Imagineers in it, everything would be better. And in spite of my thoughts on how the Disney Company has handled Star Wars, by introducing way too much social justice into the franchise and pushing it to near ruin, the vast financial resources that Disney has can not be understated in giving their Imagineers the time and money to make some of the neatest creations on planet earth, which I think is far more significant.
So this vacation of mine has nothing to do with rest and relaxation, or unplugging from the world, its all about relishing the products of raw creativity and vast amounts of financial resources. For instance, the new Star Wars land at Hollywood Studios and the park in Anaheim, California cost around $1 billion. No company on earth in any country could do something like that, so I can think of no place anywhere to visit that is better for my purpose, and that is to enjoy as much Imagineering created by raw capitalism that could be found anywhere. And for me, the first stop was to the newly renovated Disney Springs shopping complex where a bar was dedicated to one of my favorite movie characters of all time, Indiana Jones called Jock Lindsey’s Bar and Grill. I literally got off the airplane at the Orlando airport and headed there first because it’s something I’ve been wanting to see for a few years now.
The restaurants and shopping district of Disney Springs is what I would call a perfect marriage of the kind of world we should have everywhere. Because of the way Walt Disney bought the property in Florida, they have their own central government which helps with their regulatory burdens. When they need to fix a road or get a permit for a new building, the amount of land they control has given them their own governing ability, which keeps the bureaucracy to a minimum. A place like Disney Springs would not have happened any other way, and certainly nothing like Jock Lindsey’s Hanger Bar would have never been born from the minds of Disney Imagineers. But its not just that, all around the complex the input of the Imagineers is everywhere, most spectacularly in a recreation of the kind of springs that are so popular in Florida as the centerpiece. It was spectacularly beautiful and in a lot of ways much better than nature itself. The marriage of so much creativity with corporate capitalism at Disney Springs is something that was just wonderful in so many ways, I can’t think of any place I’d rather be to recharge my own batteries.
Politicians and other bureaucrats in any community anywhere in the world would find a million reasons not to build something like Disney Springs. And that is just the reason I love going to those types of places, because the level of creativity and the money to spend on it is so abundant, it is great to see what the human mind can produce if only they are allowed to. And in no place in the world are imaginative engineering types even employed, let alone turned loose to create so many fine works of art for the purpose of entertainment. And in our American culture, that is something to cherish, and to provide plenty of reverence, which I do.
Rich Hoffman






When people ask what kind of America I want, and what am I fighting for, my conversation always comes back around to one person who delivered to me an ideal of America that I have always worked to achieve, Walt Disney. Disney is one of the characters in real life who did just as the heroes of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged novel did, he brought to humanity wonderful gifts that have lived on for nearly 50 years after his death, and he did not do it as a collective effort, he did it with his solely driven mind. Roy Disney, Walt’s older brother could not have done what Walt was able to do. Roy brought a stabilizing factor to Walt’s life financially, but the collaboration did not work the other way around.
If not for the solitary, driven mind of Walt Disney, I am entirely convinced that an entire era of Americana would have been successfully destroyed by external American enemies who planted seeds of deception into our culture that were met by only a handful of creative minds who stood as pillars against moral collapse. The audacity to invoke into society the world over the unique human attribute of a personal dream was Walt Disney’s greatest weapon against tyranny, and most treasured gift to humankind. My friend Matt Clark on WAAM radio in Ann Arbor, Michigan feels the same way about Uncle Walt as I do, and we spent an hour of radio time on Matt’s show during July 21st, 2013 from 2 to 3 PM talking about the importance that Walt Disney has had in preserving American culture not only in his time but in the present, long after he departed from this world. The below conversation is unique, and Matt did a wonderful job of collecting video of the discussion complete with video examples. I would suggest that you gather up a snack dear reader and make time to watch and listen to these two broadcasts shown below—each representing a segment of radio time between the top and bottom of the hour. For old timers, it will be a walk down memory lane, and for the young, you will learn what all the fuss is about Disney as a company, and why they are so successful. Disney was not an accident, but a direct product of the kind of people only America can produce.
No other country on the face of planet earth, no education institution, no political system, no financial altruism, no welfare system, no friendship, no collaboration, no wish upon a star has produced another man like Walt Disney. Disney was the very unique type of person that shared in a fictional context Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged characters. Rand’s fictional characters and Disney’s real life character were products of a time in America where they were born at the end of a laissez-faire capitalism period before communist ideas contaminated the next generation filling up the empty minds of youth with the type of progressive tripe that is so common today. Disney literally stood against a very tough world, through competitive studios who wanted to sink him for being too good, labor union disputes, communist infiltration, and many personal set-backs to build a company that is one of the most powerful in the entire world. If not for Disney, there would be no ESPN, no sustainable ABC television. And the film business may not have survived through the 1970s.
They assassinate his character while still trying to pander to modern Disney executives to fund their creative ideas. Secretly there is a lot of resentment in the entertainment industry even within the Disney Company about why Walt Disney’s beliefs are so closely adhered to, when there are so many college trained CEO’s who should be able to do a superior job of management in the modern landscape politically, and economically. The answer is of course that they can’t.
Nobody can nowhere on earth, because what makes people like Walt Disney is laissez-faire capitalism and that doesn’t exist anywhere anymore. Laissez-faire capitalism allowed Walt to be everything he dreamed of, and allowed him to take tremendous risks and receive eventually, not until much later in his life, great rewards. It was only by the time the novel Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957 that Walt started to become personally wealthy from all his wonderful work—where he didn’t have to worry about going bankrupt. But Walt wasn’t happy to be just another rich man from his efforts; he wanted to build his ultimate dream—Disney World, which he never lived to see.
The Tea Party wants the kind of America talked about in the Davy Crockett television show, and on the famous Zorro series where crime and punishment were clear, and bad guys in politics did not win. Walt loved freedom which is most pronounced in his Pirates of the Caribbean exhibit where he understood that it was the pirates of that period which led the way to the American Revolution which Walt was very dedicated to preserving. He has an entire section of Disney World committed to preserving this memory that is more committed to America’s roots than the actual city of Boston which is extremely progressive. If not for Walt Disney, there would not be a Tea Party fighting for fiscal responsibility, limited government, or free markets—the kind of themes that were uncompromisingly explored on the old shows of Davey Crockett. Because of Disney, the world cannot forget what made America, and ultimately what made Disney– laissez-faire capitalism. Hollywood Studios is a shrine to laissez-faire capitalism, to the free flow of ideas before the labor unions infested the industry during World War II with a dirty bomb of the kind of ideals that were destroying the world—collectivism. 
