Tag: George Soros

Gun Rights “Shall Not Be Infringed”: Philosophy trumps legality–get to know Senate Bill 199 and Senate Bill 180

I get really tired of all this talk about gun control. On Saturday Night Live shown on October 10, 2015 the obvious attack against guns was incredibly obvious. They did several skits attacking guns showing how the progressive New York culture sees the rest of America. Well, just for clarity not to the gun owners who read this site each day, but those progressive types who are way too politically left-winged, the Second Amendment is not up for debate. It is not up for negotiation. And there is no interpretation of the words “shall not be infringed,” that opens the door for more rules, confiscation, or government involvement. As lawyers do try to discuss the meaning of words which can take on different meanings as times change the Bill of Rights is an extension of American philosophy for which legal terms evolved. The intent of the Constitution therefore does not fall under the proper interpretation of legal minds, but philosophy. And the essence of that philosophy is that governments cannot be trusted—which is grossly evident in our modern news cycles. Here is how the terminology has been misinterpreted by legal minds giving the illusion that the Second Amendment can be modified to suit some progressive diatribe—such as those shown on left leaning news outlets and entertainment venues.

The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Such language has created considerable debate regarding the Amendment’s intended scope. On the one hand, some believe that the Amendment’s phrase “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms” creates an individual constitutional right for citizens of the United States. Under this “individual right theory,” the United States Constitution restricts legislative bodies from prohibiting firearm possession, or at the very least, the Amendment renders prohibitory and restrictive regulation presumptively unconstitutional. On the other hand, some scholars point to the prefatory language “a well-regulated Militia” to argue that the Framers intended only to restrict Congress from legislating away a state’s right to self-defense. Scholars have come to call this theory “the collective rights theory.” A collective rights theory of the Second Amendment asserts that citizens do not have an individual right to possess guns and that local, state, and federal legislative bodies therefore possess the authority to regulate firearms without implicating a constitutional right.

In 1939 the U.S. Supreme Court considered the matter in United States v. Miller. 307 U.S. 174. The Court adopted a collective rights approach in this case, determining that Congress could regulate a sawed-off shotgun that had moved in interstate commerce under the National Firearms Act of 1934 because the evidence did not suggest that the shotgun “has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated milita . . . .” The Court then explained that the Framers included the Second Amendment to ensure the effectiveness of the military.

This precedent stood for nearly 70 years when in 2008 the U.S. Supreme Court revisited the issue in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller (07-290). The plaintiff in Heller challenged the constitutionality of the Washington D.C. handgun ban, a statute that had stood for 32 years. Many considered the statute the most stringent in the nation. In a 5-4 decision, the Court, meticulously detailing the history and tradition of the Second Amendment at the time of the Constitutional Convention, proclaimed that the Second Amendment established an individual right for U.S. citizens to possess firearms and struck down the D.C. handgun ban as violative of that right. The majority carved out Miller as an exception to the general rule that Americans may possess firearms, claiming that law-abiding citizens cannot use sawed-off shotguns for any law-abiding purpose. Similarly, the Court in its dicta found regulations of similar weaponry that cannot be used for law-abiding purposes as laws that would not implicate the Second Amendment. Further, the Court suggested that the United States Constitution would not disallow regulations prohibiting criminals and the mentally ill from firearm possession.

Thus, the Supreme Court has revitalized the Second Amendment. The Court continued to strengthen the Second Amendment through the 2010 decision in McDonald v. City of Chicago (08-1521). The plaintiff in McDonald challenged the constitutionally of the Chicago handgun ban, which prohibited handgun possession by almost all private citizens. In a 5-4 decisions, the Court, citing the intentions of the framers and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment, held that the Second Amendment applies to the states through the incorporation doctrine. However, the Court did not have a majority on which clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the fundamental right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense. While Justice Alito and his supporters looked to the Due Process Clause, Justice Thomas in his concurrence stated that the Privileges and Immunities Clause should justify incorporation.

However, several questions still remain unanswered, such as whether regulations less stringent than the D.C. statute implicate the Second Amendment, whether lower courts will apply their dicta regarding permissible restrictions, and what level of scrutiny the courts should apply when analyzing a statute that infringes on the Second Amendment.

Recent case-law since Heller suggests that courts are willing to, for example, uphold

  • regulations which ban weapons on government property. US v Dorosan, 350 Fed. Appx. 874 (5th Cir. 2009) (upholding defendant’s conviction for bringing a handgun onto post office property);
  • regulations which ban the illegal possession of a handgun as a juvenile, convicted felon.  US v Rene, 583 F.3d 8 (1st Cir. 2009) (holding that the Juvenile Delinquency Act ban of juvenile possession of handguns did not violate the Second Amendment);
  •  regulations which require a permit to carry concealed weapon. Kachalsky v County of Westchester, 701 F.3d 81 (2nd Cir. 2012) (holding that a New York law preventing individuals from obtaining a license to possess a concealed firearm in public for general purposes unless the individual showed proper cause did not violate the Second Amendment.)

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/second_amendment

That’s just a bit of history on how the Second Amendment has been knocked back and forth over the years. Yet the trend in spite of New Yorkers like those found on Saturday Night Live around the rest of the country is for gun laws to become less stringent not more so. For instance in my home state of Ohio there are two pro-gun bills being introduced for discussion which are very important.   The Ohio Senate Civil Justice Committee had a hearing Wednesday, October 7, at 2:30 p.m. in the Finance Hearing Room to discuss two pro-gun bills.

Senate Bill 180, sponsored by Senator Joe Uecker (R-14), would allow an employee to store a firearm in their locked vehicle without fear of employer retribution.  Throughout the country, many employers have adopted “No Firearms” policies that extend beyond the physical workplace to include employee parking lots – areas often accessible to the general public and not secure.  In order to comply with these policies, many employees must choose between protecting themselves during their commutes and being subject to termination by their employer.

The fundamental right to self-defense should not stop simply because you park your car in a publicly accessible parking lot owned by your employer.  When companies invite employees to park on their property, they should not be allowed to dictate employees’ constitutional rights inside one’s own vehicle.

Senate Bill 199, also sponsored by Senator Uecker (R-14) and Senator Randy Gardner (R-2), would allow an active duty member of the military to carry a concealed firearm without obtaining a concealed carry license if the active duty member is carrying a valid military identification and a certificate indicating a small arms qualification.

If your company has such a misguided policy that impedes your inherent right to self-defense, please contact NRA-ILA’s State and Local Division at state&local@nrahq.org and share this information.

https://www.nraila.org/articles/20151006/ohio-nra-backed-bills-up-in-committee-this-week

And that’s where I stand, there needs to be a lot more guns out there, not less, and we need to be able to carry them in more places more often. The trend is clear and the necessity for more guns is obvious. Guns are not just instruments of death the way left leaning politics frames them—they are part of the philosophic American experience. They transcend legal interpretation as philosophy trumps legality because it is in thought that all law emerges. So to undo some of the laws misinterpreted by sissy-driven legal minds over the years, the Ohio Senate Civil Justice Committee is working to walk back the intrusions that gun owners have been conceding—illegally due to improper legal negotiations from the anti-gun lobby over previous decades. The activism displayed on Saturday Night Live and other anti-gun venues made a false assumption—that gun rights “shall not be infringed,” were up to debate. They aren’t under any circumstance. End of story. It’s not complicated. Guns=philosophy which trumps legality.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

The Needs of Men and Women: Why it’s cowardly not to throw oneself into a hail of bullets–if needed

It really is shocking sometimes to read what those on the political left think these days when pressed against times of circumstance. These school shootings recently are bringing out all the failures in political thought starting with education and shining a light on them that obviously Salon magazine can’t face. The common ingredient between the Oregon shooter, the recent Arizona University shooting, and even the fight that left French train hero Spencer Stone stabbed after a bar altercation, is that they all feature young males trying desperately to assert themselves in a confusing world. Progressives have spent so much time trying to make women equal to men, all colors of skin to integrate, and sexual orientation to feel comfortable operating without secrecy in society—that they forgot that one of the most intense needs young men have of all shapes, sizes and backgrounds is the need to determine their place in the pecking order of their existence. There is a real science behind these crises that is obviously completely missing from an article by Heather Digby Parton at Salon trying to piece together why both Donald Trump and Ben Carson—leading the GOP pack of presidential candidates have exhibited themselves as so “pro gun.” Read that article at the link below, it is rather funny.

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/07/they_think_theyre_all_clint_eastwood_donald_trump_ben_carson_the_rights_demented_gun_fantasies/

I’m sure Heather is a nice girl. In fact I had dinner with a whole room full of Heather types recently at a winery where the premier topic among them was the movie Magic Mike, and reruns of Friends. Their dates—if you could call them that sat patiently by them as the women knocked wine glasses together and giggled like school girls over topics like six-pack abs and lesbian fantasies of accidentally putting on the other person’s underwear the next morning before leaving for the office. The men looked rather lost, not really knowing when to laugh or when to look emotionally invested. They all looked like men who had missed the train at the station and had to wait until the next day to catch the next one. It was an upscale place, but the game was obvious. Even through I’ve never met Heather Digby Parton from Salon—her kind was clearly present at the dinner engagement and guns were a taboo subject.

I was walking back to my seat after getting up to view the wine cellar and a young man actually engaged me in conversation—which I really didn’t have time for, but could tell he was desperately seeking some testosterone driven guidance. I told him what I usually do under such circumstances—that he needed to take his date to the back seat of whatever car they arrived in and give her what she’s really looking for instead of another two hours of all that hen cackling for which he and she were suffering. She’d stay on his arm for the rest of the evening and drop all the contemporary drama of not being able to find soap at Bed Bath and Beyond. About that time I received a message that the longtime leader of the Republican Party of Butler County had died. Carlos Todd was a significant figure in shaping the Republican Party nationwide as John Boehner, George Bush in 2004, and many others have cut their teeth in politics in his wake. Butler County is largely extremely conservative because of him and now he was dead at the fairly young age of 77. That left me thinking about modern girls who joke about lesbian acts in front of their male dates, Donald Trump and guns, and some of the fights I personally had with Carlos Todd over the years where I didn’t think he was conservative enough for my taste. Even though he and I disagreed about a lot of things, we did join together on some fights. Where our disagreements often flowed over it was on the Republican strategy of appealing to these modern types taught in the manner of progressivism to adhere to a new code of conduct that ignored the male need for boldness by instead encouraging them to sissy slap each other and join the ladies in mixing up their underwear with their fellow male counterparts in the morning. Not a good idea on any scale.

The Republican Party has suffered because it moved off its macho base and tried to appeal to what they thought was a changing demographic. The demographic needs did not change, young men still desire to prove to young women how tough they are and when their rope runs out, they sometimes turn to violence to display their last act of courage—from their point of view. And women as much as they think it’s stylish to hyphenate their last names to show that they are not assimilated to a man by way of marriage really just want a determined man who can make them feel like a woman while engaged in sexual mating customs. And that’s why I actually feel bad for Heather Digby Parton and those who read her Salon magazine article and actually understood her point of view.

Every human being should know that if bullets are flying that in that moment acts of heroism are mandated. It’s OK to be shot, or to be stabbed several times like Spencer Stone was during his recent bar fight. For a man it feels good to collect new scars even if it means you die in the process. It feels good to be heroic. I can say what I’d do if under the threat of gun fire honestly because I’ve been in those situations. Let me say, I’ve never put my hands up and turned over my wallet, or allowed my woman to be insulted, or my personal integrity—gun or not. So I completely understand Donald Trump’s comments in the wake of the Oregon shooting where he resurrected images of great vigilante films like Death Wish by making guns out of his hand in front of the audience pretending to quick draw. Yes it is cowardly Heather Digby Parton to not throw yourself into a hail of bullets if there is danger present. It is worse to cower like a baby pleading for your life than in dying through the act of heroics. Because our current society is so obsessed with homosexual acts and equality blending the hard-working with the lazy it has missed the deep need humans have for heroes even if that act costs them their life. Clicking wine glasses together and joking about overly estrogen necessities at the expense of masculinity won’t make a more peaceful world—it makes it more dangerous—which should be obvious after the recent school shootings. Donald Trump is proving what I have been trying to convince Carlos Todd Republicans for a number of years—that if you really want to expand the Republican Party you don’t do it by feminizing the candidates. You put up bold heroes to represent conservativism.

Young men need danger and to overcome it to prove to themselves and their potential mates that they have the potential to act heroically. Progressivism seeks to remove that desire from the human mind—which is impossible without thousands of years of evolution. Women in their sexual roles are built biologically to crave a bloody, sweaty man—and men are programmed to save damsels in distress properly perfumed and highlighted with all the latest supernormal sign stimuli (eye shadow, lipstick, blush, high heels, etc). Most women when pressed will say that the two things they are most attracted to with men are their smell and their confidence. Women are not so interested in visual attributes like six-pack abs and the strippers in Magic Mike—they actually want a deeply confident male to sweep them off their feet—even after all the decades of progressive education attempts to equalize the sexes by ignoring the strength of one and artificially propping up the other. Both have suffered and the males are lashing out in ways that are proving detrimental to the safety of our nation.

So guys, if you have an opportunity to stop a robbery, fight a bully who is picking on other people, or just standing up for an idea that you believe in, you will do better with the ladies than if you try to appease them by watching chick flicks and giggling like an idiot at their estrogen based diatribes. Women don’t really want you to giggle at that stuff either, and they really don’t care if you pretty yourself up with cologne, hairspray and well-pressed cloths. Like the girls I mentioned joking about getting their underwear mixed up after a rough night in the sheets—girls can get that kind of stuff with each other—they truly don’t need a man for that. But, people in general do recognize that it is cowardly to hide when the bullets fly and danger is at its peak. Donald Trump clearly knows that. Carlos Todd never really accepted it. But the Republican Party is deciding, just as millions of human beings are turning against the teachings of progressivism represented by Salon writers like Heather, that they don’t want to live in a world run by cowards. So in these changing times, those who invoke the gun know what they are doing. Those who hide from it just sip wine and make jokes as the times leave them behind just as masculinity was deliberately left standing at the loading deck as the train of modernism pulled away only to break down a few miles down the track—because there wasn’t anybody around who knew how to fix it. There are worse things than death, and being a coward is one of them.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

End of The Drudge Report: A calm before the next American Civil War

Well, the full court press by progressives is on and they have shown their cards. In the wake of another round of gun violence it is obvious what the strategy is. Matt Drudge gave a rare interview with Alex Jones predicting the end of his famous internet news site The Drudge Report because of something a Supreme Court Justice said to him. The next Civil War is well at hand—because of progressive intrusions, and while there is still civility the mechanisms for which they control is attempting to shape the battle ground. They want to control the media in all aspects so they can cut the lines of communication between free people. They want to disarm the public so that there is little resistance to their incursion. And they are selling all this effort with a perceived professionalism that is rather dangerous. Watch Matt’s interview here which sounds remarkably similar to the interview I gave to my friend Matt Clark recently. Click here to review that. Watch the Drudge interview here:

I agree with Wayne LaPierre, the head of the National Rifle Association (NRA), when he famously claimed that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.” There are a lot of bad guys out there, at all levels of the world. Some are thugs in the streets looking to steal from those who work; others just want to terrorize to satisfy their own infantile egos. Low level terrorists work through radical groups, or are individuals crazed with hate. More sophisticated terrorists hide their maliciousness behind orthodox behavior and reside within the world’s governments. And it is they who speak through the work of publications like The Nation which said the following in reaction to Wayne LaPierre’s gunslinger comments about private armament.

The Nation spoke to several people who do—combat veterans and former law enforcement officers—and who believe that the NRA’s heroic gunslinger mythology is a dangerous fantasy that bears little resemblance to reality. Stephen Benson knows what it’s like when bullets start flying. The former Navy SEAL saw extensive combat during his three tours in Vietnam. Later, while recovering from the wounds that earned him his third Purple Heart, he also trained elite troops at the Naval Special Warfare Center in Coronado, California. “In chaotic situations, the first thing you know is that the shit has hit the fan and you don’t know where the fan is,” says Benson. “And unless it’s constantly drilled into you, it’s very hard to maintain discipline in those situations. You’re immediately hit with a massive thump of adrenaline. Your mouth begins to taste like copper. You can hear the blood moving in your system. You can even experience a kind of time-warp. And the problem with that kind of state is that conscious thought shuts down because you’ve been taken over by your nervous system, and your nervous system is saying, ‘holy shit, things just got really bad.’”

http://www.thenation.com/article/combat-vets-destroy-the-nras-heroic-gunslinger-fantasy/

As a connected issue to all the above progressives are looking toward Australia as a solution to the gun control avocation they support most. In Australia essentially the government bought back guns from the public, kind of like the cash for clunkers program seen in the United States a few years ago. The big difference is that if people refused to participate, they were threatened with jail. The Australian 1996 National Agreement on Firearms was not a benign set of commonsense gun-control rules: It was a gun-confiscation program rushed through the Australian parliament just twelve days after a 28-year-old man killed 35 people with a semi-automatic rifle in the Tasmanian city of Port Arthur. The Council of Foreign relations summarizes the Aussie measure nicely: The National Agreement on Firearms all but prohibited automatic and semiautomatic assault rifles, stiffened licensing and ownership rules, and instituted a temporary gun buyback program that took some 650,000 assault weapons (about one-sixth of the national stock) out of public circulation. Among other things, the law also required licensees to demonstrate a “genuine need” for a particular type of gun and take a firearm safety course. The council’s laudatory section on Australian gun-control policy concludes that “many [read: gun-control activists] suggest the policy response in the wake of Port Arthur could serve as a model for the United States.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425021/australia-gun-control-obama-america

So there you can see dear reader how the collective consciousness of mass progressives—globally induced is establishing its attack run on American liberty. First, they intend to shut down free speech by strong individual advocates, like Drudge. Next they wish to continue to establish trust in a central authority, like public school teachers, and police run by international trade unions philosophically committed to socialism. Then they plan to disarm society under the guise of safety. Their only opposition is in building up public momentum against their individual enemies with public sentiment. Now that you know that much, go back and listen to the Drudge interview once again and listen carefully. The guy has been at the top of his game for two decades and knows most of the major media personalities in the United States on all sides of the political spectrum. He’s not a conspiracy wack job. He’s a very real and conscientious person.

As to the assertion that NRA gunslingers are no match for the well-seasoned combat veteran let me put that one to rest. Without question there are many brave people who serve in the armed forces—but to me that is part of the problem of mass collectivism. They are effectively employees of the government and if the government goes bad, they become the enemy against liberty—so there must be checks against their power with individual—and equal ability. But let’s be clear about something, and I know I’m not the only one out there—but under strenuous situations I trust myself far more than any police or military officer to remain cool under fire. If I were not a married man, I would be a contractor such as what works around the world outside of the military services, so professional soldiers don’t impress me. And most cops are such a panicky lot that they make fools of themselves all too often during traffic stops and late night run-ins with drunks at bars. CLICK FOR AN EXAMPLE IN MY TOWN. I certainly don’t want police officers and military personnel to have supreme command over my life and property. No disrespect to them, but they need checks and balances from a civilian presence who is better armed in most cases to keep them honest.

I’ve been shot at, been under severe threat, had guns pointed at me and been under every kind of danger imaginable and I don’t rattle. An explosion could go off right next to me and I’d be under complete control. I can control my adrenaline, and I actually thrive when the “shit hits the fan.” I enjoy those moments and I purposely look for reasons to be in such circumstances. There are many Americans like me just as there were people like that in Australia—people like Rod Ansell who was the inspiration for the movie character Crocodile Dundee.   Ansell was shot dead in a gun battle with police in 1999 two years into the gun ban when authorities came to the outback master’s remote home—blocked off the road and fought it out with the old hold-out. There are a lot of people like Ansell in the world, and everyone is much safer with them armed and free.

Make no mistake about it. The intentions from villains hiding behind certified law are lurking for excuses to unleash their ideology upon everything they see standing in their path. If they could, and will likely attempt by virtual of law, is to make an outlaw out of Matt Drudge, just as they did Rod Ansell. When Ansell was killed by multiple gunshot wounds the authorities excused the effort through the rationalization of insanity—that Rod and his 26-year-old girlfriend were hyperactive drug addicts obsessed with an attempt by the Freemasons to take over the world. Since this new breed of criminal has taken off the masks they used to rob banks with, becoming lawyers and law makers instead, they create now the means for looting by legal means—so they can make outlaws of Ansell, Drudge, and anyone else with the signature of a pen instead of the point of the gun—because when all the guns are collected, they’ll still have them—then it will be too late. So you better know what kind of game you are playing and who is moving the pieces and not white-wash the reality with any illusions. We have a Civil War on our hands—the shots just haven’t been fired yet. But they will be—and when that happens, make sure you are a card-carrying member of Second Call Defense so you can stay out of jail while the legal system still works. There will come a time when it won’t, but until then protect yourself. Because nobody else will.   At that point those public sector security types will point their guns in your direction, just as they did at Rod Ansell in Australia. That is what Obama and his progressive friends are trying to create in the United States. The real fight is one of the mass collectivism against the individual—everywhere in the world. And in a world where collectivists make all the rules—it is the truly insane mandated by the weakest links of their order for which they define the rationality of people like Rod Ansell—which is why Matt Drudge is one of the biggest targets on the internet. First it will be people like him—then it will be everyone else.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Stop Acting Like A Sissy: How to stop a form of suicide

We used to call a boy who wanted to dress up like, or act like a girl a sissy. Of course that was before liberals used the education system and every platform available to them to attempt to change words and values against the will of logic. Now calling someone a sissy is equivalent to a hate crime—but is the best term available to most people of the male sex these days. Being a sissy is not only disingenuous to themselves, it is to the wives and children they will have as adults, and it should be discouraged—in spite of the progressive attempts to eradicate the meaning of the word for the benefits of their social strategy of valueless assessment of all people no matter what the condition—because their aims are mass collectivism. That means essentially that the very good is equal to the very bad equating the human race to the value of zero—which explains a lot why our society is as messed up today as it is. Thank a progressive who pushed for society to stop calling flailing young boys, sissies.

Over a decade ago, 14 years or so as of this writing I saved a young man from committing suicide by invigorating in him the spark of life. He worked with me and for many consecutive days during a certain period of his life he was seriously about to end it all. He only kept going so that he could talk to me the next day at work so that he could get some little peril of wisdom that I’d give him as an excuse to keep living. I was glad each day that I saw him because it meant he listened to me and had not committed the act. Of course I didn’t take away what honor he had left and involve the authorities in the matter. Likely, if I had it would have only delayed the process by a few years. No, this kid needed to be fixed at the level of the soul, and he needed me to help him—so I did.

Largely his problem was that he had experimented with drugs, his sexuality, and his ethics and he felt it would be impossible for him to be a good person from there on. Usually people in his condition might turn toward God for redemption and the psychological mechanism of eternal forgiveness so that they could call themselves born again Christians. But this kid’s real father was a louse, his mother a slut and his sister was gutter trash. He really didn’t have any family support to nurture a church going turn-around. His live-in girl friend that he had three kids by was sleeping with everyone in town, his children were quickly headed down the tubes also and he really didn’t know what to do. Remarkably, he was a smart kid given the surroundings that he came from which made it worse for him—because he knew the hand he had been given in life was taking him somewhere that offered little hope for the future.

One particular day I didn’t think he’d make it through the break period at work. He was crying and was curled up in a fetal position on the ground ready to end it all. There was nothing that could reach him. So I thought of all the old John Wayne movies I had watched as a kid and did my best impression—with a straight face in all seriousness. I told him, “stop being a sissy and deal with what’s in front of you.” He looked at me through tears and asked how………………so I told him.

I taught him The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, which is an old book on Japanese samurai strategy as a way to give the kid a fresh outlook on life—to take him out of his immediate problems and place his mind in a higher place. Each break at work I played the role of a Japanese sword master and worked with him on the art of sword play and a warrior’s philosophy. This went on for about two months, but within a few weeks of it, his desire for suicide went away. Instead he was reading books about samurai, watching old Kurosawa movies, and started dressing with a top knot pony tail off an otherwise shaved head. He was losing weight and within six weeks or so was a lean figure bulging with muscle. Instead of killing himself, he was building himself and his body took the form of a warrior. His top knot hair cut did get some looks, but for a kid who was planning to kill himself, what did he care if people thought his hair was strange. It worked for him, and he was building a life for himself around the values he had been learning.

He began practicing all the time with a katana swords at home, at work, and anywhere he went. Eventually he developed a new association of friends who shared with him a love of samurai culture and Japanese art and they invited him to a beach visit the following summer, and he took his swords and spent most of the time not chasing women, but practicing with his katana on the beach. He became very good and soon found a very nice girlfriend and got his life on the right track within a year of wanting to kill himself. He became very stoic and sure of himself because of his practicing with the katana sword following the code of the samurai.

That code of the samurai is still very present in modern Japan. It is not something they take lightly and something of samurai code can be found in most aspects of their culture to this very day. The Japanese would not put up with an anti-samurai movement in Japan. If such people rose up to challenge their heritage, they would likely eradicate them, because they value their heritage and the code of conduct established largely by myth of the Feudal period where samurai roamed their island homeland with great respect.

That kid to thank me gave me a very nice katana sword as a way to honor me for saving his life. That sword still hangs on a gun rack in my bedroom and I think about it at least once every day. Without my input that kid would have been dead. He knew it, I knew it, his kids knew it—everyone knew it. But all he really needed was a new set of values to sink his teeth into that were aligned with his inner most needs. His parents gave him a lot of garbage to work through and he needed to completely refocus his energy in a positive direction. For him he found solace in the way of the samurai.

In a lot of ways our nation is trying to commit suicide presently—here in 2015. It reminds me a lot of the way of life that individual kid was living when I first met him. It needs to find the values it requires to continue living. To me the answer is exceptionally easy. The rightful comparison to the Japanese samurai is the American gunfighter. The gunfighter is America’s heritage and a code of conduct that it can use to put itself back together again away from the terrible progressive influences that are deliberating attacking all aspects of the culture within the United States. It is my very strong feeling that the entire nation, just like that single kid, would fix itself quite quickly if it could adopt a correct code of conduct that all people could agree to—and the best solution to that quandary is the American gunfighter. So like that kid, I saw in his eye a chance to introduce a healing philosophy to him, I see the same on the American nation as a whole. But for our nation we don’t need sentiments from the East—we just need to look inside at our own heritage.

The answers are already there for us. All we need to do is rediscover the wonder of our own ability through an art form we respect. Young men really need to rediscover their inner warrior, and young women will appreciate it when they do. Because in life we all have to fight through hard times, and it takes sometimes a warrior’s mind to achieve the tenacity to accomplish the task—and in American culture the way of the warrior is through the art of the gun. Understanding that relationship will unlock many of the troubles our times are currently enduring. And before anything can be fixed, our relationship to the gun must be not only accepted, but embraced fully and with great love. It’s time for half the people in our country to stop being a bunch of sissies.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

An Oregon Tragedy: Why America needs more Second Call Defense and the NRA

Nearly on time with the shots fired from a gunman at Umpqua Community College in Oregon the White House was blaming Congress for not passing more gun control legislation. As usual, the progressive types—the muddy minded know nothings of academia uttered an emotional reaction to a crisis. As stated often at this site and elsewhere, more guns lead to less violence, not the other way around. Especially in liberal regions where there are large conglomerations of people—like schools where students are nearly 99.999999% unarmed 100% of the time—when some frustrated loser wants to take out their anxieties through actions of cowardly behavior from a gun that gives them a significant advantage over the masses—the call for solutions is in actuality the opposite of what the White House advocated. But before describing why, this is how the AP reported the story as it broke across the wire.

ROSEBURG, Ore. (AP) — A gunman opened fire at an Oregon community college Thursday, killing at least seven people and wounding 20, authorities said.

The shooting happened at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, about 180 miles south of Portland. The local fire district advised people via Twitter to stay away from the school. It later tweeted that there were “multiple casualties” but did not elaborate.

State police Lt. Bill Fugate told KATU-TV that seven to 10 people were dead and at least 20 others hurt. A photographer for the Roseburg News-Review newspaper said he saw people being loaded into multiple ambulances and taken to the local hospital.

Andrea Zielinski, a spokeswoman for Douglas County Sheriff’s office, told The Associated Press: “There’s no more threat.”

Zielinski would not say whether a suspect was apprehended or dead.

Sheriff’s Office did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press seeking details.

The sheriff’s office reported on Twitter that it received a call about the shooting at 10:38 a.m.

Students and faculty members were being bused to the Douglas County Fairgrounds, the sheriff’s office said.

A spokeswoman for the Oregon department that oversees community colleges in the state said she had not received any detailed information about the shooting.

“It’s extremely concerning and sad,” said Endi Hartigan, spokeswoman for the Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission.

The rural town of Roseburg lies west of the Cascade Mountains in an area where the timber industry has struggled. In recent years, officials have tried to promote the region as a tourist destination for vineyards and outdoor activities.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/gunman-opens-fire-at-oregon-community-college-killing-7/ar-AAf0Xnl?li=AAa0dzB&ocid=LENDHP

In each of those classes there should have been at least 10 or more armed students trained to use a gun and equipped enough to stop the carnage. There is a reason these acts of violence occur in places where liberals are generally in charge. You don’t see mass shootings in areas where lots of gun owners are carrying—especially gun and knife shows. Do you know why dear reader—because people shoot back. Scum bags like this crazed gunman want to inflict as much harm as necessary before they end up dead—which if such a person is at the end of their rope—are dangerous with or without guns. If there are people present who shoot back, their chance for carnage goes from many people to just a few just because other people are armed at the scene and can stop the intentions.

I normally don’t back products or services—especially during a tragedy, but these shootings and the way liberals attempt to capitalize on them forces the issue to the forefront, so in this case I will. I’m a member of Second Call Defense which you can also become a member of by clicking on the link to the right of this page. Just type in Overmanwarrior in the redemption code and you will get your first month of Second Call Defense coverage for free. Several people at that community college even though many are under the age of 18 should have been armed with a personal firearm, they should have been members of the NRA, and they absolutely should have been members of Second Call Defense. As members they could have shot that gunman on site as soon as a threat assessment was asserted and many lives would have been saved. There is nothing worse than sitting at a desk and being trapped unarmed by an aggressor who wants to take away everything you’ve ever worked to be in an instant. It is far better to reach under a jacket and pull out a firearm so you can shoot back and save people from further carnage. If the self-defense shooter was a member of Second Call Defense they could have taken down the attacker then called the hot line to let the dedicated attorneys handle the rest of the case legally. Second Call Defense makes those types of self-defense shootings much easier.

In the case of this Oregon shooter, again it’s another kid—26 years old—with a hyphenated name. There is something to be said about the reason so many of these young kids are feeling desperate enough to end their own lives and to kill as many people as possible. Causes for the failed behavior would be progressive educations, changing masculine roles socially, video game desensitization, even copy-cat crimes. There are many causes for the violence, but the gun is just a tool in the killings. So long as society imposes progressive beliefs upon young minds in conflict with their natural inclinations, there will be occasional clashes with elements of our society who crack mentally under pressure.   Progressives point to the gun and hope that the public won’t notice that the real cause of these modern shooting sprees are their policies, which ironically have increased dramatically since the recession of 2008 and the rise of Barack Obama. A simple investigation into a chart on the matter will show what I mean.

But violence is here to stay, and it’s likely to get worse. The only way to deal with violent people is with the promise of the type of violence they fear. That’s why more guns are needed, not less. Gun laws need to be loosened, not tightened. And more people need to protect themselves with programs like Second Call Defense so that when they do find themselves in a self-defense shooting, that a legal team will fight on their behalf against the laws created by liberals to punish gun ownership and make examples out of people who use the Second Amendment for the purpose it was designed for. Progressives don’t see value in individuals, unless they can exploit them after some tragedy. So they really don’t care about the cause of the behavior that inspires these young kids to shoot other people in schools. But they do want to get rid of guns, and the more people who lose their life in violent upheavals the better for progressives and their mission. That mission was nearly dripping from the mouths of the president’s people at the White House directly after the shooting—they saw another reason immediately to attack the American gun culture. What they failed to mention is that guns protect innocent people not only from over reaching government, but from distraught young punks with nothing else in their life to do but harm others—just because they can.

Remember if you get into a self-defense gunfight with a scumbag, a diabolical menace, or a withering spirit on its last leg of emphasis, be sure to first call 911 to report what happened. Then, call Second Call Defense to keep liberals from ruining your life with litigation, character assassination and personal hatred because you stand between them and the eradication of guns from a culture that desires to be free.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

A Muslim in the White House: The history and reason why not

If there was any doubt ever about the depth of the corruption of our federal government by forces not committed to traditional America, the Muslim issue smoking off of Donald Trump’s recent town hall meeting is all the evidence anybody needs. A person at that town hall asked a question about Obama’s Islamic faith, which was a conclusion that Obama himself has fostered with his actions—particularly with NASA and his position regarding the Middle East where he favors Palestinian and Iranian positions over those of Israel and even Egypt. Trump listened politely. He had questions about Obama’s birth certificate in the past, which still are unanswered, as the document Obama eventually provided under pressure from Trump turned out to be computer generated—as proven by Sheriff Arpaio of Arizona.

So the issue never was settled, but the national and international media was quick to accept it so that they could move on to another issue—mysteriously. They called Trump a birther and the Department of Justice sued Arpaio for his border enforcement techniques which was obvious harassment as a direct result of the birth certificate investigation. The rest of the world moved on leaving lots of questions unanswered, propelling conspiracy theories which a significant portion of the American public are now asking, the guy at Trump’s town hall being one of them.   Trump didn’t fan the flames, but he didn’t quell them either, because anybody with any reasonable mind knows something is wrong on the issue—but at this point it’s no longer relevant. The condemnation from the political right and left was truly baffling. It was the lead story for four consecutive days propelled mostly by Republicans. It was evidence of just how far off the rocker we have all fallen as a nation.

Then over the weekend, Ben Carson got into all kinds of trouble by saying that a Muslim should not be elected president, which started a firestorm of its own. Carson’s position is a logical one, the Islamic faith is producing much of the violence seen throughout the world, and America doesn’t need to accelerate that violence by putting a Muslim in the White House. Maybe someday when terrorists aren’t using the Koran to justify beheading infidels—but until there is a good century of violent free behavior, a Muslim in an American White House empowering the radicals fueling terrorism in the Middle East even more is not a good idea. This is something any rational, well-educated mind should understand—easily.

Then on every channel, more than usual was a real hatred of Donald Trump. The endearing nurturing of his candidacy was gone. No longer was he a thorn in the side of Jeb Bush and other establishment Republicans—Trump had suddenly become a threat to everything every progressive had built a public dialogue around. Without Trump’s town hall, nobody would have thought to press Ben Carson, about what he said about Muslims in the White House. Now the cat of distrust about the Islamic faith is out of the bag on a national forum, and establishment types from all walks of life in unison are flustered and acting well out of accordance of what should be American interests.

I’ve known a fair share of Muslims. They are generally peaceful. Their need to pray to Mecca each day gets irritating, but as long as it doesn’t interfere with what I want to do, I’m fine with it. It’s weird to me, but so are a lot of things. Religion should be a private thing and people are free to practice whatever they want.   But like all religions, including the Catholic one, they have elements of collectivism that is dangerous to our republic style of government. The current Pope is using global warming and other aspects of the church he heads to spread a socialist agenda he learned from his home country of Argentina. If the current Pope who is touring America right now is the representation of God on planet earth, then that God is an idiot—because the Pope is not a friend of capitalism or the American way of life. If an American president were excessively Catholic and wanted to turn over the White House to the Pope for guidance, I would have a big problem with that as well. So it’s not just the Muslim faith. It’s any radical religious type who thinks through the collectivism of the church instead of their own free—individual will. We don’t elect religious nut cases in the White House—at least we shouldn’t. We need in America self guided, philosophically sound, individuals who are capable of leadership. We don’t always get that, but we at least have attempted to strive for that objective.

Occasionally I deal with some of the mysteries of Pre-Columbian archaeology and the discrepancies that investigative science casts against a historical record as defined by religion. There has been a lot of violent history regarding religious faith from just about every denomination. While we want an American president who respects the premise of religious value which established the United States, we don’t want a leader of the free world who blindly accepts a dialogue that can be controlled by an unholy relationship between the church and politics. We need a president who asks questions and we need a media who distrusts what a president might say—to question everything even if religion offers an opinion and attempts to use the hand of God as a justification for some evil performed. When barbarians destroyed the Library of Alexandria a terrible crime was committed and there is no way to recover what was lost during that tragedy. The great novel Finnegans Wake may be all that’s left of that period of history before the Roman Empire, and Halloween all that’s left of the strange rituals of that pre-history period.   The world is covered with mysterious artifacts that don’t fit with current scientific or religious understanding. There is a lot of pre-history that existed, but there is no accounting for it. So it’s dangerous and illogical to accept anything blindly—especially Islamic faith. As I’ve pointed out before without Aristotle, there would be no Islamic faith and without Zoroastrian religion there wouldn’t be any Christian or Muslim belief as those are the foundations of both. The mystery is what came before Aristotilian philosophy and Zoroastrian faith. Given that many in the media are highly educated, they should know all this, but they don’t. Instead, they are too quick to accept blind faith and false documents. They are OK to accept whatever President Obama says—even though the evidence is quite mysterious, and the fervor over just a question speaks to the same reckless agenda type of diatribe which burned down the library I referred to in Alexandria. CLICK TO REVIEW. Now you know dear reader why I support Trump so much. As a free man he is unshackled to ask the right questions without fearing upsetting the orthodox thinking, which these days is far too concerned with putting a woman in the White House, or people of different faiths, people of different sexual orientation, and anybody but the right person for the job. That is a strange value for a collective species to have. I can understand that view-point from a fanatical group, but not the entire establishment. That should send alarms to every sane mind who hears it.

Trump said all the right things in the wake and is fully aware of the challenge he posses. But I don’t think even he understood the depths of the sinister persuasion of what he terms a “dishonest media.” The media is dishonest because they are too concerned with bending logic to fit the story of their establishment. In this case their story is that Muslims are a peaceful people not prone to radicalized behavior. Yet the truth is that it is from that specific group of religious lunatics that most terrorism stems. Even radical Christians and the worst Bible thumpers are docile compared to the terrorist groups spawned from Islamic faith and their assumption that their religion is the only one of value. For instance, on the Cartoon Network late at night on Fridays is a show called Black Jesus. Such a show would never be produced called “Black Muhammad.” There would be death threats and probably someone would lose their life in response. It is because of that reality that Ben Carson said he was uneasy with a Muslim in the White House. And that is also why a question about such radicalism was asked at a Trump event. Denouncing the question as all the pundits suggested Trump should have done does not solve the problem. Ignoring the question is not what good journalism should be doing. It should be the media asking those questions, not some dude at a Trump rally. The reason why the media isn’t is why Trump says the media is dishonest, and why Republicans are supporting outsiders for the White House. Because people know something is wrong, and often the truth is hidden behind religion and the media that doesn’t cover the real facts. Among those facts are that the religions of our day are softened versions of a long forgotten pagan past. What they share in common with those distant relatives is a desire to sacrifice life essence to undefined spiritual entities. In the Catholic Church, that sacrifice is most notable during Lent and the ritual of communion. In Islamic faith, it is too often interpreted these days with the actual taking of human life, much the way the Maya, Aztec and countless head hunter cultures have for centuries. An American president needs to be free of this desire to sacrifice our country to the wishes of the uncharted, and unseen. And that is the million dollar desire of our day and the type of provocation that only Donald Trump is free to bring forth. That’s also why his poll numbers are so high because too many people are asking questions these days that nobody else will dare answer.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Seattle Education Association: Caving to communism in a progressive utopia

When politicians use the word progressive, be clear that what they are talking about is essentially Bernie Sanders socialism. They intend to “progress” society toward collective salvation to nearly a religious fervor. That’s why they don’t have any hard opinions about North Korea, China, Iran, Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Venezuela, Greece, France or even Russia for that matter, because socialism and communism are the modes those countries are functioning under, and they want the same for the United States. That is what politicians mean by “progressive” when they indicated that society needs to “lean forward” toward it.

Clearly one of the most progressive areas of the United States is Seattle, Washington. The massive union culture of the Boeing employees contribute largely to that, and the music culture that has evolved through their garage bands were undeniably socialist in orientation. They have an actual city council person who is a socialist. It is a highly liberalized part of the country and was one of the first places to attempt a $15 per hour minimum wage for fast food workers. So they have serious issues against capitalism and are certainly as a city leaning well toward pot smoking liberalism of the most severe version of progressive. With that said, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the teacher’s union in Seattle went on strike at the start of the school year holding the tax payers to the fire until city management—which is already on the same side as the progressive labor union—buckled just to get the teachers to go back to work again. Here’s what the school employees received in the deal followed by a short report from the Seattle Times.

 Highlights of tentative 3-year contract:

Raises: 3 percent in first year; 2 percent in second; 4.5 percent in third (state cost-of-living raise is additional). More in 2017-18 for some teachers for collaboration, and eight hours of “tech pay” for all school employees.

Discipline: Half day of training on reducing disproportionate discipline for all school employees. Equity committees launched in 30 schools.

Testing: New joint union-district committee to review and recommend testing and testing schedule.

Teacher evaluations: Test scores will no longer play any role.

School day: Will be longer, but not much for students, and teachers will be paid for the additional time.

Specialist caseloads: Sets limits, which union says is a first, for physical therapists, occupational therapists, psychologists and audiologists.

Source: Seattle Education Association

After four months of negotiations, a five-day strike and one final all-night talk, the Seattle teachers union and Seattle Public Schools reached a tentative contract agreement early Tuesday, and school is scheduled to start Thursday for the city’s 53,000 students.

The Seattle Education Association’s board of directors and its elected building representatives both voted Tuesday afternoon to suspend the strike, recommending the union’s membership approve the deal. The agreement will go to a full vote of the union’s 5,000 members at a Sunday meeting.

The building-representative vote came after hours of deliberation, where cheers and fervent discussion could be heard outside a packed room at the Machinists Hall in South Seattle.

Union bargaining chair Phyllis Campano, exhausted after one hour of sleep after the marathon negotiation session, declared victory.

“Let’s be clear,” she said. “We won the fight on this contract agreement.”

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/seattle-teachers-and-district-reach-tentative-agreement/

What a bunch of communist idiots. That is exactly why education costs so much in America, and why our children are being liberalized during that institutional training. There are no rational conservatives in the process, and even if they did manage to get elected to a board seat, progressive politicians have skewed the table to always favor the labor unions. To properly negotiate a deal against labor unions you really have to be an ass, and enjoy it, because it’s tough. But with a 5 to 7 member school board, one will always be out-voted by the rest, as those who typically run for such offices are liberalized types themselves. I would argue that the best education the kids of Seattle could have had was a few more days at home as these progressive teachers went on strike for more money and power.

This strike was not about any kids. Kids were clearly used as extortion pieces to secure higher wages, lower testing expectations, and more secure livelihoods. To hell with the kids, which is what the Seattle Education Association declared when they went on strike—there’s no other way to frame the debate. It was about money at the expense of the kids for the progressive aims of further substantiation of a communist agenda spreading across the world.

However, this story is an old one. We’ve covered it many times before. We’ve covered it on radio broadcasts, many articles, public debates and anywhere that the issue has been raised. Yet in Seattle, the situation is clear, the politics are grossly progressive and the aims of the insurrection directly applicable to the region. The apparatus for political theater has a well-known cast and everyone benefited except for the kids, because a liberal education is not necessarily better than not having one at all. I would argue that children could learn far more from the popular Leap Frog devices so popular now at the local Target store than a K-12 education in a public school. Such educations are as dirty and disrespected as public libraries where everything is shared and stagnate. The value of such education is clearly deficient. As pollsters like to announce often during the presidential race of 2016, college graduates support Hillary Clinton whereas blue-collar non-college graduates generally support Donald Trump. The accusation is that highly educated types are more able to understand “higher concepts” of progressivism. But such a term is purely marketing and has no basis in reality. It could be just as argued that 16 years of liberalized education is detrimental to a conservative mind and they will leave college prepared to support progressive platform points such as gay rights, open borders, and socialist wealth redistribution. Whereas those who make their own way in life work hard from the ground up and go to bed tired each night, they don’t like to have their money stolen from them by progressives—so they vote with their wallets. The Seattle Education Association is clearly attacking the hard-working as opposed to the unionized slugs and the wealth redistribution that they most support in Seattle, so it’s no surprise that the government school union got what they wanted so quickly. There really wasn’t any opposition, just political theater that showed clearly that the children were not the priority to the teachers.

It’s a hard reality for many to realize, but the educations we all go through within the public education system is nearly worthless. It exists for these unionized teachers to mooch off of, as they provide very little of any worth for a young, inquiring mind, except a radicalized progressive education. Kids don’t learn about the value of cowboys and Indians in public school, but they sure learn how to stand in line, organize in a collective unit, and get voluminous exposure to the progressive religion of global warming. It’s hard work to unlearn all the crap we learn and for those who reject the experience, it’s easier for them. But for all, the reality couldn’t be clearer. If you support the teachers in Seattle you essentially support Bernie Sanders socialism. The people who won in that case were the socialists represented here by the Seattle Education Association. And they pulled it off because there is no free market competition for their services and it’s nearly illegal to avoid the reach of public schools. So they have a government backed monopoly on building future progressives with tax payer money and every year the price tag goes up. And nobody does anything to stop it because they are afraid of being called names for identifying the behavior what it really is—which is a diabolical socialist scheme that would make the communists of the world bulge with pride. And today in Seattle, they are.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Force Friday and Donald Trump: How the Chamber of Commerce machine is losing

I have been saying it for a long time; things are changing rapidly right in front of our faces. Of late, I haven’t felt a need to talk about every evil news story simply because a time has arrived that will launch us all into a new era. Part of it is political, part is pure entertainment—but it will never-the-less touch all our lives directly and indirectly. I am sometimes hard on world religions not because they are bad, but because they desperately need updated. You can’t expect young people to accept religion who have access to thousands of years of information on their cell phones, by talking about people who walked around in the dirt 2000 years ago concerned about things that were relevant only then. And you can’t ask people to get excited about politics when the Chamber of Commerce all across the nation has roped off candidates from the reality of living to serve their own functions. And that’s what has been happening leaving most people pretty numb to the world—which was done on purpose by those who thought they were in charge to continue controlling the masses. For decades the events that are about to unfold have been priming. Now they are ready to explode, and that reality is something that at this point is unavoidable.

For instance, you might have heard by now dear reader about Force Friday—it’s where retailers unleashed their new line of Star Wars toys to the public. People of all ages lined up for countless hours to be the first to put their hands on the new items giving just a slight preview to the upcoming massive blockbuster, The Force Awakens. Then of course there is Donald Trump who signed the pledge to the Republican Party during the previous day to Force Friday, to not run as a third-party candidate.   The old, lazy, Chamber of Commerce circle of losers who has continued to give us politicians liked Pete Beck of Mason—who is now in jail, have been running the show and they are losing their grip. (I knew Pete and wasn’t a fan.). Another is Ohio senator Bill Coley, the attorney who became a politician to bring business to his law practice—who holds the line of orthodox. Then there is John Boehner, the guy with just enough skeletons in his closet and lazy enough to prevent any real reform as Speaker of the House—as the last one was a gay sex addict. The worst that mankind can produce has been given to us by the Chamber of Commerce and their finance machines that put the candidates on the front line and keep everyone else out. Now for those of you in other parts of the world those three names mean little to you, but I promise in your local neighborhood, you are dealing with the same type of thing from the same type of people. Trump has entered the scene offering a totally different kind of candidate and he will change politics permanently from now on..

We are all trained from an early age in our education systems to accept this Chamber of Commerce way of conducting politics. In my local district of Lakota it was our local Chamber who provided leadership training to key members of the management team at the public school—so its all designed to maintain a status quo that has long passed its effectiveness. In public school peer pressure is taught to us to conform to the politics of the moment—usually shaped by whatever political class is in charge at the time. As a kid I was never one who responded to peer pressure. The more it was applied to me, the more rebellious I became. By high school I gave rebellion a new definition. And I was then, and still am extremely proud of it, because that rebelliousness preserved me into an intact, intellectual adult. I was raised a Christian who went to church nearly every Sunday, watched a lot of westerns, was taught from family members correctly that tattoos and long hair indicated a vagabond personality that was disreputable. I had a lot of values in a world that seemed to despise value. So I turned to Star Wars as a safe haven to my values which was like a permanent vacation from the stifling environment of public school.

Every Friday I would look forward to wearing one of my favorite t-shirts to school—which was usually a Star Wars shirt. It was the last day of the week where I’d get a chance to get out of prison for a few days, so I was very happy on Fridays and I expressed that happiness by wearing my Star Wars shirts. Of course the moment I stepped onto the school bus kids made fun of my shirt—because it wasn’t cool to like such things, it was considered geeky. Kids entering their double-digit years were supposed to be thinking of girls, not hairy wookies and galactic smugglers in hot rod starships. But Star Wars made me happy because my values were aligned within it, so I indulged in spite of public sentiment. I learned quickly to shut off the noise of the outside world because I knew instinctively that they were wrong and off-base. I was of course right. Every single person I grew up with, and I still know some of them, are presently unhappy people. Everyone who accepted that role of not wearing a Star Wars shirt because they were afraid to be made fun of, are today miserable, overweight slobs. They may be financially successful in various ways, they may have days of joy, but generally from dawn to dusk—except for their favorite television shows, they are miserable.

Now that Donald Trump is a serious candidate the establishment types are terrified, because he is doing one of two things. He will become the next president, or he is drawing fire so that people like Ben Carson can have a legitimate shot at the presidency as a Republican candidate in Trump’s wake. Either way, politics will never be the same again because of Donald Trump. We are just getting started on this journey and I’ve seen it coming for quite some time. So the tactic now being used against Trump fans is to make fun of them—to discredit them in a way that might make them shy away to a more Chamber of Commerce oriented candidate—and keep the establishment preserved. Our public school training has taught us that if we want to be popular, that we have to listen to that peer pressure. About 30% in public school are the geeky types who know they won’t be popular so they accept the ridicule. Those are some of the present Donald Trump supporters. They are not going to listen to the established Republicans who are now crying for a return to a machine that makes politicians like John Boehner by the busloads. But it won’t work anymore because people have had enough time to realize that they don’t want to become like the people who are applying the peer pressure—and they are turning away.

Many of the adults who turned out on Force Friday to purchase new Star Wars toys are those who buckled under the peer pressure of their youth and they want to rectify that experience with their own children. I was one of the absolute few who never buckled off my Star Wars kick. I drew pictures of Star Wars. I played Star Wars at recess. I read books during the reading hours. And during every class, algebra, English, science, history I escaped from those idiots into my own world thinking of building space ships and traveling the galaxy as a kind of off-world cowboy. Most kids one-on-one agreed with me. But when peer groups were applied, they were the first to play Judas to the orthodox and shy away from any public support. Many of those people who are now adults were those waiting in line to fix the cycle with their own children buying up Star Wars toys as quickly as they hit the shelves.

All these elements are going to hit our culture at the same time. Trump and the Iowa primary season just as Star Wars will hit theaters and dominate our entertainment culture in a way that nobody has yet realized the full impact—not even Disney. When valueless celebrities like Miley Cyrus are the established peer pressure of the day dedicated to promoting pot, easy sleazy sex, and mind numb intelligentsia, the moment these two massive cultural forces hit public sentiment at the same time, a truly defined new era will have arrived. It’s fresh, and it’s ours. It’s not from some far away land speaking to us from a perspective that is no longer relevant. It is here, and now. Many have learned hard lessons from the past and they aren’t willing to continue those mistakes in the future and they will coalesce around Donald Trump and Star Wars because within those political and entertainment spheres of influence is a new age for which people like me have been demanding for several decades. And it has arrived whether or not everybody is ready for it. To understand Donald Trump is to understand the type of people who waited outside of a Disney Store at midnight prior to September 5th 2015 to buy a new Star Wars toy with all the excitement of a night before Christmas as a young child. There is more to it than just geekdom. It’s a dawn to a new time that the Chamber of Commerce types out there just won’t like—because their way of life and the stale values they have protected is about to become extinct.

Please watch the videos above for support information. This is an important lesson, and you better be ready for it dear reader.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

‘High Plains Drifter’: A Clint Eastwood western that advanced American philosophy

I watched High Plains Drifter as one of the very first movies I saw when I was newly moved out of my parent’s house. I rented it because of the cover art on the VHS tape, Clint Eastwood holding a gun and a bullwhip. I had seen at that time most of Eastwood’s movies, so I wanted to see them all and this one was on the list. I didn’t expect much, but was very surprised to see that the film was a masterpiece—a sheer work of unapologetic authenticity. It may very well be my favorite western of all time and is the summation of a span of westerns by Clint Eastwood starting with A Fistful of Dollars and ending with Pale Rider that defined the genre forever. Eastwood’s westerns were Ayn Rand tales set on the frontier of America and were very much a part of my childhood. I loved westerns, all westerns, but Clint Eastwood westerns were uniquely special to me. I could identify with them immensely. At the time that I first saw High Plains Drifter I was living a very similar life and I didn’t feel a bit of guilt about it. The established order of things said that I should. Until I saw that director Clint Eastwood understood my vantage point in High Plains Drifter, I had nothing but gut instinct to tell me I was on the right path.

I will never forget the Friday before I saw High Plains Drifter. I drove my friends to Miami University for a bit of ruckus activity which ended up in a bar and a fight with the first stringers of the football team. The fight evolved into the back alley where I and one other friend literally took on the football team until the police came and arrested everyone—but me. The reason the police left me alone was strange. I was so mad at the time that I would have punched anybody who came near me, and they seemed to understand that. Instead of feeding their aggression, they backed off and arrested everyone else starting with the outside of the pile working inward. When it was just me and the rest of the police left with blood and pieces of clothing all over the place, I spoke calmly to them realizing and feeling quite satisfied that I had just done something that seemed impossible. My friends were arrested and carted off to jail and I had to find a way to get them out. But otherwise, I was the last one standing even though I was one of the first in the fray. It was a good feeling.

I managed to work things out with the police which ended up at the jail eventually and I had my friends released. I spoke to everyone in charge intelligently, which gained respect and leverage allowing me to get my friends out without a court appearance, which I didn’t think would be possible. My friends were baffled as to how I walked away from the incident without being arrested, and how I managed to get them out of jail. I didn’t know how to explain it myself. But on the next evening we decided to stay home and rent a movie, and that movie was High Plains Drifter. I had my answer at the start of the third act when a woman who Clint Eastwood had just slept with told him to be careful because he was a man who made other people afraid. From that Eastwood explained, “People are only afraid of what they know about themselves inside.” I knew somewhere in that exchange of dialogue was an answer that I would carry with me for the rest of my life. And the woman was right. Confident people—excessively confident people—scare the meager types like those who were in the fictional western town of Lago—from the film. And those meager types were easy to control once you looked them in the eye. That is what many of Eastwood’s westerns from that period were about—but specifically High Plains Drifter.

After watching that movie I felt like a much more focused person. I understood much more about myself—which might be troubling if not for the fact that Clint Eastwood was playing a ghost of some kind in the film—a vengeful spirit from Hell set to cast justice on the small mining town and all the guilty people within it. I thought Clint Eastwood was the greatest director on earth for capturing all the controversial topics he explored in that story with such effortless mastery. High Plains Drifter was a 1973 American supernatural western film produced by Robert Daley for Malpaso Company and Universal Studios, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, and written by Ernest Tidyman (who also wrote the novelization). Eastwood plays an enigmatic wraith, who metes out justice in a corrupt frontier mining town, where he arrives as a stranger.[3] The film was influenced by the work of Eastwood’s two major collaborators, film directors Sergio Leone and Don Siegel.[4]

The film was shot on location on the shores of Mono Lake, California. Dee Barton wrote the eerie film score. The film was critically acclaimed at the time of its initial release and remains popular today, holding a score of 96% at the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Plains_Drifter

As I have been thinking about the significance of American gunfighters of late, this film keeps returning to me in a revelatory way. It is important, and specific to the American experience. I didn’t know it when I first watched it, but it is clearly in hindsight a masterpiece. It has within it an element that Ayn Rand brought out in her novels—an overman quality that is so needed. There was an evolution of human thinking that was occurring in that movie that as inescapable. There was honesty to the type of independence specific to American culture that Eastwood had tapped in to.

John Wayne was not a fan of High Plains Drifter. His westerns were about honor, sacrifice, loyalty and courage. While those are appealing attributes, High Plains Drifter was about something else. And I decided that I would commit my life to that something else. I had a taste of it at that campus fight. I had touched on it many times, but Clint Eastwood had fleshed it out and put it on the screen for all to see. His gunfighter character in the film was more than just a man—literally. But that made it even that much more appealing to me. High Plains Drifter is an American movie classic that is in a category all by itself. It is a western—the best of its kind. But it’s more than that, its philosophy—a thinking which is fresh and unique to the individual experience with an unequivocal desire for justice. Justice at every level possible, one that started with the gun, but ultimately enacted with a superior mind and unshakable confidence changed philosophic perspective for the better. It is good to keep the mind on the high plains of life and to face those tribulations alone. For that is the path toward something new, and specific to America. And freedom rides in its wake.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Cracker Barrel: Memories of an America yet to be

I was visiting a whip maker friend of mine in Middletown, Ohio who is working on a special project for me. It was Sunday around lunch time and we were early. So my wife and I elected to stop by the local Cracker Barrel for a late breakfast. Many people find it humorous that I often refer to Cracker Barrel as fine dinning, because for me it is. Now I have dined in many great restaurants, but I prefer Cracker Barrel, especially on a long trip because of the country setting and general store. The food and service to my experience has always been great and I love the “old west” feel of them when I step inside.image

My very first exposure to a Cracker Barrel was in Northern Kentucky. My grandfather who was the son of an active moonshiner from the sticks of coal country invited me as a very young boy to go shooting with the men in the family at his childhood home. His father at the time had long been dead, but as a boy he ran the hills from the law smuggling moonshine during prohibition. Their home was about the size of a modern bedroom and it was back in a valley about 30 miles northwest of Buckhorn Lake—a pretty remote location, especially when I was a kid. Back then there wasn’t much development between Lexington and Cincinnati, so if you didn’t gas up in Northern Kentucky, you might run out of fuel before Lexington. It was winter and I rode in the back of a pickup truck with some older cousins, some of whom were already men. I was by far the youngest. It was the day after Christmas and all the men were going shooting. It was my first time firing powerful weapons like a .38 special and a 30-30 rifle.

Cracker Barrel had one of their very first national stores in Northern Kentucky and it looked a lot like they do now. It was 6 AM, the sun wouldn’t be up for at least another hour and it was cold. We were all dressed in gun holsters, long hunting knives and day packs when we stepped inside to have some breakfast next to a roaring fireplace. It set in my mind for life a love for the place. It was the nearest thing I’d ever get to an authentic cowboy experience, wandering in off the open range, armed to the teeth to stop into a saloon/general store for some grub. It was a testosterone driven occurrence that shaped me for life. The waitress and manager could have turned us away at the door because we looked like we were there to rob a bank. I have worn a cowboy hat since I was in the fourth grade, so I had mine on feeling like a western drifter—and I loved the feeling as snow rushed in behind us as we stepped inside. They could have told us to leave the guns and packs in our car, but instead they asked if we wanted coffee next to a roaring fire. Years later when I saw the Clint Eastwood western The Unforgiven, the first saloon scene reminded me explicitly of that moment in my time—and it stayed with me forever. That was America. Cracker Barrel for me would always represent the best that America had to offer.

Most of the people on that shooting trip with me are dead now. Some died of old age, some from not meeting high expectations in life, some by personal destructive behavior. I could see much of it back then on that shooting trip. In the back of that truck where it was so cold ice formed on our noses, the older men passed around a whiskey flask. They offered it to me even though I was way too young to drink it. I turned it down. And if you traced their lives with mine and noticed how far apart they are now, you could trace it back to those types of decisions on a shooting trip on a cold December morning. They looked down at me a bit for not wanting to share the whisky, but my grandfather thought it took guts, which is all I really cared about. Once we started shooting, nobody thought anything about who drank what, or who said a curse word. Guns made all men equal and respect was derived by that realization. When I showed I could fire the 30-30 without being knocked down due to my small stature there was respect, and I would carry that lesson with me for life. The whole experience started with a Cracker Barrel.

My wife had never been to such a place as a Cracker Barrel before meeting me. But we went to one just north of Knoxville on our honeymoon as we traveled back from Gatlinburg. For her it summed up everything we had experienced on our first days together as a married couple and she fell in love with it for life. For years we would take our children there while vacationing and make a big deal about each visit, no matter where we were. One time we were on our way to a Star Wars convention in Indianapolis and my kids were dressed up as Jedi. We stopped at one about 45 minutes outside of Indianapolis. My kids had the experience I had as a young man, stepping in dressed as warriors. They had some unique looks, but everyone was friendly and it was a fun experience. They never forgot it. Then there was a time while traveling by motorcycle to a film festival in northern Ohio. My oldest daughter had never ridden a motorcycle before and this was her first experience—on a long road trip up north. Cracker Barrel just north of Columbus on an early summer morning in the middle of the week was an oasis of pleasure—a cozy place that always said “home” as you step into its doors.

One thing about Cracker Barrels is that they are almost always busy, especially in the noon time hours. People are often willing to wait for 30 minutes to get something they could get at McDonald’s in a fraction of the time. The reason is that most people have a special relationship to Cracker Barrel similar to mine. The restaurant chain has built their brand around American tradition for decades and people respect it enough to wait.   That was the situation my wife and I found ourselves in on a Sunday afternoon in late August, 2015, before we met on business with our whip making friend David Crain for a “special project.”

I have been thinking about guns a lot these days. The Obama administration has caused great unrest and unsettled the most rational by unleashing the insane, corrupt, and perpetually dependent to collect what the president promised during his campaigns, redistributed wealth in trade for a vote. And the results have been menacing. Police are being executed all around the country. Border violence is disturbingly common. And religious fanatics are going on holy wars against infidels with the apparent support of the American media. Long gone are the days of the Saturday morning westerns, and heroes of tradition. Those wonderful attributes are missing during our nightly news, but they are quite alive and flourishing at Cracker Barrel’s across the country, and that is what my wife and I were seeking.

As I waited for my breakfast I looked around the room at all the unique paraphernalia that they customarily have lining the walls. Most of it looked like the kind of items you might find at garage sales, but typically they speak of traditional American items, old Coke signs, early gas station markers, looms, spindles, scrubbing boards. However on this particular visit, I noted how many guns were displayed on the wall. Above my head was a Winchester lever-action and around the dining room where several musket style weapons from what looked like the pre-Civil War period. Then my attention was pulled toward an advertisement from perhaps the 50s from a drink called NEHI. It said, “What’s getting into kids these days.” Around the picture of a girl drinking what looked to be a healthy beverage alternative were kids playing. Of note was one kid dressed as a frontiersman another as a cowboy complete with a six-gun. Then another picture was of an Indian. It reminded me of the days when kids actually played cowboys and Indians and it wasn’t considered an act of insanity requiring counseling at school for wanting to play with weapons. I realized looking at that picture that the magic of Cracker Barrel was essentially represented in that picture. The family restaurant was a timeless portrayal of the type of America that many in the core of the country still love, and desire desperately to behold. That’s why many of the customers on a Sunday afternoon after church were willing to wait up to an hour to have some eggs and bacon—something they could easily get at home. But what they couldn’t get was the essence of Americana that Cracker Barrel truly is—and will always remain.

The meeting with the whip maker David Crain went well. He is very crafty and during our business dealing he showed me a little side project he was working on. He had been using his wood lathe to make some really marvelous wooden ink pens, the kind of items you might find at Kenwood Mall for $55. He sells them for $20 dollars, which I think is too cheap, but it’s his business. So I picked one up, since that kind of thing is sometimes important to me. If anybody else wants some, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with him. It’s a really good deal. Meeting with David reminds me of the kind of Americans we used to be. Behind his house David has a wood shop, and in it he makes lots of really neat crafts—the kind of things that will probably someday be on the wall of a Cracker Barrel. But with David, we are living tradition in the present, and that made that particular Sunday one that I will not long forget. It was a reminder of what we fight for and why. Much of it can be summed up in the advertisement by NEHL from a time long forgotten–except on the wall of a Cracker Barrel in Middletown, Ohio looming over eggs, bacon, and good memories.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.