Tag: Free Will

The Elephant in the Room: Democrats kill people with guns, not Republicans or NRA members

According to Ayn Rand’s definition in her books, which is as good as anyplace to sink roots into a definition, politics is the study of the principles governing the proper organization of society, it is based on ethics, the study of the proper values to guide man’s choices and actions. Politics and ethics have been fundamental branches of philosophy from the beginning. Philosophy is the science that studies the fundamental aspects of the nature of existence. The task of philosophy is to provide man with a comprehensive view of life. With that being said liberals and conservatives really can’t get along, because their fundamental approaches to even the most basic attributes of life are different. In such a case, one philosophy will have to dominate the other—they cannot coexist.

This is a new thought for me, I have tried for many years to be open-minded to other people’s thoughts, but when it comes down to the rubber hitting the road, liberals have no desire to coexist with conservatives. They only want to convert them into aspects of the liberal. They are very militant even for supposedly representing the more pacifist nature of the human species. They only desire peace so long as you think the way they do, which is to essentially not think at all. They require you to not think in order to get along with them, to not have opinions, to not judge, to assume that history is one month old and that interpretations of anything are subject to being redefined based on the sentiment of the day.

Considering things that way it should come as no surprise that liberals in the form of Democrats are the gun grabbers of society—while they have always been the perpetrators of violence. If we consider history, such as in the case of mass shooters and murderers it will become very obvious that they are largely always Democrats—more specifically liberals. Below is a list of major shootings over a long period of time that was sent to me by a reader of these pages. It doesn’t take much to see the pattern that has emerged and persists to this day. After reading it consider how absurd it is to even allow such people to lecture our society on the nature of how the 2nd Amendment should be interpreted. And even more so, how these idiots expect us to live in a gun-less society and share resources with them.

In 1865, a Democrat shot and killed Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States .

In 1881, a left-wing radical Democrat shot James Garfield, President of the United States, who later died from the wound.

In 1963, a radical left-wing socialist shot and killed John F. Kennedy, President of the United States.

In 1975, a left-wing radical Democrat fired shots at Gerald Ford, President of the United States.

In 1983, a registered Democrat shot and wounded Ronald Reagan, President of the United States.

In 1984, James Hubert, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 22 people in a McDonald’s restaurant.

In 1986, Patrick Sherrill, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 15 people in a Oklahoma post office.

In 1990, James Pough, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 10 people at a GMAC office.

In 1991, George Hennard, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 23 people in a Luby’s cafeteria in Killeen, TX.

In 1995, James Daniel Simpson, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 5 coworkers in a Texas laboratory.

In 1999, Larry Asbrook, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 8 people at a church service.

In 2001, a left-wing radical Democrat fired shots at the White House in a failed attempt to kill George W. Bush, President of the US.

In 2003, Douglas Williams, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 7 people at a Lockheed Martin plant.

In 2007, a registered Democrat named Seung – Hui Cho, shot and killed 32 people in Virginia Tech.

In 2010, a mentally ill registered Democrat named Jared Lee Loughner, shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed 6 others.

In 2011, a registered Democrat named James Holmes, went into a movie theater and shot and killed 12 people.

In 2012, Andrew Engeldinger, a disgruntled Democrat, shot and killed 7 people in Minneapolis.

In 2013, a registered Democrat named Adam Lanza, shot and killed 26 people in a school in Newtown, CT.

As recently as Sept 2013, an angry Democrat shot 12 at a Navy ship yard.

Clearly, there is a problem with Democrats with guns.

Not one NRA member, Tea Party member, or conservative Republican was involved in any of these shootings and murders. Guns don’t kill people; Democrats do. The same basic logic could be applied to the mass shootings since 2013, especially the Vegas shooter who was a millionaire gambler—and a Democrat. Many of the ISIS inspired killers are also politically speaking, associated with left leaning philosophy. Radical Islam for instance has very little in common with conservative philosophy. It is not enough to suggest that people of all kinds can get into a room and get along, because their essential political philosophies are not conducive to one another. And it is not even appropriate to assume that such people should not talk about their foundational beliefs out of respect for those who don’t feel the way they do about things. People who have radically different political beliefs cannot function in the world together.

Democrats are not shy about their desire to use force to impose their will on others. They are, historically speaking, very intolerant of other people’s beliefs. You don’t see people from the NRA running around killing people. It just isn’t in their political makeup to behave in such a way. They certainly aren’t on the list shown above. Yet Democrats are the ones who have resorted to violence when things have not gone the way they’ve desired. In extreme cases they’ve grabbed guns and tried to kill people, such as the Democrat that attacked Republican baseball players in 2017 by trying to kill them while in the field of play. But you don’t see Republicans doing such a thing because their fundamental philosophy about life keeps them from even thinking about it. Most people I know, myself included, who happen to be very conservative don’t even talk about shooting people, because that goes against the nature of life. The gun is to protect life in the mind of a Republican. To a Democrat the gun is there to take life. The Republican tends to be for the life of a fetus, to the Democrat they are for abortion—the killing of a human if it inconveniences the life of a woman. The differences are epistemological in nature. Politics isn’t a dirty word, it’s an essential element to understanding what kind of person we are dealing with, and to that effect how they view the basics of life.

Literally the elephant in the room is that conservatives stand for life and act in accordance with life in most everything they do. It is not in their nature to become mass shooters, or to even impose themselves on another life because they respect life—all life. Liberals in the form of Democrats however are all about imposing themselves in a group think way on anybody and everyone. If Republicans do not have guns and a way to protect their lives, it will be Democrats who will raid homes in the middle of the night trying to steal what is valued there. It will be Democrats who will say to everyone who they can, “join us or die.” To those who assume that Nazi types and racists like the KKK members of the American south are some brand of conservative, that would be wrong as well. It was always Democrats who formed the KKK and all racist organizations because like all liberals—Nazis included, they don’t value individual life. Only the collective efforts of the mob that rules by force against the defenseless. And it is those people who are screaming for a gun free society. That is pretty funny when you consider the absurdity of it. Because it will be Democrats who will steal a gun breaking the law many times over and use it as a sacrifice of themselves for some liberal cause. And that kind of thing will continue to happen as long as liberals are allowed to coexist with the life loving conservatives of American sentiment. There will never be peace between the two political philosophies because the two just aren’t conducive to one another. Only one side will survive, because that is the nature of philosophy. A truth and a lie cannot live in harmony. Death and life are not after the same goals. And that is the cold hard truth of this matter that is before us presently.

Rich Hoffman

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The Crime of the West Virginia Teacher Strike: Its time to replace radical school employees with Alexa

What a disaster that was in West Virginia. The teacher’s union strike that went on for 9 days as public employees used children to extort for themselves higher wages showed precisely why the Supreme Count is poised to outlaw public sector unions to begin with. The deal struck with the West Virginia governor is to give every public employee 5% in raises every year from here on which is a completely destructive approach to managing tax payer money. What the government of West Virginia signed up for are huge increases in pay for all their public employees that take no consideration into changing economic circumstances which essentially paint themselves into a long-term corner for which there will be no escape. The public-sector unions did the reprehensible, they shut down the productive tasks they were supposed to be commissioned to perform to demand out of tax payers a bottomless pit of income that essentially comes from every tax payer their system touches.

But what was the rush? The union radicles will say that their main issue is that they have poor insurance coverage but what they are clamoring for is something that doesn’t exist for people outside the public sector either. Insurance coverage in general is in a state of change and market forces are polished off and reintroduced to the process. What’s unusual in West Virginia is that the unions do not have collective bargaining power. Average wages for a West Virginia teacher are around $45,000 per year. With their sudden 5 percent increase that is several thousands of additional dollars per year for as long as they are employed, which is a lot of money. To many people that might seem like a lot, but public-sector employees complain about such high rates because they are comparing them to other places around the country—like across the border where average rates are about the same in Ohio, but in districts like mine at Lakota the average pay is much higher.

Really what should have happened was that every teacher who walked out and participated in the strike should have been terminated. Every public employee who helped with this mess should also be terminated, including the police. But in this case the employees felt they were in a do or die situation and their strongest position was now to take action so enough of them walked off the job across the state to shut down every school leaving kids stuck at home using them as bargaining chips to essentially extort more money away from the public trust. Because of the large increase that they received, school managements across the country will see more of this behavior in the coming months so a plan needs to be in place to deal with it.

The real pressure to act now is the knowledge that the Supreme Court is about to release a decision on public sector unions by June, and it looks like the strength of those organizations will decrease tremendously. That made West Virginia a strategic hot spot for a strike to attempt to get other unions to follow as a final protest hoping to rock the vote at the Supreme Court with this ominous warning. Since West Virginia didn’t have collective bargaining power what good would the upcoming Supreme Court ruling have to prevent similar strikes in the future? The leverage the unions wanted to put on display was that there simply wasn’t enough replacement teachers available to step into the classroom to cover for these striking teachers which is why West Virginia government buckled in just 9 days to the demands of their public-sector insurgents.

It will take time even assuming that the Supreme Court outlaws public union’s power to extort money from coerced membership, for the culture to change. Many of these striking employees don’t see themselves as radical insurgents, but as a culture they behave that way because teachers as a profession have been molded as progressive instructors so they don’t see any reason not to use children as bargaining chips for their own gains. That means that the profession of teaching needs to change into something else while these old relics are phased out and new, fresh thoughts can be introduced. States are going to have to prepare for massive walk offs from the teaching profession by these trained radicals. The West Virginia teachers knew that the vacancies for new teachers were low so what did they have to lose in walking off the job? Nothing. There just aren’t enough potential employees to threaten their employment with.

The way to break a strike is to replace the workers striking with new employees. When those employee positions are all getting their money from the same source—the tax payer—it gives them leverage for a walk off. The way to beat that is to decentralize those efforts into a more privatized endeavor. There should always be a certain percentage of non-union employees in schools ready to take over if the unionized teachers walk off the job to protest some turtle crossing—the business of teaching should never stop. And we do live in an age where teachers could be replaced by machines. And automated teaching system should be utilized in case a physical teacher isn’t in the classroom. If teachers refuse to work, then something like Amazon’s Echo or Google’s Home should be put into each classroom to replace those teachers while the non-union staff of administrators ensure that business as usual continues.

In a lot of ways, I think Amazon’s Echo is far superior to an average teacher in the classroom. Some teachers are exceptional, and I think those are people who wouldn’t chose to be protesting at a statehouse for higher wages anyway—they are probably worth whatever money we pay them. But for some slug like many of those teachers protesting in West Virginia I would encourage those school districts suffering to replace them with their own Alexa. If you know anything about those systems they are much better than a real teacher, and far cheaper. They can answer questions, provide scheduled assignments and collect information. They can even provide lectures for topics that are needed. If public schools utilized this technology better they wouldn’t be in such bad positions to waiting for teachers to fill their needed positions. With the economy producing such low unemployment anyway, the traditional way of staffing so many positions with live people really isn’t practical, especially if they are only going to go on strike anyway knowing that there isn’t a deep bench to replace them if they decide to walk off the job for 9 days demanding a pay increase. The great thing about Alexa is that it doesn’t have legs and will never run out of energy. It doesn’t take coffer breaks or bitch about their pay. They don’t eat and smell like coffee and decaying teeth when you ask them a question. In a lot of ways, I think they should be the future of teaching.

Since the teaching profession is changing anyway—as the Supreme Court will eventually mandate, we might as well come up with a plan to deal with the really good problems that we are facing. If there is a teacher shortage and the ones we do have want too much money and expect these extravagant insurance plans, let’s just use Alexa to teach classrooms. We don’t have to pay them insurance, heck, they don’t ever get sick and they do essentially the same thing. So what are we waiting for?

Rich Hoffman
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The Darkest Hour: Boone County Schools wimp out as teacher unions breathe one last breath

The Boone County school board voted to take no action on arming teachers in their schools this past week due to the range of emotions on the topic. Essentially educators and those who get into the business have for too long thought of the process of teaching as a separate activity from the world where the pressures of existence are removed so minds can learn. Learn what? Well that’s a discussion for another time as this is the kind of teaching method we currently have in the United States, and the people in that business have allowed themselves to think of it in a certain way—and that certain way is not indicative to reality. Daniel Boone for which Boone County School was named would be ashamed to see his name used on buildings of such cowardly disposition.

http://www.wlwt.com/article/boone-co-school-district-poised-not-to-go-ahead-with-plan-to-arm-teachers/3540281

The teachers unions across the country are of course against letting teachers arm themselves with CCWs in the schools because they are a progressive organization to begin with. They are all about bigger government all the time in every circumstance—which is why they are trying to get out from under this modern-day pressure with pushing school boards to hire more school resource officers. But that costs a lot of money whereas the arming the teachers with CCWs doesn’t. There isn’t enough money to pay teachers the high salaries they are demanding let along adding more employees to the payroll. The teacher union positions just aren’t grounded in any kind of reality, which is common for them. After all, the teaching in public schools is that the world is made up of specialists and when you have a problem, you should leave it to those specialists. People who are specialists with guns, they suggest, should be the ones who handle them.

But what’s been refreshing about this guns in schools’ debate is that a respectable number of teachers around the country support the CCW measure, and they are interested in carrying a gun for all the right reasons, and that’s all it would really take to make this proposal successful. While it’s nice, but expensive, to have armed security at schools to engage a potential suspect it’s not enough. The nature of attacking a school requires a certain randomness that cannot be prepared for. Armed guards are just another layer of security that a terrorist could observe and overcome. But not knowing who or which teacher may be armed is impossible to prepare for and that added layer of security would serve as a better deterrent than anything—and would likely discourage an attack by the very nature of the position.

Aside from the progressive “no guns anywhere on planet earth” position of teacher unions the nature of education should encompass some firearms training since guns are a huge part of our society. Instead of fighting the NRA the way that public education does currently, they should be joining forces. I have no hope that might happen soon, but after 7 years of a Trump presidency, I can see that possibility looming on the horizon, so we might as well have that debate now. Rather than waiting for the first school to step in that direction the good ones, like my area district of Lakota should take advantage of their leadership positions and shine a light for everyone else to follow. Guns are going to be a bigger part of our lives going into the years of the 2020s like it or not because behind the culture of guns are behavioral improvements that are a natural part of gun ownership. Guns are only the enemy to progressive groups, which all teacher unions are, so the natural reaction is to villainize the NRA. But the code of conduct that comes with gun ownership are valuable lessons that young people should be learning and schools should join together if their real aim is to teach students how to live a complete and fulfilling life, the basic nature of gun ownership. I would go so far to say that shooting sports should become a part of school curriculums in gym instruction and in competitive sports. Why not have a school shooting team that competes against a rival school? They do it for golf, why not guns? Learning about guns would be a lot more beneficial to students than learning to hit a little ball into a hole on an expensive golf course.

Understanding trends is important to predicting behavior and public schools have only one choice in this matter. The future is not in the favor of kids like that David Hog from Parkland who have gone around the country advocating against gun rights. The students of Parkland are simply uttering what they have been taught by the teachers of the progressive teachers’ unions and their politics of an anti-gun world. That world is changing presently and a combination of decreasing public morality and a general swing toward conservatism by a successful Trump administration is changing the face of everything and that can most be seen at the level of the Supreme Court who recently heard oral arguments on the nature of public sector unions. During that hearing Justice Neil Gorsuch didn’t say anything not giving away how he would vote on the decisive issue which should take place in June. At risk for the teacher unions is the notion that they compel members to contribute dues to their organization in trade for employment which is a violation of free speech. Gorsuch is the deciding vote so it’s likely going to happen that public-sector unions will be found to be illegal, and that will be a major blow to every progressive organization that feeds off the money generated by the public unions. People might wonder why I haven’t been writing about this issue for a while—well, there are different ways to skin a cat. I’m now part of the winning political team instead of being on the outside such as the case of a decade ago. Yes, elections have consequences and things are turning favorably in a direction I can support. I strongly believe that teacher unions will lose their power before the Trump presidency ends, but kids will still need to be taught things, and school boards still need to navigate how best to do that in a changing world full of robots competing for our jobs, decimated home lives for kids, and a much smaller government combined with a more powerful private sector functioning at 3% unemployment and a GDP of 4 to 7%. So why not join forces with the NRA to help teach people proper gun ownership and conduct? Those skills directly transfer over into other aspects of people’s lives in a positive way.

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/supreme-court-poised-to-deliver-blow-to-public-sector-unions/

Hiding from the issue isn’t a decision though. Or making decisions on one’s heels isn’t either. Guns are a part of our lives and gun free zones such as schools make them dangerous for the students, not safer. Pretending that guns are not a huge part of American culture is ridiculous. The European model of anti-gun sentiment just isn’t a viable position. I’d recommend anyone who is on the fence of this issue to watch the recent film Darkest Hour which did well at the recent Academy Awards. It’s about how Winston Churchill stood up to Nazi pressure to yield Europe to German socialism and Italian fascism. Everyone in the ruling parties but Churchill was for passive, non-engagement surrender. It was a fascinating behind the scenes look into Churchill’s challenges. In a fit of frustration on the issue he went down into London’s Underground and talked to people directly on the subway system. It was there that the people told him they were willing to fight the Germans on every street of London, that they did not want to surrender to Hitler. From there Churchill decided not to negotiate terms with the Germans and England stood their ground. Even though the Germans bombed England, they did not have the troops to occupy the island and tyranny was stopped at the English Channel. The bluff had been called. That is precisely why American has never been invaded, and why it never will. Because if it where Americans could fight the occupier at every street and field across North America, and that same mentality needs to be a part of our schools, because that’s what we should really be teaching kids. Soon the teacher unions will be much less powerful and logic can once again enter the debate and the first item on the agenda is this CCW issue. The best schools will act ahead of the curb, but eventually everyone will have to. For them, the school boards, it is best to be a part of the winning team.

Rich Hoffman

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I Saw it Coming All Along: North Korea is coming to the table of peace–they have no other choice

I saw it coming……………………I called that one a long time ago and apparently, I was the only one. None of the expensive paid pundits saw it, none of the big-time radio guys, none of the many writers of publications, no newscasters, politician or wistful contemplator saw it—but I did. I said it in many places but if you CLICK HERE you’ll see clearly dear reader I was way out in front of the Kim Jong Un story. When the rest of the world was terrified the little sausage, boy would pull us all into nuclear war launching rockets over Japan as tests, I was stating that Trump’s position was correct in pushing back at the threat by calling the North Korean dictator, “Rocket Man.”

It brought me quite a lot of joy to get that news given the way the rest of the world had been reacting—and had reacted to North Korea in general since the time that Bill Clinton was in office. I’ve said it so many times now I hate to say it again, but on these blogs there are always new readers coming and going so I might as well say it again, groups of advisors functioning from the back of a metaphorical train do not equal in intelligence and aptitude the ample observations of a good leader positioning themselves at the front of the train. Donald Trump has built his life at the front of the train. For anybody who wonders why Trump will be the greatest president in the history of the world, more so than George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or even Ronald Reagan it’s not because he went to college at Yale, Harvard or was a member of the Skull and Bones—it is because he spent his life at the front of thinking using Robert Persig’s Metaphysics of Quality to make decisions well before the analysts in the back of the train even received information.

It takes courage to be at the front of the train, and really anybody could do it if they wanted. It’s not necessarily a special skill. The reason I made the call so quickly on North Korea and saw what Trump was doing is because I live my life at the front of the train of thinking as I always have—even as a fetus. It is lonely up there but it’s the only place I like to be. It sometimes shocks me that so few people even have the intellectual curiosity to come to the front of the train from the back to make leadership-based decisions. I mean isn’t that what people who make livings in Washington should be doing?

My favorite television oversea correspondent is Greg Palkot on Fox News. I simply love that guy, the way he delivers news is something that makes my day whenever he’s on. He is full of passion and he knows how to bring energy to the business of being a foreign correspondent. As I watched his reporting of the North Korean willingness to join the rest of the world with a meeting of Kim Jong Un in South Korea where President Trump would also be meeting he was as flat-footed as I’ve ever seen him. He did not turn the news story at the end of his piece with his patented “BRET” as he normally does, but simply signed off with a “Bret.” Palkot had been to North Korea many times and he understood the complicated international coordination such a meeting meant to the world and he was for the first time that I’ve watched him in a state of utter disbelief. Suddenly Donald Trump looked like the most brilliant person in the world and all the people in the back of the train of thinking—even people with boots on the ground close to the situation never saw what was around the corner. Only those who live in the front could see what was coming and that’s how it usually is.

When Trump’s administration refused to buckle under the bully tactics of North Korea it didn’t take long for Kim Jong Un to have no more cards up his sleeve, because they were never there. Yet for so many years the family of Kim Jong Un had used terror to get what they needed in the world and to support their communist nation of serious suppression. However, as I said, the economy of North Korea because of their communism could not support a war with the world, especially the United States, and once they could no longer get unlimited support from China, Russia or even Iran without Trump going on television and talking about it, it forced the family of Kim Jong Un to try something else. So he sent his sister to the Olympics to test the waters for a different kind of life for North Korea and what he found there was an open door to peace and that family tasted what it would be like to interact with the world—and they liked it. After all, these are all just kids running North Korea. Who wouldn’t want to have the latest fashions and eat the latest food offerings? And slowly through Trump’s constant pressure the people of North Korea have seen that there is something going on outside of their communist borders and they are curious as to what it is. Kim Jong Un had no choice but to come to the table of peace and participate with the world which will greatly assist his people. For the first time in well over half a century there is hope that there will be peace on the Korean peninsula.

This is happening in the first year of Trump’s presidency. He still has three more years to do the same in Palestine, Iran and Syria and all those places are feeling the same pressure. This is also why Russia which has been unmasked as a saboteur to North Korea suddenly was talking about bombing North America with a new kind of super missile. None of these countries have any real wealth to host wars in the modern era and Trump has exploited that knowledge in a way that forced peace and that’s why Kim Jong Un is going to meet with Trump in South Korea. Not only does he have no other choice, but this is the only time he can make such a decision under his own power before his own people attempt to overthrow his regime. If he wants to keep some control of his country he’ll have to join the world as a world leader, otherwise he’ll lose it all.

Yes, I’m more than just a little wistful about this news, and I can see many more news days like this coming over many topics in the near future. Pressure, force and raw leadership from the front of the train is what we are getting with President Trump and the world just has never seen such a thing before, so they are notably shocked. I’m of course am not and that is the fun of it. This should serve as a lesson, people should listen a lot more to the things I write. It’s not that they don’t now, there are some really smart people who follow what I say as a blue print to success. I of course wish there were more because I have a damn good track record at seeing what’s way around the corner even when people who get paid a lot of money should see things as clearly as I do. Listening to me could solve a lot of problems for those seeking answers even on big national stage issues. I mean it’s no skin off my back if you don’t listen. But your life would be so much better if you did.

Rich Hoffman

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Homegrown ISIS Terrorist Attacks High School: Corrupted youth show that gun legislation will never work

As gun grabbing organizations seek to use the Parkland shooting victims to advocate gun control measures by busing them into Washington D.C. for a rally to satisfy their strategic desires, a teenager in Utah inspired by the terrorist group ISIS attacked his school with a bomb—but nobody seemed to pick up on the story. The teenage kid put a homemade bomb in his backpack and tried to ignite it at Hurricane High School, in Utah in an area that usually contains a lot of people, but the bomb produced only smoke allowing bomb techs to arrive and disarm the device without injury or death. But not before the kid vandalized the school destroying American flags and spray painting “ISIS is coming” on the school’s exterior. That high school got lucky, because if the bomb had worked the death count could have been significantly higher than the Parkland shooting which has inspired the many anti-gun student protests around the country. Yet, the story gained little attention.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/03/07/isis-inspired-utah-teen-tried-to-blow-up-high-school-police-say.html

Obviously, we all know why. The bomb narrative doesn’t fit the anti-gun objectives of the liberalized media culture who desire to exploit every tragedy as a means to advance their progressive agenda. The students trained from nearly birth in those progressive sentiments are simple pawns in the great political game of gun confiscation and a complete rewriting of the Constitution by progressive activists—so they have no desire to deal with real solutions to real problems like the rise of radicalism among violent teenagers either inspired by ISIS propaganda or the psychologically dangerous erosion of values found in the many video games available to them at a young age—games like Grand Theft Auto. More than ever we have lots of young men being raised by single mothers who needed the help of a husband to properly raise aggressive sons. Lacking that firm parental structure some young men like this ISIS follower find their authority figures in radicalism, whether it be Islamic terrorism or anarchy such as the many ANTIFA groups. In the case of a removal of strong males in the home of these growing boys, group affiliations that show power become the substitute, like ISIS, ANTIFA or even Nazi radicalism. After all, we don’t typically see females doing these terrible things, so the primary villain is the son seeking father complex which many suffer from in our modern age.

There wasn’t a single gun involved in this attempted bombing of a Utah school, yet the desire to kill classmates and make a radical attention-getting statement was very much a part of the motive. Banning guns doesn’t stop these kinds of intentions—the desire to hurt others is the real problem and dealing with the cause of that desire. Until that issue is dealt with there will continue to be violence in schools and other public places. An assumption otherwise is to defer blame from the true guilty parties, those same progressive groups who have instigated the destruction of the American family unit, pushed strong men off the map of teaching and assumed that women could do it all by themselves. But even worse, they have assumed that the public education institutions themselves could serve as the primary parent and that group affiliations could replace the desire for individualized instruction. These social failures are at the heart of the very foundations of liberal epistemology. And to the credit of conservatives, we all tried as a country to bring all these different types of thinking together to give it a try. But the destructive results are now way too evident to ignore.

There isn’t any gun legislation that would have prevented this terror attempt, in fact we are likely to discover that the fewer guns there are the bolder these attempts become. In our present society a deranged kid like this Utah bomber doesn’t know how far they may get with some terrorist attempt. The kid obviously thought he’d get away with his actions long enough to create some vandalism prior to discharging his backpack bomb. If guns were to be removed from society at large there would be even a greater zone of no risk to this kid should he be intercepted going to or back from the school on this journey of intended death and destruction. Fewer guns in the world mean even more people like this young ISIS inspired terrorist are emboldened to live out their fantasies of corrupted ideology at the expense of the innocent—and that just isn’t acceptable.

Liberals in spite of considering them part of a debate in the friendly sense of rhetorical discussion are actually insurgents against American ideas and have long ago declared war on traditional founders of North American enterprise. I’m not talking about the nature loving savages of the Indian tribes, but those who brought from Europe the ability to read and manufacture who started their own country out of the ashes of kingdoms from across the Atlantic where kings and religion fought on the carcasses of innocent people just trying to live their lives. Liberals are part of that old-world mysticism where kings claimed themselves divine rods to the gods themselves and the church fought them for that same power for several millennia. When America finally came around to asserting itself we put into our Constitution the right to bear arms so that we wouldn’t have to listen to any kings or any authority figures who would love to rule our minds by force—and that was always the point. Liberals have sought to remove that tool and in so doing they have created an environment that has bred kids like this ISIS terrorist—home grown in the vacuum of destruction liberals imposed on the American family.

And to defer that blame liberals are attacking guns so that by the time we all as a society figure out who is really to blame for all the carnage we are experiencing, that we might not have the ability to take back our government from the people who have screwed it up. So they have no problem using children to perpetuate their erosion on American rights. They don’t care about those rights, they only want what they want using a philosophy that is not conducive to the way of life of what traditional America has always represented. And in that former understanding, there weren’t kids like this Utah terrorist being bred right out in the open, they were getting their asses kicked by a dedicated father who taught them better. Instead of those kids finding that needed authority figure in ISIS they had their sons at the kitchen tables telling them to do their chores or else. And those kids didn’t rush out into the night to tear down American flags and burn efficiencies against our nation, they were learning to love our country through the discipline of tough love—which a lot of young males needed to hold together a method of productivity into their own futures. Without it they become their own worst enemies.

It was those same guilty parties who sought to provide 24 hour a day coverage of the Parkland shooting and the Vegas massacre that gave almost no airtime to this bombing attempt in Utah. And that was because it didn’t fit their narrative. After all, it’s not the news they were after, it was the ability to use hurt feelings to drive an anti-gun agenda that liberals all share together. They did it because they fear Americans with guns because it’s quickly becoming obvious who is really to blame for all these national tragedies. It’s certainly not traditional thinking Americans waving red white and blue flags in the streets who are NRA members who are causing all these problems. It is the troubled youth of progressive creation who have turned into monsters that we now must all contend with. And its only getting worse.

Rich Hoffman
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How the NRA and America are One in the Same: Understanding what defends values and why its important

There is a very philosophic reason for supporting the NRA if one wishes to protect the basic foundations that founded the United States of America. Of course, those who want to change the American idea into something else are against the NRA and things really do play out along those lines. People would like to believe that there is some waiver room there, room to have varying opinions, but basically if someone or a group of people are working against the 2nd Amendment, they are working against the political philosophy of America—and essentially against me and you personally. To that effect, I have never been prouder to be an NRA member. Over the last few weeks after the latest gun free zone shooting I have heard the NRA being bashed by just about everyone but the members themselves and that has only solidified my resolve on this matter. I am the NRA. You are the NRA. We are the people who make the NRA what it is—a lobby group representing our interests and when people talk about abolishing it, they are talking about abolishing us.

We are told that the two things we are not supposed to talk about are politics and religion—so to allow for the non-conflict type of discussion that should go on between people of different backgrounds and beliefs. The only problem with that are that both are part of the basic philosophy epistemology of our culture—and if those basic foundations aren’t agreed on, there really can’t be a society at all. Without a foundational philosophy, no society can hope to preserve themselves into the future. Essentially a country is just an organized group of people who have decided to live a certain way under constitutional foundations. Anyone who wants to change those basic foundations is looking to overthrow the nation as it was. And that is why it became popular to suggest that when speaking with other people that we don’t talk about politics or religion—because both provide the foundations for which nations are built.

Politics is the study of the principles governing the proper organization of society, it is based on ethics, the study of the proper values to guide man’s choices and actions. Politics and ethics have been fundamental branches of philosophy from the beginning. Religion of course is typically associated with the type of ethics a society uses to flourish. With these things stripped away from society mankind has nothing to hold their values to, which is precisely why we can say that we live in a time where values are stripped from us and people are functioning from a rootless existence. The people of today with all their problems were made that way because the essential foundations of philosophy for which they would otherwise function have been removed from them and they are left empty and open to whatever tyrant of activism might come along to sweep them off their feet.

And we’ve seen the worst of these people in the days after Donald Trump was elected president. If there was anything that really was wonderful about his election it was that these types of people who have been seeking to reshape American foundational philosophy were rooted out. ANTIFA comes to mind with their violent protests in our city streets and the lunatic feminists who proposed very violent actions against our government yet do not expect to see the wrath of justice thrown back at them—because they understand that they are hiding behind the destruction of America’s basic foundational premise. This is also why the FBI expects to get away with serious crimes they committed against the Trump transition team and even in tampering in an American election—then trying to blame the Russians. These criminals know that a vast majority of the people within America these days have been stripped of their basic philosophies of goodness, righteousness, and valor—and that they are naked and afraid waiting for the gods of institutionalism to shape their opinions to the flavor of the day—rootless into history or any kind of sense.

Philosophy is the science that studies the fundamental aspects of the nature of existence. The task of philosophy is to provide people with a comprehensive view of life. When that comprehensive view is disrupted or even reshaped into something destructive—such as what we see from the ANTIFA members where they are exactly what they declare themselves not to be—anti-fascists fighting for the right to be fascists, then the forces behind that thought corruption can sell any contrary idea to the public and not expect to be questioned back. We live in an age where young people have been taught that nobody should judge their actions, and once they are adults they believe they can conduct their lives in this fashion. This is largely how Hillary Clinton’s campaign expected to hide her many crimes, and she succeeded largely by those who call themselves Democrats, because their foundational philosophies have been stripped away from them to the point where they can no longer make value judgments about anything. They can talk about their favorite music, what they are watching on Netflix, or what the latest fashions are at Hot Topic, but they can’t tell you what they think of Hillary Clinton other than they want to see the first woman president sitting in the White House. Since so many people have been taught not to judge others, it allows criminals like the Clintons to roam through our political stratosphere without consequence for their power play politics.

The political left has been in the practice of deforming human beings essentially since their political philosophy shaped largely by Immanuel Kant and the peripherals took to the global stage challenging the Aristotelian foundations of Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, and John Locke. To beat those philosophies which caused people to create their own country in North America away from the European failures, the political left had to introduce decades of philosophic deformity to the basic foundations of American ideas to nonviolently introduce the type of political suppression which would advance the political left and stunt the growth of the political right. Leftists did this essentially by taking over the education institutions and seeking quite openly to remold the American youth from their very foundations so that they could pull off the destruction of America without any military assault or mass protest in the streets—but home by home and over a long period of time.

But, those forces of insurrection ran into the membership of the NRA and nobody who has supported that Second Amendment group has budged at all for well over 100 years. The NRA was founded in 1871 and has maintained a firm grounding into the type of roots that founded our country and the members which have supported that cause have been very successful in preventing the type of deformation of our basic philosophy which the political left has been so aggressive in perpetuating. The secret to the success of the political left in how they essentially lobotomize people in what they know has been the threat of force to bring harm to people who think differently than they do. Yet the essence of the Second Amendment is to provide protections from that very threat. Free people armed to defend themselves do not have to fear having their basic philosophic foundations robbed from them by force—and that has really been all that’s kept America going all these years. Its been those 5 million NRA supporters and the 10 to 20 million others who support the NRA but haven’t yet sent a check to the organization to lobby on their behalf. We become members so that the NRA will work on our behalf to prevent violence. Because if there isn’t an NRA and the political left comes to attempt to remove reason from our minds—what are we supposed to do—just sit there and let them do it? Of course not.

Rich Hoffman
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Why Trump’s Trade Policies are Brilliant, and Bold: Resetting value from gross wealth redistributuion practices that have supressed economies

I am a little surprised that so many people are against Trump’s tariffs on foreign aluminum at a rate of 10% and a 25% rate on steel. Critics are declaring that Trump is messing with free market concepts and that utilizing an America first policy will drive up prices and harm industries needing cheap aluminum. Rather the opposite will turn out to be true, a lot of the great wealth that China has enjoyed as a communist nation is this international propping up through wealth redistribution that has been occurring for several decades now. China has enjoyed a different kind of crony capitalism that has used regulation and trade policies meant to harm American interests and transfer the wealth to recipient countries, which they of course have enjoyed tremendously. But in any situation the way to determine who will win and who will lose in these types of engagements is to understand who has the leverage position and who doesn’t.

As if we are supposed to care but The Beer Institute, a trade association and D.C. lobby firm said that a 10% increase on aluminum would cost the industry $347 million and more than 20,000 jobs. Really? People who drink beer even if the cost per can did go up like they say it will of .20 to .24 cents per can aren’t going to stop drinking the product. Ever go to an NFL game where beer is $8 a cup? People who drink beer really don’t care how much it costs so how are beer manufacturers going to lose 20,000 jobs? People just got a raise in their weekly checks. Granted, they should net a weekly profit, but if they are going to drink beer, they don’t care if the price goes up .24 cents. If anything, I would think beer consumption would increase because people’s expendable income has increased under Trump and that’s the real issue.

Obviously, the trade imbalance has been a real problem for many decades and people have come to get used to it—and accept that the United States would just get the short end of the stick. As the richest capitalist country in the world there were many jealous countries that wanted very much to ride the coattails of North America to greater prosperity for themselves—primarily China. China with even its billion people still has an economy that is behind the United States and that is due to the fact that everything is state-run. Russia has a similar problem, this past week it was released that they had some kind of invincible weapon that could attack the United States without detection. Well, why does anybody think they released that information—for the same reason that North Korea does, to scream like a child to let people know they are at the negotiating table. But they have nothing to offer, so what is there to talk about?

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-impose-tariffs-steel-aluminum-imports-article-1.3849233

When we pick something up that is a material possession do we say—“hey, that was made in Russia, or China, or even North Korea. Look at that great craftsmanship?” We don’t. Russia and China occupy most of the world’s land mass together yet they are behind countries like Japan and the United States in economic output per capita and the only reason it’s never pointed out is that the stunted growth is due to the history of communism in those two places. Many in the media markets still hope that communism can find its way in the world but it never will, because the epistemological premise of economic philosophy behind communism is incorrect. The world has literally tried to fake it for most of the last century and they’ve used the United States as a way to prop up the concept with looted wealth.

I’m not anti-China, but I am very much anti-communism. China is a pretty neat country and has always been before they turned to communism in the aftermath of World War II. If China would like to adopt capitalism I think they could truly explode as an economic force around the world. The same as Russia, if they would truly become free market capitalists, they’d have a lot more to work with than the United States has had to work with.

I would recommend to anybody interested in economic matters of any kind to read the great book by Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations. I have the older 1976 copy of its many renditions, and on page 364 paragraph 3 it states “The annual produce of the land and labour of any nation can be increased in its value by no other means, but by increasing either the number of its productive labourers, or the productive powers of those labourers who had before been employed.” For instance, if some Chinese person is making baskets and they can make three in a day by hand, the way to increase those baskets would be to either add more workers to make baskets, or to make it so that the basket maker can produce more per hour. The productive work has a measurable value and the Chinese and Russian markets have an abundance of people who want to inject more “labour” to a task, but the problem for them is that the need for that product is created by American capitalism. So the only way that there can be a global market of shared wealth in this present world where communism has destroyed much of it economically, is to have the needs for products arise in America and to have the job fulfillment going on in the communist countries. Since China has an abundance of people they can afford to throw their labour at the market demand and charge a cheaper rate—whereas in the United States the per capita output is necessarily much higher meaning the labor demand for each product garners higher value because that labor value is being divided over many market trajectories. In short, labor is cheaper in markets that have parasitic economics and that ratio has been encouraged by world leaders who still believe that the way to social fairness everywhere is through various philosophies of socialism and communism.

There isn’t going to be any trade wars with the world, not in China, not in Europe, not in Russia. China needs the food the United States produces so they’d be hurting themselves by jacking up the price for their own people. They can’t feed all their people because the incentive for work has been taken away from their economy by the state-run communism which mandates all their policies. That leaves people to do only what they must, which makes them staff all their labor needs in the most inefficient means possible. Without basic capitalist ideas like private property ownership and incentives for innovation, the cost of labour is mandated by bodies, not innovation meaning a state-run country always gets only the minimum of that effort because of the human predilection to only provide what they must since the state is the entity which collects the efforts for its own economy. Yet product is developed for those who can possess it, and that is why all the lucrative markets are still in the United States which puts all the leverage behind Trump’s tariffs.

Given all that understanding it is incorrect to artificially bring down the price of foreign goods at the expense of American wealth, because the wealth of the nation was created by the United States under the means of capitalism and that wealth has been looted to prop up the failed philosophies of tyrannical dictatorships—and that is what China has been for quite a long time. Russia is also too authoritarian which is left over from when they were one of the largest communist countries in the world. Apple has more value as a company than most of the Russian economy which is very sad considering the vast wealth that Russia has that is underutilized. When they were allowed to feel like the big kids on the block by charging NASA to fly into space and were pandered to on the world stage it made Putin look legitimate as the former KGB officer turned politician. Now under Trump all that artificial leverage has been taken away leaving him to be just another saber-rattling despot threatening global destruction if someone doesn’t give him some money. China will be the next, but the real matter on the table is that these countries can do nothing, because they don’t have the money for it. Russia barely has enough money to launch a missile, let along build a lot of them, just like North Korea doesn’t. And the best way to keep China from sneaking money into places like North Korea is to cut them off from American wealth as well. Then when they are faced with the failures of communism compared to nations that aren’t so limited will they be forced to change. They might scream and threaten in the meantime, but they are harmless, because they don’t have the gold that rules the world. America does—and it’s not because we are functioning from raw imperialism. It’s just because we adopted Adam Smith’s economic philosophy and the rest of the world hasn’t yet. But they need to.

A few years from now people will realize how brilliant Trump’s tariffs really were. They will re-establish balance around the globe for economic value without propping up communist regimes, and the truth will finally be revealed. America will of course prosper, people will still drink beer, buy cars and build things. Costs will align with the practice methods of innovative business means to combine the efforts of labour to the effect of national GDP. Some costs will go down, some may increase, but the net yield will benefit America for the better and that’s all that really matters. The parasites will have to adapt and if we really want to see an end to communism in the world and free people from its tyrannical effects, we will let the tariffs destroy it for the good of the people suppressed under it. We don’t need tanks and troops to do that—all we need to do is let market forces do their work and that is how the world will be much better and freer at the end of Trump’s four years than it ever was before. And that will be good for everyone—except the tyrants.

Rich Hoffman
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Lakota Doesn’t Really Have a Choice: The Video of the CCW issue on February 26th 2018

Looking back on the video of the school board meeting on February 26th 2018 where the topic of arming teachers with a CCW drew a lot of media attention around the city of Cincinnati it wasn’t even close. The entire meeting is shown below, for which the media categorized it as “contentious,” which it was—but it was much more civil than you might think for such a hot button issue. The public comments section can be viewed at the 38-minute mark. My comment can be seen at the 53:30 mark. After me there was one other speaker on the list from the sign-in sheet and at that point the score was 6 for arming teachers with a CCW in class to just 2 against. Once the listed speakers had concluded Samuel Ronan who is running against Steve Chabot in the 1st Congressional district and was from Springboro spoke. He didn’t count in my view because he was simply there to give a stump speech on a national issue because the Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones took the lead on suggesting that he’d offer free CCW classes to any teacher who signed up for his class. After Ronan spoke there was a student who cried and couldn’t get through her speech followed by a lady who additionally added to the anti-gun comments. When the scoring was all said and done for the evening the score was 6 for allowing CCW teachers to bring their guns to school to act as first responders with only 5 against the proposal. That is the purest score this issue will ever get at Lakota. Obviously, the people against the measure hadn’t had time to professionally attack the CCW proposal and were caught a little flat-footed on the matter.

Those of us for the CCW proposal really hadn’t coordinated our efforts either. I had a few people call me to see if I was coming to the meeting and when I said I was, there were others obviously who felt they could come and add their opinions to the matter. If Lakota had a vote likely the tally would come down to a similar demographic as was shown in that school board meeting on that particular evening—something close to a 60% to 40% vote in favor of arming teachers in our 22 school buildings. Those who spoke against CCWs presented an emotional argument without any solution present, which is typical on this subject. There is a portion of our society that is just afraid of guns and wishes that humanity could remove them completely. Any logical person not thinking emotionally understands that 92% of all mass shootings take place in gun free zones—which is why schools are such a hot target. Wishing that guns were never invented isn’t a logical solution—especially in the short run. Lakota does have school resource officers—10 of them to cover the 22 current buildings, which isn’t nearly enough for a community that has over 100,000 residents. The cost is prohibitive to have an officer in every building and in every hallway in case something was to occur where a school shooter might attack and realizing all that, based on this school board meeting, there really isn’t a choice. Lakota is going to have to adopt a measure arming teachers and the reasons are obvious.

My first thought when Samuel Ronan handed his camera to an Islamic woman who was sitting next to one of the anti-gun speakers from earlier was that we were getting ready to hear from the professional anti-gun lobby. And that was confirmed when the 3-minute clock was not started for Ronan. Listening to Ronan speak I thought a member of the school board had invited him to talk which was why the clock never started for him, and why he was permitted to not address the board–but the audience and the television cameras that lined up the back of the room. But after going on for well over 3 minutes the board did stop him so it appears that the progressive politician had just crashed our meeting in a similar way that a school shooter might attempt to do and take advantage of our good graces as a community. He simply went on a stump speech for every progressive political platform and his supporters represent the emotional element which the media has latched on to. But if you listen to his speech there is no solution presented even though he is an obviously polished speaker. At the end of his speech we still had the problem and that was the same for every speaker against the measure.

Politically speaking for Lakota being one of the largest and most affluent school districts in the state of Ohio if a school shooting were to occur and footage from this meeting were to come out in the wake of the tragedy as it always happens in other mass shootings, because hindsight is always 20/20, it would destroy a lot of credibility in our school management that is completely unnecessary. If the comments of Butler County Sheriff Jones are added to the matter it will look really bad on Lakota if action is not taken, because the community spoke very civilly and succinctly on the matter when there was time to act. I personally think as a nation we are living on a time bomb where the combined elements of video games, lack of parental influence, aggressive music and the basic epistemological failure of philosophy for young people is throwing a disproportionate number of kids like the Parkland shooter out into the world. With the 100,000 residents of the Lakota district there are of course a portion of that population that will try something. It was only a month ago that the heavily tattooed and very scary looking Jason Lehman attacked a daycare facility in broad daylight for no apparent reason. Then a few days within that event a distraught Charles Warren attacked a mail carrier at gun point—intoxication appears to be a contributing factor. We are facing an opioid crisis virtually everywhere and all those people are potential bombs of danger that could pose a threat to a secure zone, like a school, and proportionally to the size of our community, there are a fair share of dangerous people who can and will inflict harm on the innocent should they take a chance to. What makes the Jason Lehman situation so disconcerting is that it could have easily have been a public school instead of a daycare facility. At least at the daycare it was a privately operated endeavor that was much smaller and easier to secure with passionate employees. In public schools where there are countless hallways and points of entry in the 22 schools, there aren’t many teachers available who will lay down in front of a door to keep an attacker from getting in, which is what happened at Children’s Learning Adventure Childcare Center on 747 at the entrance to Beckett Ridge. An attack at such a place would not seem likely because it’s in a very nice area where people don’t typically have to deal with people like Jason Lehman—scary, aggressive, and emotionally out of control. If not for the owner of the Buffalo Wings and Rings next to the daycare center who attacked Lehman, who knows what would have happened. Lucky for all of us it was a fist fight instead of a gun fight, but its only a matter of time. West Chester got lucky in that case.

Hoping that something won’t happen isn’t a strategy for dealing with problems. We can go back many years and study that among our Lakota population there have been plenty of people who have snapped and went on violent rampages. Not even considering the two people already mentioned, have we already forgotten the case of Donald Tobias Gazaway who held a kid hostage at gun point for over 30 hours just last month a few miles down the road from Lakota East? What if that guy decided to turn his wrath on the school instead of a residence? It’s only a matter of time before something happens, so hoping that the event never happens isn’t a strategy.

Lakota can pull together to help solve this problem or it can let an opportunity fade and be a victim with a whole lot of smart people pointing backward in hindsight to declare that they spoke their mind but nobody in leadership listened. I don’t think that is healthy for anybody, not the school, not the community, and certainly not the children in our care. The same media that showed up to wonder what makes people like Donald Gazaway and Jason Lehman want to threaten and attack places where there are children are the same people who listened to that Lakota school board meeting and considered the opinions evenly weighted on both sides. That wasn’t the case, the video proves it. Residents have expressed their opinions to the school board and it is now up to them to act either way. But if they don’t adopt the CCW measure, the media storm against them will be horrible when someone does attack one of the Lakota schools. And that will be a lot more painful than going against the progressive caucus that hates guns but doesn’t have any other suggestions for these troubling modern times.

I said my peace and I’m willing to give a little on the issue to help solve the problem, to make it easier for the school board to make a hard decision. But waiting for some other school board to make a decision first isn’t going to work. Lakota needs to be the pace setter on this issue, it needs to show the kind of leadership that comes with being the big school on the block to take action before people really do get hurt. The Lakota school district has had plenty of warning signs just in the past two months. Its one thing to have a tragedy when action to prevent it was taken, it’s quite another to get caught in indecision when there are families dealing with the aftermath. It is for that reason that adopting the CCW for teachers is really the only correct decision. And by the look of the video shown from that February 26th school board meeting, the community is behind the leadership of the school for what might be the first time in decades. It would be crazy to squander that rare opportunity to do something good. That same anti-gun media that tried to make the Lakota board meeting look evenly matched and even supportive of the anti-gun activists will be the same ones who cower through this video footage and show all the people who were for CCWs when something does go wrong—and that wouldn’t be good for anybody. These events are going to move forward whether or not we are ready for them. Leadership is meeting those events with solutions instead of being caught on our heels when maliciousness knocks on all our doors.

Rich Hoffman
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The Gun Grabbing Politicians of Ohio: Kasich, Skindell and Tavares overstep their authority with a proposed assult weapons ban

Let’s forget that the proposal is ostentatious and goes against the very foundations of American life, it says a lot about the people in elected office proposing these sudden assault weapons bans which are now being introduced in Ohio. Sens. Michael Skindell and Charleta Tavares introduced legislation making it a fifth-degree felony to possess or acquire a firearm considered an “assault weapon.” And to add to the insanity, Governor John Kasich is supporting it. That is a guy who has never been a conservative. It is amazing how far he has fallen, no wonder he was personal friends with the very liberal Ted Strickland. John Kasich has absolutely lost his mind. But for anyone in the Ohio legislature to assume that they even have a right to make it illegal to possess an “assault weapon” is seriously mistaken on such an intrusion into all our lives and it deserves action in retaliation.

Here’s why such a law could never be justified—because Kasich himself has framed the argument. Kasich in 2010 showed himself to be a Tea Party conservative then became a moderate shortly after the hard loss to the public-sector unions in 2012 on a controversial bill he had been pushing through. Then gradually as the 2016 election occurred, Kasich moved much closer to the liberal middle on the political spectrum and became a very radical anti-Trumper. Now he is wanting a second crack at a run for the presidency and is considering to run against Trump in the primary—which is a very un-Republican thing to do. But he’s planning to and will likely consider a switch in parties if he can’t get enough Republican backing—which means that Kasich was never a conservative. He was simply an opportunist—someone who is willing to wear the mask of whatever he needs to be to get elected in public office which also makes him dangerous.

Now consider the next implication—it is that these types of people are telling us that we should disarm ourselves and trust them with our lives. They’ll argue that nobody needs assault weapons to defend themselves, but as we all know from their past intentions, a ban on weapons of any kind is a step toward more restrictions until they reach their progressive stated goal of a gun free society. They won’t stop with “assault weapons.” That much is clear. They’ll keep trying forever to ban everything so if we give them anything, they’ll never stop until they take it all.

Kasich’s personal attack specifically on the “God-darn AR-15” is quite a case study. So is the proposal that anyone who has such a gun is to give it up if these Democrats have their way? That the day such a legislation is made into law that suddenly millions of people are now out-laws because they own an AR-15? Then to declare that the sporting rifle is a weapon of war and to decide that nobody should have them? Where does that stop, where politicians decide what we can and cannot have? What if some future politician decided that golf clubs needed to be banned because someone killed people with a well weighted driver? Would then the sport of golf be banned? I understand that to many people guns mean death, because that was their original purpose and is how a portion of society views them based on their educations. Guns are not just for hunting, but they aren’t just for killing either. Target shooting is a real challenge which combines known sciences into a symphony of human endeavor. It is quite a thing to do to put a lead bullet into a target 300 yards away. The quest to do such a thing is as useless as throwing a basketball through a hoop—yet many people put great credence in the sport of basketball but assume that target shooting isn’t just as relevant.

http://www.wkyc.com/article/news/local/ohio/assault-weapons-ban-in-ohio-will-john-kasich-support-dems-ar-15-ban/95-521264638

http://www.wkyc.com/article/news/local/ohio/lawmakers-propose-ban-on-assault-weapons-in-ohio/95-521385200

An AR-15 doesn’t shoot much of a bullet, it isn’t what I’d consider to be dangerous ammunition. I think of them as not much more powerful than a BB gun or a little ol’ .22. A .223 bullet isn’t very large, not even a quarter of an inch wide so it’s not that the gun does much damage. The bullet typically only weighs in at around .50 grains. It just has a perception of being a military style weapon because it looks that way. They look cool, so people enjoy them. Personally, I like much bigger guns, because if I’m going to shoot something, it should really exercise the power that you can contain in your hands. However, given the logic of these gun grabbing politicians, are we to ban anything that looks scary—is that the optimal purpose of making decisions about what’s legal or illegal—how something looks? That would open the idea that toy guns of all kinds could be banned because they look dangerous—whether or not they really were.

For a politician to assume that we don’t need this, or that we need that is reprehensible. For Kasich to say to a gun owner, “do you really need a “God-darn AR-15 to go hunting with.” The gun isn’t to go hunting with dumbass. It’s to learn the proficiency of a firearm without spending $3 a shot to get good with it, on the larger ammunition. Who’s to tell anybody what they need or don’t need. Do people need soccer balls, baseball gloves, or even baseball bats. Have you ever seen dear reader what a baseball bat can do to someone’s head? Talk about a dangerous weapon, a baseball bat can kill someone faster than a bullet. And a baseball traveling at 100 MPH down the first base side of the field into the stands can also kill someone, or at least cause a lot of damage. Should we ban baseball? Shooting is a sport more than its anything else, even as a tool of self-defense. A good gun becomes a trusted friend just like that old well-worn glove that you threw baseballs with your father way back when, or that great pair of golf clubs that created so many great memories hitting a silly little ball into a hole on a flat piece of grass called a “green.”

Why do we humans challenge ourselves by throwing balls into baskets, driving little balls several yards into a little bitty hole on a well mowed lawn, or try to hit a speeding ball with a wooden stick—because we are fascinated by the physics as thinking creatures of how all those elements can be combined to achieve something. And that is the essence of shooting sports. How fast can we shoot lead projectiles into a target of some distance and with what measure of reliability? Those are the questions sports shooters ask, and those are recreational elements of our American society. To designate a portion of that sporting community as “dangerous,” “needless,” or a threat to the general population is a reprehensible assumption and an assault on our very way of life. AR-15s are just another sporting rifle that may look tactical and scary but are really just inexpensive ways to get to know the mechanics of a good shooting rifle. It’s not for politicians to question why we would ever need to know about such things, its our place to enjoy them because they are products of our culture. And if you really want to peel back the onion to the truth, the Second Amendment is there because we have politicians like John Kasich who will say, do and manipulate anything as a politician to have control over the rest of us. What are we to do if he says that God told him to arrest everyone wearing a Trump shirt so that he could have a better chance of getting elected president in the next election? When he runs the state of Ohio and is power-hungry enough to switch parties for his own ambitions what might he do to any of us to clear the way? The answer is, we don’t know, and if he does abuse his authority, we need some way to check that power at the local level and sometime laws aren’t enough. Action is the only thing that can meet tyrannical force when we see it, and with Kasich, you just never know who he’s going to be from one moment to the next, and that makes him very dangerous—much more dangerous than a “God-darn AR-15.”

Rich Hoffman

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A $10,000 Bonus for Lakota Teachers: How guns in schools are conducive to team building

A lot of people don’t know it but when I put together the No Lakota Levy group by joining forces with some of the business guys who were also against the school levy over eight years ago now, we had prior to that experience been mostly rivals. Several of them about five years prior were at me over a contentious real estate transaction—actually several of them and we were not on good terms. But we were united under a common objective—a real concern that high taxation would destroy our community, so we united against the Lakota school system to get things under control. In the course of that action we became pretty good friends and a lot of those heated rivalries fell by the way side. I was reminded of that experience as I stood before the Lakota school board on Monday February 26th many years after our contentious levy fights to speak on behalf of arming teachers with firearms. Many of the school board members were new, some had been there back during those No Lakota Levy days and suddenly we found ourselves on the same side of an issue—a desire to secure the schools before some copy-cat shooter sought to put their name in lights for eternity by becoming the next assassin of the innocent. It was a little weird but was a very positive experience.

It was a productive evening and I had the opportunity to talk to a lot of people on this issue and I couldn’t help but see a pattern emerging, conflict resolution often is all about bringing people together on a common goal. We may argue about the means of teaching children, or what the purpose of a public school is, but one thing we all are unified on is that we don’t want bad people to come into our community where our kids are and exploit a weakness at their expense. As I spoke a lot of those heated rivalries melted away and I only saw eager and sincerely concerned faces looking back at me—everyone wanted to get this issue right and that was truly a special moment.

As we were having a good exchange where two sides of a political divide were joining together to solve a hard problem a reminder of how vulnerable we all are to charismatic radicals presented themselves right there at the school board meeting. CNN star and 1st Congressional District candidate Samuel Ronan from Springboro, Ohio crashed our meeting unannounced and took over for an uncomfortably long period of time taking advantage of our mutually good graces to speak out against the Lakota consideration to follow Sheriff Jones’ advice to arm teachers in one of Ohio’s largest school district. Ronan is a very progressive young man who is trying to lead a youth charge against guns in schools. Only he forgot one main thing, he willfully violated the terms of speaking that night as specifically cited in board policy 0160 which states: ” Participants must be residents of the District, or be the resident’s designee and be introduced as such, and have a legitimate interest in the action of the Board. The Board may also recognize representatives of firms eligible to bid on materials or services solicited by the Board. The Board may also recognize any employee or student of the District except when the issue addressed by the participant is subject to remediation under Board policies or negotiated agreements.” Ronan wasn’t the only speaker that night against the CCW recommendation for teachers, but he was the one who showed a complete disregard for the rules of our community to make his point—which is precisely what a potential school shooter would do should they decide to attack. It showed everyone in the room how vulnerable we all were to bold practitioners of radicalism from their own sometimes distorted perspective.

To my experience, and it was consistent with that evening’s activities, firearms bring people together, not apart, and that was what was happening between me and the school board at Lakota. Compared to some of our past issues this new problem transcended those transgressions. We needed to create a culture at Lakota that would protect kids from the types of people who put ideology over logic and will take those next dangerous steps toward the destruction of lives. As I said to several people that evening, I would support in this case a bonus for teachers who sign up for a CCW. I am thinking of something in the $10,000 per year range to encourage teachers to spend time with guns, to create a group of peers who might shoot together on the weekends down at Premier Shooting in West Chester then get together for dinner afterwards. We’re not talking about teachers wearing guns on their hips and advertising that they are CCW holders. We are just talking about concerned teachers who want to become first responders in case some crazy person comes into one of Lakota’s 22 school buildings and seeks to ruin the lives of the people inside. As Samuel Ronan showed us, someone who doesn’t belong can easily walk into a school and manipulate their way past security with the type of sincerity that he displayed and have their way with our most vulnerable because as good people we tend to trust that everyone else is also a good person. We are never quite ready for some villain who looks like a normal person, and acts like a normal person, until it’s too late. At that point, it would be good to have a teacher in every hall in those 22 school buildings who could at least keep their classrooms from becoming an unprotected zone of malice.

The bonus of $10,000 would be specifically to help create a culture among a group of people who up to this point have not been concerned about guns. By asking them to open their minds to the idea, the bonus would allow them to participate in the sport of shooting so that when and if something dire were to occur, they’d at least be familiar enough to use those firearms proficiently. Just as I came together with the Lakota school board that night in what was a good feeling exchange, people who shoot together tend to form bonds of friendship that extend into all parts of their lives. I am very certain that if Lakota were to adopt this policy there would be peer groups of shooters that would develop, and they’d enjoy the exchange with one another. As a gun owner and frequent user myself I can report that this is an experience I have in my life that I know would transfer over into the lives of the teachers who became CCW holders and it would be a very positive experience for them. Instead of dividing our community, it would unite in ways that nobody thought possible, just as nobody would have imagined years ago that I’d have a friendly exchange with the Lakota school board. Firearms have a way of uniting people who otherwise wouldn’t speak to each other any other way.

Shooting can be expensive, so I envision that $10,000 bonus helping the teachers pay for their lane fees at Premier Shooting and the ammunition to shoot there once or twice a month with other teachers. And after shooting they’d have a little money in their pocket to do what the rest of us shooters do with our time, you grab a bite to eat and enjoy each other’s company in a similar way that golfing buddies do. Only with guns there is always a higher purpose to what you are doing, and it makes saying hello to that other teacher in the hall a bit more special, because they would be in a unique club of potential first responders in case a radicalized terrorist would try to unleash pain and suffering on our nice and successful community.

My urgency on the matter is that Lakota is more vulnerable than other places in Ohio—because it is wealthy, its large, and its conservative. There was a reason that the progressive radical Samuel Ronan who is a pretty big-time star on cable news decided to target Lakota for his anti-gun protest. He had no other business in the Lakota community, he didn’t do it in Mason or Springboro, he came to Lakota. And if people like him who are just a bit too angry at the direction of the world are looking at the leadership of Lakota as a place to discharge their aggression, then someone just a few IQ points south of Ronan might just do the unthinkable, because it is a giant soft target for such people. Personally, I don’t want to see that happen. I’m willing to put away my past grievances for the purpose of a unifying objective—and this issue of giving teachers CCWs is the best idea that I’ve heard in public education for years. And I will promise this, it will be a very positive thing that will bring together the whole community—and will make the teaching staff much better. Firearms are the ultimate team building tool. I understand that many people don’t yet have a reference point to build off of, because firearms aren’t a normal part of their lives, but once they come to understand what a unifying factor firearms are—socially—the magic of that team building will become obvious—and as a side result, our children will be much, much safer as a net result.

Rich Hoffman

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