It was exciting to watch the General Lee, the famous car from the television show, The Dukes of Hazzard, jump over and through the fountain in the middle of town in Somerset, Kentucky.  What makes people want to jump a perfectly good car in such an ostentatious way, essentially destroying it in the process?  I enjoyed the event at the end of June, 2025 quite a lot, but as I watched everything unfold, I had to ask, why?  Why any of it?  Why jump in a classic car that is essentially an antique in the middle of town, and why did everyone come out to watch it?  And how did the stuntman Raymond Kohn even manage to organize the event during the Somernites Cruise, where the car would be jumped and land on roads that everyone uses, scratching up the pavement?  There were so many unsafe elements to the jump.  Usually, they do these kinds of things at a racetrack or at fairgrounds.  But this was in the middle of a busy town.  And it’s not lost on us that only a few short years ago, Nikki Haley, as governor of South Carolina, was removing all traces of the Confederate Flag from government property.  General Lee, as a car, has a Confederate Flag painted on it, and many of the vehicles at the car show openly display Confederate Flag license plates and decals. Here was an event that the world was covering.  This was international news.  It was all very haphazard and reckless, but people loved it.  But why?  What is in human nature that makes us love such things, and this extends beyond political sentiment?  Reverence for the Confederate Flag means rebellion for many people.  I appreciate the Union Army’s efforts during the Civil War and have always been an anti-slavery person.   However, I understand the rebellion the Confederate Flag represents, and it serves as a warning to self-governed people not to overreach with too many rules and regulations.  If I had to sum up the effort, that’s what this car jump was all about.

It was pretty interesting leading up to the jump, as the car was parked on the ramp in town, allowing people to walk up and touch it.  They could feel the ramps.  Anybody could have sabotaged the event, but everything was pretty loose, even right up to the jump, where people lined the sides of the street.  A lot of things could have gone wrong, and at the end of the jump, the wrecked General Lee almost hit a cameraman.  However, nobody got too emotional about anything, and the whole town showed up to see the jump, with everyone having a really good time.  The stunt team performing in the show was the Northeast Ohio Dukes, and they put on these shows quite frequently.  However, this was different because it occurred in the middle of a functioning town, which could result in real damage and injury.  However, people felt they needed to do this stunt, disregarding caution, to perform it. Afterwards, the Northeast Ohio Dukes sold off pieces of the wreck to people who wanted a piece of history.  So what would make someone want a piece of the General Lee hanging in the garage?  Well, a lot of people did.  The entire event also had significant sponsorship from notable companies, including Coca-Cola, G&L Refrigeration, Citizens National Bank, and Don Franklin Dealerships.  Thirty-five thousand people showed up to pay $10 a ticket to watch history being made.  What was noticeable to me was that nobody seemed to care about woke politics.

When The Dukes of Hazzard television show aired every Friday night, people loved it.  In every episode, the Duke boys, who were always running away from the law, would jump the General Lee during one of the many car chases that occurred throughout the series.  I loved it; I had the high-flying General Lee on my school notebooks, on t-shirts. I had lots of toy cars that I would jump with myself.  I performed many stunts and would jump my bike over numerous dangerous obstacles.  It was all very exciting, and obviously, I am not the only one.  After all that we’ve been through as a culture, where the administrative state has tried to make us a more safe society, here we were in 2025, during the first year of the Trump presidency in his second term and a General Lee complete with an ostentatious Confederate Flag was jumping through a town fountain just like on the television show.  Hollywood has tried to recapture that magic in other kinds of shows, but people still love a 40-year-old show because of its lack of political correctness.  People do not want to live safe lives under the thumb of too much government regulation, and jumping a perfectly good car, and an expensive one such as the General Lee, destroying them each time they do it, is the sign of a very affluent society that can afford to do such things as an expression of personal sentiment. For many of the same reasons, we celebrate the 4th of July with fireworks.  At the core of our society is a need for rebellion and to throw caution to the wind, and the General Lee car from the television show has become a symbol of that in our culture. 

The jump itself was 150 feet high at a speed of 50 MPH, and with people lined up all along the street, a lot of things could have gone wrong.  However, having the event itself, with all the loose caution, was more important than safety, and that was what was important here.  And since that show was on television, there hasn’t been anything like it.  People still crave that kind of entertainment because there is an extreme need for danger in people’s lives.  They don’t want the safety of the administrative state.  They want to jump cars through fountains in the middle of town, crashing them on the other side, then buying pieces of the car as a trophy for their garage.  You wouldn’t see something like this, General Lee jumping in different places in the world, because it’s uniquely American. This is interesting, considering we are only five years out from when the World Health Organization tried to make a power move with COVID and shut down the entire world.  People played along for a little while, but slowly, a rebellious nature emerged, one that led to not wearing masks or getting vaccinated, undoing all the over-the-top regulations.  And here was a car with a Confederate Flag launching through the middle of town in ways that pushed safety to its limit, and people were pleased about it. What does that say about us?  We are a defiant people who intend to have self-government, and the Dukes of Hazzard television show is all about defying progressive attempts to turn America into something much less desirable.  And after all these years, with all the technological advancements we’ve experienced, the act of jumping a classic car through the middle of town with a dangerous stunt is still something most people enjoy.  And because they do, they won’t sign up for more centralized regulations coming from the United Nations any time soon.  People like danger and a car culture of excess.  So much so that they not only want to own cars like the General Lee, but they want to wreck them in an act of defiance whenever possible.  Because it’s in our nature to do so. 

Rich Hoffman

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