It is sad that there are members of our American Republic who are so naive that they cannot see the mechanisms of evil that work behind the masses of collective rule. Even though publicly there appears to be great differences behind the recently deceased Hugo Chavez who was the socialist dictator of Venezuela and President Obama, the big differences are in the checks and balances in The United States with the Constitutional power given to individual people and the House and Senate. Idealistically Chavez and Obama might as well be identical twins, as Obama if left unchecked would undoubtedly run America in the same fashion that Chavez ran Venezuela—which appears to be Obama’s intention. Progressives believe that if they don’t name an evil, that it doesn’t exist so they expect Obama’s actions to go un-noticed because the public façade is named to be conducted under the umbrella of goodness.
Yet real reporters like Bill O’Reilly are just now beginning to arrive at the dark place that many of us in the Tea Party movement have been declaring all along only to be shrugged off as conspiracy. Is President Obama intentionally attempting to harm The United States through economic collapse? I have stated that I believe Obama is doing just that and the evidence is stacking up in my favor. But even mainstream reporters who might lean conservative, but attempt to be as fair as possible are starting to catch on that there is something really wrong with President Obama. This led to one of the most explosive, and frustrated interviews that O’Reilly has had in many years when the liberal talk show host Alan Colmes attempted to defend Obama’s fiscal failures with the lure of conspiracy.
Colmes as a progressive knows that the way to diffuse a question he can’t answer is to attack the interrogative with wild accretions such as daring O’Reilly to say that Obama is deliberately attempting to harm Americans—which in the court of public perception would appear to be too extreme for believability. Even though the facts point to such a reality, O’Reilly didn’t fall for it and turned the issue around on Colmes which became a violent exchange that I wish more conservatives would do. When conservatives buckle under accusations of fascism, racism, or conspiracy theory, and dance around the issue without getting angry at the strategy they find themselves losing to the Alan Colmes type progressives nearly 100% of the time. They end up like O’Reilly’s former back-up host John Kasich who is the current governor of Ohio as watered down versions of their former conservative selves. Even when people like Kasich win in polling and elections, conservativism loses to the Progressive who is the architect of madness. Colmes deserved what he got from O’Reilly and I would hope that more people would begin to defend themselves from the tyranny of the Progressive—because their work is sinister, deceitful, and disguised with smiling faces. Their evil is well documented and can easily be seen in countries like Venezuela who operated without the checks and balances of a Republic like The United States.
In that context the actions of Rand Paul should be common place in the Senate and not the exception that it was. America should function with the enthusiasm that was shown in the great old movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington where Jimmy Stewart filibustered the senate in a very similar fashion that Rand Paul did in his 13 hour standoff. Government is not supposed to be like a mound of insects serving a collective cause of unity, they are supposed to be a group of representatives who hash out their differences in verbal combat for the good of the country, and display that nobody is above the law—not even a President of The United States. America does not have a king, or a dictator, so they are not able to make decisions without accountability to other representatives of the Republic having an input. The facts and behavior behind President Obama show that he has a willingness to act without respect to these checks and balances, and this should raise concern among every American. Thankfully, Senator Rand Paul acted as a proper representative under tenuous conditions, and justice has been pursued in his filibuster to the benefit of all no matter what political persuasions may be. Right is right, and Paul acted in accord with the pursuit of truth, and justice—and the American way, which is truly unique on the world stage and should be the model every country across the planet uses for their own government. The spirit of that government is often confusing and mired in controversy, but the intention was captured so wonderfully in the film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and the Rand Paul Filibuster. The rest of the world should take notes.
I more heavily than ever support the Tea Party efforts of my friends in the Liberty Movement and there have been some intense discussions of late over beer, chicken wings, and flat screen televisions in dark corners of dank local pubs that have reminded me of how the Liberty Movement started in Boston during the years of 1750 to 1773. I see the same thing happening once again in America in these dark corners under hushed voices. Being a lover of Alan Eckert novels especially The Frontiersman, and Wilderness Empire which cover American development from 1720 through the early 1800’s from the East Coast to Illinois I have a love of information that covers that era. To date only The Last of the Mohicans really jumped into this time period successfully as Walt Disney attempted on several occasions to tell stories from the period without coming out like stale bread. The period of 1680 to about 1840 in America is one of the most violent, liberating, and exciting times in American history, yet it has been watered down by modern education to reflect through academic collectivism only the concerns of the Civil Rights debates of the 1850s to 1970s which were only the tail being wagged by the dog which began in the period of the First Great Awakening, roughly 1730 to 1770. So it was with some excitement that I placed Assassin’s Creed III into my Xbox to play after looking at it on my book shelf for nearly 4 months unopened, as I had other tasks to attend to over that duration.
The game is fun, and it’s wonderful to cut the heads off bad guys and do all the usual video game antics that make them so popular with young people. But Assassin’s Creed is more than just fun—it is deeply educational, and places the video game player in the sights, sounds, and politics of 1750 – 1773 America very accurately, much more than I anticipated. Within the first 15 hours of game play I took a journey from England to American aboard a four masted galleon that took 73 days. Life on the ship was brutally realistic, and even though I have read for years about such journeys, having the ability to walk around a ship, sleep, look-out across the water, talk to people working on the vessel and doing simple chores made the journey very real for me and gave me an appreciation for these boats and their tribulations that I have not received upon viewing actual replicas in port at Jamestown and other such places. In Assassin’s Creed III I have had the opportunity to walk the streets of Boston as they might have looked at the time and engaged in meetings in those same dimly lit taverns which reminded me very much of my present reality. I have met and interacted with Ben Franklin, William Johnston, George Washington, and Sam Adams just to name a few. I have found myself just walking around the streets aimlessly looking at all the street vendors, the ship yards, and various businesses in amazement. They have done in Assassin’s Creed what Walt Disney attempted to do with his Frontier Land in Disney World, which is recreate Old Boston with as much accuracy possible so that the essence of it would not be lost to time.
To get an idea of where Lexington is in relation to Boston and how the terrain outside of Old Boston might have looked to neighboring Native American tribes has been nothing short of stunning. The Native Americans speak in their native language with subtitles needing to be read, and I found that after a little while I was starting to understand some of the words in context to the situations without reading the subtitles. I could literally go on and on about the quality of Assassin’s Creed as a video game. It is an example of exception that has set a new high bar for video game development.
Yet I could not stop thinking that more kids have probably learned more about American history after playing Assassin’s Creed for 40 or 50 hours than they have in all their years of public education history classes—which makes the video game far more superior as an education tool than a stagnant teacher standing in front of a class writing on a chalk board. Assassin’s Creed would be a fun game if killing wasn’t even involved, but rather just interacting with the Founding Fathers and watching the slow gradual rebellion fester up against the English over a twenty year period. It is one thing to read about the occupation of British troops in Boston in 1770, but it is another to watch them patrolling the city and shoving you out-of-the-way if you walk in front of their formation to exert their authority, like what happens in Assassin’s Creed. I have caught myself saying ahhh, haaaa many times as things I’ve read in different books over the last thirty years came together for me in the video game where I suddenly had visual reference to tie it all together. The detail is immaculate, even down to the mechanics of riding horses as they splash about on a muddy street from a recent rain.
Being a history buff, I love to interact with these three-dimensional environments that modern video games afford. They complement my reading in a way that allows a very detailed picture to be painted in my mind, and connects many historical dots obtained from multiple sources. The games are made for the purposes of entertainment, but it is staggering to consider how effective they could be if they took themselves seriously as educational tools. As I examine the effectiveness of Assassin’s Creed III next to the stagnant education methods of even the best schools, it is obvious that public education is well down the wrong path, and they refuse to analyze their position in favor of something better. Not being a gambler I would bet everything that most young people today know more about George Washington not because of the books by Glenn Beck, or the efforts of 12 years of public education, but because they played Assassin’s Creed III during the fall of 2012 and winter of 2013 and had to speak to him, go on missions that he sent them on, and watch history take place in a computer game instead of a solitary, bored individual standing at the front of a class spewing “teacher breath,” (a combination of coffee and teeth in the first stages of gingivitis) toward an uninterested class that has no context to apply any information to. Video games provide that context, and to date, none better than Assassin’s Creed III. Not even the great Sid Meyer games did so well to place a player into the streets of history to interact with its authors as equals so that truth can be grappled with. That is the power of a video game to become an opportunity to improve education effectiveness.
On the day after the sequestration implemented from the federal government on March 2nd Darryl Parks from 700 WLW covered the events that transpired in the aftermath as government officials calculated that society might come to an end because of the cuts. Well, in his usual fashion Darryl brought some non-partisan, non emotional, non group affiliated analysis regarding the sequestration cuts to the light of reality. As many might be afraid of the rhetoric coming out of Washington Darryl put into the context the extent of the cuts in a fashion that everyone can understand. The ridiculous amounts that Darryl laid out in his broadcast, and that I break down below in written form are so small that they aren’t even worth discussing. Yet all the news broadcasts on television cried like infants for over three weeks along with virtually every politician, especially Barack Obama about the costs of these cuts to the social fabric of American society. So without further fanfare have a listen to Darryl’s broadcast as it was given on March 2nd at 9 AM in the morning.
Most people start to blank out when such large numbers are expressed so they cannot get their mind around such concepts. Looting politicians like Barack Obama know this, and have successfully hidden the extremity of these federal numbers behind relatable faces, like children, National Park employees, government janitorial staff and so on—so that tax payers will be inclined to vote in favor of more tax increases to help out their fellow Americans. The federal government essentially uses the same tactics that we have been fighting locally in the school levy debates—they clearly manipulate the numbers in hopes that nobody can wrap their mind around the truth. However, Darryl Parks did better than President Obama in showing the hypocrisy of the federal diatribes by putting into a context that everyone can understand the amount of the sequestration cuts that prove just how small they really are—and how much politicians in Washington and the doomsday press blew out of proportion the extent of the damage—which proves that none of them can be trusted.
Darryl did the hard math and discovered that it was much easier to understand the 44 billion in cuts coming from the sequestration reductions that went into effect on March 1st by proportionally breaking it down against something that virtually everyone can relate to, a McDonalds Big Mac extra value meal. Darryl took the known value of 1320 calories that are contained within a Big Mac extra value meal consisting of a Big Mac sandwich, a medium Coke and a large order of French fries that normally contain 87 individual fries within the container they come in and for sake of argument gave that value of 1320 an equal value to the federal budget. Now we know that 44 billion in cuts is only 1/80th of the total federal budget, so if we apply the same reduction to the Big Mac value meal, we discover that we will only lose 2 ½ French fries from our feast
Most people eating such a meal would not notice a 2 ½ fry reduction, and in the society at large, particularly the 130 million Americans who pay nearly all the federal tax, they won’t notice any reductions at the federal level. The only people who will notice the reductions are those who have built their careers in the flimsy existence of government and find themselves jobless in the sequestration cuts. It will be discovered that many of those reduced jobs were not necessary to begin with just as many of the local schools who have had to reduce their staffs have found that they can still operate with fewer employees as they work to meet their budgets. The impacted parties are those who work for government at wages that are too high for jobs that were created by government for government reasons.
Nobody in their right mind can argue that losing 2 ½ fries per Big Mac value meal will ever be noticed and will drive down the quality of the meal itself. Just like the sequestration cuts don’t even come close to bringing our federal government into the light of reality when it comes to fiscal spending of those poor 130 million tax payers who are covering the whole bill. Yet everyone who covered the sequestration in a negative way is guilty of openly misleading the American people with radical rhetoric that belongs in the basement of old hippie flower children engulfed in pot smoke as they watch reruns of Sesame Street and think themselves sophisticated contributors of society. In reality, much, much, much more needs to be cut from our extra value meals if we wish as a nation to lose any weight and take measures to truly get our budget under control. Taking away 2 ½ French fries out of 87 won’t do the job—and is not even worth the discussion which has transpired.
The question that arises from Libertarians is how can government control what goes on in the bedroom of citizens, or dictate what an individual puts into their bodies? For me, government can’t, and shouldn’t be in the business of social behavioral regulation. That type of thing would normally be regulated to the spiritual pursuits of an individual which would create the goals people strive to live within. This would work fine if people shared similar values, such as a majority of the population wished to live by Christen values or Buddhist ideas, but in the absence of such social conviction there is a kind of free-for-all mentality that causes some to impose their freedoms on others who don’t share their values. So a law is necessary under those conditions, and a penalty for that law must be swift so it is respected by the public as a shared value.
For instance, if I’m in line at Kings Island, a popular amusement park in Southern Ohio and there is a guy in front of me smoking a marijuana cigarette, he is making a decision based on his personal liberty to impose upon me the expelled air from his lungs that contain within it chemicals I do not want in my body. Currently the law protects him from me, because I cannot just go up and knock his face into another dimension as he imposed upon me the marijuana smoke from his lungs. Because using drugs in public is illegal, the conflict is averted, where it wouldn’t be if marijuana use in public were legalized. There is nothing more disgusting than such public displays where the careless use of intoxicants can be seen coming out of the mouth of an individual and the only way you can prevent yourself from ingesting it yourself is to hold your breath. Such a thing is nearly as disgusting as seeing discarded cigarettes on the ground of a parking lot, or walkway that has been saturated with rain and are smashed flat. When in a public place I am always cautious to avoid stepping on them because I don’t want to drag that trash into my car, or my home as the old cigarette might become lodged into the tread of my shoes to fall out within my property littering it. I am just as cautious about looking for places in public that people have spit on the ground. I do not want to step in the spittle of some other person and drag their chemical intoxicants into the carpet of my vehicle on the way home. The rights of liberty from the person who spit on the sidewalk do not supersede my rights to maintain my property free of their discarded saliva, or cigarettes.
With liberty comes responsibility and if the social trends of the day leaned in the direction of social valor, then I might embrace the Libertarian designation a bit more amiably. I have no desire to visit the city of Amsterdam because of their loose drug laws, and now that Colorado has passed legislation legalizing pot, I may never visit that state in the years to come. The very idea of a body of people who collectively wish to participate in detrimental drug use is disgusting, and changes the way I view the entire state. I find the tendency to use drugs even for bi-polar disorders to be deplorable. I would like to see the human spirit overcome shortcomings and illnesses in the most self-reliant fashion possible—and I don’t see the Libertarian political movement going in that direction. Instead, it appears to be a happy middle place between what the Republicans once stood for, and what the hippie liberals promote actively–human weakness.
I hate more laws, and encourage breaking unjust laws as the situations dictate. The ultimate question is who decides what good and proper social behavior is—is it the Republicans, Democrats, or Libertarians? The answer is in none of them. Before the kind of freedom that Libertarians are striving for can ever occur the human race has to have a desire to behave with quality. They have to want to live quality lives and to respect the quality of other peoples’ lives. Without a firm definition of quality and what makes one thing better than another one persons freedom becomes another person’s hell. Without a spiritual bonding agent that is shared between one group of people and another, freedoms will collide and impose on unwarranted victims the pursuits of less stable personalities and their flaws.
If anyone thinks that Jessie Jackson Jr. is alone in his fall from grace, guess again. Jackson is only the latest to get caught dipping is hand into campaign donations to buy Rolex watches and other tid-bits of pleasure while working in government. Politicians who would otherwise be unsuccessful in business find they can become respected in public office, but they lack the mental aptitude to resist temptation making them for the most part scandalous bands of thieves always looking to partner up with a financial pirate or public con artist. The Jackson case is fresh from the press and shows to what extent the trouble in government runs. I would say that Jessie Jackson’s tendency to throw his wife under the bus in his plea deal to get reduced jail time says everything about the quality of person Jackson is and all politicians in general. Read more about his case at the link below:
The trouble with politicians is that they represent the low quality constituents that America has become. Just the other day as I was listening to Bill Cunningham on the radio, he was rather animated over John Boehner’s long time position against earmarks in congressional bills. Cunningham on the air stated that his golf buddy John should drop a few billion dollars worth of earmarks into some bill to pay for the new bridge that needs to replace the Brent Spence connecting I-75 in Cincinnati and Covington, Kentucky. “Nobody would notice,” Cunningham said. “Everyone else does it, so why doesn’t Boehner?” That statement ladies and gentlemen is why we have so many scum bags in politics. The more money that is thrown into the public treasury, there are far too many hands who wish to take it and use it for some pet project to satisfy the whims of any of the multiple lobbyists on K-Street. Wall Street to hedge their bets and keep government looters out of their pockets is happy to include politicians in their scams to keep the law off their back. Politicians like Jackson can’t resist the call of easy money, so they start taking it and buy themselves expensive watches, and real estate investments off money that isn’t technically theirs. Boehner is a Washington insider who considers himself an honest politician compared to the rest because he has a long-term policy against putting earmarks in congressional bills, but at the same time his golf buddies who claim to be conservative hawks want him to take money out of the treasury to pay for pet projects in the Speaker’s district—which is just as corrupt as when some politician on the other side of the country does it.
The trouble is in the lack of personal responsibility, the disconnect between the value of money and the value of the people stealing it. When people of little personal value have their hands on money of great value, the attraction is unfathomable. When Jessie Jackson Jr. took money to buy lavish gifts for himself, he did it to fill a void in himself that lacks personal character. When Bill Cunningham urges John Boehner to install earmarks in some meaningless congressional bill to raise the billions of dollars for a new bridge, he is making such statements from a lack of personal value. The money is there to be taken, so somebody should take it and use it on something needed. When Elizabeth Warren asks why there is a cozy relationship between Wall Street and politicians on Capitol Hill, she is really positioning herself for a candidacy in 2016 for President. She doesn’t care about the corruption really, but rather sticking to the progressive party talking points that wants to destroy Wall Street while making waves that place her on the national scene. Politics is all screwed up and is run by thieves and con artists because the values of our society are so bad that nobody sees such things as wrong any more. Nobody wishes to uphold a moral order, so there is no consequence for actions. That is unless, as in the case of Jessie Jackson Jr., he understates his income on his tax returns. Then, justice is swift and true. Government must have its money to pay for all the bandits that hold office there, and wish to make sweet-heart deals with scum bags on K-Street. When taxes aren’t paid, even Al Capone was sent to jail—because government is not about caring for people in a republic. It’s about making politicians rich off the backs of extortion and shell games of injustice that makes Las Vegas look like a church on a Sunday morning.
Considering that I spent a good part of last weekend preparing DVD copies of my videos to prove a tax filing status to satisfy the IRS, the news that Facebook isn’t paying any Federal taxes caught my attention. Facebook (spelled with a little “f” to prove they don’t take themselves too seriously—which is the cool thing to do these days—won’t pay a penny in Federal income tax. Rather, they are getting money back after making over a billion dollars in profits. Shhhhhhhh, do you hear that……………………………..keep listening……………………….if you pay attention you will not hear a damn thing from the Obama White House when a huge financial contributor to his progressive causes dodges payment of their “fair share” in social obligations. More on the story is at the link below.
Now, I don’t begrudge Facebook the ability to make money, or file their taxes in creative ways to avoid getting pillaged over tax obligations. Taxes are legalized theft of property owner resources by a mob like government, so I applaud at every opportunity free enterprise and bold innovation to avoid the money collecting trolls calling themselves IRS agents. The trouble is, if the company getting caught doing such a thing were a company associated with the Republican Party, the Tea Party, or individuals who typically cause the IRS trouble, that harassment for not paying a mythical “fair share” would be aggressive. It has long been stated by people like me that the IRS (Internal Revenue Service=Tax Collectors) is not about fairness, it’s about control and is the oldest game in the book of manipulation from one entity over another.
But remember the constant utterances from the political left all during the Presidential election about Mitt Romney only paying 14% of his many, many millions to the IRS and the accusation that he was a bad, greedy man because he didn’t want to pay his fair share to the government. Even President Obama himself poked fun at Romney for hiding money in the Cayman Islands and attempting to shield his wealth from the grubby hand of progressive looters. Romney paid more in taxes last year than the $1 billion dollar profit generating free website Facebook. In fact, 49% of us did. Anyone who pays Federal taxes—which is just under half the nation–paid more in taxes than Facebook, but why.
Dear reader, if you want to be treated with the same respect that Facebook has, and not have IRS agents show up at your house asking for DVDs to justify tax status, or grill over all your financial records to prove that you are telling the truth, all you have to do is give a few million dollars to the organized crime syndicate called the Democratic Party and all will be forgiven. The hidden story behind Facebook is that if you pay the troll, the troll won’t come and eat you and your family. But if you try not to pay, then every law written in the IRS books will be brought to justice against any who dare question their authority, or avoid paying them the money they believe they have coming to them just for being born.
The hypocrisy is obvious. Not a peep came out of President Obama on the campaign trail following his State of the Union speech about how Facebook was evil in trying to avoid paying taxes. Not a word was said that executives at Facebook didn’t feel an ounce of guilt as they took their bonus checks and went on lavish vacations and rolled in the massive profits they generated by selling collected data to third party interests—(cough)…….like the government. After all, who pays Facebook a billion dollars? To learn how Facebook makes money, click the link below.
Once again the real nature of government business is easy to see and right out in the open for anyone with the guts to look. Obama has said nothing about the tax evasion of yet another one of his financial contributors and this flies in the face of progressive theory in ways liberals on the political left chose to ignore. Their idea of a utopian society forcefully provided through violence, extortion and massive wealth redistribution will never work because in the end, they are as greedy as the most corrupt oil company, the most openly capitalistic, profit generating Midwestern business. Obama doesn’t say anything because he wants easy access to Mark Zuckerberg and the young voters who think that Facebook is cool, and hip. Obama also needed the campaign donations from people like Zuckerberg to keep him in power over Republican rivals so turning a blind eye to tax evasion on behalf of Facebook is to his benefit.
The IRS is not about justice, it’s about protection money. If you are on the wrong side of the current President, the law will be used to hunt you down to prove your innocence–no stone will be left unturned. If you do not pay your protection money to the government through campaign donations, you will be publicly ridiculed, and perhaps even thrown in jail for not paying your taxes. But if you are a huge company that puts money in the mobster’s pockets indirectly, you can go free and even profit more because they will help you become more profitable with public endorsements and official cabinet seats within the administration. If President Obama really cared about the poor, the down-trodden, the debt ridden malcontent who’s been unemployed for over a year, he’d publicly call out Facebook for dodging their taxes the same way he accused Mitt Romney of doing during the last presidential campaign. But instead, Obama updated his Facebook status and bragged to his daughters that he knows the CEO of Facebook personally, and hopes that it makes him a better dad in the eyes of innocence that are blind to the dirty tricks and scandals that go on behind the cubicles of the IRS.
Below is a clip of what Kelly has been able to do as President of Springboro schools.
If public education were about actually teaching children, I would be all for it. If little boys wanted to grow up to become Thomas Jefferson and little girls Annie Oakley or Amelia Earhart I would support public education in less than one second. Instead, public education inspires young people to be more like Kim Kardashian and Honey Boo Boo. When I speak against public education and college it is not because I don’t love learning. It is because those institutions are reeking with liberalism and are teaching our youth everything wrong. They are filled with teaching positions held by liberals scared of the real world and in no position to teach the youth of American anything! The evidence of this liberal presence in all tax payer funded schools is overwhelming, and is vastly ignored by the adult population because the knowledge is inconvenient. Parents fear losing their day time babysitting service, which is all public education really amounts to these days—which is quite tragic.
Many people today would be shocked to learn that in the year 1636 Harvard was founded by Congregationalists to train for ministers. Yale in 1701 and Dartmouth in 1769 were founded with the same intention. The College of William and Mary was founded to train Anglican ministers. In fact many of the early education institutions in America particularly those guided by minds like Thomas Jefferson who founded The University of Virginia as a multi denominational school committed to higher learning, emphasized critical thinking, and a yearning for philosophy in their studies. Education in the early days of America was committed to more than just landing a good job with a high salary. The students were encouraged by their teachers to be good people, and to operate under moral conviction. Education in America during the time of the Founding Fathers intended to elevate the soul of the students through education not to reprogram them into some small-minded perpetrator of liberalism.
It is educators like Arnol Elam who have yelled to the world that good men like Founding Father Thomas Jefferson should be discredited by an affair with his 15-year-old slave Sally Hemmings—because the tenants of progressive philosophy must tear down Jefferson and those like him so that history will not measure progressivism against the philosophy of Scottish Common Sense, that are most guilty of destroying our society with moral depravity and watered down educations. But guess what? I measure Progressivism against the philosophy of Scottish Common Sense that founded American very unfavorably, so unfavorably that I reject modern education because of it.
The Scottish School of Common Sense was a school of philosophy that flourished in Scotland in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Its roots can be found in responses to the writings of such philosophers as John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume, where its most prominent members were, among others, Dugald Stewart, Thomas Reid andWilliam Hamilton, who combined Reid’s approach with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. The peculiar influence it had on philosophers elsewhere in Europe, not to mention in the United States, exemplified by the American pragmatistCharles Sanders Peirce, is of a considerable magnitude.
One central concern of the school was to defend “common sense” against philosophical paradox and scepticism. It argued that common-sense beliefs govern the lives and thoughts even of those who avow non-commonsensical beliefs and that matters of common sense are within “the reach of common understanding”.[citation needed] The qualities of its works were not generally consistent; Edward S. Reed writes, e.g., “[Whereas] Thomas Reid wished to use common sense to develop philosophical wisdom, much of this school simply wanted to use common sense to attack any form of intellectual change.”[2]
In regard to the affair of Jefferson and Hemings it is highly unlikely that Jefferson even had intercourse with another woman after his wife died, let alone had an affair with Hemings. It was largely because of Jefferson that slavery began to be examined as immoral in The United States, steps that Lincoln would later utilize to abolish the practice for the first time in human history. And Jefferson was NOT having sex with underage girls as progressive modern educators hell-bent on embracing human weakness wish to slander and propagate to further their agenda of social destruction. Jefferson it would appear—especially once he was over forty, was far more concerned with reading, writing, and scientific thought than plotting ways he could have sex with a woman for a mere two hours of pleasure. Only an immoral progressive educator would think such a thing—who has nothing going on in their minds or private lives to indicate to them that people think any different from them.
Imagine the typical modern-day school superintendent who has a doctoral degree in education—in liberal studies, in progressive social advancement–that is committed to attacking America’s version of Scottish Common Sense, who don’t even have understanding enough to see that Kasich wasn’t stealing money from the poor to give to rich schools, but that it is the other way around. Modern education is not about teaching children big ideas about science, philosophy, or even spiritual awareness. It’s about creating good jobs for progressive minded human beings who seek to impose their small-minded world view onto all tax payers with the blanket assumption that education is universally good—when in fact it only advances thoughts favoring liberalism and rejects common sense entirely. The product of modern education is bad. It creates bad, immoral characters, and it is responsible for much of the misery that can be seen around the world to this very day. It is truly sad that dusty old relics such as the Founding Fathers of The United States were far more intellectually sound with all the limits of their day than the modern educator with far more tools at their disposal—but it’s true. Educators like Arnol Elam see only one thing—money and progressive causes in the daily conduct of their lives and they disgust me. I despise having to contribute money to such people with my tax dollars. I hate that a small portion of my money goes to the salary of Arnol Elam to propagate such disgusting verbiage to his school district that young people will learn and carry into their adulthoods.
There isn’t much in this world that I love more than books. I read every single day of my life, and most days I read for many hours. I understand people like Thomas Jefferson, and yearn to see his kind of America. I do not want to understand people like Arnol Elam. Educators like that are small people with small minds and they are teaching young people to be small adults—and that absolutely disgusts me. It is not the job of the American tax payer to throw more money at education so that people like Arnol Elam can have a good job on the public dime. The job of education is to teach young people how to be successful adults, and that job is not being done. So in that respect I see every public education issue as my problem because my money is being used to advance it. If I’m going to pay for public education I’m going to get a return on my investment. If public education takes my money, they will get my criticism especially when they fail to do the job as I think the job should be done. My measure for good education is people like Thomas Jefferson who placed education on the highest level of human thought and spent his life learning every day and wanted to share that love of learning with all American citizens. I do the same, and understand that. But advocates of a faulty product such as modern education like what Arnol Elam represents are parasites to common sense; they seek to advance the basic tenants of Immanuel Kant and the European Enlightenment. Jefferson spoke of that same European Enlightenment by saying “the comparisons of our governments with those of Europe are like a comparison of heaven and hell.” And so too is my idea of education compared to Arnol Elam, it is for this reason that I reject modern education in public and college models. I see them as lost ships guided far out to sea under the idiocy of modern progressives who built their philosophies off Kant and the European Enlightenment monstrosities. Such things may sound like disconnected rubbish when attached to superintendents like Arnol Elam, but the roots of progressivism are in his concerns, his political actions to move the city of Franklin to political action against a governor in Kasich that is trying to reform education spending. Districts being run by my friend Kelly Kohls are cast in a bad light by people like Arnol Elam because it is Springboro that is trying to emerge from the darkness of liberalism that has so infected every single education institution in America, breaking the universal commitment to collectivism which so terrifies progressives. As a conservative, anti-Federalist, Tea Party loving American, the liberalism being taught in public education is unacceptable and I’m not happy with it. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t spend one dime of my money on it. Instead though, because of big mouth, greedy, small-minded educators like Arnol Elam who cries out for more money at every turn to fuel their progressive diatribes my money is taken from me and wasted on liberal institutions in the form of public education without my consent—and that is not acceptable.
So it is not true that I hate education just like it is not true that Thomas Jefferson had an affair with Sally Heming’s. Both falsehoods have been spread by progressive enemies of Scottish Common Sense in order to advance modern progressive activism rooted in European Enlightenment. I love education, but I reject the liberal institutions that currently possess those houses of learning. Instead I advocate individual learning so to bypass the liberal control of the education process so that young minds can return their concerns to common sense and a life-long study of morality and goodness that they can carry not just into a job making them subjects to consumerism, but in every aspect of their lives from being good parents, to responsible voters, to committed community contributors, to thriving human beings. If education is not concerned with these things, it is worthless. The evidence to the state of modern education is in the words of Arnol Elam and his cries to steal more money from the rich to fuel his progressive school district toward the destruction of more youthful minds and their last hope for a clean and productive life.
Education is more than cheerleading, band, football practices, and art class. Education is philosophy, critical thinking, and moral grounding along with igniting a life-long yearning for knowledge. Education in the state that 2013 America holds is a deplorable excuse for human achievement that does little if anything to advance human progress. Instead, it seems committed to carrying mankind backwards to the tribal villages of Africa or the human sacrificing city-state of the centrally planned communities of the Aztecs and Mayas. I wouldn’t offer modern education to a dog I cared about, let alone a child I loved. So it has no value to me as a viable tax expense and there are few politicians qualified to offer commentary on the subject when their primary concerns in life is the quality of their golf game instead of the quality of their life. Thomas Jefferson did not, and would not have an affair with Sally Heming’s or any other sexual representation of feminine magic. Such a thought is hard for people who are still intellectually inept to grapple with, but sex is not the only concern for the human mind. As anyone who has a love of learning can attest to, and has lived a full enough life to tell the difference, books and learning are far more rewarding than sex. Thomas Jefferson in all probability spent the last 45 years or more of his life sexless completely because his mind was so active. Modern educators who seek to teach young people about sex in the 4th grade can’t imagine such a person as Thomas Jefferson—and because they can’t are not qualified to teach anybody anything, let alone a child. Thomas Jefferson to me represents how education should be in America and anything less than his approach is worthless and not worth any amount of money. If the desire in public education were to carry every child into the life of such a classic founding father, I would support it unequivocally. Instead, modern deconstructionist education seeks to tear Jefferson down, so that people like Arnol Elam can be seen by the public to be viewed as an equal measure of a man, instead of a money-grubbing thief with their gluttonous eyes on the public treasury.
Tail of the Dragon is about rebellion, it’s about living honestly even if the result of the honesty makes a person an outlaw in the eyes of politics. It’s also about romance, and the importance of relationships. It is a romantic, rebellious, ruckus story that challenges our current legal system in ways that deserve to be analyzed without lenses fashioned through fear. I appreciate when I receive so many comments about the story citing that they hope it is made into a movie, which I have discussed in other articles. I have a great love of old Jimmy Stewart films—especially Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life, and even though Hollywood doesn’t make films like that any more, I am happy that Tail of the Dragon evokes such a reaction from its readers. But unlike those classic character driven films, I take the action that is expected in a car chase story to an entirely new level that many find shocking—which is the intention. There are some action sequences in this story that are thoughts that have bounced around in my head for over 40 years. I have a great love of car jumps, car crashes, and high-speed chases that are integral parts of my character. They go back to my first toys that I played with as a kid, to the first bicycle I ever had, to my soap box derby racing days all the way up to my own early driving days that paralleled Rick Steven’s own life in many ways. The results of many years of high-speed driving, several car crashes and many, many, many close calls are found in Tail of the Dragon. But action by itself is not enough, the characters have to have a reason for their epic rebellion, and they must have heart and soul. It is a rewarding experience when, as a writer, all these elements can be captured and placed within the context of a story. But it is even better when readers of the story understand and feel what the characters are going through as can be reflected in the two reviews below reprinted from Amazon.com.
I’ve not finished reading this fun-filled ride on the wild side yet but what I’ve read so far is amazing! The characters seem well-developed and the high-speed car chases are amazingly detailed! I think if I were Rick Stevens GPS I would probably explode!!! I cant wait to see how this rollercoaster concludes!!!!
This was an outstanding book. Once you get started you can’t put it down. And if you do you can’t stop thinking about what is going to happen next. Once the story is set it moves very fast. You can see many comparisons to that state of our nation in the things that happen in this book. Rich has nailed it down in story form. I can picture every moment as if I were there. The setting is familiar to many and promises to give the chills to make the hair stand up on your neck.
There is nothing better than taking on “the system” at a time when it needs taken on more than ever. You can insert any of today’s leaders in politics in the places of the political characters in the book and see why things came to a head like they did, because it is fixing to happen in America in front of our eyes. The message in this book should be a wake up call to stand strong and firm to protect America the way it was founded.
Everyone needs a copy
My publisher has been very supportive, and I appreciate them for it. But they, especially in the beginning were very concerned that my small government views would isolate half of the book buying public, and in the short run they were right. However, I believe in what I write and will stand behind the actions of Rick Steven’s in his fictional rebellion against the Federal Government that is the start of the next Civil War in America because the winds are changing, and our society I believe will be very hungry for stories like Tail of the Dragon in that emerging future. If other publishers and Hollywood in general looks down upon the exploits of Rick Steven’s and his very rambunctious wife in the ultimate car chase that thumbs its nose at every law that politicians have concocted for the human race, in these modern times, rebellion against big government is coming back into fashion, similar to how it was when Star Wars, Smokey and the Bandit and The Blues Brothers came to cinemas in 1970s America. There is a little of all those films in my most recent novel as I dredged up my day dreams from the third grade of car crashes and polices chases with the mind only a child can produce in great vibrancy. America embraced rebellion once upon a time against big government and they will again, and the readers who are enjoying Tail of the Dragon now are ahead of the rest, who in the years to come will join the ranks of lovers, rebels, and small government advocates who find themselves enamored by Rick Stevens high-speed exploits with his bikini wearing wife and a 200 MPH classic muscle car that runs off vegetable oil fueled by restaurant garbage.
I found that meeting bizarre. I was being looked at because of my Midwestern upbringing, but at the same time I was expected to reject that upbringing to the greater cause of “collectivism, and secular progressive” commitment in the all-encompassing umbrella of liberalism. I would not doubt that many of the actors above would have privately expressed views that reflect their Midwestern conservative upbringing, but in Hollywood, those views are expected to be shelved if that star expects to stay employed. It all starts with a lunch meeting like the one at Katsuya but after 10 years of such political compromise, and many millions of dollars later, those same actors find themselves wearing t-shirts of Che in public because their groups of filmmaking friends think its funny—and cool. I didn’t come close to passing the test and was politely driven back to the airport with smiles and handshakes by shoulders that became colder with each mile that LAX grew closer on the odometer.
I am not willing to trade my beliefs for millions of dollars, so it is unlikely that Tail of the Dragon will ever be made into a movie within the next 20 years, because of the Walt Disney warning. So it should come as no surprise if I reveal here what I have revealed in private to very liberal-minded people in wonderful restaurants like Katsuya over some of the best sushi in The United States—that liberals are some of the most disgusting creatures ever to find the rays of sunlight shining upon their skin. I have never cared for liberals even though they have a right to exist, as not all people must think alike. But the trouble with liberals is that they require my money to live. I on the other hand don’t require anything from liberals. I don’t want their money, their services, their government, their collectivism—I want nothing from them. I don’t even want the military that is offered by the Federal government. For me, the Second Amendment and the other Bill of Rights is all I really want out of government.
Liberals have not been shy, especially in Hollywood of making fun of conservatives—like me—so it is only fair that they get it back in return, especially since conservatives pay for their existence with tax dollars. Liberals in relation to the kind of people I know in the Midwest—in Paul Harvey’s America, are destructive enterprises of faulty minds. They are parasites to everything that is good. They represent virtually everything that is wrong with modern America and the spoof titled “So God Made a Liberal” is sadly all too accurate. They are embarrassments to the human condition and destructive to every life they come in contact with. It is amazing that these very same vermin lecture conservative America on righteousness, and justice. Only such despicable human beings could claim that the same Republican Party that put an end to slavery is against Civil Rights. Only a pathetic disregard for facts could ever give a liberal moral authority over the conservative and paint the later as evil, when it is actually the former.
Liberals are such terrible creatures that I would not even pretend to be one for all the money in the world—because such a world would lose all value and money would no longer mean anything. After all, that is what the liberal does; it robs life of all value so that no thing or no person can be judged against those values. This is why people become liberal, is because they fear judgment against values—because they assume they will come up short on that judgment. So to protect themselves and their careers, it is safer to pick professions where the bosses also fear judgment—like what the film industry has become under the microscope of thousands of entertainment publications and critics in every newspaper. Liberalism centered on no judgment is appealing to the weak and malicious because their acts of destruction can proceed without risk to their personal integrity, because integrity has been minimized by the concept of liberalism.
If God made a liberal on the 9th day as the video above suggests, he did it to bring Armageddon to the Earth and to create the End of Days. A liberal does not bring productivity to a business or justice to the wronged—a liberal only creates chaos, menace, and terror by way of social values stripped away until they mean nothing. As funny as the video might be in a metaphorical way, I cannot say that the humor is excessive by way of exaggeration, but funny because it’s true. If Paul Harvey’s monologue expressed the values of the Midwest from years ago, this new rendition called “So God Made a Liberal” expresses the sad hopes of a couple of Hollywood producers in Katsuya who were more concerned about recruiting people to work with who shared their views of no value than a conservative voice that middle America is hungry to hear. Or people raised in those sacred lands who quickly reject their values in trade for work like a common prostitute will declare their love for anyone who pays them the proper sum for their love-making. The liberal is a degenerate species of human kind that produces only destruction and malice. Liberals are good for only undoing the creations of the conservative, the representation of good, of justice, and of honor.
For me, I’ll stick with Paul Harvey and his vision of conservative America, because it is only there that growth for the human race can take place. There is no dollar amount that could sway my opinion on the matter. As I told the letter writer honoring my latest novel, yes, I think Tail of the Dragon would make a cool movie, but it’s unlikely for that to ever happen. It’s not because the story is wrong for the silver screen, but rather because it does not fit within the confines of liberalism—which is quite intentional. The story is about values and fighting to protect those values, and there is no writer in Hollywood who could remove that core tenet from the context without destroying what the novel is about. Liberalism will stop at no limit to destroy a threat to its existence, and in the case of conservatives, it is more important to destroy or convert conservatives away from their Midwest roots so that liberals can monopolize bad behavior to the extent that they can then call them good—and people will finally believe it. Liberals seek to turn conservatives into their kind with the same kind of domination that a pot-head drug user intends when they purchase a killer snake to display in their living rooms. The pot-head wishes to show the world that they are in control of such a killer as they scoop up the big snake and put it in a glass display to be confined there so long as the pot-head feeds the snake rats and mice enough to stay fat, dumb, and happy. So too has Hollywood done to the stars of the Midwest, fed them plenty till those free-thinking humans ate from liberal hands and proved to the world that the liberal can control the majesty of the conservative with the promise of easy food, and some damn good sushi at Katsuya.
Watch closely, and very carefully…………………………………………………………….God made a liberal so that people like the guy below wouldn’t have to feel guilty about all the bad decisions they made in their life…………………as a direct result of…………………….liberalism. Which came first–the chicken or the egg………………the loser or the liberal?
Not all things at the Lakota School System have been bad. I personally like the treasurer for Lakota, Jenni Logan. She is very competent and is more than able to manage a multimillion dollar budget. School board members Ben Dibble, Ray Murray, and Linda O’Conner I personally like, even though they are way to the political left of me. I think they mean well. And the current spokesman Randy Oppenheimer seems to be a pretty honest person with his heart in the right place. Even though I think spokesmen for public education should be illegal, Randy is not bad at his job. Recently in the Hamilton Journal Randy gave an honest assessment of Lakota’s financial situation that deserves recognition. He stated along with reports from many other local schools regarding Governor Kasich’s new education budget that Lakota had been planning for a reduction in state funding so the news that cuts would not be forthcoming was seen as a budget surplus. The quote from the paper can be seen below with a link to the article following.
“Lakota Local Schools — with enrollment around 16,625 — is set to receive $35.6 million in 2013; and would receive $4.1 million or 11.6 percent more the first year, and $849,318 or 2.1 percent the second year. “We had projected a cut in funding, and the governor made his comments (last week) and indicated we couldn’t be cut,” said Lakota spokesman Randy Oppenheimer. “Any increase in funding is good news.”
That statement says that at least some of the management team at Lakota is crunching the numbers properly. At this point I have my doubts but logic would dictate that Lakota shouldn’t ask for another school levy for more than a decade since their student enrollment is set to decline over that time span. When Lakota was asking for school levies every 6 months a couple of years ago and we were fighting like cats and dogs Lakota had a student population of over 18,000. By the time The United States elects another president Lakota’s enrollment should hover just over 10,000, and I would expect that the staff of over 2000 employees would have to be cut to reflect that loss in demand. There may even be a combination of schools where some of the buildings will sit empty for lack of need. This is good news for the tax payers of Lakota as they should be able to save millions upon millions in staff that costs a lot of money in salary and benefits. If Lakota is smart, like some of the people who have emerged within the last couple of years have shown themselves to be, they wouldn’t ask for another levy till well after 2020. Their tax base will stabilize, new businesses continue to move into the area which contributes money to that base consistently—which should flood the market with new money once the Liberty Way development takes off in 2014, and home sales from the Carriage Hill development where Homearoma is taking place in the summer of 2013 will contribute revenue per household well above the 250K per pupil tax base needed to maintain a funding model of 20 mills. CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO LEARN MORE ABOUT CARRIAGE HILL.
Those are all wonderful and exciting things. Carriage Hill and the Liberty Way shopping complex will naturally expand the tax base while student enrollment will be declining rapidly bringing down the cost demands at the Lakota School System, if management does not give away the kitchen sink to the employees with excessively high labor contracts. I would think that it would be worth a reasonable salary of between 50K per year to 60K per year for a 10 to 20 year veteran of education to teach at Lakota where the kids are nice, the parents care about their children, and the community is thriving versus going after 70K to 80K per year in salary teaching in a district like CPS which is a declining community because the taxes are too high and there are way too many parents on government assistance, which statistically leads to poverty and crime.
The home owners who purchase homes ranging from $700,000 to $1.2 million at the new Carriage Hill development are not the types of families who bring 2.1 children into a school district seeking to flood the market with a desire to for free babysitting while they work an average job at P & G, climbing up their personal career ladder. The people looking to purchase homes in Carriage Hill will be successful people in their own right and most likely will find instruction for their children in private schools or tutors and won’t use the services of Lakota anyway—even though like the rest of us without kids in the school, will have to pay for it.
I don’t like the idea of having to spend the next 40 years of my life paying for kids to attend Lakota through my property taxes. I don’t like the amount I pay now, so an increase is unfathomably ridiculous and I know that the people who invest in communities like Lakota won’t keep their money in the distinct if they find it continuously stolen from them by short term thinking levy supporters. The fight in the Lakota School District is not over children, it’s over whether or not Lakota becomes the next Fairfield—overrun with Section 8 housing and degraded property value or continues to increase in value like Indian Hill has over the years with managed development and growth. Chaos and reactive spending will not lead to perpetual prosperity. The growth of the Lakota district has more to do with residents fleeing high tax communities from around the country than the nice trees and school system that levy supporters believe. It is low taxes and prosperity that are the most attractive feature to the affluent property owner, and that must be protected if the district wishes to maintain its value in the future.
Lucky for people like Jenni Logan, Ben Dibble, Ray Murray, Linda O’Conner and Randy Oppenheimer the numbers work in their favor at Lakota to not just sustain themselves but survive well into the future maintaining an Excellent with Distinction rating that reflects the community it resides in, even if the most affluent send their kids to private instruction. I hope they accept the manageable challenge of allowing the enrollment rates to decrease as the tax base stabilizes without asking for further tax dollars. That would be the responsible thing to do in virtually every facet of community management. The worst thing they could do is listen to the short sided utterances of their levy hound real-estate agents who want a levy increase to lure in more panicky 30-year-old parents who cry over every drop of spilled milk and perceived threat to their children’s lives who are still children themselves and willing to spend infinite amounts of money on education to compensate for their own internal insecurities as parents. Those are not the kind of people who should shape the direction of our community for the future. So a lot rests on how the school management team above handles 2013 at the Lakota School District and the numbers that are now known before them.
Government is not supposed to be like a mound of insects serving a collective cause of unity, they are supposed to be a group of representatives who hash out their differences in verbal combat for the good of the country, and display that nobody is above the law—not even a President of The United States. America does not have a king, or a dictator, so they are not able to make decisions without accountability to other representatives of the Republic having an input. The facts and behavior behind President Obama show that he has a willingness to act without respect to these checks and balances, and this should raise concern among every American. Thankfully, Senator Rand Paul acted as a proper representative under tenuous conditions, and justice has been pursued in his filibuster to the benefit of all no matter what political persuasions may be. Right is right, and Paul acted in accord with the pursuit of truth, and justice—and the American way, which is truly unique on the world stage and should be the model every country across the planet uses for their own government. The spirit of that government is often confusing and mired in controversy, but the intention was captured so wonderfully in the film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and the Rand Paul Filibuster. The rest of the world should take notes.
